By early 1945, the end was in sight. After months of hard fighting the Allies were advancing towards the Rhine and to the east the Russians were closing in on Berlin as part of Operation Bagration.
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The conflict in the Pacific provided history with some of the worst reminders of the true meaning of war. Even today the images captured on islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa have the power to shock a world by the horrors of more recent events.
By early 1945, the end was in sight. After months of hard fighting the Allies were advancing towards the Rhine and to the east the Russians were closing in on Berlin as part of Operation Bagration.
And so it finally arrived: 6th June 1944, the day that British, US and Canadian troops were sent across the English Channel to begin the job of reclaiming continental Europe and freeing it from German occupation.
The decision by Hitler to send his armies east in to Russia was probably the most significant of the war. Now against military convention, he was fighting on two fronts and almost as bad made a bitter enemy of an erstwhile ally.
This episode remembers some of the thunderous naval battles which took place during the Pacific war. They include the Battle of the Coral Sea, the battle of Midway and the biggest naval engagement of the war – the battle of Leyte Gulf.
Meanwhile in North Africa, the Italian dictator Mussolini had his own ideas about building a new Roman Empire in the region. And so he sent thousands of poorly-trained and ill-prepared Italian troops against the British garrison in Egypt.
The German mass breakout that stunned wartime Britain, the astonishing secret behind the daring escape of an American bomber crew trapped in the Soviet Union, and the Trojan Horse of Stalag Luft Three.
The German mass breakout that stunned wartime Britain, the astonishing secret behind the daring escape of an American bomber crew trapped in the Soviet Union, and the Trojan Horse of Stalag Luft Three.
An adrenaline-fuelled dash through nazi-occupied Europe known as ‘The Flight of the Crow', a death-defying escape across the world's most perilous mountain range, and the largest escape of world war two - by men who chose death over dishonour.
Colditz Castle, the foreboding Nazi fortress that became a university of escapology The Great Escape, and the doomed airmen of Stalag Luft Three and the most daring breakout of them all, the ‘Warburg Wire Job'.
Hitler's last soldier in America who defied the FBI for 40 years, the Auschwitz prisoners who releaved the secrets of the death camps, and the merciless Nazi who almost got away.
The elite German submariners who caused havoc in the heart of the American desert, the playboy pilot they couldn't cage, and the young lovers whose escape defied all odds.
The Russian soldier who led a desperate outbreak from a secret Nazi death camp, Operation Chicken - an audacious plan to flee an escape-proof Japanese prison camp, and the pilots whose bold bid for freedom won the admiration of their enemies.
The German mass breakout that stunned wartime Britain, the astonishing secret behind the daring escape of an American bomber crew trapped in the Soviet Union, and the Trojan Horse of Stalag Luft Three.
An adrenaline-fuelled dash through nazi-occupied Europe known as ‘The Flight of the Crow', a death-defying escape across the world's most perilous mountain range, and the largest escape of world war two - by men who chose death over dishonour.
In 1961, Soviet T-54 tanks and American M-48 Patton tanks face off at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.
Exploring the machines that hide in the shadows, capturing, transmitting and analysing vital combat information.
We examine the robot that defused bombs both on foreign battlefields and British streets, and an astonishing Gulf War minelayer
Examining the machines used by iconic military unit 'The Desert Rats' in the North African desert campaign of World War II.
Examining the machines used by iconic military unit 'The Desert Rats' in the North African desert campaign of World War II.
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