Never has a generation been so completely taken over by a totalitarian state as was the case in Hitler’s Third Reich: at the age of 10 children joined the “Jungvolk” movement, at 14 they joined the Hitler Youth, and at 18 they joined the party, the “Wehrmacht”, the SA, or the SS. This 5-part documentary by Guido Knopp and the ZDF Contemporary History Department is the first comprehensive film portrayal of the young people in the Third Reich. With in-depth witness statements and some previously...

Few if any men have changed the course of history like Martin Luther. In less than ten years, this fevered German monk plunged a knife into the heart of an empire that had ruled for a thousand years, and set in motion a train of revolution, war and conflict that would reshape Western civilization, and lift it out of the Dark Ages. Luther’s is a drama that still resonates half a millennium on. It’s an epic tale that stretches from the gilded corridors of the Vatican to the weathered church door of a small...

It was the defining moment of the 20th Century – the scientific, technological, military, and political gamble of the first atomic attack. This drama-documentary attempts to do what no other film has done before – to show what it is like to live through a nuclear explosion. Set in the three weeks from the test explosion in New Mexico to the dropping of the bomb, the action takes viewers into the room where the crucial political decisions are made; on board the Enola Gay; inside the bomb as it explodes; and on...

Where does one begin with the IRA? In the 17th century with the first Protestant settlers in the Northeast of Ireland? With Patrick Pearse's seizure of the GPO building in Dublin in 1916? With the Partition of Ireland in 1921? With the bombing campaign of the 1950s? In 1968 with the first civil rights marches? With the arrival of British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry in 1969? Any one of these flash points could have served as a starting point for Peter Taylor's remarkable book – and indeed...

This one-hour program is divided into five chapters. The Forgotten Maya Temples. In 1774, Spanish explorer Jose Calderon rediscovers the temples of Palenque and the ancient hieroglyphs of the Maya, a people whose culture was decimated by the Spanish conquistadors. A Hidden History. Toiling away in the basement of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, archeologist Tatiana Proskouriakoff discovers that Maya monuments contain a decipherable history rather than mere pictures and symbols. Political Roadblock. Working behind...

From the moment that Allied forces established the first beachhead in Normandy on D-Day, the end of the war in Europe was in sight. But although many soldiers joked about being in ‘Berlin by Christmas’, tenacious German resistance soon brought home the realisation that there were to be no quick victories. It was a nearly a year before the defeat of Nazi Germany was complete and Hitler’s Third Reich lay in ruins – a year of murderous struggle in the hedgerows of the bocage, exhilaration at the liberation...

Simple yet riveting, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till articulates the madness of racism in the South of the 1950s. Combining archival photos and footage with deeply felt interviews, this documentary tells the harrowing story of what happened when a mischievous 14 year old black boy from Chicago, visiting his relatives in Mississippi, whistled at a white woman in the street. The lynching that followed was so gruesome that a media circus surrounded the trial–and what stunned the nation was not only the...

Where does one begin with the IRA? In the 17th century with the first Protestant settlers in the Northeast of Ireland? With Patrick Pearse's seizure of the GPO building in Dublin in 1916? With the Partition of Ireland in 1921? With the bombing campaign of the 1950s? In 1968 with the first civil rights marches? With the arrival of British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry in 1969? Any one of these flash points could have served as a starting point for Peter Taylor's remarkable book – and...

A powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy? John Pilger...