S1.E2 ∙ On the Ball

This documentary is a captivating account of the defense of Wake Island by a small contingent of United States Marines and civilian contractors. From December 8th until December 23rd, 1941 the defenders thwarted an aerial attack and an attempted amphibious landing from a naval task force before finally being overwhelmed by the third attempt by the Japanese Imperial Navy. Five surviving Marines, one surviving construction contractor and others walk the viewers through the battle and the aftermath of the battle. A truly superb story of American heroes at the outset of World War II, narrated by Will Lyman.

Late in the 1980s, two documentary film makers found six German men, all in their 60s and 70s, who had been soldiers in the German invasion of the USSR in 1942. Each carried an 8mm camera into battle and they still had their film. "Mein Kreig" alternates between interviews with these older men, now apologetic, philosophical, or defiant about their participation, and the footage they shot. It's chronological: basic training, the train trip East, roof-top vistas of war-torn Warsaw, peasants in Belarus, the downing with carbine volleys of a Russian plane, winter, a holiday at the Black Sea, mud, impassable roads, death, destruction and retreat. "Home, that was the front," one says.

A number of frontline cameramen shot the footage used in this documentary of the Battle of Moscow, between October 1941 and January 1942,in which a people's war against the German invaders, whose atrocities are shown in graphic detail, is begun, with echoes of traditional Russian heroism and an appeal to save the country's religious and cultural monuments.

Nazi Titanic is the amazing and unknown story of one of the most bizarre chapters of WWII. In the middle of the war, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who was fascinated by the Titanic, decided to make a movie based on the sinking of the ship. This movie was so large in its scale, the Nazis were forced to divert men, materials and ships from their war effort in order to complete the film.

The actor and his brother, a former pilot, present a celebration of the Royal Air Force's centenary looking at planes from World War I to the present day and speaking to service personnel from throughout the RAF's history.