Elite combat units from the Second World War. The formidable Waffen-SS were renowned for their brutality and tenacity, characteristics which made them the subject of numerous Allied war crime investigations.
Britain's SOE was a covert force established in 1940 to support the Resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. Trained in radio use, unarmed combat and sabotage, many parachuted or were dropped by submarine behind enemy lines.
In this program, the soldiers whose name has become a synonym for heroism and tackling the seemingly impossible. What was the task of Britain's elite military force, the SAS, in World War II?
Tells of the British Armoured Division, known as the Desert Rats, who conducted an epic campaign against Rommel's Axis forces in the deserts of Egypt and Libya.
After escaping the German invasion of their homeland in 1939, Polish fighter pilots and ground forces played a key role in the liberation of western Europe.
Despite the general inexperience of its young pilots, the Royal Air Force Fighter Command ultimately prevailed in its battle against the German Luftwaffe.
Winston Churchill created the Commandos in summer 1940 as a means of striking at the coasts of Nazi Occupied Europe. Beginning as a mere raiding force, they became the spearhead of the Allied amphibious landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Normandy. Out of the Commandos evolved Britain's airborne forces, whose feats ranged from the daring Bruneval raid of 1942 to the epic of Arnhem.
Norway was strategically important to Hitler and endured five years of Nazi occupation, but it developed one of the most effective resistance movements in the whole of Occupied Europe. Its activities helped the British to contain and then destroy Germany's mightiest warships, as well as to ensure that the Allies won the race to develop the atomic bomb.
The Royal Navy fought a long campaign against the German U-boats and surface ships in the Atlantic; the Royal Navy's Pacific Fleet helped win victory over Japan.
This edition takes a look at the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzacs, who first saw active service in Libya with the British when they forced the Italian army to surrender.
The Free French Forces, led by General Charles de Gaulle, refused to accept the armistice their country had signed with Germany and crossed the Channel to join the fight in Britain.
