Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit, an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II. The Second World War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing-in a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights: A New Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland Whirlwind: the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa Stalingrad: the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat Inside the Reich-Germany 1940-44: one of the most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth Morning: prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion Genocide: this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust Japan 1941-45: although The World at War is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion-early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial The bomb: another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. [+]

When North Korea surged across the 38th Parallel into the south on July 25, 1950, it marked the first full-scale confrontation of the cold war. In the years to come, Korea's divided country would became a global political chessboard with the communists backing the offensive North and the U. S. and United Nations supporting the defensive South. What would follow were among the most brutal battles in the history of global warfare: the Pusan Perimeter, the Inchon Invasion, Pork Chop Hill, the Iron Triangle, and Heartbreak Ridge. The Korean War: Fire and Ice, the four-part History Channel series, explores the historical factors, political entanglements, and military strategies of this pivotal struggle in exceptional detail. Rare black-and-white footage is combined with a diverse and knowledgeable group of veterans to paint a gripping, complete perspective of the Korean conflict. From its politically intertwined beginnings through the brutal battles and the unsettling truce that would leave more than 2 million lives in its wake, the Korea conflict would set the standards of East and West relations for the next 50 years. In spite of its political, historical, and military significance, the Korean War remains one of the least examined incidents in modern warfare. The Korean War: Fire and Ice is an excellent telling of military history as it was encountered by those who were there. [+]

The Germans knew it had to happen; they just didn't know when or where. Even so, they made certain the beaches would be a living hell. As the ramps of the famous Higgins boats dropped, the nervous invasion force jumped headlong into deadly bands of criss-crossing machine gun fire, unrelenting mortar fire, 88s and small arms. The casualties were staggering but the invasion forces prevailed, and by days end, more than 150,000 men were ashore and the long march to Berlin was on. This fascinating cassette contains the classic WWII histories of D-Day including D-Day Convoy and Normandy Invasion. With footage shot on the invasion beaches themselves on June 6, 1944, by Signal Corps cameramen, this collection lets you see D-Day exactly as it happened. First in the series "D-DAY TO BERLIN: The Liberation of Europe".

This unique set provides an atmospheric and informative record of an extraordinary period in British history. CROMWELL Oliver Cromwell was born in relative obscurity in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, but he was to rise to prominence as one of the greatest Generals and Statesmen that this country has ever produced. He was a leading light in the Great Revolution and Civil War which saw the overthrow of the British monarchy. Cromwell was victorious in almost every battle in England, Scotland and Ireland and throughout the civil wars. After the wars, during a decade of turbulent political upheaval, he presided over the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate and although he had refused the Crown, by the end of his life he was effectively ruling Britain as King in all but name. The story of Oliver Cromwell is inextricably linked to the social, religious, political and military upheavals which racked the British Isles in the mid Seventeenth Century. MARSTON MOOR The Battle of Marston Moor on July 2nd 1644 was one of the most important of the entire English Civil War. It was there that a force of some 27,000 Parliamentarian and Scottish troops routed an army of almost 18,000 Royalists. Crucially the Royalist stronghold of York was lost and King Charles' cause in the north fell into virtual collapse. It was a blow from which the King never recovered. [+]

Harrowing, funny, and immediately addictive, the 1979 British television series Danger UXB stars Anthony Andrews as Army Lieutenant Brian Ash, an engineering student whose excitement about his rapid commission as an officer during World War II is tempered by his unenviable post with a bomb disposal unit. Assigned to a fatality-heavy team that defuses unexploded German bombs scattered throughout London during the blitz, Ash faces down his terror and eventually becomes the closest thing to an expert one can be dismantling sometimes booby-trapped ordnance. In doing so, he earns the respect of his superiors as well as from the enlisted men working under him, and his protracted survival is nothing short of miraculous considering the tragic number of friends and colleagues Ash loses. There is a dark side, however. The longer Ash sticks with his unit, the more obsessive he becomes about his responsibility to keep London safe. Meanwhile, his nerves grow frayed and his morale collapses. Ash's desperate romance with a married woman (Judy Geeson) provides him little to hold onto, and when a true crisis ambushes his spirit toward the end, one can't be sure if he's headed for the scrap heap of permanent casualties. Based on the recollections of an actual wartime bomb disposer, Danger UXB was created by John Hawkesworth, who later produced (and wrote many episodes for) the fantastic Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett. Despite many tense moments in Danger UXB's 13 episodes-one is always expecting a bomb to blow away a favorite character-the show is also graced by great humor (Ash's crew sometimes bring to mind Sergeant Bilko's hustlers) and a warm, likable cast. Andrews himself, perhaps, has never been better. [+]