LA GUERRE GAGNÉE, LA PAIX PERDUE

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

A look at the Nazi "show camp" used to fool the world while they carried out their "Final Solution".

Following the Battles of Mons and Le Cateau the already near exhausted British Expeditionary Force, who had been marching and fighting for six days without a break , embarked on a nine day epic march across France. They headed back to the safety of the far side River Marne south of Paris rather than to the traditional haven of British Armies – the Channel Ports.The BHTV team of historians and battlefield guides take us to the scene of some sharp rear guard actions fought during the Retreat from Mons including the great cavalry actions at Cerizy and Nery, where the mounted British soldier established domination of his German counterpart. As they travel the highways and byways of France they analyze the decisions made by the commanders in that fog of war that together spelt the end of the Schlieffen Plan and set conditions for the 'miracle of the Marne'.

While the Allies were nearing panic as the Germans approached Paris, Marshal Foch quickly realised the German intent and that the Schlieffen plan was unravelling. In a master piece of military diplomacy he persuaded Filed Marshal French to join the Attack on the exposed flank of the Germans as it wheeled to the east of Paris. The battle was indeed a miracle, with the British playing a key part alongside the French in halting the German advance and driving them back behind the next river – The Aisne, where the Allied attack crossed the river and up onto the open ridges of the Chemin des Dames. The Germans held firm and Field Marshal French ordered the BEF to dig-in as a temporary measure but the line moved but little here in the next four years.With neither army able to make headway against modern small arms, the machine gun and quick firing artillery in a conventional frontal battle, the armies raced to redeploy into the uncontested ground north to the sea.

Ilze Burkovska, a little girl who is obsessed with stories of World War II and will be a filmmaker in a distant future, lives in Latvia under the totalitarian boot of the Soviets and the ominous shadow of the many menaces and horrors of the Cold War.

A documentary produced by the French armed forces which chronicles the way of France’s “1ere armée” in the second world war from the days it first crossed the Rhine in March of 1945, through the liberation of a POW-camp in Swabia, until the forces reached the Danube and the Alps at the end of the war and the day French troops marched in the victory parade in Berlin.

Chaja Florentin and Mimi Frons have been best friends for 83 years. Born and raised in Berlin, they had to escape from the Nazis to Palestine with their families in 1934. They talk about their complicated relationship with Berlin in a Tel Aviv café where they meet everyday. A film about friendship, homeland and identity.

We’ve all heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but most people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi barbarism was. Instead, it’s widely believed “Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter.” Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back provides a much-needed corrective to this myth of Jewish passivity. There were uprisings in ghettos large and small, rebellions in death camps, and thousands of Jews fought Nazis in the forests. Everywhere in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the Nazis.

The life and career of Erwin Rommel and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.

On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).