Tales of the Gun was a television series that broadcast on the History Channel for one season in 1998. It featured the history of firearms.
The usual episode format included interviews of historians and people who used the featured weapon, explanations of how the weapons were made, and demonstrations on a shooting range. The series narrator for the American version was Thom Pinto, a veteran voice actor.
Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, Nazi U-boats attacked American ships within sight of the North Carolina coast leaving a trail of death and destruction; now, a team of experts turn this forgotten graveyard into a protected sanctuary in honor of the fallen.
The Crusades: An Arab Perspective is a four-part series produced by Al Jazeera English, which presents the dramatic story of the medieval religious war through Arab eyes. The series provides a new perspective on the history of the Crusades for a global, English-speaking audience, that has largely read about or studied the famous struggle from a primarily Christian and Western point of view.
During the Cold War, the superpowers mobilized thousands of spies and spotters to lift the enemy’s secrets. The three-part program The Spying Game takes a close look at this era of rising tensions between East and West.
The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors is given comprehensive treatment in six 50 min episodes produced by PBS. Using archival footage and extensive interviews with participants, the production begins by explaining conditions in Palestine at the end of World War II and the crisis created by the exodus of European Jews who went to the Middle East after the Holocaust. The withdrawal of the British, who had controlled Palestine for decades, is detailed, as is the creation of the state of Israel. Much of the region's history is complex, with the local struggles being conducted at times as a part of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but these videos do an admirable job of explaining the complexities of the situation. The segment on the Six Day War, for example, is masterful, with the scenes shifting from Israel to Egypt to Washington to Moscow.
When Germany began Europe's WWII by invading Poland in 1939, China had already been fighting Imperial Japan for two years. This brutal war would cost 14 million Chinese lives while inflicting vast suffering. China's resistance was crucial to the outcome of the Pacific War, later won by the US and its allies. This film is an emotional, eye-opening journey that re-writes history as we know it.
Ambitious 11-part docudrama of the life, teaching, and work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This series was produced by East-German television. The series shows important points in the life and political development of these immense figures, from Marx's birth in 1818 until Engel's death in 1895.