Stefan Brauburger

The documentary tells the life story of Margot Friedländer, a 101-year-old Berlin native who survived the Holocaust and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, in January of this year.

Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.

NAPOLEON UND DIE DEUTSCHEN shows that it was, of all people, a foreign emperor—the French ruler who dominated the continent for a century—who catapulted the Germans into their national era through conquest and reform. Bonaparte, in collaboration with the German princes, put an end to the Old Empire and its territorial fragmentation. Fundamental changes take place—both with and against Napoleon. In the end, larger German states emerge from the territorial fragmentation. As a reformer, Napoleon sows the desire for freedom; as a tyrant, he awakens German national sentiment. Hardly any emperor before him has ever contributed so much to bringing the Germans closer together. Against his will, he becomes the awakener of the “nation.”

Did the man behind Hitler's secret weapons program survive the war? Was SS General Hans Kammler covertly brought to the USA to safeguard his knowledge? Allegedly he had committed suicide on 9 May 1945. Yet, recently found documents contradict the official version. Kammler controlled a widespread network of underground production sites vital to the German war effort. But Kammler was not merely in charge of the latest state of the art weapons technology. The former architect and civil engineer was also one of the key figures behind the construction of concentration camps and the systematic employment of their inmates as forced laborers. In the end, he escaped being charged as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials.

On operated by Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck the German Empire is finally founded in 1871 on the floors of Versailles castle, ancestral seat of the French monarchy.

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

In 1916, the name of the French fortress town of Verdun came to symbolize the greatest battle of attrition of all time - a portent of mass death on the battlefields of the 20th century. Based on selected individual fates, the film "The Hell of Verdun" tells the story of a military inferno in which people were regarded as material, not as individuals. More than 700,000 soldiers, German and French, died, were wounded or remained missing, without the course of the front changing significantly.

Documentary concerning the battle of Verdun which, with its weapons of mass destruction, marked the beginning of modern warfare in what is considered to be the most gruesome military confrontation of World War I. The programme conveys the horror of this military inferno, illustrating the similar experiences of the French and German soldiers and their struggle for survival. It also provides the unknown soldier with a face through various letters, diaries and private photographs.