Thomas Staehler

When the first railroads were built some two hundred years ago, they brought about a revolutionary change for mankind, linking cities and countryside, driving the industrial revolution and irrevocably changing the landscape: a history of the railroad from its beginnings to the present day.

The stories of The Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights) have captivated mankind for centuries. However, two of its most famous tales do not belong to the original canon.

The heart of Islam beats on the Arabian Peninsula. For there lies Mecca, the holy city of the Muslims. Almost 100 years ago, one of the peninsula's many clans founded a kingdom there: Saudi Arabia. The rule of the Al Saud is based on a pact that combined, and still combines, strict religious zeal with political calculation.

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.

March, 2013. A sensational, incomparable find in the basement of a Munich auction house: 44 auction catalogs from the years 1936 to 1944, containing hand-written notes from the Third Reich. Katrin Stoll, present-day owner, takes a brave step and decides to have her own company's history investigated. Adolf Hitler was the worst art thief in history.

In January 2012 Italian divers discovered the wreck of a massive plane off the coast of Sardinia. At a depth of 65 meters (213 feet) lies a Messerschmidt `Gigant', the biggest aircraft to fly in WWII.

Adolf Hitler consistently hushed up or denied his family lineage for fear that his ragtag bunch of ancestors and living relatives could tarnish his reputation or expose his imperfect Aryan background. His family had a history of psychiatric disorders, and his second cousin, Aloisia Veit, was locked up in an asylum for nine years before being sent to the gas chambers for being "unworthy of life". Hitler was embarrassed by his sister Paula, and made her live under the assumed name of Paula Wolf. Paula became engaged to Dr Erwin Jekelius, medical director of the asylum who sent hundreds of mentally ill patients, including Aloisia Veit, to their deaths.