Verdun: Descent into Hell

"Hitler's Women" - A six part series about some of the women Hitler enjoyed and adored.

SS — the two letters in old Germanic rune script represent the most effective and dangerous instrument of power of the Nazi dictatorship. The SS represented more than any other Nazi organisation the wild and deadly delusions of those who believed themselves part of the master race. It took only a few years for Hitler's Schutzstaffel to be transformed from an insignificant personal bodyguard to an all-powerful empire of evil. There are personal interviews with survivors and and with those men who served the inhuman SS system. Only now, as their lives draw to a close, are they prepared to speak up. In the world's first television series on the overall history of the SS, this documentary series takes a balanced view with many previously unpublished sources and with witnesses to the history of the SS: victims, perpetrators and opponents.

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.

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.

Die Deutschen is a German television documentary produced for ZDF that first aired from October to November 2008. Each episode recounts a selected epoch of German history, beginning with the reign of Otto the Great and ending with the collapse of the German Empire at the end of the First World War. In November 2010 the second season of Die Deutschen was published in German television, beginning with Charlemagne, the Frankish King, and ending with Gustav Stresemann, the Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. Historical events are recreated through a combination of live action scenes and computer generated animations. The series was filmed at over 200 different locations in Germany, Malta, and Romania at a cost of approximately €500,000 per episode.

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.

The spectrum of topics ranges from political history with a focus on contemporary history (especially National Socialism and post-war history) to cultural history and social history. In addition, ZDF-History also regularly deals with pre-modern history, art and cultural history.

Under the guidance of Simon Wiesenthal, documents the year-long process leading up to ‘the Final Solution’ using newly accessible Eastern European archives, first-hand eyewitness accounts and world renowned historians.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Sarajevo, late June 1914: A Serbian nationalist shoots the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne and his wife. A few weeks later, war raged in Europe with devastating consequences.