Documentary / War & Politics
The rise of Stalin, from his early beginning as a bankrobber to the cold-blooded leader of the Soviet Union.


June 1941. Hitler has thrown himself into a fight to the death against Stalin. Two decades earlier, in 1917, Joseph Jughashvili from Georgia is a member of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, who has just seized power in Russia. The country is torn by civil war.

1942. After blocking the Germans right outside of Moscow, Stalin now faces Hitler's second assault. The world's fate will be decided in Stalingrad. Like in Leningrad, men, women and children, plunged into hell, are sacrificed.

In 1944, the Soviets find out about the horror of Hitler's extermination camps. Fifteen years earlier, Stalin transforms his country using any method he can.

Narrator (voice)

Self (archive footage)

Sharpe is a British series of television dramas starring Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe is the hero of a number of novels by Bernard Cornwell; most, though not all, of the episodes are based on the books. Produced by Celtic Films and Picture Palace Films for the ITV network, the series was shot mainly in Turkey and the Crimea, although some filming was also done in England, Spain and Portugal. The series originally ran from 1993 to 1997. In 2004, as part of ITV's new set of drama, ITV announced that it intended to produce new episodes of Sharpe, in co-production with BBC America, loosely based on his time in India, with Sean Bean continuing his role as Sharpe. Sharpe's Challenge is a two-part adventure; part one premiered on ITV on 23 April 2006, with part two being shown the following night. With more gore than earlier episodes, the show was broadcast by BBC America in September 2006.

Track the main events of World War II with the help of remarkable archive footage and see exactly what happened, and when. Learn about Pearl Harbor, The Battle of Britain, D-Day, the dropping of the atomic bomb and more. From the early battles right through to the complexities of the endgame, this extensive 24 episode series shines a spotlight on a period of history that should never be forgotten.

The specter of drug trafficking haunts Europe. Struggling with ultra-violent criminal groups that control the vast majority of cocaine trade, European police forces are overwhelmed. The epicenter of all this trafficking: the Netherlands. A nation at the forefront of international trade and drug policy. This two-part film delves into the origins of European drug trafficking through the unique history of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

How did 20th Century Europe's most liberal democracy fall into the hands of fascists? From Hitler's political scheming that turned Germany's parliament into a House of Cards, his War on Truth leading to book burning, and his scapegoating of minorities, this series explores in extraordinary detail the events leading up to the outbreak of World War II.