Osteuropa zwischen Hitler und Stalin - Das große Sterben(2025)

September 3rd, 1939. Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany, only two days after the Wehrmacht invades Poland. This day, the sad date when the fate of the world changed forever, the Phoney War began: eight months of uncertainty, preparations, evacuations and skirmishes.

A year has passed since the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, and it is still unclear what actually happened at the bottom of the Baltic Sea at that time. ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and DIE ZEIT have joined forces for a large-scale investigation and set out to find the alleged perpetrators. An investigation into one of the most spectacular criminal cases of our time, an attack of historic proportions.

See Kenneth W. Rendell's collection of over 6,000 artifacts that range from the end of World War I and the rise of Nazism to the start of World War II and the fight in Europe and the Pacific.

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

The background to, events of and consequences of the Battle of Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940. In that battle, Royal Navy ships fired on the French Fleet in order to prevent it from falling into German hands. A French battleship was sunk and several other ships damaged. Nearly 1,300 French sailors were killed.

My Flesh and Blood is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Karsh chronicling a year in the life of the Tom family. The Tom family is notable as the mother, Susan, adopted eleven children, most of whom had serious disabilities or diseases. The film itself is notable for handling the sensitive subject matter in an unsentimental way that is more uplifting than one might expect.

Can a language save your life? Yes it can, even an ancient one from the 15th century. Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a Partizan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps. By speaking in Ladino to a Spanish-speaking US pilot in 1944 he was able to survive and lead the pilot, along with his American and British colleagues, to a safe Partizan airport.

Using exclusively archival footage, Erwin Leiser traces the rise and collapse of the Third Reich, from Adolf Hitler’s early years to the devastation of Europe and his suicide in 1945. The film draws heavily on material produced and preserved by the Nazi propaganda apparatus to confront the mechanisms, imagery, and consequences of totalitarian power.

In the midst of World War II's turmoil, the quaint British town of Bury St. Edmonds becomes a focal point where lives intersect and secrets unravel. An 18-year-old woman finds herself caught in the throes of a great wartime secret – the breaking of the German Enigma code. Her recruitment into the "Ultra" program brings her to the heart of Bletchley Park's most clandestine operations, where Alan Turing and his team forge the world's first computer in a bid to crack the ever-changing German codes. Every day, she grapples with the weight of the secret, so profound that even her family is oblivious to her covert role. Meanwhile, she captures the heart of an assertive American soldier and their whirlwind wartime romance culminates in a heartwarming union, facing the challenges of the Official Secrets Act. The soldier, persistent and deeply in love, goes to great lengths, in order to secure her release from the program and to solidify their commitment to one another.

Marina Carrère d'Encausse lifts the veil on the intimate questions that preoccupy her as well as society at large: those related to the end of life. The doctor-journalist introduces Antoine, her partner, who is suffering from Charcot's disease, an incurable illness, and who wishes to choose how he ends his life. Is the current law in France sufficient? Should it simply be better enforced, allowing better access to palliative care? Should assisted suicide and euthanasia be legalized? Marina meets with patients concerned about the end of life, caregivers, and politicians in France, as well as in Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada, countries where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal.

Displaced by the Second World War, a troop of Polish soldiers form an inseparable bond through an orphaned bear they name Wojtek.

World War II was not just the most destructive conflict in humanity, it was also the greatest theft in history: lives, families, communities, property, culture and heritage were all stolen. The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.