Open Diaries

Charts the distinguished career of the award-winning novelist and the long battle with cancer to which she succumbed in 2003 at the age of 68. Born in Chicago in 1957, Carol Shields settled in Canada and went on to raise five children and publish 16 novels, scooping the Pulitzer Prize for her book The Stone Diaries along the way. Interview footage with Carol, her daughters and a selection of her literary peers highlight the life of a gentle unassuming writer.

How could Hitler count on the German public even in the face of unspeakable suffering and impending doom? Evocative and previously unseen private archive footage, much of it in colour, shows life in Nazi Germany from 1933 onwards till the end of the Nazi regime in 1945 as never before. This two-part documentary is an intimate and revealing portrait of the German people under Hitler.

Tells the remarkable true story of how, in 1968, four "average Joes" from Minnesota teamed up with a French Canadian bon vivant to make the 500-mile journey across the polar ice cap to the North Pole via snowmobile.

- Also known as "Ten Days to Victory" - As the deadliest war in history draws to an end, the bloodshed is far from over. For ten soldiers and civilians caught in this theatre of war's final act, the last days of World War II would change their lives forever. Combining large-scale reconstructions with traditional documentary storytelling, World War II: Final Days evokes the climactic last moments of the Second World War. The program interweaves the stories of 10 very different people caught up in the liberation of Europe from the grip of Nazi terror.

In the wake of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, National Geographic follows descendants of ordinary Americans as they embark on personal journeys to discover the stories of their ancestors in the bloodiest war in American history.
This three-part program reveals the amazing human stories of lives turned upside down by the Civil War–from a Virginian slave holding lady to a Union officer and a Confederate private. Through vivid recreations and innovative graphic techniques, we'll go back in time to see the true consequences of hard war and the resilient human spirit.

Brilliant. Gifted. Legendary. Whether taken by murder, drugs, or suicide, the names of these late stars live on forever. Their achievements rendered them iconic and aided in defining their legacy, even while off-screen demons haunted them. Too Young to Die grants viewers a chance to go beyond the myth and get a glimpse into the private lives and personas of those who were simply too young to die.

Deep in the jungle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, scattered among tall trees and thick, razor-sharp grasses, are the rusting remains of a World War II-era fighter plane. A fragment of the tail still bears traces of the light blue paint of U.S. Navy aircraft of the period, and the number 5192. Research confirms that the plane is the doomed Wildcat flown by James "Pug" Southerland in one of the most heroic and legendary dogfights in aviation history.

This is the tragic story of the U-boats at war. Brave men fighting a losing battle against odds they could never hope to overcome. Out-numbered, out-gunned and out-thought, the U-boats were justifiably known to their crews as 'iron coffins'. Somehow the U-boat fleet rose to the challenge and even managed a brief flicker of success before their inevitable fate enveloped them.

WWII was not just a military conflict. It was also a series of psychological battles waged by its four leaders: Hitler, Stalin, FDR, and Churchill. Based on the book by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts, this acclaimed documentary series examines WWII from a completely unique perspective. Inter-weaving the leaders’ own words with personal recollections and private diaries, it reveals the four warlords as fascinating, flawed, and fully human. “Gripping”—The Times (UK). Narrated by David Morrissey.

In 1943, in a circus tent in Burbank, CA, a bunch of revolutionary thinkers first gathered together in secrecy to build America's first jet fighter. They were rule benders, chance takers, corner cutters-people who believed that nothing was impossible. In the decades that followed, this secret club would create some of the most iconic flying machines in history: the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 stealth bomber - each of them so unfamiliar, so far ahead of their time, that they were often mistaken for something otherworldly.