The most unusual war of the 20th century took place in 1969. El Salvador and Honduras faced one another in a qualifying set for the 1970 World Cup. Tensions were already boiling over in the two countries over the issue of Salvadoran workers in Honduras. But soccer sometimes brings out the worst in people, and the games turned from friendly competition into a full-scale military invasion by El Salvador on its neighbor. Although the fighting lasted only four days, the combat damaged two nations already teetering on the brink of economic collapse. And it all started over a soccer game.
And you will find few war stories this potentially interesting in The Century of Warfare, an interminable series from the History Channel. A low-budget 1993 British production that relies on public domain footage, library music, and a monotonous British narrator with a soporific voice, this 26-episode series somehow manages to make one of the most inherently interesting subjects stunningly pedestrian and dull.
Line Of Fire is history with a difference. The great battlefields of war are presented in a unique animated environment providing new insights into military history's most compelling events. Each powerful episode combines informative graphics with atmospheric recreations and archive footage to analyse every facet of famous battles from the medieval period to modern times. Series also features authoritative comment by leading military historians from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
The ultimate success or failure of many of the battles of World War II boiled down to men and machines locked in a fight to the death. But behind the scenes of these epic struggles were highly organised and highly disciplined servicemen and women who have now passed into the annals of military history. Special regiments, squadrons and naval services, together with clandestine forces and formations, gave the vast, overall fighting forces of World War II an extra edge in the most pivotal battles. Gladiators of World War II examines the establishment and background of the greatest fighting forces of the Second World War. Each program examines a different unit, dissecting its command structure, military objectives, battle formations and its success or failure in applying its tactics and strategy to each of the major theatres in which it fought. This series also examines, in the light of newly released information and recently discovered rare archive film, some of the individual stories of the men and women who were members of these fighting bodies. The stories of these warriors have seldom beer told before. These are the stories of the Gladiators of World War II.