Spiegel TV

A look at the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler and how they crossed with the creation of the film “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940.

At the end of 1945, the Nuremberg trials against Göring, Hess, von Ribbentrop and other Nazi officials began. The young Jewish reporter Ernst Michel and the witness Seweryna Szmaglewska, both concentration camp survivors, struggle not only with their deep traumas, but also with some uncomfortable insights that the trial brought to light. Carsten Gutschmidt's thoughtful docudrama sensitively interweaves dramatised scenes, flashbacks, colourised original footage and new material in which witnesses and descendants visit the original locations and comment on the action.

This remarkable trove of color footage, assembled from far-flung private and state collections, presents Hitler's Europe as never seen before. Amateur film enthusiasts - soldiers, tourists, Hitler's own pilot, even Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun - began experimenting with color film in the late 1930s, their camera eye recording the Third Reich from every angle. Some of this film was only recently uncovered in former Soviet-bloc archives, hidden for almost 60 years; all of it, thanks to digital technology, has been newly transferred to video with surprising clarity. (This documentary was produced with two different narratives, both an English and German language version.)

The Stammheim trial against the leadership of the first generation of the RAF was one of the most elaborate in the Federal Republic of Germany. Through this trial, Stammheim also became a place of identity for the RAF. The docudrama uses the perspective of Horst Bubeck, who as a prison officer in the cell wing had the most intensive contact with the prisoners, to shed new light on the history.

The war in the Ukraine has changed the way many European countries view Russian politics. Suddenly it became clear how dependent countries had become on Russian gas imports for decades and what Vladimir Putin was up to. However, no country needs more gas than Germany. It was only after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine that the German government realized that Russia had long used gas as a weapon to impose its will on states. The instrument created for this purpose is the natural gas production company GAZPROM. So how did Germany become so dependent on Russian gas? The documentary shows how, over several decades and several changes of government, a broad alliance of politicians and business representatives did everything possible to secure Germany's energy supply with cheap Russian gas, while the Kremlin's foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and the warnings of experts went unheeded.

At the beginning of the year 2020, a relentless plague sweeps the planet and, as a consequence, a global lockdown is gradually decreed: how did people from very different latitudes, living necessarily very different situations, experience this shared solitude? How did people adapt to the restriction by decree of their personal freedoms and the transformation of many bustling metropolises into ghost cities?

Adolf Hitler spent the last ten days of his life in a bunker underneath the Chancellery of the Reich. Unwilling to face the consequences of defeat, the dictator ended his own life on April 30, 1945 in this fortified underground complex. Featuring exclusive interviews with the last survivor’s of Hitler’s inner circle and extensive archival footage, Death in the Bunker is an illuminating look at the Führer’s final decisions in preparation for his suicide.

Thoughts of a diversity of public and private citizens on the virtues of democracy, its faults, its decadence, its fall and the rise of populism.

Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never before had sports and politics been mixed. Through archive photos and reconstructions, we get a closer look into the historical propaganda show.

The authors have meticulously traced the prehistory of September 11, the tragic fate of agent John O'Neill and the day of the attacks - with the help of contemporary witnesses, scenic reconstructions and numerous original recordings.

Born into a Bavarian bourgeois family, Heinrich Himmler became the driving force behind the indescribable crimes that made the Nazi regime so unique in modern history.

A history of Nazi television programming and technology, from 1935 to 1944.

In Germany, left-wingers do not have to justify their views. They have established their opinions across the board, not among the people, but in the circles that set the tone, i.e. where they prefer to be at home. Those on the left have the wonderful feeling of always being right. In politics, the left has often been wrong, but somehow that doesn't matter, they are always credited with the best motives. Why is that? Jan Fleischhauer has spent a large part of his life among left-wingers - from his parents' home to school and university to the journalists' milieu in which he has worked for two decades. Now he takes a close look at them, with the detachment of someone who at some point discovered that he no longer belonged. The book is an analysis, polemic and personal experience report. A foray through the empire of the left.

Crises, the struggle for raw materials, climate change and digitalisation – the world is changing rapidly, and with it the globalised economy. Who wins, who loses? What is in store for us? A search for clues in seven regions of the world.

Young people are discovering pornography at an increasingly early age. How does this early exposure affect them? Filmed in Europe and the United States, this is a comprehensive and nuanced scientific overview of a massive phenomenon.

The first ascent of the Matterhorn was made on July 14, 1865 by Edward Whymper, Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson, Douglas Hadow, Michel Croz and two guides from Zermatt, Peter Taugwalder father and son. Douglas, Hudson, Hadow and Croz are killed on the descent after Hadow slips and drags the other three men down the north face. Whymper and the two Taugwalders, who survive, are later accused of having cut the rope that connected them to the rest of the group so as not to be dragged into the fall, but the ensuing investigation finds no evidence of their guilt and they are acquitted. The Matterhorn is the last great peak in the Alps to be conquered and its ascent marks the end of the golden age of mountaineering. One hundred and fifty years later, a team undertakes the same expedition in order to unravel the mystery.

After the Berlin Wall fell, hidden GDR and Swiss Cold War bunkers surfaced. Author Michael Kloft tours preserved Stasi and NVA shelters, including sealed command centers for Honecker and Mielke, and abandoned missile sites. In Switzerland, “false chalets” and the alpine “Reduit National” fortress reveal underground defenses once kept secret. With exclusive access to military command bunkers, the film exposes relics of a vanished era’s paranoia.