1914-1945: They Made History

Covers the 1941 Japanese military strike on a Hawaiian naval base in never before seen detail.

Villain or hero, Taira no Kiyomori changed Japanese history forever 900 years ago. Without ever knowing his real father, Kiyomori was raised as a samurai. Together with his stepfather, he wiped out piracy along Japan's western coast, becoming a full-fledged warrior samurai. In an age when samurai were looked down on as members of the lower class, Kiyomori was skillful at winning the hearts and minds of the people. By rounding up surrendered pirates and achieving other successes, Kiyomori eventually became the de facto ruler of Japan.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II: Leopold Trepper, a colonel in the Red Army, travels to Belgium under a false name and sets up a spy ring there. Together with his employees Viktor Sukulow-Gurewitsch, Johann Wenzel, Hillel Katz and Michail Makarow, he succeeds in establishing a spy network throughout Belgium and France in a very short time. With the help of his cover companies - a chain of raincoat shops and later the import-export company Simexco ”- Trepper can collect information from the economy and the Wehrmacht, about Atlantic Wall construction sites and railway lines, and send it to Moscow. The agents also get help from patriots who want to free their countries from the occupation by the Germans.

Les Grandes Batailles is a series of historical television programs by Daniel Costelle, Jean-Louis Guillaud, and Henri de Turenne, broadcast on French television in the 1960s and 1970s, depicting the major battles of World War II, as well as the Nuremberg Trials. The project for the series actually began with an official government commission for a program on the Battle of Verdun in 1966. Ten other programs about World War II followed. The writers and producers of the series were Henri de Turenne and Jean-Louis Guillaud, both journalists. They entrusted the production of the series to the young director Daniel Costelle.