While the Allies were nearing panic as the Germans approached Paris, Marshal Foch quickly realised the German intent and that the Schlieffen plan was unravelling. In a master piece of military diplomacy he persuaded Filed Marshal French to join the Attack on the exposed flank of the Germans as it wheeled to the east of Paris. The battle was indeed a miracle, with the British playing a key part alongside the French in halting the German advance and driving them back behind the next river – The Aisne, where the Allied attack crossed the river and up onto the open ridges of the Chemin des Dames. The Germans held firm and Field Marshal French ordered the BEF to dig-in as a temporary measure but the line moved but little here in the next four years.With neither army able to make headway against modern small arms, the machine gun and quick firing artillery in a conventional frontal battle, the armies raced to redeploy into the uncontested ground north to the sea.

Four battle-weary American soldiers under fire reflect on the women they left behind.

An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI...

A young pilot in the German air force of 1918, disliked as lower-class and unchivalrous, tries ambit...

In northern Finland in the fall of 1916, Saima Niva rescues a man drifting in the river, who turns o...

In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestin...
This program provides, through 1st hand accounts & contemporary films & photographs, a rare ...

The Gallipoli campaign of World War I was so controversial & devastating, it changed the face of bat...

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his...

Professor Niall Ferguson argues that Britain's decision to enter the First World War was a catastrop...
A family suffers greatly during the First World War.

Documentary to mark the WI's centenary. Lucy Worsley goes beyond the stereotypes of jam and Jerusale...

A tale of the World War I love affair, begun in Italy, between American ambulance driver Lt. Frederi...

When the Great War breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford University, en...

Celebrating the end of World War II and liberation of their city, a group of students is set on hold...

Joint montage of the first three silent films about Švejk: Good Soldier Švejk (1926, director: Karel...

Unassuming catering salesmen Jim Ferguson falls through a time hole to 1917 where he saves the life ...

England, early 20th century. The future writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)...

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieute...

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to...