Structure
Each of the ten-minute episodes begins with a title. It first shows the Earth from space. As earth comes closer into view, the series title track plays along with historic recordings. These are:
"Three, Two, One" - Apollo 11 countdown
"I Have a Dream" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Do you want total war?" - Joseph Goebbels
"We choose freedom!" - Konrad Adenauer
"I am a Berliner" - John F. Kennedy
"The wall must go!" - Willy Brandt
"We are the people!" - Monday demonstrations in East Germany
After the opening credits three events of the year are briefly shown followed by an introduction. In this we see the Earth again before the featured year is displayed and the view through the closed hallmark of the second-ranked 9 on the respective continent zooms. After this begins the actual sequence that is about the last-mentioned event. This is used as a hook for a more detailed consideration of the topic, not limited only to the year. Several of the previously mentioned issues are addressed briefly in other episodes.
The individual effects are rotated so that when taken by itself conclusive, and the knowledge from previous episodes is not necessarily required. For example, in the wake of falling to his knees in Warsaw (1970) again reported a lot about the Warsaw ghetto, with The Boy from Warsaw (1943) having its own segment.
No known episode was made for 1902, 1904, 1905, 1908, 1910, 1915, 1921, 1931, 1935, 1950, 1952, 1957, 1971, 1973, 1984 and 1996. The year 1999 is also omitted. The years 1922, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1941, 1943, 1945, 1954, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1986 and 1991, however, had two episodes, and for 1953, three.
The zooming into the continents is usually to Europe, followed by North America and Asia. South America was rarely shown, only twice (1960 - Operation Eichmann, 1982 - The Falklands War); Antarctica and Australia are not shown at all.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.
Joachim von Ribbentrop was a German politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945.
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders. It closely followed the Cairo Conference which had taken place on 22–26 November 1943, and preceded the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Although the three leaders arrived with differing objectives, the main outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Western Allies' commitment to open a second front against Nazi Germany. The conference also addressed the 'Big Three' Allies' relations with Turkey and Iran, operations in Yugoslavia and against Japan, and the envisaged post-war settlement. A separate protocol signed at the conference pledged the Big Three to recognize Iran's independence.
Johan Marius Nicolaas Heesters, known professionally as JohannesHeesters, was a Dutch actor of stage, television and film, as well as a vocalist of numerous recordings and performer on the concert stage with a career dating back to the 1920s. He worked as an actor until his death and was one of the oldest performing entertainers in history, performing shortly before his death at the age of 108. Heesters was almost exclusively active in the German-speaking world from the mid-1930s and became a film star in Nazi Germany, which later led to controversy in his native country. He was able to maintain his popularity in Germany in the decades until his death.
Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach-Zelewski was a high-ranking SS commander of Nazi Germany. During World War II, he was in charge of the Nazi security warfare against those designated by the regime as ideological enemies and any other persons deemed to present danger to the Nazi rule or Wehrmacht's rear security in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. It mostly involved atrocities against the civilian population. In 1944 he led the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. At the end of 1941 the forces under von dem Bach numbered 14,953 Germans, mostly officers and unteroffiziere, and 238,105 local "volunteers"
Heinrich Müller was a high-ranking German Schutzstaffel (SS) and police official during the Nazi era. For the majority of World War II in Europe, he was the chief of the Gestapo, the secret state police of Nazi Germany. Müller was central in the planning and execution of The Holocaust and attended the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which formalised plans for deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe—The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". He was known as "Gestapo Müller" to distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller.
Lion Feuchtwanger was a Bavarian Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and aftermath of World War II. It also sometimes refers to the treatment of other Central and Eastern European states at the time.
Operation Margarethe was the occupation of Hungary by German Nazi troops during World War II, as it was ordered by German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guido Knopp is a German journalist and author. He is well known in Germany, mainly because he has produced a great number of TV documentaries, predominantly about the "Third Reich" and National Socialism, but also about other topics, such as Stalinism.
German–Soviet Union relations date to the aftermath of the First World War. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by Germany ended hostilities between Russia and Germany; it was signed on March 3, 1918. A few months later, the German ambassador to Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach, was shot dead by Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in an attempt to incite a new war between Russia and Germany. The entire Soviet embassy under Adolph Joffe was deported from Germany on November 6, 1918, for their active support of the German Revolution. Karl Radek also illegally supported communist subversive activities in Weimar Germany in 1919.
Through statutes of 30 January 1937, the German National Order for Art and Science was an award created by Adolf Hitler as a replacement for the Nobel Prize. The prize was to be awarded each year to three outstanding German citizens who would receive 100,000 Reichsmarks which could be equally divided. Along with the prize money the recipient also received a certificate with the Order.
Samuel Bischoff was an American film producer who was responsible for more than 400 full-length films, two-reel comedies, and serials between 1922 and 1964.
Bayerischer Fernsehpreis is an award presented by the government of Bavaria, Germany since 1989.
The 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement was an economic arrangement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed on February 11, 1940. In it the Soviet Union agreed in the period from February 11, 1940 to February 11, 1941, in addition to the deliveries under German–Soviet Commercial Agreement, signed on August 19, 1939 to deliver commodities to the value of 420 to 430 million Reichsmarks.
Falsifiers of History was a book published by the Soviet Information Bureau, edited and partially re-written by Joseph Stalin, in response to documents made public in January 1948 regarding German–Soviet relations before and after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
In Europa is a Dutch series of television documentary programs on Europe during the 20th century, based on the book with the same name by Dutch writer and historian Geert Mak. The program was broadcast on Nederland 2, premiering on 11 November 2007 and airing through 2009. Quite a few locations important in European history are shown throughout the series, both historical and current.
Leo Rudolf Raubal Jr. was an Austrian nephew of Adolf Hitler who served in the German Luftwaffe during World War II.
The May Crisis was a brief episode of international tension in 1938 caused by reports of German troop movements against Czechoslovakia that appeared to signal the imminent outbreak of war in Europe. Although the state of high anxiety soon subsided when no actual military concentrations were detected, the consequences of the crisis were far-reaching.
