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This is a series about heroes – men who stand up and fight when everything seems lost. It’s a series about brilliant generals, ferocious warriors and individual selfless acts of courage. Hundreds of thousands owe their lives to the people featured in these films.

Told exclusively through their personal stories, this series recreates the suicidal raids, fantastic rearguard actions, back-to-the-wall fighting and mass evacuations. Among them:

The top-secret mission led by James Doolittle in the Pacific. They flew even though they knew their bombers didn’t have enough fuel to get them back to safety.

Trooper Ronald Moore who led his men through miles and miles of desert back to headquarters when trapped behind enemy lines in the Sahara.

Wilhelm Stemmerann, the monocle-wearing German general, who led his men in a desperate rearguard action. He died so that hundreds of thousands of his troops could escape.

The battalion of black soldiers who were surrounded, down to their last 10 rounds, and yet who helped win the Battle of the Bulge. WMR has exclusive access to unseen archives and interviews on the defence of Bastogne by the 333rd.

The unassuming merchant shipper who piloted his oil tanker through German attacks for six days into Malta – all of it captured on previously unseen colour film.

The series combines eyewitness and expert testimony with specially shot material, dramatic reconstruction and archive – much of it previously unseen.

1. The Amiens Raid
2. The Doolittle Raid
3. Wingate & the Chindits
4. The Black Battalion
5. Lucky Laycock's Escape from Crete
6. Manstein Holds the Line
7. The Siege of Kohima
8. Roy Urquhart escapes from Arnheim
9. Morshead holds Tobruk
10. Evacuation in the Baltic
11. Moore's March
12. Operation Pedestal
13. Breakout through Hell's Gate