GREAT BLUNDERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

SERIES 1: 52 x 26 mins
SERIES 2: 26 x 26 mins
THE SERIES
The Twentieth Century is the only Century which has been able to capture Man’s great exploits on film. Running on a parallel course, events have occurred which cannot possibly be described as successes. In many cases, the camera has recorded the most heroic failures, but, towering above these, the Century has produced on rare archive film, the most enormous blunders.
These have varied from the most basic errors of human judgement to massive miscalculations involving people, machines, buildings and relatively small events which have gone on to produce the most catastrophic and sometimes humorous consequences.
The series investigates with the use of hitherto unseen archive film - the greatest individual blunders of our Century:
Some of the blunders involved whole governments on ill-advised adventures, others show the effects of sheer carelessness in building hotels, ships and bridges without sufficient safety features. From monumental political or military miscalculation to individuals who simply made the wrong decision, ‘The Great Blunders of the Twentieth Century’ is compulsive viewing for worldwide television and video audiences.
FOR WORLDWIDE TV RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT :
MICHAEL KATZ
VICE PRESIDENT PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
THE INTERNATIONAL DEPT,
THE HISTORY CHANNEL
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
235 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 212 210 9003
FAX: 001 212 907 9476
E-MAIL: michael.katz@aetn.com
FOR WORLDWIDE VIDEO AND ALL PUBLISHING RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT:
KATE WINN
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING HOME VIDEO
NEW VIDEO GROUP
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
216 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 203 353 7204
FAX: 001 212 907 9418
E-MAIL: kate.winn@aetn.com
ALSO: CERTAIN VIDEO CASSETTES AND DVDs ARE AVAILABLE FROM:
SUSAN MARGOLIN
NEW VIDEO GROUP INC
902 BROADWAY (9TH FLOOR)
NEW YORK
NY 10010
USA
TEL: (212) 206 8600 X 226
FAX: (212) 206 9001
E-MAIL: SMargolin@newvideo.com
(each programme = 26 minutes)
Programme 1.01
Titanic - An Accident Waiting To Happen
Too few lifeboats and cost cutting in construction plus pressure from the owner to travel at full speed in an ice field brought disaster on an epic scale. Even the watertight bulkheads did not reach the top deck.
For video availability click here.
Programme 1.02
The Sinking Of Andrea Doria
As a famous Italian ocean liner neared New York at the end of an Atlantic crossing, she collided in fog with another vessel and sank swiftly. Both were equipped with radar and it was a series of small human blunders which caused this tragedy.
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Programme 1.03
The Pilot Who Bombed London
In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe seemed to be winning the Battle of Britain with its attacks on RAF fighter bases. Then one pilot, off course and confused, dropped his bombs on London. The British retaliated and so began the Blitz and the bombing offensive that eventually devastated Germany.
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Programme 1.04
The Last Flight Of The ‘Lady Be Good’
The young American B-24 Liberator crew became lost over the Mediterranean during a daylight bombing mission. They ended up by overshooting their base on the Libyan coast and crashed deep in the desert. It took over twenty years to discover their fate and even longer to identify the errors that led to it - errors which were symptomatic of flawed bombing tactics.
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Programme 1.05
The Sinking Of The Graf Spee
In 1939, the Germans sent their best pocket battleship into the Atlantic on a secret mission. Eventually confronted by three under-armed British cruisers, not only did the German ship sail into a blind alley, but failed to use its superior guns and was scuttled by the Germans themselves. The captain committed suicide. His blunder had been to disobey orders.
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Programme 1.06
The Sinking of Force Z Off Singapore
When Churchill thought that the Japanese would invade Malaya, he dispatched two of Britain’s mightiest warships, Repulse and Prince of Wales, to Singapore without any air cover. Within three days of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had sunk the pride of the Royal Navy on its ill-fated mission. This was reckoned by many to be Churchill’s biggest wartime blunder.
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Programme 1.07
Fire at Cape Canaveral
Somehow a fire broke out in the capsule containing three of America's top astronauts whilst on the Saturn Rocket launch pad. The fire nearly wrecked the US space programme and killed three very brave men.
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Programme 1.08
The MIR Space Station
A number of disasters on board during 1997 risked the lives of the astronauts manning it, and made clear the bankruptcy of the old Russian space programme.
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Programme 1.09
Disaster in the Dardanelles
When Winston Churchill was First Sea Lord he thought that the deadlock on the Western Front in World War I could be broken by an attack on Turkey. What followed was the worst planned operation of World War I and the Anzac losses were immortalised in the Mel Gibson movie ‘Gallipoli’.
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Programme 1.10
The Raid on Dieppe
The Canadians in early World War II were anxious to prove themselves and agitated for action. Their first major operation was the 1942 raid on the French port of Dieppe. It was a disaster but who was really to blame?
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Programme 1.11
Hitler’s Declaration of War on The United States
As the third year of the war in Europe began, President Roosevelt struggled to convince the American people that soon or later they must confront the dictatorships of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor solved part of his problem, but there was still widespread resistance to the idea of joining the fight against Germany and Italy. Out of the blue, Hitler provided the solution by declaring the war on the United States. It was a critical strategic blunder which made Germany’s defeat inevitable.
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Programme 1.12
Death at Stalingrad
As the German armies thrust toward Stalingrad in 1942 it seemed possible that they could finally defeat the Soviet Union. But Hitler’s insistence that they must take the city led to the loss of an entire army and was the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front.
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Programme 1.13
The Spruce Goose and the Bristol Brabazon
Two of aviation's most spectacular miscalculations. Hailed as the largest flying boat and airliner in the world, both lumbering giants creaked into the air suffering from design blunders and outdated technology.
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Programme 1.14
The Delorean Car
How the British government lost some £60 million when it backed an American businessman to set up a factory in violence-stricken Northern Ireland to produce a revolutionary new sports car.
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Programme 1.15
Operation Sealion
Before the Battle of Britain, Hitler intended to invade the UK and massed invasion barges in the channel ports. It was a totally flawed exercise, revealing a complete misunderstanding of amphibious operations, and its abandonment left Britain undefeated to continue the war against Nazism.
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Programme 1.16
The Blunders of Hitler’s Luftwaffe
When Hitler gave him the task of building a new Luftwaffe in 1934, Hermann Goering based all his plans on Blitzkrieg - the need for divebombers and medium bombers to support armoured forces in a series of lightning wars. Little consideration was given to what might be needed if an enemy failed to collapse swiftly. When Britain fought on, and the Russians pulled their industry back deep into their heartland the Luftwaffe found that its lack of long-range heavy bombers meant it could no longer strike back effectively.
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Programme 1.17
Disaster in the Desert - Operation Eagle Claw
The abortive attempt by US Special Forces to rescue the hostages in the US Embassy, Tehran, during the Iranian revolution in 1980.
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Programme 1.18
The Bay Of Pigs
The disastrous ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion and the subsequent Cuban Missile crisis brought the world to the brink of Nuclear War. Was it necessary and how close did the world come to World War III?
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Programme 1.19
America’s Greatest Port Disaster
On 16 April 1947, at the port of Texas City, failure to deal correctly with a small fire on board a vessel loaded with fertiliser led to the explosion of an ammunition ship. The resultant fires and devastation caused the deaths of 750 people and $100,000,000 worth of damage.
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Programme 1.20
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Probably the most graphic bridge failure ever recorded on film, this story explains how not all the world’s bridge structures have been safe.
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Programme 1.21
The Spanish H-Bomb Crash
In the early 1960s a US B-52 bomber accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb dangerously near a Spanish holiday resort. Thankfully it was not armed, but the world held its breath.
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Programme 1.22
Chernobyl
Probably the greatest of all nuclear accidents yet. Its poisonous legacy still threatens hundreds of thousands of Russian children. How did it happen and is it safe now?
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Programme 1.23
British Battle Cruiser Disaster at Jutland
As he watched the second of his Battle Cruisers explode during WWI’s greatest naval battle, Admiral Beatty remarked: “There seems to be something wrong with my ships today.” What was wrong was inherent design faults which made them totally vulnerable to enemy fire.
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Programme 1.24
The Scattering of Convoy PQ17
It was one of the largest Anglo-American convoys ever to sail to Russia. Normally bunched together for protection against U-Boats, the convoy was suddenly instructed to disperse by the first Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, who overestimated the threat from German battleships. Over half the convoy was sunk. One of the greatest blunders of World War II.
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Programme 1.25
A Bridge Too Far
When Field Marshal Montgomery was racing General Patton into the German Reich he deployed the British Airborne brigades one bridge too far in an attempt to cross the Rhine, and brought lightly armed paratroops up against two crack SS Panzer divisions.
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Programme 1.26
The Bomb Plot to Kill Hitler
One of the worst blunders in World War II was the failure of German opposition to Hitler to unite against him. Typical was the bomb plot of 1944 at the Wolf’s Lair in the Rastenberg forest in East Prussia. There, a young aristocratic officer called Von Stauffenberg had placed a briefcase bomb under Hitler’s map table. When this failed to kill the Fuehrer the disorganised conspirators were soon rounded up and hanged.
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Programme 1.27
The Flight of the R101
She was the largest airship ever built by a British government keen to take the lead in long-haul air travel. The crash of the R101 in France on its maiden flight was one of the greatest tragedies in aviation history.
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Programme 1.28
Flight of the Do-X
Designed in 1929 as the giant flying boat which would finally bring Trans-Atlantic passenger flights, the Dornier Do-X proved disastrously underpowered and took nine months to reach New York.
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Programme 1.29
When The Queen Mary Cut HMS Curacao In Half
On its way to England from the USA with ten thousand GIs on board the liner Queen Mary could not slow down below thirty knots for fear of being torpedoed. On one of her zigzag movements she cut an escorting cruiser in two. One of the greatest Naval blunders of the Century can now be revealed.
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Programme 1.30
USS Indianapolis
The US cruiser was on such a secret mission involving the delivery of an atomic bomb that when it was torpedoed on its return journey no-one realised that its crew were struggling to survive alone and without any help in shark infested waters. There were few survivors.
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Programme 1.31
The Mistakes at Midway
Probably the Imperial Japanese Navy’s greatest blunder after Pearl Harbour itself. The wrong aircraft were armed first. The wrong torpedoes were set incorrectly. The wrong bombs and fuses were fitted and the wrong aircraft were sent up at the wrong time. America’s finest Admirals were to press home their advantage.
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Programme 1.32
Mutiny In The Trenches
In early 1917 French General Nivelle declared that his forthcoming attack at Chemin des Dames would break the deadlock on the Western Front. Flawed tactics and poor preparation led to a bloody repulse and widescale mutinies in the French Army.
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Programme 1.33
Disaster at Dien Bien Phu
French commanders in Indo-China thought that they could entrap their Vietnamese enemy by setting up a killing ground at Dien Bien Phu. But their forces were swiftly besieged and outgunned. The fall of this base forced the French to surrender their Far East colonies.
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Programme 1.34
The Falklands War
How General Galtieri’s decision to invade the Malvinas proved to be the death knell of his military junta and a new democratic start for Argentina.
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Programme 1.35
The Invasion of Kuwait
Misunderstanding the international political climate and driven by jealousy, Saddam Hussein met his match in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.
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Programme 1.36
The Coup Against Gorbachev
By summer 1991, Mikhael Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost and perestroika’ had brought the Soviet Union to the edge of breaking up. He was still trying to hold it together when an attempted coup by Communist hardliners precipitated the final collapse of the system.
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Programme 1.37
The Sinking of the Lusitania
Despite German warnings of commercial shipping being fair game for its U-Boats, the Lusitania sailed into the history books with many American casualties. For Germany its sinking was the crucial blunder which helped eventually to bring the US into World War I.
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Programme 1.38
The Treaty of Versailles
By punishing Germany too severely after World War I, the Allies brought the country to its knees. The result was the rise of Nazism with all its extremes and the determination of Hitler to seek revenge.
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Programme 1.39
The Failure of the Japanese Suicide Weapons
Manned aircraft and torpedoes, speedboats packed with explosives and midget submarines were classic blunders, poorly designed and badly piloted. They failed to achieve any real success at all.
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Programme 1.40
The German Hesitation at Dunkirk
When Hitler could have crushed the 400,000 remnants of the British Expeditionary Force he committed one of his greatest military blunders by withholding his Panzers - why?
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Programme 1.41
The Bombing of Monte Cassino
Did the Allies blunder by bombing a beautiful Franciscan monastery when they could have outflanked the crack German troops it contained?
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Programme 1.42
Operation Cobra
As the Allied forces lay poised to break out of Normandy in July 1944, this ill-fated mission to bomb the Germans in close proximity to US troops failed when bad weather and bungled instructions to return to base resulted in Allied troops being bombed by their own planes!
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Programme 1.43
Bombers without Escorts
The USAAF belief that its bombers could operate over Germany by day without escort fighters proved to be fatally flawed, as the two Schweinfurt-Regensburg raids in the late summer / autumn of 1943 starkly demonstrated.
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Programme 1.44
Supertanker Disasters
As the seaways of the world have grown ever more crowded with massive tankers, the potential for disaster through human error has increased rapidly. From the ‘Torrey Canyon’ to the ‘Exxon Valdez’ the struggle to prevent ecological disaster has become ever more urgent.
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Programme 1.45
The British Bombing Assault On Berlin
During the winter of 1943-44 ‘Bomber’ Harris waged a grim campaign against the German capital, convinced that he could bomb the Third Reich into submission before the Normandy invasion took place. But as the bomber casualties mounted, it became clear that Berlin was too tough a nut to crack.
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Programme 1.46
Mussolini’s Invasion of Greece
In late 1940 Mussolini committed a blunder when he invaded Greece from neighbouring Albania and suffered a severe setback. Yet Churchill too blundered by sending precious forces to support the Greeks. The subsequent German invasion led to the loss of much of the eastern Mediterranean to the British and enabled Rommel to drive the British out of Libya.
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Programme 1.47
The ‘Impregnable’ Gazala Line
In the spring of 1942 the British constructed what they thought was an impregnable defence line in Libya. It proved to be fatally flawed and Rommel almost succeeded in driving them back across the other side of the Suez Canal.
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Programme 1.48
The Battle of the Bulge
By the winter of 1944, the war in Western Europe seemed over. The Germans had been pushed back to their last natural defence line on the Rhine. US troops in the Ardennes sector looked forward to a quiet Christmas. Then came a totally unexpected and massive German assault - but one which should have been anticipated had the Allies' High Command not blundered.
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Programme 1.49
Stalin’s Purges
By the mid-1930s the Soviet Armed Forces were amongst the most forward looking and modern in the world. Thanks to Stalin’s purge of senior officers the Soviet Union suffered severe embarrassment when it attacked neighbouring Finland at the end of 1939. They were also to lead to the disasters of the summer of 1941, when the Germans invaded.
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Programme 1.50
Naval Night Fighting At Guadalcanal
In 1941 the US Navy was one of the most powerful in the world. But the lack of priority given to night fighting capability was to come home to roost when it met the Japanese Navy in the waters around Guadalcanal in the late summer of 1942.
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Programme 1.51
The U-2 Affair
At a time when the Cold War was beginning to thaw, a US photographic reconnaissance plane was shot down on a high altitude mission over the USSR handing the Soviets a propaganda coup on a plate.
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Programme 1.52
The Wooden Flat-Tops
Throughout the Pacific War the US Navy continued to fit even its newest carriers with wooden docks even through this had proved to be a fatal weakness. The blunder cost thousands of unnecessary casualties.
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FOR WORLDWIDE TV RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT :
MICHAEL KATZ
VICE PRESIDENT PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
THE INTERNATIONAL DEPT,
THE HISTORY CHANNEL
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
235 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 212 210 9003
FAX: 001 212 907 9476
E-MAIL: michael.katz@aetn.com
FOR WORLDWIDE VIDEO AND ALL PUBLISHING RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT:
KATE WINN
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING HOME VIDEO
NEW VIDEO GROUP
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
216 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 203 353 7204
FAX: 001 212 907 9418
E-MAIL: kate.winn@aetn.com
ALSO: CERTAIN VIDEO CASSETTES AND DVDs ARE AVAILABLE FROM:
SUSAN MARGOLIN
NEW VIDEO GROUP INC
902 BROADWAY (9TH FLOOR)
NEW YORK
NY 10010
USA
TEL: (212) 206 8600 X 226
FAX: (212) 206 9001
E-MAIL: SMargolin@newvideo.com
SERIES 2 - THE 26 PROGRAMMES
(each programme = 26 minutes)
Series 2
(each programme = 26 mins)
Programme 2.01
Pearl Harbor
Even as he planned the surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto knew that his country was making a catastrophic blunder. Despite six months of runaway victories Japan could not hope to prevail once it had woken the sleeping US giant.
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Programme 2.02
Somalia, 1990s (US versus the Warlords)
US troops went into the civil war in Somalia with a clear mission statement - to help aid agencies get supplies through to where they were needed. But this was soon and disastrously forgotten amid hot pursuit of the warlords.
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Programme 2.03
The Maginot Line
‘Never Again’ was the feeling of the French people as the most terrible war in their history came to an end. And what better way to defend against a resurgent Germany than to build an impregnable defence line? They did, it was, but unfortunately it did not go far enough.
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Programme 2.04
The Failure to Secure the Port of Antwerp
By the autumn of 1944, the Allied pursuit of retreating German forces was being severely hampered by lengthy supply lines. At one moment, the port of Antwerp could have been seized easily and the problem solved. But instead the Germans were allowed to reinforce the area and put up a lengthy and bloody resistance.
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Programme 2.05
German Acceptance of the Allied Double-Cross Deceptions
No German spy operated successfully from Britain during World War 2. Ill-trained and undermotivated, most were picked up within hours of landing, and ‘turned’ to send back misinformation to their former masters. But the clues to this massive con-trick were there, had the Abwehr chosen to see them.
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Programme 2.06
The Schlieffen Plan
Obsessed with the threat of a war on two fronts, Germany’s brilliant general Alfred von Schlieffen evolved a strategic plan which would bring rapid victory in the West before the threat from the East became too great. Unfortunately, the plan also meant that most other major powers would be drawn into war against Germany, and when Schlieffen’s successor altered it, even the anticipated knock-out blow was not achieved.
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Programme 2.07
Kasserine Pass
American troops arriving in Tunisia for their first campaign of World War 2 were gung-ho. With their resources and equipment they would quickly show the German Afrika Korps who were the masters now. Unfortunately, Rommel and his battle-hardened veterans hadn’t read the new script.
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Programme 2.08
The Fall of Crete
When thousands of German paratroops began an airborne invasion of the island of Crete the British should have been ready - for the German plans were known to them in detail from the breaking of the European codes. Yet inexplicably the British commander refused to believe this intelligence coup.
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Programme 2.09
Italian Disaster at Caporetto
The struggle between Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces in the Alps was one of the most bitter yet little-known campaigns of World War 1. Eleven costly Italian offensives had failed to break the stalemate. When the demoralised troops were struck by fresh German units disaster ensued. But the Germans were to make blunders of their own.
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Programme 2.10
Hitler’s Panzer Deployments for D-Day
For Hitler and his High Command the crucial question was where would the Allies land to begin the liberation of Western Europe, and where should their armoured reserve be held? Once D-Day came Hitler refused to believe that this was the main assault, and vital counterattacks were fatally delayed.
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Programme 2.11
Suez 1956
When President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, the British and French governments assumed that they would enjoy international support for an expedition to retake it. But times had changed - they faced massive opposition, and their ignominious retreat marked the symbolic end of two great empires.
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Programme 2.12
The Channel Dash
The British expected two powerful German battlecruisers to break out of the French port of Brest and attempt to get back to their home port. But no one anticipated that they would try to do so in broad daylight.
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Programme 2.13
The Sinking of HMS Hood
She was the fastest and most powerful battlecruiser afloat, and the pride of the Royal Navy. But when she was committed to action against the German battleship Bismarck design blunders committed many years earlier became tragically apparent.
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Programme 2.14
MacArthur’s Crossing of the 49th Parallel in Korea
General Douglas MacArthur showed all his brilliance and daring during the Korean War when his Inchon landings forced the invading North Koreans to fall back in confusion. But instead of stopping when they had left South Korean territory, he insisted on pushing forward to the Communist Chinese border.
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Programme 2.15
Allied Pre-D-Day Blunders
The Allied build up to D-Day did not always go smoothly, and there were several occasions when blunders threatened to betray vital secrets - on one occasion vital plans were sent by mail to an officer's family in the US, on another several key personnel were feared captured when German E-Boats surprised a night landing rehearsal.
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Programme 2.16
Massacre at Amritsar
It was meant to be a peaceful demonstration - none of the 5,000 men, women, and children who packed a square in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar were armed or threatening. But there had been pro-independence rioting in the area, and Brigadier-General Dyer was determined to make an example of someone.
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Programme 2.17
The Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
As Lenin seized power in Russia in October 1917, civil war erupted as counter-revolutionaries attempted to defeat Bolshevism. The Western Allies decided to intervene to aid them. It was an act of pure folly, for it enabled Lenin and his tiny minority of followers to pose as the true champions of the Russian people.
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Programme 2.18
The My Lai Massacre
Caught in an apparently unwinnable war against a ruthless enemy, US troops inevitably overreacted at times. But when an ill-trained lieutenant encouraged his inexperienced platoon to torch a Vietnamese village and massacre its innocent inhabitants, it was his own colleagues who ensured justice was done.
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Programme 2.19
Ferry Disasters
The dramatically changing moods of the sea mean that maritime disasters are sometimes inevitable. But when the roll-on roll-off car ferry The Herald of Free Enterprise lurched to port in calm waters just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge and capsized within a minute there had to be other reasons. What emerged was a trail of errors that led to some of the most far-reaching changes in ferry safety regulations.
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Programme 2.20
The Jumbo Jet Collision at Tenerife
When two Boeing 747 Jumbo jets collided on the runway of Los Rodeos airport on 27th March 1977, 583 people lost their lives. It was the greatest single disaster in aviation history. Yet the reason for it was a series of human failures and misunderstandings, none of them fatal individually, but catastrophic as a whole.
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Programme 2.21
The Shooting Down of KAL 007
When Soviet fighters shot down a Korean Airlines' 747 which had strayed over a top secret base area, it seemed that a horrendous blunder had been committed. But was the airliner deliberately flown off course in an even more sinister blunder?
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Programme 2.22
The Vincennes Shootdown
By mid-1988, the USN had been patrolling the Persian Gulf for several years to keep a vital sea lane open during the Iran-Iraq war. Its ships were often under threat and sometimes attacked, so when one of its latest anti-aircraft missile carriers spotted what appeared to be a hostile plane, the.crew reacted immediately. But the intruder turned out to be an Iran Air airbus, and 286 passengers died in a tragic blunder.
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Programme 2.23
Kashmir - The Legacy of the Partition of India
Right up to the moment when India and Pakistan became independent, the last British viceroy Louis Mountbatten was undecided which country Kashmir should be part of. Finally it was the choice of the Hindu Maharajah that his largely Muslim state should join India. The decision precipitated a virtual state of war between the two countries and a bitter territorial dispute that persists to this day.
For video availability click here.
Programme 2.24
Mao’s Great Leap
Obsessed with the need to modernize China, Mao Tse-Tung attempted to quadruple China’s steel production by taking 100 million peasants off the land and putting them to work in backyard furnaces. Because there were no raw materials, everything including cooking pots and tools had to be melted down. Some 30 million died of starvation.
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Programme 2.25
The Wall Street Crash
As New Year 1929 dawned, the American Stock Market had enjoyed four years of extraordinary growth. Buying shares seemed a great way to get rich quick, and more and more ordinary citizens sank all they had into the seemingly unstoppable boom. But they had forgotten the basic rule… what goes up can come down.
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Programme 2.26
Prohibition
At the stroke of midnight on 16th January 1920, the United States of America went dry. Its citizens were to be saved from the evils of alcohol. In reality prohibition’s misguided zeal ushered in 14 years of violence, lawlessness and gangsterism. It failed completely to stop people drinking, and enabled organised crime to put down roots that have never been pulled up.
For video availability click here.

FOR WORLDWIDE TV RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT :
MICHAEL KATZ
VICE PRESIDENT PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
THE INTERNATIONAL DEPT,
THE HISTORY CHANNEL
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
235 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 212 210 9003
FAX: 001 212 907 9476
E-MAIL: michael.katz@aetn.com
FOR WORLDWIDE VIDEO AND ALL PUBLISHING RIGHTS
PLEASE CONTACT:
KATE WINN
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING HOME VIDEO
NEW VIDEO GROUP
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
216 EAST 45TH STREET
NEW YORK
NY - 10017
USA
TEL: 001 203 353 7204
FAX: 001 212 907 9418
E-MAIL: kate.winn@aetn.com
ALSO: CERTAIN VIDEO CASSETTES AND DVDs ARE AVAILABLE FROM:
SUSAN MARGOLIN
NEW VIDEO GROUP INC
902 BROADWAY (9TH FLOOR)
NEW YORK
NY 10010
USA
TEL: (212) 206 8600 X 226
FAX: (212) 206 9001
E-MAIL: SMargolin@newvideo.com