Great Escape

Nov 16, 2004

★ 6.0

Overview

The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

NOVA

Great Escape Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator

Richard Donat

Himself - Reporter

Robert Krulwich

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

0.0

Maïco : Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, la révoltée

May 25, 2024

Communist, resistance fighter, deportee, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier is one of the great heroines of the 20th century. Nicknamed Maïco, she became a photojournalist and embraced the class struggle at the same time as she fell in love with one of the figures of the Popular Front, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. During World War II, she joined the Resistance and later gave decisive testimony at Nuremberg.

0.0

Ralph Rush: Concentration Camp Liberator

Sep 1, 2015

Ralph Rush, a Scout in General George S. Patton's World War II Intelligence & Reconnaisance Platoons went from digging up German mines to being the first American to enter the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp; the first concentration camp liberated by the Allies.

7.1

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Feb 13, 2005

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.

7.7

The Adventures of Werner Holt

Feb 4, 1965

Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.

3.0

The Street Performers

Oct 5, 2015

This documentary-style short follows two impoverished teens performing on the streets of London in the days leading up to the London Blitz of 1940.

7.0

Betrayed

Dec 25, 2020

During World War II, millions of Jews from all over Europe are deported and killed in German concentration camps. When the German troops invade Norway, the Norwegian Jews feel safe and protected. But anti-Semitism knows no borders and as the war escalates in Europe, the situation changes drastically. Suddenly, their radios are taken away; their passports are stamped with a big J and one day, all the men men over the age of 15 are arrested and taken to prisons camps. Many of the women left behind are too frightened to escape and are desperately waiting for their husbands and sons to come back home. On November 26, 1942, hundreds of Jews are picked up by the police in the middle of the night and are transported to the dock in Oslo. Unknowing and frightened men, women, children, sick and old are forced on board the awaiting German cargo ship "SS DONAU". The ship leaves with 532 Norwegian Jews onboard; 302 men, 188 women and 42 children. The end station is Auschwitz.

4.1

The Last Drop

Apr 13, 2006

Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.

6.0

Mr. Kingstreet's War

May 1, 1973

A couple sets up an African game preserve, only to have British and Italian armies fight over the waterholes.

6.5

The Cardinal

Dec 12, 1963

A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.

8.0

Le Bataillon du Pacifique

Jun 23, 2024

No overview available.

5.3

The Lancaster at War

Jul 25, 2009

The incredible story of the Avro Lancaster, one of the finest bombers of the Second World War, which played a crucial role in the long and savage campaign to defeat Hitler's Third Reich. This documentary features interviews with surviving veterans of Bomber Command, who share frank personal accounts of their part in an aerial battle of attrition which claimed the lives of 55'000 aircrew.

10.0

Old Man River

Mar 3, 1999

Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.

7.0

Challenging Churchill

Jul 3, 2012

Churchill, a name typically associated with braveness and altruism. Recently found evidence from Soviet and British sources however brings up questions about Churchill's doings in the conferences of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. Why did he agree to give Stalin large parts of Poland? The story of two world leaders in times of war - it is also the story of Poland.

0.0

China und wir · Ein riskantes Spiel

Jun 5, 2025

China is pushing hard into German and European markets. Furthermore, Beijing is developing into an increasingly powerful military power. An investigative reporter team from BR, rbb, and SWR is investigating the impact this has on Germany's internal and external security.

0.0

Cesty dětí

Jun 9, 2016

No overview available.

7.8

When Paul Came Over The Sea

Jan 28, 2017

An unusual friendship in an agitated political context.

0.0

Schuss in der Nacht - Die Ermordung Walter Lübckes

Dec 4, 2020

On June 1st, 2019, around 11:30pm, the shoot which represents a turning point in the federal republic falls. In the hessian small town Wolfhagen-Istha, the district president of Kassel, Walter Lübcke, is murdered during this night, while, just a few meters away, the annual carnival is putting the locals into a festive mood. It is DNA-evidence on the clothes of Walter Lübcke which leads the investigators on June 15th, 2019, to his presumptive murderer: Stephan Ernst. The previously convicted right-wing extremist Ernst gets arrested by a SEK unit in Kassel. A first background check reveals: Stephan Ernst was known to the security authorities, but they did not have him on their radar for six years. Now he is back. And a person is dead. The docu-drama “Schuss in der Nacht” („Shoot in the dark“) tells emotionally, and simultaneously factually, how the deadly attack on Lübcke came to be. It tells about the first far-right motivated murder of a politician since the era of national socialism.

6.2

Kokoda

Apr 25, 2006

A bitter battle is fought between Australian and Japanese soldiers along the Kokoda trail in New Guinea during World War II.

No Image Available

9.0

Hiroshima Revealed

Aug 4, 2015

Pulitzer Prize -- winning journalist John Hersey caused a sensation when he published "Hiroshima", the first account for American readers of the horror experienced by victims of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack. "Hiroshima" stunned readers with its descriptions of the terrible aftermath of the bombing, yet Hersey never spoke about his experience in Hiroshima.

Great Escape

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Great Escape Trailers