History Hit

Martin Luther King Jr.: Enemies of the Dream

The 1979 Iranian Revolution, led by Khomeini, imposed the veil and sparked a fight for freedom.

Mary Beard on Women and Power

Kasturba Gandhi: Accidental Activist

A mysterious group of warrior monks and their links to the Holy Grail and the Temple of Solomon, the Knights Templar was a brotherhood that vowed to band together and protect the most coveted religious relics from the dawn of Christianity.

At first glance, images like these conjure up some of America's darkest moments. But these black-clad torch-bearers are the Wide Awakes, a paramilitary political machine that some say delivered the presidency to Abraham Lincoln.

The Tea Party sparked the American Revolution, driven by politics, trade, and colonial mismanagement.

Haitian Revolution exposed slavery's brutality and overturned France's plantation colony.

Filmed primarily in Egypt in March 2011, soon after the January revolution, this film introduces you to the Egyptians who lived under Mubarak and helped to bring him down.

Edward Carson and Michael Collins clashed over Irish Home Rule, delayed by WWI.

Castro has outlived generations of US Presidents, Soviet General Secretaries, CIA Directors and would-be assassins. This film offers a psychological profile of the Cuban revolutionary, and a deeply intimate account of his life.

Osama bin Laden

Mary Beard on Women and Power

S01 E01 — The Gathering Storm In the run-up to September 1939, political and economic chaos in the aftermath of World War I allowed Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and ultranationalists in imperial Japan to seize absolute power.

S01 E02 — Lightning War Germany took just four weeks to conquer Poland, using a new form of warfare, Blitzkrieg. Six armoured tank units known as Panzer divisions, supported by the Luftwaffe, quickly broke through Polish defences.

S01 E03 — Britain at Bay After the retreat from Dunkirk, Churchill rallied Britain in its darkest hour. Hitler was only just across the channel, but he reckoned without our supreme strategist, the might of the navy and the manoeuvrability of the air force.

S01 E04 — Hitler Strikes East Explores Hitler's assault on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.

S01 E05 — Red Sun Rampant The attack on Pearl Harbour brought the country nicknamed the 'sleeping giant', aka America, into the war, and saw the emergence of the aircraft carrier as the pre-eminent weapon of the seas.

S01 E06 — Mediterranean and North Africa Italian dictator Benito Mussolini dreamed of recreating the Roman Empire and making the Mediterranean the centre of a new vast colonial empire, including British-controlled Egypt and Sudan to the south.

S01 E07 — Turning the Tide With their armies fully engaged on the battlegrounds, the Allied and Axis powers focused their efforts to develop new weapons and new strategies to deliver a knockout blow to the enemy and bring about a quick end to the conflict.

S01 E08 — The Soviet Steamroller After Hitler's gamble in the East fails, the Soviet Union starts to slowly push back and grow.

S01 E09 — Overlord By early 1944, Hitler had long been expecting an Allied attack on north-western France, but his problem was knowing when and where it would come. This episode has a look at the Allied operations Bodyguard and Overlord.

S01 E10 — Closing the Ring Concentrates on Hitler's attempts to shift the balance of power back in his favour.