Season 1 - Episode Guide

Floating off the coast of Southern Spain, the discovery of a British Royal Marine was considered a major intelligence coup for the Germans. Documents inside the soldier's attache foretold an Allied invasion that prompted the Nazis to transfer their troops and fortify the coast. What the Germans didn't know was that the body belonged not to a British officer, but to a Welsh tramp who'd been planted within their reach as a mode of Allied counterintelligence. Operation Mincemeat would be the Trojan Horse of World War II, that may have saved thousands of lives and pushed the Allies towards victory.

The Battle of Castle Itter is the strangest WWII battle the world has never heard of and the only battle where the Allies joined forces with the Germans to defeat the Nazi's. High up in the Austrian alps, an 18th century castle housed some of Nazi Germany's most important political prisoners. Here a ragtag band of former prime ministers, German defectors and American infantrymen fought off SS attack just four days before German's unconditional surrender.

Between September 1944 and February 1945, US troops fought their longest battle in history, one so punishing soldiers called it 'The Meat Grinder' or 'Death Factory.' When troops entered the forest, they knew their mission: capture the dams on the other side. They never suspected progress would be so slow it would be measured in yards. What stood between the Allies and their goal? Minefields, artillery units, and hundreds of German pillboxes, not to mention mud, cliffs and ravines and the prospect of the Germans flooding the dams to delay Allied progress.

It's hard to imagine the destruction the world might have seen had the Nazis had access to nuclear weapons, in 1943 this seemed like a real possibility. Nestled in the Norwegian hillside was a facility that could provide the Nazis with another piece to their nuclear puzzle: heavy water. Vemork Hydro Plant had a giant store and the ability to produce more. With the threat of the nuclear weapons looming, the Allies would plan and carry out Operation Gunnerside, the most successful act of sabotage in WWII. A daring mission to thwart Hitler's atomic bomb. It would require skis, scaling equipment and explosives and the sacrifice of many brave men.

Six Horsa gliders dropped from the skies near Cabourg in a surprise attack to take Pegasus Bridge over the One River. Securing the bridge was a crucial step in protecting the north flank invasion of D-Day and this battle's casualties were the very first of the bloody onslaught.

When Joseph Goebbles featured the luxurious SS Cap Arcona in a propaganda film about the Titanic, he never imagined this German ocean liner would meet a similar tragic fate. Over the course of the war, one of the most opulent ships ever built would serve many functions: a propagndic coup, a transport vessel, and eventually a concentration camp. This is the story of the Nazi Titanic, a floating metaphor for the war and its casualties. From one of the most luxurious ocean liners ever built to a floating death machine, the tale is even more tragic than Goebbels first intended.