War Factories - Episode Guide

In 1932 The German aviation industry produced a mere 36 planes and employed only 3,200 people, yet in just a few short years it will go on to create the largest and most formidable air force the world had ever seen. At its height it would employ 3 million workers, produce tens of thousands of aircraft and represent over half of total German war production. So how did this fledgling industry come to dominate the skies of Europe… and then how did it all go so wrong?

The Krupp company were responsible for the manufacture of two of Germany's most feared war products: the Panzer Tank and the U-boat. The fall of this historic and powerful armaments manufacture is as amazing as its early triumphs and Krupp will end the war being described in Nuremberg as the modest sadistic of all the Nazi industrialists.

At the start of World War II, Hitler relied on three ‘superweapons' to dominate the sea, the sky and the land: his U-Boats, his Stuka dive-bombers and his Panzer tanks. The company that can perhaps lay claim to doing much to defeat all three, was Britain's engineering giant Vickers-Armstrong. Guns, tanks, submarines, and then then the fighter plane that became known as the Spitfire - Vickers-Armstrong was one of the most important manufacturers in the world.

During World War 2, the Americans put their skills and knowledge to turn their infant army supplies into mass production which dwarfed the rest of the world's.

America is completely underprepared for aircraft warfare when war breaks out. The Luftwaffe has almost a decade on them in preparation time. Henry Ford sets out with the help of Albert Kahn, to build a giant new factory in Michigan. And it is the largest factory the world has ever seen.

When the Nazis take France, they are desperate to use the giant Peugeot factories to build up their war machine. France has some of the best industry in all of Europe. Its car manufacturers – Peugeot, Citroen, Renault – have gone further than any other European company in the race to achieve mass production. The France that the Nazis occupy is rich with gold, infrastructure and talent. The Nazis waste no time in looting it, and trying to forcibly attach these assets to its cause.

The story of America's 'Liberty Ships', which were produced in incredible numbers and became known as the Model T Fords of the ocean.

Modern warfare runs on oil - without it you cannot run the tanks, trucks and planes needed to keep an army going, so control of the oilfields is vital for any War Factory. This story centres around the discovery and exploitation of the Baku Oilfields in the Russian Caucasus, which ultimately forced Stalin and Hitler to face-off in one of the most decisive battles in the history of warfare: Stalingrad.

The story of the Agnelli Family - godfathers of the Italian auto industry… and the power behind Mussolini. Find out how Fiat didn't just make cars: they made trains, they made planes, and like modern-day kingmakers, they made and broke governments too.

While America had Ford or Chrysler or Buick, Hitler also wanted a car that would transform his nation: the ‘people's car'- a Volkswagen…

The incredible story of the arms race to create America's nuclear arms factories.

Japan started WWII before the rest of the world and would create arguably the greatest fighter of the war – the Mitsubishi Zero. But the failure of Japan's War Factories would ultimately reduce the Zero to a Kamikaze plane.

How the Lancaster factory, one of the biggest buildings in Europe at the time, helped to create a truly war-winning weapon.

Long before Henry Ford, Samuel Colt is the true father of mass production. Ironically, it was the inadequacy of Soviet factory production which made the AK47 so effective.

The First World War led to a number of astounding war factories, which laid the foundations and paved the way for modern factories of today.

The Spitfire, the Hurricane, the Lancaster and Wellington Bombers, the P51 Mustang – all iconic aircraft which arguably won the Battle of Britain - were all powered by the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

In a time of war, factories need to mass produce. Rolls-Royce, with its slow and careful production methods, could not keep up with demand despite running factories in Derby, Crewe and Glasgow, and was compelled to license the Merlin engine to the Packard Motor Company in Detroit.

The story of the rise of the aircraft carrier and how it changed the tactics of sea warfare.

Back in the 1930s, Skoda's Czech factory was one of the biggest arms producers in Europe and became the cover for espionage, sabotage and the liberation of Jews from all over Europe.

This episode tells the story of how car designer Ferdinand Porsche became one of the most influential engineers in all Nazi Germany, and by inventing the slowest war machines in the world, created the blueprint for the muscle cars that would make his name.

For the Germans, the truck became the secret weapon that changed warfare. From the mountain passes of the Ardennes, across the deserts of Libya and the vast wilderness of Russia, the humble truck enabled the German Army to conduct its lightning war with the speed and efficiency it required. And the key machine in Blitzkrieg was the GM Opel Blitz. This episode tells the story of the Blitz and the American-owned war factories that would produce them, putting business before country.

This episode looks at the invention and evolution of the machine gun, and how the weapon that changed the art of war was adopted and adapted by war factories around the world. The Maxim Gun was developed by a British-based American inventor called Hiram Maxim and was the first fully automatic machine-gun. The only problem was that it weighed a whopping 136 lbs. British company Vickers acquired Maxim's company and moved on the design.