The games and entertainment, plus violence as a political instrument, with the Battle of Laugaricio (modern-day Slovakia), portraits of Commodus and Lucilla, and the legendary Colosseum.

War, loyalty, citizenship and the plots of a changing empire with the massacres of Alexandria, portraits of Caracalla and Julia Domna, and the extraordinary Baths of Caracalla.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Nazis had the finest air force in the entire world. James Holland learns how internecine squabbles led the Nazi High Command on the catastrophic road to defeat.

The crucifixion of Jesus changed the world; how much of our understanding of this event is true, and what answers can be found in the Holy Land to back up the Bible's story?

The tank became the key to victory during WWII; Germany unveils its latest evolution of the German panzer, the Panther, but is it ready for battle, and is it enough to overcome the Soviet T-34?

Tanks continued to evolve and older tanks found a new life on the Pacific battlefront; with the end of WWII in Europe in sight, anything went in the peak of experimentation of tank design.

By the end of WWII, the tank had evolved from its trench-crossing beginnings; it had turned into a vision of armoured warfare that carried on through the Cold War and into the present day.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, built an organisation of terror rooted in racial fantasy and Nordic mythology. As Nazi Germany crumbled, his desperate bid for power ended in disgrace.

Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless figurehead behind the Holocaust's planning, wielded power through deadly efficiency. His assassination was a dramatic blow to the Nazi elite.

Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, oversaw the industrialised murder of over a million people. After the war, his confessions exposed the horrifying mechanics behind the Nazi death camps.

This episode traces the war in the West and how the geography of Western Europe provided both the Nazis and the Allies with advantages and disadvantages.

For 2,000 years, whoever controlled the Mediterranean controlled the resources of the known world. In WWII, this area was in control of the British Empire, and Mussolini wanted it back.

The Eastern Front saw Hitler's most brutal WWII campaigns, but it is also where the Soviets, with mastery of the ground on which they lived, beat him all the way back to Berlin.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it won a battle and inherited a geographic problem. How to hold and defend a vast island empire scattered across the largest ocean on earth?

The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were innovative, introducing television coverage and the torch relay. We show the highlights, but also how Hitler used the Games as propaganda for his brutal regime.

The Pazzi family attacked the Medicis during Easter Mass in 1478, killing Giuliano; Byzantine Empress Maria of Antioch was strangled in 1182 after her cousin Andronikos incited massacre.

King William Rufus was struck by an arrow while hunting in 1100; Japan's last Minamoto shōgun Sanetomo was assassinated by his nephew outside a shrine in 1219.

Scottish King Consort Darnley survived an explosion in 1567 but was then smothered; Cleopatra's sister Arsinoë IV was murdered at the Temple of Artemis by Mark Antony's soldiers, violating sacred law.

Many legends persisted about the life of Adolf Hitler after the end of World War II; is it true that he was incapable of human emotions, friendships, or romantic relationships?

For years it was claimed that Adolf Hitler was a man without a private life, a socially disturbed character; on his farm in the Berchtesgaden Alps, he was surrounded by a close-knit family circle.

Amateur footage of frontline and civilian stories offers novel insight into life in pre-war Germany and the early days of the war. Nazi control pervades; anti-Semitism is explicit.

Berlin falls and the war in Europe ends. Okinawa falls with terrible losses on both sides as each prepares for the invasion of the first of the major home islands - but a new weapon is unleashed.

This episode traces the war in the West and how the geography of Western Europe provided both the Nazis and the Allies with advantages and disadvantages.