This page provides an outline of TV documentaries looking at general military topics including: military leadership, fortifications and military history.

General Military Topics
Title Genre First Aired Season(s) (Episodes) Synopsis
Great British Commanders Military Leadership 2015 1 (6) Six documentaries about great (English) and British military commanders.
BBC Castles: Britain’s Fortified History Military Fortifications 2014 1 (3) Historian Sam Willis traces the story of Britain’s castles and their unique role in our history, art and literature.
Bullets, Boots and Bandages: How to Really Win at War Military Planning 2012 1 (3) Military historian Saul David tells the real stories of how wars have been won and lost throughout history – not in the bravado of the frontline, but in the backroom sinews of military planning.
Ground War: The Evolution of the Battlefield Military History 2009 1 (4) Ground War explores the transformative technological advances that have defined battlefield combat through the ages.
Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle Military History 1985 1 (13) A BBC television documentary series, presented by Frederick Forsyth, about the history of warfare from antiquity to the Falklands War.
Weaponology Military History 2007 1 (13), 2 (13) Tracing the advancement of military technology over the last century.
Weapons Races Military History 2011 1 (8) Examines the development of various new military technologies and how their evolution impacted tactics and strategies used in warfare since the High Middle Ages, but focused mainly on film since World War I. It is an eight-part series exposing the most significant weapons races to transform modern warfare, from the original concepts that overturned military thinking to the most advanced versions of each weapon in service today.
Foot Soldier Infantry 1998 1 (13) A 13 part documentary presented by A&E Television Networks about foot soldiers, ‘aka The Infantry’, across the ages.
The Great Wall of China: The Hidden Story Military History 2014 (1) Secret History examines the new evidence that rewrites the Great Wall of China’s history, decodes its complex signals system and reveals the surprise ingredient that’s kept it standing.
The History of the British Army: From Flanders to the Falklands Military History 1992 (1) Documents the history of the British Army from Flanders to the Falklands War.
The History of Warfare Military History 1991 (61) Aired between 1991 and 2005, it is about the most famous wars and battles in world history focusing primarily on the military annals of Great Britain.
Secrets of War Military History 1998 (65) This comprehensive series tells the complete story, from all sides, of the hidden wars of spies, stratagems, cryptology, deceptions and other previously classified secrets.
Biography Series Military Leadership 1997-2013 Lots

The life stories of various (military) historical figures and celebrities are told. Examples include Douglas MacArthur, Erwin Rommel and Genghis Khan.
American Commandante Military History 2015 1 When William Morgan was executed outside a Havana prison on March 11, 1961, his strange story seemed to vanish from the popular imagination as quickly as it had appeared; it was lost in the classified archives of the Cold War; and it was edited out of Cuban history by Fidel Castro’s retelling of the revolution as an epic tale of a handful of men fighting under his direct command at the exclusion of all others.
Battle Plan Military History 2006 1 (18)
  • A documentary series examining various military strategies used in modern warfare since WWI.
  • Each episode looks at particular military strategy, or ‘battleplan’ – through two well-known historical examples, gauging them against the ideal requirements necessary to successfully conduct that strategy.
War & Civilisation Military History 1997 1 (8)
  • Based on the lifetime’s work of leading military historian John Keegan and narrated by Walter Cronkite, this wide-ranging series addresses the question of why men fight wars, and how these wars have formed the world we inhabit.
  • Tracing the history of war and civilisation over 3,000 years, the series is shot on location in Mongolia, Japan, Europe and North and South America.
Weapons at War Military History 1995 1 (4), 2 (60), & 3 16) The technology of warfare is examined.
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