Spiegel TV

A look at the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler and how they crossed with the creation of the film “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940.

Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never before had sports and politics been mixed. Through archive photos and reconstructions, we get a closer look into the historical propaganda show.

The Code of Criminal Procedure is actually intended to help judges get to the truth. To do this, they interview witnesses, listen to experts, and have evidence presented. But what if the evidence does not provide a clear picture when statement is against statement? The judge is free to assess the evidence. All that counts is the judicial conviction, which ideally also corresponds to the “objective truth”. But how often is this really the case? How easily do we believe our own prejudices when in doubt? How quickly can we be manipulated? And how do we know when someone is lying? Knowledge of these soft factors also makes it difficult for people at the head of a court to decide whether guilt or innocence. In the end, the judges also have to live with a verdict that has serious consequences for those involved. The accompanying documentary to the TV movie attempts to explore this dilemma with the help of various interview partners and cases.

Thoughts of a diversity of public and private citizens on the virtues of democracy, its faults, its decadence, its fall and the rise of populism.

This remarkable trove of color footage, assembled from far-flung private and state collections, presents Hitler's Europe as never seen before. Amateur film enthusiasts - soldiers, tourists, Hitler's own pilot, even Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun - began experimenting with color film in the late 1930s, their camera eye recording the Third Reich from every angle. Some of this film was only recently uncovered in former Soviet-bloc archives, hidden for almost 60 years; all of it, thanks to digital technology, has been newly transferred to video with surprising clarity. (This documentary was produced with two different narratives, both an English and German language version.)

The war in the Ukraine has changed the way many European countries view Russian politics. Suddenly it became clear how dependent countries had become on Russian gas imports for decades and what Vladimir Putin was up to. However, no country needs more gas than Germany. It was only after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine that the German government realized that Russia had long used gas as a weapon to impose its will on states. The instrument created for this purpose is the natural gas production company GAZPROM. So how did Germany become so dependent on Russian gas? The documentary shows how, over several decades and several changes of government, a broad alliance of politicians and business representatives did everything possible to secure Germany's energy supply with cheap Russian gas, while the Kremlin's foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and the warnings of experts went unheeded.

A history of Nazi television programming and technology, from 1935 to 1944.

Seven men stand on the summit of the Matterhorn, the last Alpine peak to be conquered. Their place in history is assured. Then disaster strikes. A rope snaps and four men fall to their death. But did the rope really just snap, or did one of the climbers cut it? This is a murder mystery at 14,000 feet, filled with gripping reenactments filmed at the original locations to retell the tragic events.

Young people are discovering pornography at an increasingly early age. How does this early exposure affect them? Filmed in Europe and the United States, this is a comprehensive and nuanced scientific overview of a massive phenomenon.

Adolf Hitler spent the last ten days of his life in a bunker underneath the Chancellery of the Reich. Unwilling to face the consequences of defeat, the dictator ended his own life on April 30, 1945 in this fortified underground complex. Featuring exclusive interviews with the last survivor’s of Hitler’s inner circle and extensive archival footage, Death in the Bunker is an illuminating look at the Führer’s final decisions in preparation for his suicide.

The small Portuguese coastal town of Nazaré is unique in Europe. It became the Olympus of surfing in the 2010s. Monster waves roll ashore here between late autumn and spring. They are the largest in the world, so Nazaré is a hotspot for big wave surfers such as the German professional Sebastian Steudtner, the only German extreme athlete in this field who belongs to the world's elite. The giant waves are spectacular, but they are also extremely dangerous. They have given the former fishing port a new boom, because the activities of the surfers now attracts tourists in droves to the place even in winter. But accidents with serious injuries occur again and again. The documentary shows how the coastal town is handling the new attraction and how Sebastian Steudtner is preparing for a new record ride on the biggest wave on earth.

Documentary about the late-era German Democratic Republic

At the beginning of the year 2020, a relentless plague sweeps the planet and, as a consequence, a global lockdown is gradually decreed: how did people from very different latitudes, living necessarily very different situations, experience this shared solitude? How did people adapt to the restriction by decree of their personal freedoms and the transformation of many bustling metropolises into ghost cities?

The first ascent of the Matterhorn was made on July 14, 1865 by Edward Whymper, Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson, Douglas Hadow, Michel Croz and two guides from Zermatt, Peter Taugwalder father and son. Douglas, Hudson, Hadow and Croz are killed on the descent after Hadow slips and drags the other three men down the north face. Whymper and the two Taugwalders, who survive, are later accused of having cut the rope that connected them to the rest of the group so as not to be dragged into the fall, but the ensuing investigation finds no evidence of their guilt and they are acquitted. The Matterhorn is the last great peak in the Alps to be conquered and its ascent marks the end of the golden age of mountaineering. One hundred and fifty years later, a team undertakes the same expedition in order to unravel the mystery.