The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997)

Six episodes on how the Nazis took power, held it and fell, and still the clearest introduction to the Third Reich on screen. Laurence Rees wrote and produced it with Ian Kershaw as historical and script consultant, so the argument rests on firm ground. Its distinctive strength is the eyewitness interviews, set against archive footage and left to speak with little embellishment. Samuel West's narration is restrained throughout. It won a Peabody and the BAFTA for best factual series, and nearly three decades on it has hardly dated.