The World at War (1973)

The benchmark for archive-led war history, and still the place to start on the Second World War. Thames Television made its 26 episodes with the Imperial War Museum, and the interviews are what lift it: Albert Speer, Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge and SS general Karl Wolff speak alongside soldiers and civilians from both sides. Laurence Olivier's narration is grave without being pompous. It first aired in 1973, so scholarship on the Holocaust and the Eastern Front has moved a long way since, and later series here fill those gaps well.