What are the best History documentaries?

Question

What are the best History-related documentaries you know? It can be about any period of History.

Answer 1

History Channel has a TON of them in their archive.

Every history teacher in my department likes Simon Schama's History of Britain.

History channel's Russia: Land of the Tsars is also excellent.

Ken Burn's The Civil War is simply the best video documentary on the Civil War that exists.  (That's the one everyone above is talking about.  It is Ken Burns.)

I'm rather fond of history channel's The Crescent and Cross, about the Crusades.  

Oh, and PBS did a fantastic documentary about Watergate where they managed to interview everyone involved about what happened, and everyone was remarkably honest.  Agnew wasn't in it, and I don't think Nixon participated.  But Haldeman and Colson were fantastic.  It does a good job of explaining it.

PBS also did a documentary on the history of rock and roll.

Hmm, another great one is The Fog of War.  It's Robert McNamara's tale, told by him.  He wasn't fond of how it came out, and preferred the book, but it is spell-binding.

IF you like conspiracy theories, The Men Who shot Kennedy is a great one.

Answer 2

I really adore the documentary films by Claude Lanzmann and can especially recommend his "Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures" - which tells the story of a concentration camp prisoners revolt within the extermination camp of Sobibor.

Answer 3

The Fog of War

War of the Century

Answer 4

The Revolution and the Civil War by the History Channel, the Civil War by Ken Burns and the Ghosts of Rwanda.  Band of Brothers produced by Tom Hanks is also very good.

Answer 5

Ken Russell makes great documentaries and they are usually long.  PBS will air them over the course of a week in 2-hr segments for an entire week.  So far, he's done documentaries on jazz, baseball, and the Civil War.

Answer 6

The World At War Has got to be one of the best history documentary series there was ever made, narrated by Laurence Olivier, it tells from the rise of Hitler until the end of the war. It covers every theater the second world war was fought in, and covers every major player in the war aswell. There are countless interviews and testimonies from veterans on both sides and civilians from nearly every country involved in ww2. A superb Series altogether.