Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, this three-part documentary presents a vivid and realistic portrait of the events, including footage never before seen on television.

Almost all of our recollections of the Second World War are in black and white. However, years of research have unearthed hours of previously unseen colour film offering a completely new portrait of the war. The result is a remarkable insight into the event that shaped our modern world. Dramatic colour footage from as early as 1933 shows home movies of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts, the devastation wrought by the Blitz, life on the home front, D-Day and the Allied Invasion of France, British bombers defying German fighters, the horror of the Holocaust that greeted troops as they entered Germany and the jubilation of VE Day.

With John Thaw's narration and spoken accounts from the letters and diaries of those who fought, those who survived, and those that the war claimed as victims, this three-part documentary is an extraordinary remembrance.