Keyword Miitary History

Michael Wood travels through Syria and Iraq to uncover the story of Alexander the Great's decisive battle against the might of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. Ancient writers agreed that it was fought somewhere near the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, but the exact location has never been discovered. Using dramatic new finds in the UK - a cuneiform clay tablet in the British Museum and a papyrus dug up in Egypt - Michael sheds new light on the course of events. Then to reconstruct the campaign, he follows Alexander's route through Damascus and Aleppo to the river Euphrates in Syria and travels into Northern Iraq with the British and US military.

A Total War is all encompassing, a war without boundary or limitation. It is a war of material and morale. A war that mobilizes, destroys and displaces civilian populations. The Second World War was a war in which massive armies advanced, confronting whole populations with impossible choices. The manufacture of weapons transformed industry and the workforce; area bombing campaigns reduced cities to rubble; sieges doomed populations to starvation; racial policies sponsored campaigns of genocide. Told through archive footage and expert interviews, we learn how WWII shattered the boundaries between home-front and battlefield.