War Factories

Modern warfare runs on oil - without it you cannot run the tanks, trucks and planes needed to keep an army going, so control of the oilfields is vital for any War Factory. This story centres around the discovery and exploitation of the Baku Oilfields in the Russian Caucasus, which ultimately forced Stalin and Hitler to face-off in one of the most decisive battles in the history of warfare: Stalingrad.

The story of the Agnelli Family - godfathers of the Italian auto industry… and the power behind Mussolini. Find out how Fiat didn't just make cars: they made trains, they made planes, and like modern-day kingmakers, they made and broke governments too.

While America had Ford or Chrysler or Buick, Hitler also wanted a car that would transform his nation: the ‘people's car'- a Volkswagen…

The incredible story of the arms race to create America's nuclear arms factories.

Japan started WWII before the rest of the world and would create arguably the greatest fighter of the war – the Mitsubishi Zero. But the failure of Japan's War Factories would ultimately reduce the Zero to a Kamikaze plane.

How the Lancaster factory, one of the biggest buildings in Europe at the time, helped to create a truly war-winning weapon.

Long before Henry Ford, Samuel Colt is the true father of mass production. Ironically, it was the inadequacy of Soviet factory production which made the AK47 so effective.

The First World War led to a number of astounding war factories, which laid the foundations and paved the way for modern factories of today.