DVD
Documentary - 58 mins
Audience - General
Classification - Exempt
Region - 0
Format - PAL
Language - English (no subtitles)

CD
Winston Churchill - His Finest Hour - The Great Wartime Speeches
Running Time - 71 minutes
12 Speeches

Product weight - 180g

DVD

 Early in the morning of 6th June 1944, a vast and bizarre armada ploughed steadily against stiff head-winds through the rough waters of the English Channel, heading for the Normandy coast. Amongst the 5,000 vessels were many of the best British and American warships, of stupendous collective firepower, also ancient battleships and tankers on their last voyage, destined to be sunk to provide breakwaters. Thousands of the craft had been built to make one journey only and that a short one; to ferry the invading allied forces tougher with their immense diversity of equipment on the last difficult, dangerous stretch from the transports to the shore of enemy-occupied France.

It was D-Day. Concieved almost on the shores of Dunkirk, four years planning, two in the organising and one day in the execution, the landing in Normandy was easily the largest and most extraordinary combined military operation ever attempted. It was also a crucial one. By 1944 it was becoming clear that Germany would lose the war in Europe, who would win it was another matter. Had D-Day failed and at times it came close to it, the western allies would have found it impossible to launch another operation for at least a year, perhaps more and today's map of Europe might have been very different.

One of the millions taking part in the landings, Admiral Ramsey, was famous for his dislike of even the mildest exaggeration, as Overlord got under way, he told his officers "Gentlemen, I am sorry about all the superlatives, today they happen to be true." This is that story.

From the Back Cover

Scene Selection

Start
Omaha and Utah
Sword, Juno and Gold
Caen and Cherbourg
The Mortaine Front
The Resistance Plays Its Part
 

Special Features

Scene Selections
Interactive Menus

CD

12 Speeches

The words of the man who offered his nation 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'.

Listen to the poignant, sometimes comical but always inspirational words of the wartime British Prime Minister as he rallied a country to face the spread of evil.

His familiar words echo a time when our very liberties were under threat, and yet out of this bleak dark time came Britain's 'finest hour'.

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