Australia World War

May 1941. German paratroopers launch a blitzkrieg from the air against Crete. They are met with fierce defiance, the Greeks fighting back with daggers, pitchforks and kitchen knives. During the bloody 11-day battle, Alenka, a young Greek woman, saves the lives of two Australian soldiers. Jack and Teddy are childhood friends who joined up together to see the world. Both men fall in love with Alenka.

When the first convoys of the ANZAC Expeditionary Forces sailed from Albany’s majestic King George Sound in November and December 1914, they carried with them hundreds of horses. Many had been loaded in ports elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand. Some came from unexpected places, including Juna Downs, a vast pastoral station in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

As part of the French Resistance in Paris, Arlette LaRue and American Josie Anderson steal so many Nazi secrets they become known as the 'Golden Doves', renowned across France and hunted by the Gestapo. Their courage costs them everything. When finally arrested, they and their loved ones are taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. There a reclusive Nazi doctor does appalling things to Josie's mother, while Arlette's baby son is stolen from her, never to be seen again.

Single mother Sarah is guilt-ridden when an accident leaves her young daughter Melody seriously injured and their once music-filled lives silent. When she discovers her grandmother Rosalie's old war correspondence, she thinks she might have found a way to save her family, but it will require a leap of faith she isn't sure they are ready to take.

Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, is alone and scared when she gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, Ally knows she must keep her baby in the shadows to protect her against Hitler’s deadly ideology of Aryan purity. But as she grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Lilith hidden, so Ally sets in motion a dangerous and desperate plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety.

Rome, 1943: Marina Tozzi adores her father Vittorio and working together in his art gallery is her only escape from the reality of the Nazi occupation. Not only has Marina inherited her father’s passion for art but she is earning a reputation as an expert in her own right.

Young Meike Mosbach and her brother escape Berlin just before the horror of Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister to follow them to America. But their family never arrives. Haunted by their loss, Meike becomes Millie and graduates from college to work as a magazine journalist while David enlists in the army to work in intelligence. After the war, they both return to a shattered Berlin, hoping against hope to find their family.

Amsterdam, 1941. When the Nazis invade Amsterdam, singer Johanna Vos watches in horror as her Jewish friends are forbidden from performing with her onstage, and the vibrant music scene she loves is all but erased. Johanna helps organize the Artists’ Resistance, an underground network that arranges for Jewish musicians to perform at house concerts hosted by their allies. When Johanna is told about a Jewish orphan who is headed for deportation, she does not think twice: she takes the baby in as her own, hiding the truth from everyone, including her sister, Liesbeth.

Two fathers, their sons and the feud that binds them. In the early years of the twentieth century, Billy and Tommy Smith are growing up on the mean streets of Sydney's Millers Point. It's a hungry, hard-scrabble life, made even worse when their violent father returns home from a long stint in prison. In the wealthy eastern suburbs, Charles Davies is living an entirely different life, the beneficiary of his father's business acumen and insatiable, unyielding greed. Charles wants for nothing - except perhaps his father's approval.

Inspired by the author’s true family story of survival during the Second World War, Natalia’s story is an unforgettable portrait of the triumph of the human spirit.

Blazing her trail at the dawn of the 20th century, Vida Goldstein remains Australia's most celebrated suffragette and social reformer. Her life - as a campaigner for women's rights and suffrage in Australia, Britain and America, an advocate for peace, a fighter for social equality for all and a shrewd political commentator - marks her as one of Australia's foremost women of courage and principle. In 1903 she became the first woman in Australia to stand for the Senate and the the first woman in the Western world to stand for a national Parliament.

Australia's contributions in the Pacific War are often forgotten in history lessons today. However, Australia faced the bombing of its cities and invasions of nearby islands much like the rest of the world, and stood up to fight as needed. They placed a central role from 1942 to 1943 in the New Guinea Campaign and defended Japanese forces invading Port Moseby. Japanese forces then invaded the Australian mainland, trying to cut supply lines, but were fought back by valiant forces. Take to the ground and skies during this mix of intense land and air battles.

In 1942 London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics. Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war.

Daisy Wilder prefers the company of horses to people, bare feet and salt water to high heels and society parties. Then, in the dizzying aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy enlists in a top secret program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time. Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked-out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies.

Paris, 1944. Charlotte Foret is working in a tiny bookstore in Nazi-occupied Paris struggling to stay alive and keep her baby Vivi safe. Every day they live through is a miracle until Vivi becomes gravely ill. In desperation, Charlotte accepts help from an unlikely saviour - and her life is changed forever.

Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost. Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued drowning, freezing men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.

Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost. Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued drowning, freezing men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.

Jess and Nancy are nurses in France during the Great War. They have much in common for both have lost their lovers in the trenches, so when the war is over and they return to Liverpool, their future seems bleak.