Looks at three sins which drive great military leaders - arrogance, ambition and vanity and looks at how these attributes manifested themselves in the WWII leadership of Field Marshall Montgomery and General MacArthur.
20th Century beliefs that a new military technology would bring about cleaner wars and reduce casualties are confounded in this look at modern warfare from the Battle of the Somme to the Gulf War.
In 1942 two German battle-cruisers, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, put into a French port for repairs and became trapped there, targets to be bombed at will by the RAF. It was only a matter of time before they would attempt an escape. Churchill ordered that the ships must not reach Germany, and that they must be destroyed. The plan to do so was called Operation Fuller. However, when the moment came to put the operation into action, the plans were locked in a safe and the only man with a key was away on holiday. What happened next was a series of one farcical mistake after another which allowed the two German ships to sail right up the English channel and home to Germany. The programme also features Operation Eagle Claw, the clandestine operation ordered by President Carter in 1980 to free the American hostages held in the Tehran embassy. The newly formed Special Operations Group, Delta Force, began planning a daring rescue. However, inter-service rivalry intervened, with tragic results when the American aircraft carrying the rescue teams crashed into each other in the Iranian desert.
A look at the tragic consequences of underestimating the enemy. During the Second World War, the British commander of Singapore believed it to be an impregnable fortress until a numerically inferior Japanese Army overran it. Similarly, 12 years on, the French lost the mountain garrison at Dien Bien Phu after failing to anticipate the resourcefulness of General Giap and his Vietnamese peasant army.
Examining the strategic failures of politicians. Included: the defeat of the Crusaders at the battle of Hattin in 1187. Also: Fascist Italy led by Benitto Mussolini invades Ethiopian territory in 1935; and Ronald Reagan orders the invasion of Grenada in 1983.
Discusses General Elphinstone who led the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1839, General Redvers Buller who led men at Spion Kop in the Boer War, and Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering who let the British off the hook at Dunkirk. The programme also looks at the story of General Julian Thompson, commander of the British land forces in the Falklands Campaign in 1982. He blames himself for the death of Lt Colonel H. Jones who died commanding the second battalion of the parachute regiment at Goose Green.