Told in 13 episodes through the unparalleled resources of one of the world’s great film archives, and brought to life by the testimony, recorded exclusively for the series, of more than fifty eyewitnesses to the war, this is the story of the greatest man made event in history.

The wars of east and west that fused to become the Second World War remade the political map of the world.  This is the story of how a world, centuries in the making, was completely remade in a couple of decades. The story of how traditional powers fell from greatness as new forces rose to make the modern world. The story of those that could pay, and those that could no longer meet, The Price of Empire.