Nat Geo, Disney+ line up landmark WWII docuseries

National Geographic and Disney+ are preparing to debut a docuseries from UK indie Impossible Factual to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Western Europe in World War II, Broadcast can reveal.

Four-part Liberation: D-Day to Berlin is a history series employing ground-breaking restoration and colourisation techniques to create vivid archive footage to complement the “powerful eyewitness testimony”, according to Impossible Factual (IF) managing director and executive producer Jonathan Drake. 

Over the series, Liberation charts the campaign to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis from D-Day to the fall of Berlin, taking a modern perspective to explore both the military efforts by the Allies and lives of civilians across Europe whose homelands had become war zones as the Allied troops advanced.  

Each episode takes in a new country and historical account, beginning with France, moving into Belgium and Netherlands in episode two, and investigating Hitler’s resistance and the move into Germany for the final two parts. 

The first episode sets out the series’ narrative and creative ambition, Drake added, drawing on the restoration and colourisation tech to look at the impact of Allied bombing and subsequent ground invasion on the French.  

Drake and creative director Steve Maher exec produce Liberation: D-Day to Berlin, which is series produced by Rosalind Bain. Drake and Bain direct episodes one and four respectively, with two and three helmed by Ian Bremner. 

Drake said its “first-person testimony, taking a modern view that looks at the civilian story as well as the military one, and the tensions between them” helps sets IF’s doc apart from others in the space. 

Nimble financing and novel windowing 

Nat Geo International boarded the project as principal commissioner initially, through global acquisitions director Ben Noot. IF was tasked with finding a US partner to help complete the financing picture.  

Although Drake said it was a “close-run thing”, Paramount boarded the project and took the US rights to air the doc on Smithsonian Channel and Paramount+ at the beginning of the year. Piecing together further financing, IF were able to bring Australian PSB SBS on board.

“Paramount came up trumps in the end, and we were left with a small gap as producer investment, had enough to get started, and quickly made a deal with SBS that covered our risk,” Drake said.  

“Nat Geo were prepared for a US partner to TX first if it made it possible to greenlight, and their target had always been the VE Day anniversary.” 

The doc will drop on Disney+ with two episodes on Sunday 4 May and Monday 5 May, from 8pm.

However, IF – which has previously worked with Nat Geo on projects such as WWII’s Greatest Raids and T-Rex Autopsy, and have produced several singles and series for Smithsonian – has retained some rights for the series and is in talks with distributors at securing further deals. 

“We have some windows available in Europe, Asia – and more broadly there will be free-TV [windows] available in later 2026,” Drake said. 

The news follows on from IF’s deal to secure the rights to cultural historian Fern Riddell’s forthcoming book on Queen Victoria, to adapt into a TV documentary.