Must-watchWorld War II · Series · 2001
Band of Brothers
Ten episodes follow Easy Company of the 101st Airborne from brutal training in Georgia to the D-Day drop, the siege of Bastogne and Hitler's Eagle's Nest, told through the men who were there.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 10 places.
Stop 1: Camp Toccoa, Georgia
Under the petty tyranny of Captain Sobel, the volunteers of Easy Company run up and down Currahee mountain until they become paratroopers.
Stop 2: Aldbourne, Wiltshire
Billeted in an English village, the company trains for the invasion while the conflict with Sobel comes to a head.
Stop 3: Brécourt Manor, Normandy
Scattered by the night drop, Winters gathers a handful of men and assaults the German guns firing on Utah Beach.
Stop 4: Carentan
Easy Company storms the town linking Utah and Omaha beaches, and Private Blithe struggles with fear under fire.
Stop 5: Eindhoven and Nuenen
Cheered through liberated Eindhoven during Market Garden, the company is then mauled by German armor at Nuenen.
Stop 6: Bastogne and Foy
Key location
Without winter clothing or enough ammunition, the men hold foxholes in the frozen Bois Jacques and later attack the village of Foy.
Stop 7: Haguenau, Alsace
Holding a quiet stretch of river line, the exhausted company is ordered to send a night patrol across to take prisoners.
Stop 8: Kaufering camp near Landsberg
On patrol in Bavaria, the men stumble on a concentration camp and finally see what they have been fighting against.
Stop 9: Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's Nest
Easy Company reaches Hitler's mountain retreat, raids Göring's wine cellars and hears that the war in Europe is over.
Stop 10: Zell am See, Austria
In the Austrian Alps the men wait to learn whether they will be sent to fight Japan while surrendered Germans pass by.
What really happened
The series adapts Stephen Ambrose's 1992 book about Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The company jumped into Normandy on 6 June 1944, where Lieutenant Dick Winters led about a dozen men against a German battery of 105 mm guns at Brécourt Manor, then fought at Carentan, in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands and through the encirclement of Bastogne in December 1944.
In 1945 the company moved through Alsace into Germany, saw the Kaufering camps near Landsberg and reached Berchtesgaden before the war ended in Austria. Each episode opens with interviews of the real veterans. The series is largely faithful but dramatizes some events: Albert Blithe, for example, did not die of his wounds in 1948 as the episode claims; he served in the army until his death in 1967.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Band of Brothers
- Created by
- Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks
- Countries
- United States, United Kingdom
- Languages
- English, German, French, Dutch
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Released
- 2001
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Combat
- True story
