HISTORY IN THE CROSSHAIRS

A NEW premium documentary SERIES

SYNOPSIS : These are the extraordinary, little-known stories of courage, sacrifice, and ingenuity that have shaped 250 years of American military history. Each season takes viewers deep inside pivotal moments where ordinary men faced impossible odds—and changed the course of history.

SERIES TRAILER

the creative overview

For 250 years, America's military has been defined not only by the battles history remembers, but by the remarkable individuals whose courage, determination, and selfless service made victory possible. While many of these heroes never became household names, their actions altered missions, saved lives, and helped shape the nation—and, in many cases, the world.

HISTORY IN THE CROSSHAIRS is a premium unscripted documentary series narrated by MIKE ROWE that shines a light on these overlooked stories of heroism. Each season consists of multiple cinematic episodes exploring a different chapter in American military history through compelling archival footage, immersive recreations, expert interviews, and powerful first-person accounts from veterans, historians, and family members.

From the Revolutionary War to today's modern conflicts, the series reveals the human stories behind history's defining moments—not simply how battles were won, but how courage, leadership, innovation, and sacrifice emerged under unimaginable pressure. These are stories of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Guardians, and Coast Guardsmen who answered the call when everything was on the line.

Mike Rowe's authentic, grounded narration provides the perfect guide through these remarkable journeys, honoring the grit, humility, and resilience that define America's fighting men. His storytelling connects audiences not just to the historical events themselves, but to the people whose decisions and sacrifices continue to inspire generations.

Designed for today's streaming audience, this multi-season series combines the pace and visual sophistication of premium documentary filmmaking with emotionally driven storytelling that makes history feel immediate, personal, and profoundly relevant.

At its heart, the series is a celebration of service. It honors the men who willingly faced extraordinary danger in defense of their fellow Americans and our allies, reminding viewers that behind every chapter of military history are individuals whose bravery helped secure freedom, protect democracy, and make the world a better place. Their stories deserve to be remembered—not as footnotes, but as defining examples of courage in the face of impossible odds.

season ONE: THE GOLDEN GUN

SYNOPSIS / THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE WHEREABOUTS OF ONE OF HITLER’S MOST PRIZED POSSESSIONS AND THE ASTONISHING STORY OF ONE SOLDER’S JOURNEY TO OBTAIN IT.

Season One's story emanates from the New York Times best-selling book Hitler in the Crosshairs by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maurice Possley and Dr. John Woodbridge. Set amidst the final days of World War II, two officers from different worlds -- one an American GI commando, and the other a dissident German intelligence officer -- join forces to help stop the flow of high-ranking Nazi officials into the Bavarian Alps and bring a decisive end to the global conflict.

A PECULIAR HOME INVASION

Charles Woodbridge unlocked the side door, and all four children bounded into their home. They stopped in their tracks, though, gawking at their normally pristine living room that was now in a state of disarray. The piano stool stood in a pool of liquid that gave off the unmistakable stench of urine.

The children shouted for their parents, Charles and Ruth came running. The feeling of being personally violated began churning uneasily inside Charles. As he stood there, he felt a growing sense that something was particularly odd about this burglary, a feeling that was confirmed as he began a room-to-room search and noticed that expensive silver candlesticks and silver candy dishes sitting in plain sight in the dining room were untouched.

He went upstairs to explore the bedrooms. As he entered his office, nothing seemed amiss. He walked to his desk and pulled open the top right drawer. His heart sank. The drawer was empty. Hitler’s pistol was gone.

WHY WOULD A NORTH CAROLINA

PASTOR HAVE HITLER’S GUN?

IRA “TEEN” PALM- MUSICIAN AND SOLDIER

Teen palm stepped off the train in Raleigh, greeted by a muggy August evening in 1933. He looked relatively fresh in his suit and tie, though he had been onthe train for nearly a day.

He had been driven by a friend to New York City’s Grand Central station, boarded in darkness, and then watched as five hundred miles of lovely countryside rolled across the window—New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia until he was farther away from home than he had ever been.

Clutching a suitcase in one hand and his saxophone case in the other, he stepped off the train and scanned the platform. “Teen Palm! It’s you!” Teen nodded, reflexively dropped his suitcase and extended his right hand to grip the man’s hand. “That’s me,” he said. “I’m Teen Palm.”

Crowded in a sedan, Poyner and the “boys” whisked Teen the seventy miles south to Southern Pines, where the band had summer living quarters. Even though it was late, they got right to business, and Teen was impressed as the band ran through a few numbers.

“Now, let’s hear what you’ve got,” said Poyner. Teen played with passion and precision, and his audition was a success. He had a hard time determining whether he felt more elated or relieved when told he had been accepted into the band. With Teen as lead singer and featured saxophone player, the band quickly became popular as it toured the East Coast, playing on university campuses and in hotels and clubs.

HITLER’S MUNICH APARTMENT

It was the third and last of his residences in Munich, the city that, according to Otto Dietrich, his chief of press relations, “was Hitler’s chosen home, the city he loved above all others and which he held to be the pearl of Germany.”

Ira “Teen” Palm and his men paused to listen and gather their composure. As he had many times before going into battle, Palm withdrew a grimy and creased piece of paper from his pocket. Carefully, he unfolded it. He knew the words to chapter thirty-one, verse eight from the book of Deuteronomy - his war verse - by heart:

“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

With a nod of his head, Palm led the men across the street, where they pressed against the side of the building on both sides of the front door. Slowly, Palm pushed on the door. It was unlocked and swung open without a sound. The nine-room apartment spread over three thousand two hundred square feet of living space. The building was silent. None of Palm’s men spoke. They knew their job, and they likely had a vision of Hitler’s face before them as they crept upward—moments from coming face-to-face with the scourge of the world.

It was immediately apparent that no one was in the apartment. Wherever Hitler was, he was not at 16 Prinzregenten Platz. The place was pristine—as if housecleaners had just finished tidying up after a visit by the Fuehrer.

Palm found himself alone in Hitler’s office. He surveyed the room and then walked behind Hitler’s rectangular oak desk. He slid back the brown leather chair and saw drawers on each side. He pulled open the top drawer on the right side. There, resting as innocuously as a fountain pen or a letter opener, was a pistol. It was no ordinary pistol. It was the golden pistol the Walther family gave Hitler nearly six years ago to the day on the dictator’s fiftieth birthday.

CHARLES WOODBRIDgE- PASTOR

Woodbridge worked his way through Princeton University, earning undergraduate and graduate degree there. He was an all-American soccer player, holding his own against bigger and stronger foes by drawing on his expertise learned from the English children he had played with while in school in China. He earned a theological degree from Princeton Seminary and was ordained in 1927.

He first served the First Presbyterian Church in Flushing, New York, where he established a reputation as a hard-working clergyman with an outgoing personality who was interested in the lives of his church members. Athletic and vivacious, he endeared himself to others with a finely tuned blend of preaching within church walls and an avuncular sense of humor beyond the pulpit.

Woodbridge also became a part of the social fabric of his town, participating in all manner of non-church activities, such as goose hunting with Sheriff Jim Krider. On one occasion, Krider invited Woodbridge to accompany him on his evening patrol, saying, “Pastor, then you will know how your church members really live.”

He would recall one of those spine-tingling night rides: “Krider drove like Jehu [a biblical commander of chariots] for several miles in pursuit of a drunk culprit who dove head-on into a garden wall, was unharmed, and turned out to be one of my more docile members!” The parishioner was likely mortified to see his pastor sitting next to the sheriff in the police car.

In October 1939, Woodbridge began teaching a Bible class, which quickly became popular among the city’s young men. It was at this point that his path crossed with Teen Palm. He was clearly a man of God, but with his familiar manner, contagious sense of humor, and worldly intelligence, he easily related to young people, even those who were not particularly godly or spiritual.

season one APPROACH

In Season One, multiple storylines and themes will be explored through beautiful top-tier sit down interviews with historians, journalists, and writers that will serve as a spine for the narrative while additional cinematic narrative glimpses will help drive the story arc and create tension throughout. Principle photography will take place in the US with the potential for targeted additional photography in Europe.

Storyline One follows Teen Palm’s background as an American saxaphonist-turned soldier. Teen’s WWII journey will be traced from the States into the raging war in Europe, crossing the Rhine River, climaxing at his mission to capture Adolph Hitler.

Storyline Two provides glimpses into Charles Woodbridge’s extraordinary life and how his mentorship with Teen inspired him to reach a new level of courage and confidence in the chaos of war. The question of why Teen gave Woodbridge the Golden Gun will be asked as well as what it represnted to Woodbridge, and how it was stolen from him.

Storyline Three traces the mystery of the Golden Gun. It follows the introduction at Hitler’s 50th birthday in Nazi Germany, how it reached the Munich apartment, and traces the mysterious journey of where it is today.

Some of the themes and additional topics to explore include: why a unique courage was developed in the fabric of “The Greatest Generation”, how those days and the days we are living in now are “Unusual Days”, and what we can learn from the principles of Hitler’s rise to power.

season two: freedom’s detective

The source material for Season Two is the award-winning book Freedom's Detective. In the years following the Civil War, a new battle began. Newly freed African American men had gained their voting rights and would soon have a chance to transform Southern politics. Former Confederates and other white supremacists mobilized to stop them. Thus, the KKK was born. After the first political assassination carried out by the Klan, Washington power brokers looked for help in breaking the growing movement. They found it in Hiram C. Whitley. He became head of the Secret Service, which had previously focused on catching counterfeiters and was at the time the government’s only intelligence organization. Whitley and his agents led the covert war against the nascent KKK and were the first to use undercover work in mass crime—what we now call terrorism—investigations.

To bring fans further into the series, in subsequent seasons we plan to utilize social media to cast a wide net of untold stories of heroism in the American military by inviting viewers to submit stories and heroes of their own. Our team will sort through these and select the best ones.

THE creators

RJ MOELLER (PRODUCER)

RJ Moeller is a creative producer based in Franklin, TN with over 15 years of unscripted storytelling experience.
Specializing in “based on a true story” intellectual property, RJ most recently produced the feature-length documentary NOTHING BUT A WINNER that chronicles the racial integration of the University of Alabama’s football program in the 1970s.
RJ also helped launch the YouTube channel Prager University which, to date, has more than 10 billion views.
COLBY GAINES (PRODUCER)

Colby Gaines of Backroads Entertainment is an Emmy nominated executive producer and one of the top storytellers in unscripted entertainment. He’s well known for having co-created cable TV’s longest-running hit show, Pawn Stars.
He’s managed large teams and a variety of C-suite partners and famous personalities, developing, producing and distributing thousands of hours of content for television, brands and fortune 500 companies.
Currently, he's working with lifestyle experts and celebrities like Abbott Elementary’s Lisa Ann Walter and Oscar Winner from CODA Troy Kotsur on formats for streaming, cable and broadcast.
Mike Rowe (PRODUCER, narrator)

Mike Rowe is an Emmy award-winning TV host, producer, narrator, podcaster, spokesman, bestselling author, recording artist, and America’s leading advocate for the skilled trades. As the CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, he’s awarded nearly seven million dollars in work-ethic scholarships and led a national effort to reintroduce shop class into high schools.
Best known as the creator and host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, Mike has traveled to every state multiple times and worked alongside hundreds of Americans in more than 350 different vocations. Dirty Jobs has not only aired every week for the last 20 years, but it has served as an incubator for dozens of similar programs and launched a new genre of work-related television.
Mike has hosted and produced Somebody’s Gotta Do It for CNN, Six Degrees for Discovery, The Story Behind the Story for TBN, and Returning the Favor for Facebook. He’s narrated dozens of series and documentaries, including How the Universe Works, Bearing Sea Gold, Planet Earth, and Deadliest Catch.
JOSH FRANER (DIRECTOR, PRODUCER)

Josh Franer is an American film director and producer known for pairing beautiful, effortless visuals with hopeful, true stories. His work brings a fresh eye to filmmaking and emphasizes his subjects’ emotional depth.
For Josh, collaboration is a vital part of the creative process, one that fosters innovative thought and contributes to a quality end product. Josh has collaborated with brands like Chevy, Ford, Rolls Royce, Disney, Samsung and Visit California amongst others, and his work has been featured in Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal.
His recent feature documentary "SUPERSPREADER" sparked national conversation in theaters and is now streaming.
Maurice Possley (JOURNALIST)

Maurice Possley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is also a Research Fellow at Santa Clara University. He is the author of non-fiction books including "Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder, and the Price of Truth" and "The Brown’s Chicken Massacre".
JOHN D WOODBRIDGE (AUTHOR)

John Woodbridge has taught history at Northwestern University, the Sorbonne, and many other institutions, and his specialties include church history and the French enlightenment. He has edited & authored scores of publications including "The History of Biblical Authority" as well as having served as the Senior Editor at "Christianity Today".