Thomas received many awards for his work. He said that one of his best was the Oscar won by a documentary he narrated, "One Survivor Remembers". That documentary, produced by HBO, talks about the personal experience of Gerda Weissman Klein, who was imprisoned at the Nordhausen Concentration Camp when she was a teenager. Thomas' unit helped free the prisoners at Nordhausen. Klein and Thomas met during the making of the documentary, and again at its premiere. Thomas also participated in an HBO movie on the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, in which he fought with the 1st Infantry Division (United States). Thomas was also the narrator for a show that ran on The Discovery Channel in 1993 that was called "How the West was Lost". Thomas was the narrator for the two-hour "Nova" episode entitled "D-Day's Sunken Secrets", broadcast May 28, 2014, just before the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings; he participated in the original D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.