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Works Set In World War II / Films Set in World War II
aka: Film

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Films about or set during World War II.

For the other works, see Works Set in World War II.

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Documentaries

    Wartime Documentary Films 

    Post-War Documentary Films 

Fiction:

A number of the works below cover multiple categories and are grouped according to their main setting.

In an era where the only major forms of mass entertainment were radio, theatre and cinema (British television went off for the duration), it is not surprising that a very large number of movies were made during the war itself. Most of them were propaganda of some form or another, but some of these films (including some flag-wavers) have stood the test of time, such as Casablanca, In Which We Serve and Went the Day Well?

    The Early War in Europe (1939-1940) 

The early part of the war, from the invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the fall of France in summer 1940. It ended with the victory of Nazi Germany and the latter's occupation of most of continental Western Europe and the Western half of Poland, and the occupation of the Eastern half of Poland and annexation of the Baltic states by Josef Stalin's Soviet Union.

Poland:
  • The Heroes of Westerplatte (2013), about the fierce, one-week long defense of a military depot by its Polish garrison against invading Germans on the peninsula of Westerplatte in September 1939.
  • Katyń (2007), a Polish film about the Katyń massacre in April-May 1940, a series of mass murders that claimed the lives of about 22000 Polish men, mostly intelligentsia and military officers. It was carried out by the NKVD when the Eastern half of Poland was under Soviet occupation.

Scandinavia:

  • April 9th (2015) follows a group of Danish bicycle infantry sent to slow down the German advance into Denmark until reinforcements can arrive.
  • The King's Choice (2016), focusing on the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 and the choices King Haakon VII has to make over whether to fight the Germans or surrender.

France and the Low Countries:

  • The 7th Company (1973-1977), a film trilogy about the comedic antics of three French soldiers getting lost somewhere on the front in May 1940 during the Battle of France. The third film has the heroes sort of involved in La Résistance.
  • Appeal of 18 June (2010), a TV film about the famous 18 June 1940 speech by Charles de Gaulle, who founded the Free French Forces and the Free French Government in Exile in London.
  • Bon Voyage (2003), about the exodus of the French populations fleeing the German advance on the roads and the French government relocating itself in the city of Bordeaux.
  • Films featuring "Operation Dynamo", the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and French troops surrounded by Germans in the city of Dunkirk during the Battle of France in late May 1940:
    • Dunkirk (1958) is about the siege and evacuation from the British point of view.
    • Weekend at Dunkirk (Week-end à Zuydcoote, 1964) is about the siege and evacuation from the French point of view.
    • Atonement (2007) has a section covering the evacuation on the beaches. It's mostly known for a stunning five-minute single tracking shot along the whole beach.
    • Dunkirk (2017) also about the siege and evacuation, from three British points of view.
  • De Gaulle (2020), in which Charles De Gaulle desperately tries to stiffen the spines of the French government and high command, then escapes to England to deliver his "Appeal of 18 June" speech starting the Free France Government in Exile.
  • The Pied Piper (1942), about an elderly Englishman and a group of children, trying to make their way through the Germans and find a boat to escape back to England, during and immediately after the fall of France in June 1940.
  • Forbidden Games (1952), about a Parisian girl who bonds with a boy whose farm family takes her in after her parents are killed in in an air raid while fleeing the city.

Others:

  • The Lion Has Wings (1939) is a British propaganda film rushed into production and released in December 1939, a mixture of newsreel about the war effort and scripted drama about early RAF combat against the Luftwaffe, including a British raid on the Kiel Canal in September 1939.

    The Finnish Front (1939-1944) 

The war between Finland and USSR, more specifically the Winter War of 1939-40 and the Continuation War of 1941-44 (which is included in the Eastern Front as Finland was co-belligerent with Germany) as well as the Lapland War of 1944-45 (when Finland switched sides to the Allies and drove the German troops out of Lapland where they were stationed). Has been depicted several times on film, but these films are little known outside Finland.

Winter War:

  • Talvisota (The Winter War), a Finnish 1984 novel by Antti Tuuri and the 1989 movie based on it.

Continuation War:

  • Kukushka (The Cuckoo), a Russian film.
  • Tuntematon Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier), based on a novel of the same name written by war veteran Väinö Linna. Three versions exist, made in years 1955, 1985, and 2017.

Lapland War:

  • Sisu, an action film about an old Finnish gold miner and former commando who has to protect his treasure from a retreating German platoon.

    The Eastern Front (1941-1945) 

The biggest and bloodiest theatre of the war (the number of deaths there alone- over 25 million- would make the Eastern Front the worst war in history in its own right), and the one that defined "total war" in every aspect, opposing Nazi Germany and its allies to USSR from the German invasion of the latter during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 to Germany's final defeat in May 1945. Has been covered in film quite a bit in the German, Soviet and Russian film industry for obvious reasons, but most of the Soviet and Russian examples aren't that well known outside of Russia and Eastern Europe. In most of the former USSR the focus is not on World War II in general, but on that front, named "The Great Patriotic War" there. A few US-made 1943-45 propaganda movies made about the Eastern Front glossed over many of the Soviet Union's more questionable activities, which would come back to haunt their creators and actors just a few years later during the late-40s to early-50s Red Scare.

In German works, it is common to see soldiers threatened with being sent to the Eastern Front - a posting there was nothing but trouble, and became a near-certain-death-sentence from 1943 onwards, hence the consistently bleak tone of them.

Somewhat under-represented in (non-German) Western and Anglophone media, for the likely reason that the protagonists weren't Western Allies, save for a few cases involving volunteers such as the French Normandie-Niemen Fighter Regiment and the Lend-Lease shipments to USSR.

The New Russia has produced a noticeably large amount of World War II films since the mid-2000s, which more often than not put heavy emphasis on spectacle and the bravery of the Red Army.

German/Axis Point of View:

  • 1944 (2015 Estonian film): A rare example that attempts to cover and treat both sides of the war equally. It follows two Estonian platoons: one fighting in the Waffen-SS, another in the Red Army.
  • 08/15 (1954-1955 West German film series): Covers the life of German conscripts during the war, mostly on the Eastern front. Based on the books by Hans Hellmut Kirst.
  • Cross of Iron (1977 British-German film): The conflict between German front-line and rear area soldiers after the defeat of Stalingrad. Relatively rare example of an English-language movie set here.
  • Downfall (2004 German film): Adolf Hitler's final moments and the downfall of Nazi Germany during the battle of Berlin.
  • About the battle of Stalingrad:

Soviet Point of View:

    German Occupation of Europe (1939-1945) 

Life and historical events in the countries of Europe that were occupied by the military forces of Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. Often involves The Gestapo and Les Collaborateurs versus La Résistance. In many cases, it also overlaps with the Holocaust.

  • A sizeable number of films are based on Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of the Nazi posterboy, SS-Obergruppenführer and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia Reinhard Heydrich, in German-occupied Prague in May 1942:
    • Hangmen Also Die! (1943 American film): The first film on the subject, filmed only a couple of months after the events, and very loosely based on them.
    • Hitler's Madman (1943 American film): A slightly more faithful version compared to Hangmen Also Die!.
    • Atentát (1964 Czech film)
    • Operation Daybreak (1975 Czech-American film)
    • Lidice (2011 Czech film): About the attack and its horrific aftermath, namely the massacre and destruction of the village of Lidice as reprisals.
    • Anthropoid (2016 British film): Focuses entirely on the operation from the point of view of the Czechoslovak resistance protagonists who carried out the attack.
    • The Man with the Iron Heart (2017 French film): Based on a novel. It focuses both on Heydrich and his life and on the Czechoslovak resistance protagonists who carried out the attack.
  • Appointment with Venus: British Major Valentine Moreland is tasked with rescuing a prized pedigree cow from the German-occupied Channel Island of Armorel.
  • Beyond the Border tells the story of a group of Swedish soldiers trying to save the younger brother of one of them who accidentally crossed the border into Norway and got captured by the Nazis.
  • Black Book: The Occupation and resistance in the Netherlands. Often seen as a polar opposite to Soliders of Orange due to its focus on betrayal within the Resistance and collaboration with the Germans, by the same director.
  • Charlotte (2021): A biopic about Charlotte Salomon, who lived in Vichy France until her death in a concentration camp.
  • Closely Watched Trains: Coming of Age Story about a young man working at a train station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during the war.
  • Counterpoint: The Nazis capture an American orchestra and force them to perform.
  • A Curious Conjunction of Coincidences: Part of the film takes place during WWII, and involves a German soldier having a very bad day who accidentally drops a bomb on Amsterdam.
  • Divided We Fall: A Czech couple hide a young Jewish man in the storeroom of their apartment.
  • Edge of Darkness: The people of a Norwegian fishing village rise up against the German occupiers.
  • The Exception: A German agent investigates the household of exiled former Kaiser Wilhelm II in The Netherlands.
  • Fannys Journey: A band of Jewish war oprhans try to flee to Switzerland while being pursued by the French police and the Nazi. Based on Fanny Ben Ami's biography.
  • Five Branded Women: Yugoslavia
  • Flammen og Citronen (Danish film): Tells the story of two Danish resistance movement fighters, nicknamed Flammen and Citron, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
  • Forbidden Games: Rural France under German occupation.
  • General Della Rovere: The Germans send a con artist into a prison in German-occupied 1944 Genoa, impersonating a leader of La Résistance, in order to gain valuable intelligence.
  • Gramps Is in the Resistance: A comedy about a family of French musicians who support the Resistance and must deal with German soldiers occupying their mansion and some collaborators.
  • La Grande Vadrouille: French comedy in which a British Lancaster bomber plane gets shot over German-occupied Paris. Its crew and the two Frenchmen who find themselves forced to help them do everything they can to reach the Free Zone to escape.
  • Head in the Clouds: The last third takes place in occupied Paris
  • Lacombe, Lucien: A sullen teen in occupied France becomes a collaborator.
  • The Last Metro: A woman in Paris during the occupation struggles to hide her husband, who is Jewish.
  • Léon Morin, Priest: In France, a widow and a priest strike up a friendship that might turn platonic relationship amidst the German occupation.
  • Miracle at Midnight: About the German occupation of Denmark and their failure to capture most of its Jewish population due to the efforts of the local populace.
  • Les Misérables (1995): A story of deportation and resistance in France with plot points and character types that were borrowed to Les Misérables.
  • The Moon is Down: The occupation of Norway (as seen by Hollywood in 1943, the film served as propaganda, naturally).
  • The Night of the Generals: A murder mystery set in occupied Poland and later France.
  • None Shall Escape, a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the (then-ongoing) second world war, told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial. The first flashback takes place the newly-formed Polish state in 1919 right after the end of WWI, the next one takes place in the Weimar Republic in 1923 right before and after the Beer Hall Putsch before skipping ahead to 1929 and then to Nazi Germany in 1934 after the Night of the Long Knives, and the third and last one takes place in Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII.
  • One of Our Aircraft Is Missing: In which a British bomber crew are forced to bail out over the occupied Netherlands, and attempt to escape with the assistance of the Dutch.
  • The Others (2001), a ghost movie set on the Channel Island of Jersey during the German occupation.
  • The Passage: An elderly shepherd (Anthony Quinn) attempts to help a scientist and his family escape across the mountains into Spain while pursued by evil Malcolm McDowell.
  • Les Passeurs: Two rival mountain men living in Vichy France/occupied France smuggle either people or goods to neutral Switzerland.
  • Pope John Paul II
  • The Resistance Banker
  • Riphagen: An (in)famous gangster from Amsterdam who turned collaborator.
  • The Scarlet and the Black: Italy
  • Le Silence de la mer (2004): A young Frenchwoman and her grandfather are forced to house a German officer. They vow to never speak to him for as long as he's in their house, which is complicated by the fact that he is francophile, gentlemanly and not really into Nazi ideals.
  • Simon and the Oaks: Sweden
  • Strange Gardens: Two French villagers decide to blow up a railway station to make themselves a name in La Résistance. It backfires and Germans take hostages, including them. One of the Germans, who was a clown before the war, takes pity on the hostages and starts entertaining them.
  • Suite Française: Adaptation of the eponymous book. A romance between a French woman and a German soldier.
  • This Land Is Mine: France
  • To Be or Not to Be: A comedy about a Warsaw theater troupe of actors who use their acting skills to escape occupied Poland.
  • The Trip Across Paris: Two men involved in the Black Market in Paris in 1943.
  • Uncertain Glory: 100 Frenchmen are taken hostage and face execution after a bridge is blown up. A criminal facing a death sentence for ordinary crimes gets the idea to take the blame for himself and spare the hostages.
  • Under the Roman Sky is about the occupation of Rome by the Germans, the deportation of the Eternal City's Jews and Pope Pius XII's actions at the time.
  • Le Vieux Fusil
  • Volhynia, the first film about the Volhynian Slaughter, which the Germans (who had no hand in it) had let happen.
  • Zelary: A Czech woman has to assume a fake identity, marry a total stranger, and hide out in a rural village, all after the Resistance cell she belongs to is busted by the Gestapo.

    North Africa (1940-1943) 

Initially, just between the Commonwealth (and Free French), Italy, and other independent nations. Later, the Germans (famously led by Erwin Rommel) and the Americans also took part. An area of desert warfare where supplies are scarce, it also saw the creation of the SAS and the work of the Long Range Desert Group. Famous for the presence of two very quirky but effective Allied generals, George S. Patton and Bernard "Monty" Montgomery.

  • The Big Red One - the first part of the film is set during the Battle of North Africa.
  • The Desert Fox - starring James Mason as Rommel
  • The Desert Rats - Another telling of the siege of Tobruk, starring Richard Burton. Also stars Mason as Rommel.
  • El Alamein: The Line of Fire - the Italian point of view of the Battle of El Alamein.
  • Five Graves to Cairo, set in Egypt during Rommel's drive to El Alamein
  • Ice Cold in Alex
  • Patton - the first half of the film takes place here.
  • Play Dirty - A group of convicted criminals go on a mission behind the battle lines to destroy an Afrika Korps fuel depot.
  • The Rats Of Tobruk - focuses on ANZACs holed up in the besieged Libyan coastal town of Tobruk
  • Sahara - an impromptu multi-national force of stragglers gathers around a lost American tank to defend a strategic oasis.
  • Un Taxi Pour Tobrouk - after the siege of Tobruk, a Free French LRDG squad journeys through enemy lines to reach Allied territory with a German prisoner.
  • Tobruk - a fictionalized story of members of the British Army's Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the Special Identification Group (SIG) who endeavour to destroy the fuel bunkers of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's Panzer Army Africa in Tobruk.

    Southeastern Europe (1941-1945) 

The operations in Greece, Yugoslavia (which were both invaded and occupied by Germany), and the Eastern Mediterranean Theatre. The Yugoslav film industry celebrated the achievements of the Partisans, naturally. There is some overlap with the Resistance/Special Forces category (see below).

    The Italian Front (1943-1945) 

The invasion of Italy by the Allies, starting in 1943 after their victory over the Axis forces in North Africa. Winston Churchill thought the country was the "Soft underbelly of the crocodile" for the Axis, given the pitiful state of the Italian forces by that point. Unfortunately, German defense lines proved to be much stronger than expected, and the country suffered from both war crimes (from both sides) and a civil war between the pro-Allies and Benito Mussolini's loyalists.

  • The Devil's Brigade - about the joint American/Canadian commando unit the First Special Service Force and its mission to capture Monte la Difensa in December 1943.
  • The Four Days of Naples - the people of Naples rise up in a spontaneous revolt against their German occupiers, in the days after the Italian surrender in September 1943.
  • Fortress tells a fictional (but inspired by real events) story of Lucky Lass, a B-17 Flying Fortress as it flies in the campaign against Italy.
  • The Green Devils of Monte Cassino - Follows German parachutists during the battle of Monte Cassino, in 1944.
  • Hornets' Nest - set in and around the fictional Italian town of Reanoto.
  • Miracle at St. Anna, a Spike Lee joint.
  • Operation Mincemeat - About the titular disinformation scheme which allowed the Allied to capture Sicily with minimal resistance
  • Paisan - six-episode anthology starting with the invasion of Sicily and going to the Po Valley fighting in December 1944.
  • Road47 takes place entirely in the winter of 1944 in Italy.
  • Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Torture porn at its most depraved, set in the city of the last fascist government. The fascist setting is really just an excuse for... icky stuff.
  • Two Women (La Ciociara). The story of an Italian woman trying to protect her young daughter from the horrors of war.
  • Von Ryan's Express - About a group of POWs in an Italian escaping from an Italian camp by hijacking a train to Switzerland.
  • A Walk in the Sun - From The Golden Age of Hollywood, comes a war drama set in Italy and made just as the war ended.
  • Parts of the 1982 film adaptation of The Wall, by Pink Floyd (carrying over from the album itself). Roger Waters' father died in combat in Anzio, the song "When the Tigers Broke Free" (later included on The Final Cut since 2004) is dedicated to him.
  • What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? - A comedy that follows an outfit of U.S. soldiers assigned to capture a small village in Sicily.

    The Western Front (1944-1945) 

The fighting in Western Europe, from the "D-Day" Normandy landings in June 1944note  to the invasion of Western and Southern Germany and its final surrender in spring 1945. Americans had a large role, and the British, Canadians and Free French (as well as a few others) were involved, but they tend to be left out of US films.

D-Day Landings and Battle of Normandy:
  • The Americanization of Emily: A satire/black comedy about the high life as lived by high-ranking Navy brass in the month right before D-Day. Ends with the hero, a self-described coward, stumbling about Omaha Beach as one of the first people to land.
  • The Great Escaper - The true story of Bernard Jordan, a British veteran who escaped his care home to attend the 70th anniversary commemorations of D-Day in 2014 to honor his fallen comrades. There are flashbacks to the events of 1944.
  • The Longest Day - covers both the events leading up to and on the 6th of June, 1944, the longest day for both the Allied invaders and the Axis defenders.
  • Overlord - follows a single British soldier, from the moment he's called up into the army at the age of 20, through his basic training, and up to June 6, 1944 when his platoon is part of the first wave of soldiers landing on Sword Beach.
  • Rommel - covers the last months of Erwin Rommel as he commands the defence of occupied France (the Atlantic Wall).
  • Saving Private Ryan focuses on a squad of Rangers as they make their way through the semi-organised chaos of Operation Overlord in search of the titular Private Ryan.
  • Storming Juno - A docudrama retelling the Canadian assault of Juno Beach on D-Day

Liberation of Paris:

  • Diplomacy - in August 1944, a Swedish diplomat tries to persuade a German general not to destroy Paris.
  • Is Paris Burning? - The liberation of Paris in August 1944, focusing on the German commander resisting his orders to destroy the city while the 1st Free French Armored Division spearheads a desperate Allied drive to save their capital and the French resistance launches an insurgency.

Lorraine and Alsace Campaigns:

  • Kelly's Heroes focuses on a hodgepodge unit put together by the title character for an attempt to steal Nazi Gold during the Lorraine campaign.
  • Snow and Fire - Two childhood friends fight in the French Army of the Liberation in the harsh winter battles in Lorraine and Alsace in late 1944 / early 1945.

Netherlands Campaign:

  • A Bridge Too Far looks at the failed Allied offensive in the Netherlands, Operation Market Garden.
  • The Forgotten Battle - A Dutch film about the Battle of the Scheldt, when the Allies had to attack strong German defensive positions to gain control of the approaches to the port of Amsterdam.
  • The Last Drop - focuses on a commando raid into the Netherlands to recover Nazi Gold in the backdrop of Operation Market Garden.

Belgium and Ardennes/Bulge Campaign:

Invasion of Western Germany:

  • Brass Target - In 1945, General Patton sends Germany's confiscated gold reserves to Frankfurt, but the Army train is robbed by plotters who also hire a Swiss hitman to kill the General.
  • The Bridge - A German film about seven teenaged soldiers defending a bridge against the Americans in the last days of the war
  • The Bridge at Remagen - A fictionalized version of the capture of the last standing bridge over the Rhine River in March 1945.
  • The Captain - The true story of war criminal Willi Herold.
  • Fury - follows the crew of the namesake M4A3 Sherman tank during the advance of the US forces into Germany in early 1945.
  • Hell Is for Heroes - a squad on the Siegfried Line bluffs a German pillbox into thinking they are a much larger force.
  • The Monuments Men - Based on a True Story film about a unit of art experts in the army tasked with protecting and rescuing plundered art from the Nazis.
  • When Trumpets Fade, set in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest.

Others:

  • The Big Red One - the second half of the film follows the US First Infantry Division during their campaign through Western Europe.
  • The Bunker - horror film about a group of retreating German soldiers taking refuge in an abandoned bunker and find themselves haunted by dark figures as they try to retain order.
  • Days of Glory focuses on North Africans fighting for the Free French, first in Italy, then for the bulk of the film on the Western Front in France.
  • Decision Before Dawn - American intellligence unit recruits German prisoners to turn spy and filter back into German lines to gather intelligence.
  • Patton - follows General Patton.
  • The Victors follows one U.S. squadron through Britain, France, Italy, and Germany.

    East Asia and the Pacific Front (1941-1945) 

Most of the works here focus on the American and Japanese part in The Far East, although Commonwealth forces also played a major role (primarily the ANZAC forces, for obvious reasons). Films about the Australian and New Zealand war efforts started appearing with the rise of those country's film industries, the relative lack of British films on the subject is probably due to the European theater being much important in the minds of most people at the time (celebrities like Vera Lynn felt British troops in Asia were neglected in the public opinion and visited them, Burma in her case).

Only recently have films dealing with the Second Sino-Japanese War started to appear, unsurprisingly given the delicate politics of the matter.

Think partisan warfare, big naval battles (most famously Midway and Guadalcanal), Jungle Warfare, beach landings, starving civilians, and the inconsistent (mis)treatment of non-combatants.

American Point of View:
  • Away All Boats: Jeff Chandler (not John Wayne) as a John Wayne/Vince Lombardi-type of Navy Captain, this time about one of the amphibious assault ships that the U.S. Navy invented out of whole cloth in order to prosecute the Pacific War.
  • Bataan
  • Battle Cry: Covers the Battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan.
  • The Battle of Midway: John Ford's famous documentary short (18 minutes) about the battle, including live combat footage taken by Ford and an assistant cameraman on Midway atoll on June 4, 1942.
  • Crusade In The Pacific: America Goes to War, an early (1951) 24 episode documentary serial that is surprisingly Fair for Its Day with relatively little of the racism, jingoism and triumphalism that mar other works of the period and not, despite the title, focused entirely on the US war effort. Covers both the prewar era and the postwar occupation, but does not cover the fire raids or the Soviet Union's last-minute contribution, perhaps because the Korean War was going on at the time. Useful if you're looking for coverage of some of the less ballyhooed aspects of the Pacific war, like the ANZAC campaign to liberate Indonesia. It even contains surprisingly sympathetic views of the causes and rise of Japanese militarism and Indonesia's postwar anti-colonialism.
  • Cry 'Havoc': Army nurses on Bataan during the doomed defense of the peninsula in 1942.
  • Destination Tokyo: An American sub goes on a reconnaissance mission in Japanese home waters.
  • Empire of the Sun: The life of a boy living in the British concession in Shanghai, and then a POW camp.
  • Father Goose: 1960s romcom involving the adventures of Cary Grant as an unwilling coast watcher.
  • The Fighting Lady: A documentary filmed in color, and made During the War, featuring life aboard an Essex-class class carrier, the USS Yorktown (CV-10).
  • The Fighting Seabees: Another John Wayne propaganda film about some of the unsung heroes of World War II, the US Navy Construction Battalions ("CB" - get it?) who managed to build airfields, bases and port facilities across the Pacific much faster than anyone believed possible prior to the war.
  • The Five People You Meet in Heaven: Only partially takes place during WW2. The protagonist Eddie fights in the Philippines.
  • Flags of Our Fathers: The lives of the flag-raisers in the famous photo of raising the flag upon Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Received a P.O.V. Sequel, Letters from Iwo Jima.
  • Francis: Second Lieutenant Peter Sterling (Donald O'Connor) is caught behind Japanese lines in Burma during World War II. Francis, a talking Army mule (voiced by Chill Wills), carries him to safety. When Sterling insists that the animal rescued him, he is placed in a psychiatric ward. Each time Sterling is released, he accomplishes something noteworthy (at the instigation of Francis), and each time he is sent back to the psych ward when he insists on crediting the talking mule.
  • The Great Raid: about the raid at the Japanese POW camp near the Philippine city of Cabanatuan.
  • Guadalcanal Diary - made during the war, based on a 1943 memoir.
  • Hacksaw Ridge, the true story of conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss, who saved saving the lives of over 75 of his comrades during the Battle of Okinawa.
  • The Hasty Heart, a group of allied soldiers in hospital at the end of the war befriend a dying man so that he can spend his last days with friends.
  • Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, about a U.S. Marine and an Irish nun who find themselves stranded on a Japanese-occupied island.
  • Hell in the Pacific: Two servicemen — one American, one Japanese — form an unexpected bond while stranded on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.
  • In Harm's Way: Following the exploits of a group of American naval officers in Hawaii during the early part of the war. The last John Wayne film produced in black and white.
  • In Love and War (1958): Follows the war's effects on three U.S. Marines in the Pacific and their families back home.
  • Midway (1976): About the turning point of the Pacific war, notable for lacking a special effects budget and using mostly Stock Footage, though still surprisingly good.
  • Midway (2019): A more modern retelling of the battle by Roland Emmerich.
  • Mister Roberts: About one of the most essential but also most monotonous and least glamorous parts of the war, the men who served on the cargo ships far behind the fighting.
  • The Mission of the Shark, a TV movie, - tells the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which after having delivered the atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, it was sunk by a Japanese submarine, and because of the top secret nature of its mission, the survivors were left floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to be devowered by sharks until only a handful were left alive when rescue finally arrived.
  • Never So Few: An American OSS officer and a handful of American men lead a squad of Kachin natives, behind enemy lines in Burma, fighting the Japanese.
  • Objective, Burma! - controversial at the time as Australian Errol Flynn leads a group of US army soldiers on a raid in Burma, leading to some of the first British complaints about America Won World War II as Burma was a wholly British Commonwealth theater.
  • Operation Petticoat - 1958 comedy starring Cary Grant as a submarine captain trying to escape the Philippines at the beginning of the war with a broke-down sub loaded with Army nurses and Filipino civilians—and the sub is painted bright pink. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Pearl Harbor - A love triangle drama in addition to the battle as well as the Doolittle Raid, with a very brief foray into the the Battle of Britain. Notable for its many inaccuracies.
  • PT109 - about the wartime exploits of future US President John F Kennedy.
  • Report from the Aleutians: John Huston's propaganda documentary about a forgotten part of the Pacific war, namely, the Aleutian Islands campaign.
  • Run Silent, Run Deep: Submarine warfare off the Japanese home islands.
  • Sands of Iwo Jima - John Wayne propaganda film
  • So Proudly We Hail!: Much like Cry 'Havoc' above, this film is about Red Cross nurses in the Philippines.
  • South Pacific- Set mid-war, after the southern islands had become a backwater.
  • Submarine Command
  • They Were Expendable - John Ford directs John Wayne and Robert Montgomery in this movie about PT Boats of the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines in 1941-42. It doesn’t end well, though it at least gets a Bittersweet Ending for the leads.
  • The Thin Red Line - about a squad of US Army soldiers during the Guadalcanal campaign, although the title is an allegorical reference to a small Scottish force in the Crimean War.
  • Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo - the story of the Doolittle Raid.
  • Tora! Tora! Tora! - An acclaimed joint US/Japanese production that depicts the Pearl Harbor attack from both sides.
  • USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage: Revolves around the infamous sinking of Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) by Japanese Submarine I-58, and the 5-day ordeal of her surviving crew members in shark-infested waters.
  • The Wackiest Ship In The Army: Two men man the USS Echo (a sailboat) alongside a fairly (at first) incompetent crew as they sail to Japan in hopes of studying enemy tactics.
  • Wake Island is about that island and the 400 doomed Marines defending it from the Japanese in December 1941.
  • Windtalkers - focuses on a group of Amerindians trained as signalmen because their language is entirely unknown outside the U.S.
  • The Wolverine: The movie starts with a flashback when Nagasaki was about to be bombed.

Australian Point of View

  • Attack Force Z - A fictionalised depiction of the exploits of the Z Special Unit.
  • Australia - Features a fictionalised version of the Japanese bombing of Darwin in February 1942.
  • Kokoda - Australian soldiers in New Guinea.

British Point of View:

Chinese Point of View:

  • City of Life and Death - Aka 'Nanjing, Nanjing', focuses on the aftermath of the Battle of Shanghai and the pacification of the lower Yangtze.
  • Flowers of War - About the Rape of Nanking, as witnessed by an American.
  • Fort Graveyard - A rare example of a film focusing on Japan vs. Manchurian China.
  • Gun Brothers - One of the earlier Shaw examples.
  • Heroes of the Underground - Shaw Brothers biopic about Ding Yi-shan, legendary Icon of Rebellion during the Sino-Japanese war.
  • Lady from Chungking - Anna May Wong plays a Chinese woman, leading a secret resistance cell behind Japanese lines. Her La Résistance group hides a downed American fighter pilot, and Wong's character flirts with a Japanese general in order to get intel about a Japanese offensive.
  • The Last Emperor - not purely a World War II movie, it focuses on Puyi, the eponymous "last emperor" of China and only emperor of Manchukuo, a puppet state the Japanese established in Manchuria from 1931 to 1945.
  • Lust, Caution - focuses on the Japanese occupation of China and local Chinese resistance.
  • The Naval Commandos - set in the Sino-Japanese war, a group of Chinese hooligans volunteers to infiltrate and destroy an otherwise impenetrable Japanese aircraft carrier.
  • Purple Sunset - an anti-war film released in 2001 that details about a Chinese farmer, a Soviet soldier, and Japanese schoolgirl together lost in the Manchurian forest during the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria.
  • 7 Man Army - The unofficial Shaw Brothers remake of Cross of Iron, on steroids. A platoon of seven Chinese soldiers defends their fort from an invading army of 20,000 Japanese soldiers and holds the invaders off for an entire week, before they're finally defeated. The movie ends with the Japanese forces retreating out of respect.
  • Sons of the Good Earth - a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers in 1937 China gets caught in the Japanese invasion. One of the higher-budgeted films made by Shaw Brothers during the mid-60s, with a lengthy Big Badass Battle Sequence (some 15 minutes long!) capping the end.
  • The Eight Hundred - During the Battle of Shangai, Eight Hundred Chinese soldiers valiantly defend a Warehouse near the Shanghai International Settlement, in face of overwhelming Japanese numerical superiority.
  • The Sino Japanese War At Sea 1894, a war biopic based on the life of Manchurian Admiral Deng Shi-chang and his war against the Japanese navy.

French Point of View:

Japanese Point of View:

  • Battle of Okinawa: A Japanese film about the battle itself from Japanese POV.
  • The Emperor in August: A 2015 film about the Japanese government in the last chaotic days of the war, August 1945, as Hirohito resolves on surrender and junior officers respond by mounting a coup
  • Fires on the Plain: Disorganized remnants of the IJA undergo terrible suffering on Leyte in the Philippines, February 1945.
  • The Human Condition - A socialist-leaning Japanese contractor in Manchuria starts to realize his country may be the bad guys...it got worse. Also includes the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, a subject rarely dramatized.
  • Letters from Iwo Jima - P.O.V. Sequel to Flags of Our Fathers showing the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective.
  • Momotaro's Sea Eagles (1943): A fictionalized 37-minute short film where the classic Peach Boy and his animal companions bomb the Oni Island (Pearl Harbor).
  • Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors (1945): A full length (74 minutes) sequel to Sea Eagles where the Peach Boy and his companions build a sea base and paradrop onto Oni island (which is either Singapore or Hong Kong).
  • Yamato: The last two combat missions of the IJN Yamato: the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the doomed Operation Ten-Go.
  • Zero: a film focusing on the development, testing and ultimate failure of the Zero fighter plane in aerial combat.

Filipino Point of View:

  • A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino: Originally a theatre production but released in two film versions: a 1965 Deliberately Monochrome English version and the 2017 full-colour Tagalog Ang Larawan, both concerning an Impoverished Patrician family and their heirloom house and art, in Intramuros, the Philippine colonial capital, getting ready for war by scheduling rolling blackouts among other things.
  • Oro Plata Mata: Depicts oligarchic families from Negros, in the Visayas region in the central Philippines, whose lives and wealth are disrupted by the Japanese invasion.
  • Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure: 2001 Philippine film depicting the Japanese occupation of the country in flashbacks and the film centers around the eponymous urban legend.

Korean Point of View:

  • The Battleship Island: A group of 400 Koreans, Forced to work on the Mines of Hashima Island, attempt a daring escape from their Japanese captors.

    The Air War (1940-1945) 

In which the two sides of the war try to bomb each other into submission. A fair chunk of these are British and a number are based on true stories.

The Blitz, which followed the Battle of Britain, was a German attempt to bomb the UK into surrendering, which didn't really work. The Battle of Britain had been a close run thing, as the British had spent much of the 1930s not investing in their fighter force as they had believed "the bomber will always get through". It took Winston Churchill to persuade them otherwise- the Spitfire and the Hurricane arriving just in time. The Blitz was at its peak during 1940-1941 and 1944-1945, the latter mostly using V1 and V2 missiles. There were still attacks on the United Kingdom in-between, but Germany's resources were focused on the Eastern Front at the time.

While the actions of the Allied bombing missions in Germany have been subject to quite a bit of historical debate (although there were legitimate industrial targets in German cities, the bombing of German civilians did not have the planned effect of destroying German industry or morale- it simply made them more resolved, much like what had happened during the Blitz), it should be noted that these bombing raids were very dangerous for British airmen. They flew at night, unlike the USAAF (US Army Air Force) who did the day missions. Of every 100 airmen, 55 on average would end up dead. The issue of not awarding separate medals for the British Bomber Command crews (who got the Air Crew Europe star that everyone else who flew over Europe did) is raised from time to time.

This is not to say that the USAAF had it any better. Flying by day meant they had a monstrously high casualty rate, particularly before P-51s were available for long range escort. There was a policy of "25 and out". Once an airman had done 25 missions, his war was over. The ball turret gunner, despite not having a parachute close to hand and being exposed to ground fire, wasn't actually that dangerous, relatively speaking. Just unpleasant, as they ended up doing somersaults in a tiny, cold, plexiglass and metal ball looking at a really long drop. The 25 got upped to 30 and then 35. The average crew got shot down around the 20th mission.

The Air War in the Pacific has received comparatively less attention, even though the scope and nature of the Pacific theater meant that air power played an even larger role there than it did in Europe. The strategic bombing campaign against Japan in particular has not received much attention, perhaps because it's difficult to portray massive fire raids against civilians in a heroic light. Even those who participated rarely considered it to be anything more than a necessary evil.

  • 633 Squadron: Airstrike Impossible against a heavily defended German rocket fuel factory.
  • Alice by Heart: The framing scenes are set during the 1941 London Blitz.
  • Battle of Britain: The RAF during the desperate days at the height of The Blitz.
  • The Big One
  • Captains of the Clouds: Canadian bush pilots attempt to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as fighter pilots after hearing Churchill's call to arms. Notable for being the first major Hollywood production filmed entirely in Canada.
  • Carry On England: Awful British Sex Comedy set in a mixed-gender anti-aircraft battery regiment.
  • Catch-22: A very dark Black Comedy set in the Mediterranean campaign.
  • The Dam Busters: Based on a true story about an elite air unit attempting a dangerous bombing mission on a major German dam.
  • Desperate Journey: Well, sort of about the air war. The story involves an RAF bomber grew that gets shot down over Germany and then goes on a, yes, desperate journey across Germany.
  • The German
  • A Guy Named Joe: Deals with both the European and Pacific air wars.
  • Into The White: A German and a British plane are shot down during a dog fight and the crews cooperate to survive in the Norwegian mountains.
  • London Can Take It!: 1940 documentary short showing a real German bombing raid on London, with firefighting efforts as well as a look at damage the next day.
  • Memphis Belle
  • Mosquito Squadron
  • Operation Crossbow: Follows British efforts to spy on the Nazis' rocket production and make them vulnerable to bombings as the Nazi rockets hit London again and again. A group of soldiers with mechanical skills are recruited to pose as collaborating scientists and infiltrate the rocket project in Germany.
  • Passage to Marseille: An odd example since the Framing Device that begins and ends the film involves a Free French bomber squadron based in England, but the middle part of the film involves a bunch of prisoners in French Guiana trying to escape to join the war effort.
  • Reach for the Sky: Biopic of RAF pilot Douglas Bader, a double amputee who became flying ace.
  • Red Tails: Lucasfilm finally gives the Tuskeegee Airmen the patriotic war movie they deserve a half-century after the war.
  • Shadow in the Cloud
  • The Tuskegee Airmen: An earlier and arguably less patriotic take on the same subject as Red Tails: Elite African American fighter pilots who are subjected to racism while fighting for their country.
  • Twelve O'Clock High: The US 8th Air Force's daylight bombing campaign.
  • Victory Through Air Power: Disney Wartime Cartoon (yes, Disney) that explains the vital role of airpower in modern warfare.
  • The War Lover: examines what it takes to be an Ace Pilot: is he a hero, or a psychopath?
  • The Way To The Stars surveys the entire western European air war as the protagonist progresses from New Meat RAF bomber pilot to a ground controller supporting both the British and American air forces.

Though less common, there are several movies about the Air War in the Pacific:

  • Air Force - one of the earliest examples, a 1942 film about a B-17 bomber crew travelling to the Philippines in December 1941, passing through Hawaii on the day after the Pearl Harbor attack.
  • Flying Tigers — 1942 propaganda film with John Wayne about the American mercenary air force defending China.
  • The Flying Leathernecks — John Wayne yet again!
  • God Is My Copilot - About the Flying Tigers
  • Pearl Harbor — Features the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo.
  • Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo — All about the Doolittle Raid. John Wayne somehow missed this one.

    The Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945) 

In which the German submarines (U-Boote) try to starve Britain into submission and stop equipment from getting to the Allies. The subs (on both sides) are hot, cramped and nasty. In fact, calling them submarines is slightly inaccurate, considering that most of their time was spent on the surface.

This campaign started pretty much on day one of the war, making it the longest battle in human history. A German U-boat mistook a passenger liner running without lights for an armed merchant ship... You get the idea.

Three-quarters of those who went out in the U-Boote did not return. This was a result of a combination of the Allies' refining their convoy system and its defences, as well as simply producing more ships, both cargo and fighting types, than the U-Boats could sink and thus were overwhelmed.

  • Action In The North Atlantic — a tribute to the Merchant Marine, the civilian crews who had to sail the ships that carried the supplies that sustained the allied effort in WWII. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Massey.
  • Crash Dive
  • Below — A psychological horror film set aboard an American sub on patrol in the Atlantic.
  • Das Boot— A German movie from the U-boat crews' perspective: "hunters" who are actually the hunted and not likely to survive in any case.
  • The Cruel Sea — film version of the novel by Nicholas Monserrat, about the crew of a British corvette escorting convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic.
  • The Enemy Below — An American destroyer escort and a German U-boat duel on the high seas. Inspired the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Balance of Terror".
  • Enigma
  • Greyhound — A feature film about an American captain's (Tom Hanks) first convoy command in 1942 and being targeted by German U-Boats.
  • The Incredible Mr. Limpet — A half-live action/half-animated comedy starring Don Knotts as a wimpy accountant who transforms into a talking fish with powers he uses to help the US Navy locate and destroy U-boats. Yes, really.
  • Lifeboat — An Alfred Hitchcock movie made in 1943 about the survivors of a sunken merchant ship who are trapped in the titular lifeboat with the U-Boat captain who sank them.
  • The Long Voyage Home — Merchant sailors taking military supplies to England while German U-boats prowled the Atlantic. Made prior to the American entry into the war.
  • Murphy's War A British ship is sunk by a Nazi U-boat while conducting patrols in the rivers of South America. The submariners murder most of the UK survivors at the conclusion of the battle, but one man survives to seek revenge
  • U571—an American movie that caused outrage in Britain due to showing the first captured Enigma machine to be recovered by an American submarine crew.
  • We Dive at Dawn — A British movie made in 1942, set on a British submarine.

The early years of the war in the Atlantic also saw some combat between surface ships, in particular the raids of the German battleships Admiral Graf Spee and the (in)famous Bismarck.

    Resistance Movements (1939-1945) 

The most famous is arguably the French Resistance (Trope Namer of La Résistance), but the other movements throughout Europe, most notably Greeks, Yugoslavs, Soviets and Poles, were very effective in their respective countries too. The German Resistance is also portrayed for their valiant, though eventually futile due to their small numbers and lack of support, attempt to save Germany from Hitler's rule.

  • The 12th Man: The film chronicles the true story of Jan Baalsrud, a British-trained Norwegian resistance fighter who is trapped in occupied territory after a failed sabotage mission. He struggles to make it from Norway to neutral Sweden while struggling with frostbite. He relies on the help of local patriots and Good Samaritans.
  • Army of Shadows: Dramatic film showing the work of a French Resistance unit. Directed by an actual veteran of the Resistance, Jean-Pierre Melville.
  • Black Book
  • Canaris: A drama about Wilhelm Canaris opposing the Nazis from his position as chief of the Abwehr and executed for hispart in the 20 July plot to kill Hitler.
  • Casablanca
  • Charlotte Gray
  • Come and See: Belarusian partisans fight SS Einsatzgruppen.
  • Defiance: About the Bielski Partisans, a group of Jews who hid in the Belorussian forests and fought the Nazis and local peasant collaborators
  • Escape to Athena: Greek resistance and POWs conspire against Nazis.
  • Flame & Citron: About the Danish Resistance.
  • A Generation: About a cell of young Communist guerillas in occupied Warsaw, 1942-1943.
  • Kanał: The Warsaw Uprising in which the Polish Home Army fought against the Germans in occupied Warsaw in 1944.
  • A Man Escaped: About a French Resistance officer who has to escape from a Gestapo prison before he's executed.
  • Max Manus: Norway's answer to Flame and Citron.
  • Men Without Wings: A Czech resistance group, operating out of an aircraft factory, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the Lidice massacre.
  • Operation Valkyrie: German film about a group of German officers trying to assassinate Hitler.
  • "Pimpernel" Smith
  • The Red Meadows: The Danish resistance blows up a German factory, but two of their guys get arrested.
  • Rescuers: Stories of Courage
  • Resistance: The resistant life of Marcel Mangel (later known as mime Marcel Marceau). Overlaps with Holocaust as Marcel was Jewish and witnessed deportations.
  • Rome, Open City: An Italian resistance cell in Rome during the Aug. 1943-June 1944 German occupation.
  • Soldier of Orange: Paul Verhoeven's first film about the Netherlands during WWII.
  • Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage, about several members of the German resistance (against the Nazi regime, that is).
  • The Sorrow and the Pity is an excellent documentary about both the French Resistance and the Vichy regime that they opposed.
  • To Have And Have Not
  • The Train: About a group of French resistance fighters trying to stop a train filled with art treasures from leaving the country as the Germans retreat.
  • Valkyrie: American film about a group of German officers trying to assassinate Hitler.
  • Le Vieux Fusil
  • We Leave for England follows Norwegian resistance fighters in their flight from the Gestapo.
  • Where Eagles Dare
  • Wild Wind
  • Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter)
  • Many local Yugoslav movies, some of the more famous being: The Battle of Sutjeska, The Battle of Neretva, Raid on Drvar and Walter Defends Sarajevo. All involve the Yugoslav (communist-led resistance) fighting versus various Axis forces. Most were rather akin to Italian Spaghetti Westerns recycled in the WW2-era Balkans. Movies made in the last 10-15 years of Yugoslavia sometimes had a much darker tone, focusing on topics like atrocities, betrayal and trying to survive what was effectively a civil war. A good example of this kind of movie is Occupation in 26 pictures.

    Special Forces and Spies (1939-1945) 

Films about various small forces carrying out special missions involving sabotage, spying or assassinations, most prominently coming from the Allied side. Outside of Alternate History, Ghostapo and Stupid Jetpack Hitler, this is the genre where historical events tends to take a backseat the most to focus on flashy and sometimes glamorous action.

Historical Operations:

Fictional Operations:

  • 36 Hours (1965) concerns a German attempt to find out the date and place of the D-Day landings by means of an elaborate deception.
  • Across the Pacific: A Japanese spy operation to destroy the Panama Canal, timed to coincide with the attack on Pearl Harbor, foiled by Humphrey Bogart.
  • Air Raid Wardens: A very silly Laurel and Hardy movie where Stan and Ollie join the local Civil Defense patrol, and wind up foiling a plot by German spies to blow up the local magnesium plant.
  • The Adventures of Tartu: A British Captain is sent undercover into occupied Czechoslovakia to steal the formula of a new Nazi poison gas and sabotage the gas plant where it being manufactured.
  • All Through the Night: A German spy operation to sink a battleship in New York harbor, foiled by Humphrey Bogart.
  • Allied: A romance-thriller about an RCAF intelligence officer and a French resistance fighter, who is accused of being part of Les Collaborateurs.
  • Atlantic Wall: French comedy in which a peaceful French restaurant owner finds himself in possession of German V1 flying bombs launching pads plans. He brings them to the Allies in London and reluctantly takes part to a secret assassination plot on the eve of D-Day.
  • Commandos Strike at Dawn: A Norwegian fisherman escapes to England, and then guides a commando raid on a German base in his hometown.
  • The Dirty Dozen
  • The Eagle Has Landed: About a German commando unit infiltrating the English countryside to assassinate Winston Churchill.
  • Eye of the Needle - A Nazi spy discovers the Allies are pulling a king-sized fast one with Operation Fortitude on Germany to hide the true invasion destination for D-Day.
  • Hitler, Dead or Alive: Propaganda Piece about a fictionalized plot to kill Hitler.
  • Inglourious Basterds
  • I See a Dark Stranger: A feisty young woman gets in over her head when she gets mixed up with German spies trying to find out the location of the D-Day landings.
  • Journey into Fear: An American naval engineer, returning home from Turkey by ship, is pursed by Nazi agents.
  • Ministry of Fear
  • Northern Pursuit: A German submarine lands some commandos in the frozen Canadian north; the commandos set out to find a hidden plane, which they will use to bomb a crucial waterway.
  • Where Eagles Dare

    Prisoners of War (1940-1945) 

Germans generally respected the Geneva Conventions with regards to US, UK and French POWs, although by the end of the war when almost everyone was on the verge of starvation they were seriously considering throwing the Conventions out of the window with the Allied bombing raids as the excuse.

Geneva had never so much as been in the building when it came to the treatment of Slavic peoples by Germans - captured Red Army soldiers usually ended up as slaves or starved in death camps at best. And assuming they actually survived to be liberated their treatment upon returning home was frequently nearly as bad since Stalin's Soviet Union practiced You Have Failed Me on a massive scale and shuttled them directly from German prison camps to Siberian labor camps where they served, ironically enough, alongside the German prisoners of war the Soviets belatedly (and sometimes never) got around to releasing. The last German and Volkdeutsche prisoners to be released came back in the 1950s.

Conversely, the Allied POW camps, especially American and Canadian ones, kept to the Geneva Conventions so well that they became famous for being often more comfortable to Axis prisoners than their own side's barracks. This proved surprisingly beneficial for the Allies: the prisoners generally refrained from causing trouble, were more inclined to cooperate with interrogators and work details outside like on local farms, encouraged surrenders of the enemy and was excellent propaganda to the civilians of Allied nations that they were on the side of the good guys in that war. A number of repatriated Italian (and even some German) ex POW later emigrated back to the US and Canada, a testament both to the treatment they received and the relative lack of opportunity at home.

You did not want to be prisoner of the Japanese, as they considered surrendering as a shameful and degrading thing. Slave work, executions, torture and starvation were widespread, with also some infamous cases of experimentations on humans.

    The Holocaust (1939-1945) 

The Holocaust is the genocide Nazi Germany carried out on its territory and throughout occupied Europe primarily against Jewish people, but also against a couple other sorts of people their ideology deemed worthy of being exterminated, such as political opponents, Slavs, homosexuals and Gypsies.

  • Amen about the attempt of a priest to warn the Pope in Vatican about the gassings of Jews on behalf of SS officer Kurt Gerstein, who witnessed mass murders in gas chambers.
  • Angry Harvest - A Polish farmer hides a Jewish woman, but then proceeds to take advantage of her.
  • Au revoir les enfants
  • Bent
  • The Boat Is Full - A small group of Jewish refugees seeks shelter in Switzerland.
  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
  • Come and See, set during the Nazis' extermination campaign in Belarus.
  • Conspiracy (2001), a film based on the Wannsee Conference where the Final Solution was decided.
  • The Counterfeiters
  • Escape from Sobibór
  • Europa Europa - the true story of Solomon Perel, a Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by pretending to be German and ended up being in the Hitler Youth
  • Fog in August (Nebel im August), a teen age Yenish boy is tranfered to a mental isntitution until his father is released from prison, and slowly he figures out that place is a transit point for the Aktion-T4 programme before it becomes a killing center itself.
  • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - persecution of Italian Jews ending in their roundup for deportation
  • God on Trial
  • The Grey Zone, about the Jewish sonderkommandos in the death camps, forced to cooperate in the killing mechanism even as they knew could be next to die at any time.
  • Hidden in Silence:
  • In Darkness - A Christian man in Lviv hides a dozen Jews in the sewers beneath the city.
  • In the Presence of Mine Enemies
  • Jacob the Liar, the original East German version
  • Kapò - A teenaged Jewish girl escapes Auschwitz only to become a despised "kapo" (prisoner guarding other prisoners) in a different labor camp.
  • Der letzte Zug
  • Life Is Beautiful
  • Night and Fog
  • The Ninth Circle: A Christian family in Yugoslavia tries to shelter a Jewish girl from the Nazis.
  • The Pianist about Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman, who escaped deportation and managed to survive in Warsaw between 1939 and 1945.
  • The Revolt of Job: A Jewish couple in Hungary adopts a Christian child, in part to leave him their possessions as they see the Final Solution coming.
  • The Round Up about the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. 13000 Jews were arrested (including more than 4000 children) in Paris by the French police (which collaborated) and deported to the death camps in Poland.
  • Sarah's Key
  • Schindler's List about the German industrialist who managed to save about 1200 Jews from extermination by employing them in his businesses.
  • The Shop on Main Street
  • Son of Saul - A Sonderkommando prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp
  • Sterne - (Translation: Stars)
  • Sunshine (1999)
  • Toyland
  • Visas and Virtue
  • Woman in Gold - the true story of Maria Altmann, an Austrian Jew who fled during the Anschluss and fifty years later sought litigation to retrieve a painting of her aunt that was stolen by the Nazis

    Home Fronts (1939-1945) 

The impact of the war on civilian life in the various unoccupied countries or areas that took part in the conflict.

Germany:

  • Aimée & Jaguar, the true story of the lesbian affair between German housewife Lilly Wust and Jewish woman Felice Schragenheim.
  • Before the Fall, about the Nazi National Political Academy.
  • The Devil Strikes at Night: The hunt for a Serial Killer in 1944 Berlin, and how the conscientious inspector on the case is confronted with interference from the party hierarchy.
  • A Hidden Life, the story of Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to enlist in the German army.
  • Jew Süss: Rise and Fall, the production of the antisemitic propaganda film Jew Süss in 1939-1940.
  • Lili Marleen, a fictional story around the famous hit song.
  • The Marriage of Maria Braun deals with a woman's journey from the earliest stages of Germany's surrender to the mid-1950s in West Germany.
  • The Night fell on Gotenhafen, about the tragedy of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. It is the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history, up to 9400 German civilians and soldiers died trying to evacuate East Prussia to flee the Soviet advance.
  • Rosenstrasse, a film about the 1943 protest in the eponymous street. Many "pure German blood" wives and relatives of Jewish men took to the street in protest against their deportation.
  • The Tin Drum — Set in the city of Danzig, which was part of Germany until 1919, when the League of Nations made it a Free City and allowed Poland access to the Baltic sea there, thus cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. The city was still mostly German ethnically, and was the first to be invaded by the German armies on September 1st 1939.
  • Wunschkonzert, a 1940 German propaganda film that shows the Luftwaffe bombing Poland and a combat scene in what appears to be the 1940 Western Front, but is mostly about the star-crossed romance between a German woman and her fighter pilot boyfriend. They're eventually reunited through the popular Wunschkonzert weekly radio show.

Hungary

  • Bizalom: A young woman in late 1944 Budapest is shocked to find out that her husband is part of La Résistance and has fled to avoid arrest. To avoid arrest herself she has to get fake papers and pretend to be the wife of another man who is also hiding under a false identity. They fall in love.

Italy:

  • Malèna: A pubescent boy is entranced by the beauty of the most gorgeous woman in his village—who has been left in desperate straits after her husband is killed in battle.
  • Le pupille: A short film about how the privations of war—lack of food, lack of coal for heating—is impacting an orphanage full of Heartwarming Orphans.
  • Shoeshine: Two street urchins struggle to survive in the grim poverty of the Roman underclass immediately following liberation in 1944.

Japan:

  • Army, a Japanese film made during the war, 1944 to be exact, about the duty of the Japanese to support the war and the duty of Japanese parents to give their sons to the Emperor. Contains a very subtle anti-war message.
  • Bridge to the Sun: Unusual in that it's an American film in English. The protagonist is a white woman who goes to Japan with her Japanese diplomat husband, when he and everyone else in the Washington embassy are sent home in December 1941.
  • Doctor Akagi, set in a Japanese town during the last days of the war.
  • Grave Of The Firefliesnote  - a slice of Japanese civilian life in 1945. Based on the same novel as the animated film.
  • Memoirs of a Geisha - a stylised account of the life of a Japanese entertainer-courtesan
  • Morning for the Osone Family, 1946 Japanese film about the suffering an upper-middle class family undergoes due to the conflict.
  • The Most Beautiful: 1944 Akira Kurosawa propaganda movie showing young Japanese women laboring away at a factory making precision lenses for the war effort.

United Kingdom:

USA:

USSR:

  • AK-47: A Russian Biopic that starts off with Mikhail Kalashnikov's service on the Eastern Front in 1941, then shifts to his engineering work on the Russian Home Front in Moscow throughout the rest of the war and then some of his post-war work involving the creation of his infamous AK-47 assault rifle.

    Fantasy / Horror / Science-Fiction 

Where there's much outlandish genre fun to be had and where history definitely leaves the building.

  • Bedknobs and Broomsticks: A spinster who trains as a witch wants to use her powers to help the British war effort. She also must serve as Parental Substitute to three Blitz Evacuees.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger: Takes place in the United States and Europe during World War II. Leading an international Allied unit, Captain America fights Hydra, a Nazi science division led by Red Skull that uses technology way beyond anything imaginable in the 1940s, thanks to the Cosmic Cube (the Tesseract).
  • The Final Countdown: A magnetic storm sends the then-new modern nuclear powered USS Nimitz, just heading out of Pearl Harbor in 1980, back in time to the same spot in early December 1941 just before the Japanese attack.
  • Frankenstein's Army: A squad of Russian soldiers go to a remote East German village to locate missing comrades towards the end of the war. Unearthing a plot to resurrect fallen soldiers, the squad becomes the target of cobbled-together monsters.
  • Ghosts of War: Seems like a typical horror film set during the war when actually it is set in a 20 Minutes into the Future computer simulation.
  • Godzilla Minus One: The eponymous Kaiju shows up during the events post the Bombing of Tokyo.
  • King of the Zombies: A German agent in the Caribbean kidnaps an American admiral and tortures him in an attempt to learn the defences of the Panama Canal. Plus, you know, zombies.
  • A Matter of Life and Death: A supernatural love story about an RAF pilot who bailed out of a plane without a parachute and lived, much to heaven's chagrin. Set mainly in a British military convalescent hospital, and in the afterlife.
  • Overlord: A group of paratroopers encounters Nazis and horrifying experiments underneath a radio tower.
  • Reign of the Gargoyles: A horror slash science fiction set during the Battle of the Bulge, where the Nazis unleash a horde of gargoyles in Northern France, and the Allies end up having to find a way to both prevent the Germans from finding a way to control the monsters as well as find a way to stop the latter for good.
  • Les Visiteurs: A 12th century French knight and his squire Time Travel to 1943 by mistake at the end of Bastille Day (the third film), when France is occupied by the Germans.
  • Werewolves of the Third Reich: Four disgraced criminal soldiers uncover attempts by Josef Mengele to turn Nazi soldiers into werewolves.

    Others 
Films that don't really fit elsewhere.
  • 49th Parallel: A group of German submariners are trapped in Canada when their sub is sunk, and attempt to escape to the neutral US.
  • The Dig: Set in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. It is about an archeological excavation of a Viking ship in the months leading up to the War.
  • Fighter in the Wind: The main character is a Korean who joined the Japanese air force in the first part of the movie.
  • The First of the Few: Uses the Battle of Britain as a framing device to tell the story of British aircraft designer R. J. Mitchell and his development of the Submarine Spitfire in the 1930s.
  • Goebbels and Geduldig: Joseph Goebbels happens to have a lookalike in a Jewish man, Harry Geduldig, and a switcheroo of them happens.
  • Homecoming: Follows a doctor and his nurse in a U.S. Army surgical unit in both Italy and France.
  • Hotel Berlin (1945), basically Grand Hotel if Grand Hotel was about Nazis and Nazi collaborators and German resistance inside a hotel in Berlin in the final months of the European theater (it was in fact written by the same author whose book Grand Hotel was based on).
  • How I Unleashed World War II
  • It Happened Here: Alternate History about the Nazi occupation of Britain.
  • Jojo Rabbit: A young German boy in the Hitler Youth has an Imaginary Friend who looks like a friendly Adolf Hitler with the war as backdrop.
  • The Man in Grey: While the bulk of the film is a Whole Episode Flashback set in Regency England, a framing story involves an RAF pilot and a Wren in 1943.
  • Men Behind the Sun: Inspired by surviving records of the human experiments that were conducted within the Unit-731 facility in occupied China, the film shows numerous gruesome experiments conducted by scientists led by Shiro Ishii. An accidental Exploitation Film that is not for the faint of heart.
  • Mission to Moscow: About the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in the years leading up to the war; now infamous for its pro-Stalinist message.
  • Morituri: A German living in India is blackmailed into sabotaging a Nazi merchant ship carrying rubber from Japan.
  • My Führer, a comedy in which Adolf Hitler is so depressed that a (fictional) Jewish acting coach is hired to help him prepare a New Year speech.
  • My Way: Follows two Korean men who fight in the Imperial Japanese Army, then the Red Army, then the Wehrmacht before being captured by Americans after D-Day. Inspired by the story of Yang Kyoungjong.
  • Nowhere in Africa: Deals with a German Jewish family who flees to Kenya to avoid the Holocaust who try to run a ranch (in between being occasionally rounded up as enemy aliens, due to being German)
  • One Night in Lisbon: An American pilot, transporting a bomber to London prior to America's entry into the war, gets involved with an aristocratic Englishwoman and a German spy ring.
  • Return To Never Land: The story begins in World War II London, during the Luftwaffe's bombing campaign in preparation for Operation: Sea Lion.
  • Saboteur: Essentially The 39 Steps set in wartime America.
  • Sailor of the King
  • Went the Day Well?: Depicts the infiltration and takeover of a fictional English village by Nazi soldiers in advance of a planned invasion of Britain.

Alternative Title(s): Film

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