The 50 Best Movies About World War II

An all-star cast including Clint Eastwood, Don Rickles, Carroll O’Connor, Donald Sutherland, and Telly Savalas appear in this subversive war/heist caper about U.S. soldiers who cross German lines to steal Nazi gold. The film captures the antihero vibe of the 1960s; the team even strikes a deal with their erstwhile enemy to divide the loot.

If any Steven Spielberg movie can be considered as underrated, it’s this one. In one of his earliest performances, Christian Bale played a privileged English boy living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. He is interred with an American sailor (John Malkovich) who looks out for him. Despite the fact that he’s separated from his parents, the boy maintains his dignity in the face of his hardships.

This bizarre allegorical anti-war film from Germany, based on the novel of the same name by Günter Grass, is about a child who refuses to leave the womb until he’s promised a tin drum by his mother. The child wants nothing to do with a world of hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday not to grow up. He gets his wish. As the Nazis gain power, he beats his drum and screams in protest.

Richard Basehart and Gary Merrill star in this drama about an American intelligence unit that recruits German prisoners of war to spy on the Nazi regime. The film’s authenticity is augmented by scenes shot in Bavaria, a region that was still recovering from the war at the time the movie was filmed. It has been lauded for giving greater dimension than usual to German characters.

“Three Came Home” is an acclaimed World War II film about a couple living in Borneo – a writer and a British officer – separated when the Japanese invade and place them in different internment camps. The movie is based on the story of Agnes Newton Keith, played by Claudette Colbert, who wrote about the depravations she endured while in captivity. The film is cited for its nuanced depiction of the Japanese, though they are still shown to be cruel.

Starring Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” is based on the exploits of the Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle and his aviators, who bombed the Japanese capital about five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Robert Mitchum makes an early-career appearance in the film.

This is a comedy/drama about U.S. Navy officer Charles Madison (James Garner), who won’t give up the good life to fight in World War II. The good life also includes romancing Englishwoman Emily Barham (Julie Andrews). That becomes complicated when a navy admiral resolves that a sailor must be the first to die in the D-Day invasion, and assigns the duty to Madison. The movie also stars Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn.

“The Dirty Dozen” follows an army unit made up of former death-row inmates who are sent on a suicide mission to sneak behind enemy lines and assassinate dozens of German officers. The all-star cast includes Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Telly Savalas – and the film helped launch the movie career of Cleveland Browns star running back Jim Brown.

Actor Richard Powell directed this film about a deadly game of cat and mouse on the high seas of the Atlantic during World War II between a U.S. warship captain (Robert Mitchum) and a German U-boat commander (Curd Jürgens). As the two commanders maneuver and push their crews to achieve victory, they develop a begrudging respect for each other.

John Boorman wrote, directed, and produced this autobiographical story about a young boy growing up during the Blitz in London. While he and his mates find adventure in rummaging through the debris of bombed-out buildings, his parents struggle to maintain composure as they deal with the losses the war has brought.

“From Here to Eternity” is set at an air base in Hawaii just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The topflight cast includes Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, and Donna Reed. The movie is famous for its kiss in the surf between Lancaster and Kerr. The movie corralled eight Academy Awards, including statues for Sinatra and Reed, and resuscitated Sinatra’s career.

Alfred Hitchcock directed this thriller about a crime reporter (Joel McCrea) stuck in a rut who is reassigned by his editor to be a foreign correspondent in Europe. Once he starts his new assignment he’s out of his depth, especially when he stumbles onto a spy ring. He turns to a politician’s daughter (Laraine Day) and a savvy British journalist (George Sanders) for help.

Jack Palance, one of cinema’s most intense actors, played a lieutenant stationed in Belgium toward the end of 1944 who has doubts about the leadership qualities of his captain (Eddie Albert), a coward who only got his position because of his connections to a lieutenant colonel (Lee Marvin). The captain’s inexperience and contempt for the lieutenant threaten the lives of his men as the Battle of the Bulge rages.

Christopher Nolan wrote, directed, and co-produced “Dunkirk,” the story of the near-disaster of the Allied armies trapped in the French seaport town by the German army, eventually rescued by the Royal Navy and a flotilla of civilian vessels. The movie is told from the perspective of a pilot, a civilian boatman, and a soldier. Nolan turns the movie into a contemplation of battle without honor or victory. At no point does the viewer see the face of the enemy, who is never identified.

“Where Eagles Dare” is a stirring World War II thriller based on a novel by the prolific writer Alistair MacLean. Allied agents (including chatty Richard Burton and taciturn Clint Eastwood) are dropped behind enemy lines to launch a raid on a well-fortified castle in the mountains in an attempt to free an American brigadier general held prisoner there.

Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn star as Allied saboteurs sent to destroy a massive German gun emplacement on a Greek island that is preventing the Royal Navy from rescuing Allied troops trapped on another island. The movie, based on the Alistair MacLean 1957 novel of the same name, has a screenplay written by Carl Foreman, who had been blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s.

“To Hell and Back” is a biopic of real-life Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy, who played himself in the movie. After becoming the family’s breadwinner when his father abandons them, Murphy enlists in the Army, despite his short stature. The film follows his combat exploits, including the actions that won him his medal.

This star-studded dramady is about a supply officer (Henry Fonda) aboard a cargo ship during World War II who wants to be transferred to a combat zone but is thwarted by the ship’s tyrannical captain (James Cagney). Tired of being denied liberty by the ship’s commander, the crew rebels with minor acts of resistance. Jack Lemmon won the first of his two Academy Awards for his role here as Ensign Pulver.

In this somewhat surreal film about German life during World War II, Jojo is a lonely, fanatically nationalist German boy (Roman Griffin Davis) who discovers that his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic. With the help of his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, Jojo tries to rationalize the world as the war strikes close to home.

War movies from Japan during the imperial era are rare. This one is about a conscientious objector Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) during World War II who pins his hopes on avoiding service by working as a manager for a mining company. He tries to improve the terrible working conditions of Chinese laborers in a mine. His superiors reluctantly agree, but he has no support for his ideas at the mine itself. As POWs flow into the workforce, he risks his position by helping them.

Often dismissed as a propaganda film, “Mrs. Miniver” played a role in convincing Americans to join the fight against Nazism. Starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, the film follows the tribulations of an English family and their American daughter-in-law during the dark days of the early years of World War II, including the Dunkirk evacuation and the Blitz. Director Wyler, a German Jewish immigrant, was opposed to American isolationism.

Gladys Aylward (Ingrid Bergman) plays a British maid who believes it is her destiny to go to China. After she’s rejected as a missionary, she eventually finds her way to the town of Yang Cheng and runs an inn there. However, her tranquil life is disrupted by Japan’s invasion of China. With the help of a half-Chinese/half-Dutch military officer (Curd Jürgens), she leads orphans to safety through dangerous mountain passes.

“The Longest Day,” which tells the story of the D-Day invasion of Normandy from the Allied and German perspectives, was helmed by three directors, and featured one of the greatest casts in motion-picture history, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton, Edmond O’Brien, and Sean Connery. British actor Richard Todd, who was part of the British airborne invasion of France during the D-Day operation, also appears in the film.

“Lifeboat” is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful story based on a John Steinbeck novella about the survivors of a ship sunk by a German U-boat whose humanity is tested when one of the submarine’s crew is pulled out of the ocean. The entire movie takes place about the lifeboat. The cast included Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, Canada Lee, and Mary Anderson. Viewers will be amused in the ingenious way Hitchcock, who appeared in each of his movies, shows up in this one.

This film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including the third and last for Humphrey Bogart. He plays the commander of a U.S. Navy ship during World War II whose erratic behavior suggests mental instability. He is relieved of duty by an executive officer (Van Johnson) and an ensign (Robert Francis), prompting their court martial. The film, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, is famous for the scene in which Bogart’s character testifies.

Director Clint Eastwood told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima twice in films, from the perspective of each side. The Japanese view is expressed here through the unsent letters home written by Japanese soldiers that were unearthed in Iwo Jima’s caves decades after the battle. These include missives from Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic champion; and Shimizu (Ryô Kase), an idealistic soldier.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is the true story of U.S. Army medic Desmond T. Doss, a pacifist, who saved American soldiers wounded at the Battle of Okinawa and became the only American serviceman to win the Medal of Honor for not firing a shot. The movie is remembered for its depiction of the extraordinary bravery of Doss, played by Oscar-nominated actor Andrew Garfield, and its gripping battle scenes.

With the British about to invade Sicily in 1943, intelligence agent Ewen Montagu (Clifton Webb) concocts an interesting plan to fool Germany into believing the Allies’ true target is Greece. He creates a fictitious British officer named Maj. William Martin, gathers false top-secret documents and personal letters, and plants them on a corpse that will wash ashore in Spain. The problem is that a German undercover agent (Stephen Boyd) might foil the operation.

Burt Lancaster was reunited with director John Frankenheimer (they had earlier collaborated on “Birdman of Alcatraz”) in “The Train.” Lancaster plays a French Resistance fighter who tries to stop the Nazis from transporting works of art out of Paris ahead of the Allied advance. An acclaimed cast of international actors included Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, and Wolfgang Preiss.

“Sahara” is a war movie set in the Libyan desert, where an American tank crew led by hard-boiled tanker Humphrey Bogart becomes separated from its unit, picks up Allied stragglers, and tries to survive as food and water run low. Despite moments of propaganda, the film was lauded for Korda’s realistic depiction of desert warfare.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays quirky computing pioneer Alan Turing who was tasked with cracking seemingly unbreakable Nazi codes during World War II. “The Imitation Game” also tells how Turing is forced to conceal his homosexuality, which was illegal at the time in the U.K. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, winning one for best adapted screenplay.

What says revenge more than a Quentin Tarantino-helmed film about exacting retribution on Nazis? When it comes to violence, “Inglourious Basterds” takes no prisoners – not exactly shocking for a Tarantino film. Brad Pitt plays an American lieutenant who puts together a team of Jewish soldiers who parachute behind German lines to attack, scalp, and kill Nazis.

“Conspiracy” TV movie telling the story of the fateful Wannsee Conference that took place in a Berlin suburb in 1942 during which Nazi officials considered the “final solution” of exterminating Europe’s Jews. To accomplish this, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) and his associate, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci), must try to convince a small group of men opposed to the idea, led by Chancellor Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (David Threlfall).

In this elegant, beautifully mounted classic about human relationships, produced by the team of Merchant-Ivory, Anthony Hopkins plays an English butler slavishly devoted to his Nazi-sympathizing master – to the point of not visiting his dying father nor following his heart in regard to his feelings for his master’s former housekeeper.

This is a surrealistic tale about two black marketeers Marko (Miki Manojlović) and Blacky (Lazar Ristovski), who manufacture and sell weapons to the Communist Resistance in Belgrade during World War II. Marko rises in the Communist Party, abandons Blacky, and steals his girlfriend. Blacky ends up spending most of the war years underground, in a cellar. The fate of the two one-time partners is followed through the Cold War years and the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.

George C. Scott’s towering performance as the narcissistic and controversial WWII general George Patton represented the apex of his career. The movie would win seven Oscars, including Best Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Scott). Scott said before the Academy Awards ceremony that he would not accept the Oscar if he won and he did not, calling the honor “meaningless.”

An all-star cast at the height of its star power distinguished “Judgment at Nuremberg.” In 1947, four ex-Nazi judges face a military tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood (Spencer Tracy) hears testimony from lead defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster); his defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell); the widow of a Nazi general (Marlene Dietrich); a U.S. Army captain (William Shatner); and witness Irene Wallner (Judy Garland).

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger directed, wrote, produced this story of a general considered by his men to be out of touch with modern soldiering. The story is told in a series of flashbacks in which the general recalls his time fighting in the Boer War and World War I.

British prisoners of war held by the Japanese in Thailand are forced to build a bridge over the River Kwai in 1942 in this film based on a 1952 novel by French writer Pierre Boulle. Initially, the British soldiers, led by Alec Guinness, resist. Guinness, however, comes to believe he can shame his captors with a bridge far superior to what they might build on their own. William Holden and a group of commandos travel through the jungle to destroy it. The film won seen Oscars, including those for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Guinness).

William Holden received an Academy Award for his performance as a cynical prisoner of war wrongfully accused of being a spy for the Germans in this drama set in a German POW camp over the Christmas season of 1944.

“Rome, Open City” has been held in high esteem by critics since it was released in 1945, calling it emotionally powerful and a cinema landmark. The movie follows the lives of Roman citizens living under the jackboot of Nazi occupation. Giorgio Manfredi, a leader of the Resistance, is being hunted by the Nazis. He appeals to Pia, the fiancée of his friend Francesco, for help. She enlists the aid of a priest to help Manfredi flee the city as soon as possible.

Ernst Lubitsch directed, produced, and co-wrote this satire about the Nazi takeover of Poland and a theatrical troupe’s attempt to help the Resistance. The movie was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996. It was the last film that Carole Lombard appeared in before she died in a plane crash.

“The Great Escape” is based on the true story of a mass escape by Allied prisoners from the German prison camp Stalag Luft III. The film stars Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Donald Pleasence, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Steve McQueen. Among its greatest scenes shows prisoner McQueen attempting to outrun the Germans on a motorcycle by trying to leap over barbed wire fences that separated Germany from neutral Switzerland. The movie is one of the most frequently run films at Christmastime in Great Britain.

Simone Signoret was among the French stars in this film about a French Resistance fighter (Lino Ventura) who is betrayed by an informant and tortured by the Nazis. He escapes and tracks down his betrayer and exacts revenge – but continues to fight in the shadows against the Nazis, unable to trust others.

“The Best Years of Our Lives,” starring Frederic March and Dana Andrews, dramatized the difficulties World War II veterans faced with adjusting to civilian life. The movie won William Wyler his second Best Director Oscar. The motion picture won seven Academy Awards in all, including Best Supporting Actor for disabled veteran Harold Russell.

Steven Spielberg’s homage to the “greatest generation” is about a U.S. unit tasked with finding the lone surviving brother of an Iowa family and bringing him back to safety. The film has been noted for the uncanny realism of costumes, weaponry, and terrain. The graphic D-Day invasion scene changed the way combat scenes are shot. It was so authentic that it triggered trauma among veterans who viewed a screening of the movie. Tom Hanks’ performance ranks with his very best.

Based on the life of Polish-Jewish pianist and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman, this saga follows the man’s experiences during the Nazi occupation of his native country. After his family is shipped off to a death camp, Szpilman helps smuggle arms to Resistance fighters, witnesses the unsuccessful Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, is taken in by a sympathetic Nazi officer, and survives the war.

In one of the greatest films of all time, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, past lovers, find themselves together in Casablanca, in Nazi-controlled French Morocco. Bergman tells Bogart that when they were together in Paris, she had been married to a Resistance leader whom she thought had been killed by the Nazis. Now she and her husband are in Casablanca. It’s up to Bogart to decide whether to go with Bergman or help her and her husband escape. The movie was released just as the United States was invading North Africa, and was used to support the invasion.

Animated films are infrequently among the saddest of films, especially when they involve children. “Grave of the Fireflies” is the major exception. The harrowing anime follows the lives of a young brother and sister in Japan separated during an American air attack during the final days of World War II. Film critic Ernest Rister has called it “the most profoundly human animated film” he’d ever seen.

No movie depicts the triumph of the human spirit better than “Schindler’s List.” It is the story of a German industrialist who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during World War II. The film dominated the Academy Awards in 1994, winning seven Oscars, including Best Director – the first of three for Spielberg – and Best Picture. Susan Stark of the Detroit Free Press called the film “heartfelt” and “monumental.”