A History of World War 2 Told in Movies (Part A: Atlantic Theater)

*** PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LIST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION ***

*** In the following list I am aiming for a balance between Allied and Axis stories and between stories of 'the big picture' and personal stories. ***

*** SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME but may or may not be included. ***

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL - 1934, Nuremberg, Germany. Documentary record of the 1934 Nazi Party Rally. [Movie released 1935]

COUNTDOWN TO WAR - August / September 1939, Germany, Great Britain, France, U.S.S.R. The inevitable failure of international diplomacy faced with Hitler's determined aggression. [TV movie released 1989]

MRS MINIVER - 1939, England. The story of an English family as Britain declares war upon Nazi Germany. [Movie released 1942]

THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE - 13 December, 1939. The first major naval battle of the war took place in the South Atlantic off the estuary of the River Plate near Montevideo. The German pocket battleship Graf Spee was engaged and disabled by three British cruisers. The German crew later scuttled their vessel. [Movie released 1956]

DUNKIRK - May to June, 1940. The evacuation of British forces in France as France is overrun by Germany. [Movie released 1958]

BATTLE OF BRITAIN - 10 July to 31 October, 1940, southern England. The Royal Air Force defeats Goering's Luftwaffe and prevents a planned German invasion of England. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." - Winston Churchill. [Movie released 1969]

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY - September, 1940 to April 1942, England, Canada, U.S.A., Brazil. "This is the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war taken in Britain during the Second World War who escaped from numerous British POW camps and got back to Germany." - IMDb plot summary. [Movie released 1957]

THE DESERT FOX - 1940 to 1943, North Africa. The story of Erwin Rommel the commander of the German forces in North Africa. He committed suicide in 1944 after being implicated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. [Movie released 1951]

THE RATS OF TOBRUK - April to December, 1941, the fortress of Tobruk, Libya, North Africa. The failed German siege of the fortress was the first notable land defeat for a German army in the war. Tobruk was held by mainly Australian forces. They were called 'rats' by the frustrated German commander, a name they adopted and wore with pride. [Movie released 1944]

SINK THE BISMARK! 18 - 27 May 1941, the North Atlantic to the west of Ireland. The German battlecruiser Bismark had originally been designed as a commerce raider, but the British suspected she had been refitted as a particularly dangerous combat vessel. Their suspicions were tragically confirmed when the Bismark broke out of its harbor and was engaged by the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Hood in the Denmark Strait. The Hood received a direct hit from the Bismark, exploded and sank with the loss of 1415 crew. The Prince of Wales was disabled and forced to withdraw. With this the order went out to all available British vessels to sink the Bismark. Despite having been rendered all but unsteerable by an aircraft-launched torpedo attack, the Bismark survived dozens of attacks by five destroyers. Then it was engaged by two battleships, the King George V and the Rodney. Soon its bridge was destroyed with the loss of most of its senior officers. It was now a sitting duck and the attacking vessels destroyed its superstructure, with the Rodney firing from point blank range of 2 miles. Still the Bismark remained afloat and with colors still raised until it was scuttled by its remaining crew. Only 110 of them were rescued by the British who withdrew after a u-boat warning was received. [Movie released 1960]

THE NORTH STAR - after 22 June, 1941, Russia. The fighting Russian retreat in the face of Hitler's 'Operation Barbarossa', the attack that opened the Eastern Front and changed the U.S.S.R. from a treaty partner with Germany to a member of the Allies. [Movie released 1943]

DAS BOOT - 1941 to 1942, Atlantic Ocean. Life aboard a German u-boat during the 'Battle for the Atlantic'. [Movie released 1981]

THE CRUEL SEA - 1941 to 1942, Atlantic Ocean. Life aboard a British corvette protecting Allied cargo-ship convoys from German submarines during the 'Battle for the Atlantic'. [Movie released 1953]

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK - 12 June, 1942 to 1 August, 1944, Amsterdam, Holland. The true story of a Jewish family who hid from the Nazis for almost 2 years in an attic, told by their daughter. They were eventually captured. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen death camp in 1945; she had not reached 16 years of age. [Movie released 1959] [See also, Dnevnik Ane Frank, 1959; The Diary of Anne Frank, TV 1967; The Diary of Anne Frank, TV 1980; The Diary of Anne Frank, TV 1987; Attic: the Hiding of Anne Frank, TV 1988; Laatste zeven maanden van Anne Frank, TV 1988; Anne Frank Remembered, TV 1995; Anne no nikki, 1995, Japan; Het Korte leven van Anne Frank, 2001; Anne Frank: The Whole Story, TV 2001]

DIEPPE 19 August 1942, Dieppe, on the north coast of France.

STALINGRAD -August 1942 to February 1943, the German siege of the Russian city of Stalingrad, the failure of which was the beginning of the end for Germany on the Eastern Front. According to some estimates, total casualties in this siege exceeded three million. [Movie released 1993] [Alternate movie: Enemy at the Gates, 2001]

THE GREAT ESCAPE - April, 1943 to April, 1944, Stalag Luft III, near Sagan, eastern Germany. True story of the escape by tunnel of 76 Allied prisoners from this German p.o.w. camp. [Movie released 1963]

THE DAM BUSTERS - 17 May, 1943, the Ruhr Valley, Germany. 'Operation Chastise', the mission to destroy industrially important German dams. Also tells how special 'bouncing bombs' were developed for the operation. [Movie released 1954]

TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH - 1943 to 1945, England and the skies over Germany. The development of 'precision daylight bombing' by the Allied air forces. [Movie released 1949] [Alternative: Memphis Belle, 1990 (thanks RosieCotton)]

ENIGMA - 1943, Bletchley Park, south eastern England. The breaking of the code embodied in the German 'ENIGMA' code machine. Some authorities say the breaking of this code shortened the war by at least a year. [Movie released 2002] [Alternative: Breaking the Code, 1996]

ANZIO - January, 1944, Anzio, Italy. 'Operation Shingle', the beginning of the Allied invasion of 'Europe's soft underbelly'. Although successful, the operation was poorly executed and turned into one of the bloodiest battles of the war on the Western Front. [Movie released 1968]

ROME, OPEN CITY - 1944, Rome, Italy. Life among members of the Italian Resistance in a Rome that is by this time an ally of Germany in name only. [Movie released 1945]

NANCY WAKE - April, 1944, Auvergne region, France. Little known, incredible true story of the Australian/French woman who was among the most decorated heroes of the war. The 'White Mouse', as the Nazis called her, is credited with having saved the lives of hundreds of Allied troops through her work as a British agent in the French Resistance. [TV movie released 1987]

THE LONGEST DAY - 6 June 1944, "D-Day", Normandy coastal region, northern France. The story of 'Operation Overlord', the Allied invasion of German occupied Europe. [Movie released 1962] [Alternative movie: Saving Private Ryan, 1998]

UPRISING - August to October 1944 , Warsaw ghetto, Poland. The Jewish uprising against their imprisonment in the ghetto and the Nazi counter-attack. [TV movie released 2001] [Possible alternative, The Pianist, 2002]

A BRIDGE TOO FAR - September 1944, 'Operation Market- Garden', the Allied attempt to capture strategically important bridges in northern Europe. [Movie released 1977]

SCHINDLER'S LIST - October, 1944 to May, 1945, Brunnlitz, Sudetenland. - Austrian businessman Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews from extermination in the Nazi death camps. [Movie released 1993]

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE - December 1944, Ardenne Forest, Belgium. The last major German counter-offensive of the war (Western Front). [Movie released 1965] [Alternative: Battleground, 1949]

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE 13-15 February 1945, Dresden, Germany. Arguably a war crime committed by U.S. and British air forces was the deliberate incendiary bombing of the city of Dresden. The attack caused a fire-storm in which as many as 300 000 civilians in the refugee crowded city died of suffocation or burns. [Movie released 1972. Note: only the opening scenes of this movie refer to the bombing of Dresden. The author of the book on which the movie was based, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, was an American soldier captured during the Battle of the Bulge and held prisoner in Dresden during the bombing. He describes the opening of cellars crowded with the corpses of suffocated victims.]

THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN 7 March 1945, The Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany. This last intact bridge over the Rhine was strongly defended by the retreating Germans, but was captured on this day by elements of the U.S. 9th Armored Division. General Eisenhower considered the capture so important that he called the bridge "worth its weight in gold". [Movie released 1969]

THE DOWNFALL - April 1944 to April 1945, various places in Germany. The final year of the Third Reich and of its creator, Adolf Hitler[Movie released 2004 (thanks RosieCotton)] [Alternative: Hitler - The Last Ten Days, 1973]

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG - 1948, Nuremberg, Germany. Surviving Nazi leaders are put on trial in an international court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. [Movie released 1961]