List of documentary films about World War II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following is a list of documentary films about World War II.
1940s
| Year | Country | Title | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1940 | Nazi Germany | Deutsche Panzer (German Panzer) | Walter Ruttmann | Nazi propaganda film showcasing German tank manufacturing.[1] |
| 1940 | Nazi Germany | Deutsche Waffenschmieden (German Weapons-Forge) | Walter Ruttmann | Nazi propaganda film about the might of German arms manufacturing. |
| 1940 | Nazi Germany | Feldzug in Polen (Campaign in Poland) | Nazi propaganda film about the 1939 invasion of Poland, portraying the Poles as aggressors and the ethnic Germans living in Poland as oppressed minorities.[3] | |
| 1941 | Canada | Churchill's Island | Stuart Legg | British propaganda film showcasing the defense of the British Isles during the Battle of Britain.[4] |
| 1941 | Canada | Inside Fighting China | Stuart Legg | Canadian propaganda film showcasing China's resistance to Japan's invasion.[5] |
| 1941 | USA | Kukan | Rey Scott | American propaganda film showcasing China's resistance to Japan's invasion.[6][7] |
| 1941 | Kingdom of Italy | Uomini sul fondo (Men on the bottom) | Francesco De Robertis | |
| 1942 | Nazi Germany | Männer, Meer und Stürme (Men, Sea and Storms) | Heinrich Hauser, Hubert Schonger | |
| 1942 | United Kingdom | The Soldier's Food | unknown | British military training film about the importance of food, including topics like demonstrations of cooking equipment, prevention of waste, and the management of surplus food.[8] |
| 1944 | Nazi Germany | Panorama | ||
| 1944 | United States | The Battle for the Marianas | Gordon Hollingshead | American propaganda film about the US invasion of the Japanese occupies islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian.[9][10] |
| 1944 | Japan | Calling Australia (Japanese: オーストラリアを呼び出します, romanized: Ōsutoraria o Yobidashimasu) | Dr. Huyung (formerly known as Hinatsu Eitaro, Hae Yeong, and Hŏ Yŏng) | Japanese propaganda film showing Australian prisoners of war drinking beer, playing sports, eating balanced meals. It was intended to train the Australian public to accept occupation of their country by the Japanese military. |
| 1944 | United States | Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress | William Wyler | US propaganda film providing an account of the final mission of the crew of the Memphis Belle, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. It was intended to build morale at home by showing the everyday courage of the soldiers who flew these bombers.[11][12][13] |
| 1945 | Netherlands | Nippon Presents | Dutch counter propagranda film showing the true treatment inside Japanese POW camps.[14] | |
| 1945 | Denmark | Danmark i Lænker (Denmark in Chains) | Sven Methling | Danish film chronicling the 5 years of Nazi occupation of Denmark. |
| 1946 | United States | Let There Be Light | y Huston | American short documentary film intended to educate the public about post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, but its unscripted presentation of mental disability caused the U.S. government to suppress the film, and it was not released until the 1980s.[15][16] |
| 1947 | United States | Lest We Forget | n.a. |
1950s
| Year | Country | Title | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | United States | Victory at Sea | M. Clay Adams | |
| 1955 | France | Night and Fog | Alain Resnais | French documentary showcasing the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek established in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. The film also talks about the rise of Nazi ideology. |
1960s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | United States | Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler | Louis Clyde Stoumen |
| 1962 | Canada | Canada at War | ? |
| 1964 | Canada | Fields of Sacrifice | Donald Brittain |
| 1965 | Canada | Memorandum | Donald Brittain, John Spotton |
| 1965 | United States | France: Conquest to Liberation | Aram Boyajian |
| 1965 | United States | Prelude to War: Beginning of World War II | Alan Landsburg |
| 1965 | Soviet Union | Ordinary Fascism (Обыкновенный фашизм) (Obyknovennyy fashizm) | Mikhail Romm |
| 1968 | United States | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | Jack Kaufman |
| 1969 | France | The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié) | Marcel Ophüls |
1970s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | United Kingdom | The World at War | Miscellaneous |
| 1974 | Israel | The 81st Blow (המכה ה-81) | Haim Gouri |
| 1976 | United Kingdom | The Memory of Justice | Marcel Ophüls |
| 1977 | United Kingdom | The Secret War (TV series) | Various |
| 1978 | Soviet Union | The Unknown War (Neizvestnaya voyna) (Неизвестная война) | Isaac Kleinerman, Roman Karmen |
1980s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | West Germany | The Yellow Star - The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45 | Dieter Hildebrandt |
| 1981 | United States | The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter | Connie Field |
| 1982 | United States | Genocide | Arnold Schwartzman |
| 1982 | Sweden | The Story of Chaim Rumkowski and the Jews of Lodz | Peter Chohen, Bo Kuritzen |
| 1982 | United States | Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die | Laurence Jarvik |
| 1985 | France | Shoah | Claude Lanzmann |
| 1985 | United States | Unfinished Business | Steven Okazaki |
| 1987 | Japan | The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On | Kazuo Hara |
| 1988 | France | Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie | Marcel Ophüls |
| 1989 | France | De Nuremberg à Nuremberg | Frédéric Rossif |
| 1989 | United Kingdom | Fascist Legacy | Ken Kirby |
| 1989 | Sweden | The Architecture of Doom | Peter Cohen |
1990s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | United States | Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo | Steven Okazaki |
| 1990 | Germany | Mein Krieg | Harriet Eder, Thomas Kufus |
| 1992 | Canada | The Valour and the Horror | Brian McKenna |
| 1993 | France | L'Œil de Vichy | Claude Chabrol |
| 1994 | United States | Battlefield | Miscellaneous |
| 1994 | Germany | The Jewess and the Captain | Ulf von Mechow |
| 1994 | Spain | Memory of Water | Héctor Fáver |
| 1995 | United Kingdom | Anne Frank Remembered | Jon Blair |
| 1995 | United States | One Survivor Remembers | Kary Antholis |
| 1995 | South Korea | Najeun moksori | Young-Joo Byun |
| 1996 | United States | Fire on the Mountain | Beth Gage, George Gage |
| 1997 | United States | The Long Way Home | Mark Jonathan Harris |
| 1997 | United Kingdom | The Nazis: A Warning from History | Laurence Rees, Tilman Remme |
| 1997 | Estonia | We Lived for Estonia | Andres Sööt |
| 1998 | United States | Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy | Tracy Atkinson, Joan Baran |
| 1998 | United States | Pola's March | Jonathan Gruber |
| 1998 | United States | The Last Days | James Moll |
| 1998 | Netherlands | The Saved | Paul Cohen, Oeke Hoogendijk |
| 1998 | United States | Voices of the Children | Zuzana Justman |
| 1998 | Canada | Unwanted Soldiers | Jari Osborne |
| 1999 | United Kingdom | The Second World War in Colour | Polly Bide |
| 1999 | United Kingdom | War of the Century | Laurence Rees |
2000s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Czech Republic | A Story about a Bad Dream | Pavel Stingl |
| 2000 | United States | From Swastika to Jim Crow | Lori Cheatle, Martin D. Toub |
| 2000 | United States | Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport | Mark Jonathan Harris |
| 2000 | Germany | Paragraph 175 | Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman |
| 2000 | Germany | Shadows of Memory | Claudia von Alemann |
| 2000 | United States | Sisters in Resistance | Maia Wechsler |
| 2000 | United Kingdom | The Children Who Cheated the Nazis | Sue Read |
| 2000 | United Kingdom | World War II׃ The Complete History | Matthew Hall |
| 2001 | United Kingdom | Horror in the East | Laurence Rees, Martina Balazova |
| 2001 | Japan | Japanese Devils | Minoru Matsui |
| 2001 | France | Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m. | Claude Lanzmann |
| 2001 | United States | The Color of War | Peter Coyote |
| 2002 | United States | A Yiddish World Remembered | Andrew Goldberg |
| 2002 | Austria | Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary | André Heller, Othmar Schmiderer |
| 2002 | United States | Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII | Aviva Slesin |
| 2002 | Canada | The Boys of Buchenwald | Audrey Mehler |
| 2003 | United States | Marion's Triumph | John Chua |
| 2003 | Denmark | Med ret til at dræbe (With a Right to Kill) | Morten Henriksen, Peter Øvig Knudsen |
| 2003 | Canada | Prisoner of Paradise | Malcolm Clarke, Stuart Sender |
| 2003 | United States | The Holocaust Experience | Oeke Hoogendijk |
| 2004 | United Kingdom | Dunkirk | Alex Holmes |
| 2004 | Netherlands | Goodbye Holland | Willy Lindwer |
| 2004 | United States | Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality | Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato |
| 2004 | United States | Hiding and Seeking | Menachem Daum, Oren Rudavsky |
| 2005 | Germany | 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him | Malte Ludin |
| 2005 | United States | A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin | Eric Simonson |
| 2005 | United Kingdom | Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' | Laurence Rees, Catherine Tatge |
| 2005 | United Kingdom | Hiroshima | Paul Wilmshurst |
| 2005 | United Kingdom | Japan's War in Colour | David Batty |
| 2005 | United States | The 11th Day: Crete 1941 | Christos Epperson |
| 2005 | United States | The Mushroom Club | Steven Okazaki |
| 2005 | Poland | The Portraitist | Ireneusz Dobrowolski |
| 2005 | Austria | Unwanted Cinema | Petrus van der Let |
| 2006 | Russia | Blokada | Sergei Loznitsa |
| 2006 | United States | Forgiving Dr. Mengele | Bob Hercules, Cheri Pugh |
| 2006 | United States | The Rape of Europa | Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham |
| 2006 | Estonia | The Blue Hills | Raimo Jõerand |
| 2007 | United States | A Distant Shore: African Americans of D-Day | Douglas Cohen |
| 2007 | Canada | My Opposition: The Diaries of Friedrich Kellner | Fern Levitt |
| 2007 | United States | Nanking | Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman |
| 2007 | United States | Order Castles of the Third Reich | R.J. Adams |
| 2007 | United States | Ruins of the Reich | R.J. Adams |
| 2007 | Israel | Stalags | Ari Libsker |
| 2007 | United States | The War | Ken Burns, Lynn Novick |
| 2007 | United States | White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Steven Okazaki |
| 2007 | United States | Wings of Defeat | Risa Morimoto |
| 2007 | Japan | Yasukuni | Li Ying |
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
| 2008 | United States | Battle 360° | Tony Long |
| 2008 | Germany | Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss | Felix Moeller |
| 2008 | Netherlands | Tulip Time: The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano | Tonino Boniotti, Marco De Stefanis |
| 2008 | Latvia | The Soviet Story | Edvīns Šnore |
| 2008 | United Kingdom | World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West | Laurence Rees, Andrew Williams |
| 2009 | France | Apocalypse: The Second World War | Isabelle Clarke, Daniel Costelle |
| 2009 | United States | The Inheritance of War | Ashley Karras |
| 2009 | Netherlands | Patton 360° | Tony Long |
| 2009 | Finland | Sisters Across the Gulf of Finland | Imbi Paju |
| 2009 | United Kingdom | The Week We Went to War | Malcolm McKissock, Louise Pirie |
| 2009 | United Kingdom | World War II in HD Colour | Robert Powell, Matthew Barrett |
| 2009 | United States | WWII in HD | Frederic Lumiere, Matthew Ginsburg |
| 2009 | United States | Valor With Honor | Torasan Films |
2010s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | War Music | David Porteous | |
| 2011 | United States | We Were There | Jarod O'Flaherty |
| 2011 | Netherlands | 900 Days | Jessica Gorter |
| 2011 | United Kingdom | The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire | Stewart Binns |
| 2011 | Russia | Soviet Storm: World War II in the East | Anna Grazhdan |
| 2012 | United Kingdom | Britain at War in Colour | Stewart Binns |
| 2012 | United States | Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States | Oliver Stone |
| 2013 | United States | The Ghost Army | Rick Beyer |
| 2014 | United States | Second War Diary: The War Day by Day | José Delgado |
| 2015 | Germany | Hostages of the SS | Christian Frey |
| 2016 | Australia | A Long Way Back | Samm Blake |
| 2018 | Italy | Visconti's Eagles | Claudio Costa |
| 2019 | United Kingdom | Greatest Events of WWII in Colour | Sam Taplin, Nicky Bolster, Kasia Uscinska, Josh Whitehead & Ailsa Fereday |
2020s
| Year | Country | Title | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | United Kingdom | WWII in Color: Road to Victory | Sam Taplin, Lou Westlake, Kim Lask, Stan Griffin & Katie Boxer |