World War 2 only lasted 6 years, but it became the deadliest war in human history, -- between
70 and 85 million deaths, including the holocaust and nuclear attacks on Japan.
It was a world-changing period so abundant with stories that new movies are still being
made about it today.
It’s hard to capture the true scope of World War 2, but here are the 12 streamable films
that do it best.
George C. Scott portrays the complex and provocative General George Patton in this 1970 bio-epic.
Perhaps just as famously, Scott was also the first actor to refuse the Academy Award for
best actor.
He previously warned the Oscars that he would do so on ethical grounds if he won.
Scott believed every dramatic performance was fundamentally unique and incomparable.
Saving Private Ryan needs little introduction.
The iconic Spielburg film stars Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, and Matt Damon, and recreates
the violence of war through the harrowing Invasion of Normandy.
It’s one of the greatest movies in any genre, and an extraordinary homage to allied heroes
of Europe.
The existentialist anti-war film Come and See focuses on the Nazi German occupation
of Belarus through the eyes of a teenager who joins the resistance movement.
It’s simultaneously surreal and hyper-real, and draws on the atrocities and human suffering
inflicted upon Eastern Europeans.
It took 8 years of censorship from the Soviet government before the film was finally allowed
to be completed.
The Bridge on the River Kwai follows a British colonel leading a team of prisoners of war
in building a bridge for their Japanese captors, who plan for a rebellion.
The epic mostly ran the table at the Academy Awards, capturing statues for best picture,
best director, best actor, best writing, best cinematography, best editing, and best music.
Schindler’s List is so famously wrenching, it’s increasingly harder to find anyone
who’s seen it.
But Steven Spielberg’s magnum opus is the authoritative on-screen depiction of the Holocaust.
Liam Neeson plays a German businessman, who worked with his wife to save the lives of
more than 1,000 Polish-Jewish refugees by employing them in his factories.
It also features unforgettable performances from Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley.
Director Clint Eastwood portrays one of the most famous battles from the perspective of
Japanese soldiers in Letters From Iwo Jima
The film was nominated for Golden Globes and Oscars, and rises above its companion piece,
Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the American viewpoint.
Casablanca is one of the greatest films ever made, though not necessarily remembered as
a WW2 movie.
It essentially set the standard for the wartime romance genre.
Performances from Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman, combined with the classic writing, make this
a treat, even for modern audiences.
Quentin Tarantino presents an alternate history in his depiction of the assassination plots
on Nazi Germany’s leadership—including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels—by a ragtag
Jewish group of righteous killers called the Basterds.
Like all of his films, it garnered the controversial director high praise and objection.
Tarantino, as he did later in Django Unchained, rights many historical wrongs with wonton
sadistic violence.
Das Boot is a celebrated West German classic, initially produced to be a mini-series.
It takes place in the depths of a claustrophobic Nazi U-boat.
It was first released as a 149-minute cinema premiere, but would later become much longer
for TV, and eventually a 209-minute director’s cut.
The title of The Thin Red Line alludes to a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem, in which
he calls foot soldiers “the thin red line of heroes.”
Director Terrence Malick returned from a 20-year hiatus to direct this movie, which Gene Siskel
called “the greatest contemporary war film” he had ever seen.
Night and Fog is a documentary short focusing on the abandoned grounds of Nazi concentration
camps in occupied Poland.
The lean scripting describes the lives of prisoners who suffered abject horrors.
It also addresses Nazi Germany’s normalized apathy and masochism, including torture, supposedly
scientific and medical “experiments,” rapes, and mass executions.
Christopher Nolan’s drama/thriller Dunkirk centers on the covert evacuation of Allied
troops out of the French city before Nazi forces can capture it.
It’s a work of tremendous depth and detail, and Nolan manages grandeur, scale, and drama
without sacrificing historical accuracy.
That’s our list of the best WWII films you can stream right now.
If you’re ready to go down the history rabbit hole, let us know where you’ll start in
the comments below.
And if you’re watching another great wartime film that’s not on our list, be sure to
shout it out in the comments as well.
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