Do Germany and Japan have ww2 movies

Cafe Society
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Asking if Germany has any WW2 movies is like asking if the US has ever made a movie about Vietnam. But then, Vietnam was ONE of many pivotal points in US history of merely 241 years, but WW2 and all of the surrounding events was THE event in German history, which reaches a bit more back in time. So much of post-war art in Germany, including cinema, dealt with the realization, shame, guilt, processing and the preventing of suppression of that monstrous events.

It immediately started in literature and arts, also some earlier film classics have been made, like the aforementioned “Die Brücke”, but in post war Germany up to the middle sixties, probably guilt-laden everday people preferred to get escapism out of the movies instead of confrontation with their ugly past, so mostly German cinema shunned this theme, with some very other notable exceptions like “Des Teufels General”.

As I said, German literature didn’t have much of these hang-ups, as it catered more to the more educated classes. With the student movement of the middle/late sixties, some of those dams broke, but I think it was the screening of the TV series “Holocaust” in Germany that really inspired many German filmmakers to tackle the time period. Since then many remarkable German movies about WW2 have been made which have already been mentioned here, like “Das Boot”, “Stalingrad”, “Der Untergang” etc.

Note that the ratio between movie and TV market in Germany tends MUCH more toward TV than in the US for different reasons, so additionally to the movie productions there have been made tons of TV movies, series and documentaries about the times.

The weakness in the US/Vietnam analogy is this: you won’t find a German “Rambo” or “Missing In Action” about WW2, but rather exclusively “Apocalypse Now” or “Platoon”. There won’t be much heroism shown in military actions, but rather in humanitarian acts. The typical hero of a German WW2 will be a kind and upright person, it can even be a Wehrmacht soldier, but not one of those who plows down 200 enemies with one machine gun. Far, VERY far from that.

(I really don’t know if those kinds of movies exist, at least none of big budget German productions. But coming back to the literature angle, there was an outlet for those fantasies, the "Landser pulp books)

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The Tin Drum.

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Missed edit - ninja’ed - post 23.

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If memory serves Godzilla is sent back in time and is showing killing US soldiers. There was some controversy at the time. This was during the “Godzilla protector of Japan” stories.

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In one version, Godzilla is an ordinary dinosaur on a mysterious uncharted Pacific island, who, by attacking an American force, saves a Japanese force from being wiped out. He then gets mutated by atomic radiation into the gigantic monster we know. There were also some evil time-traveling aliens involved, but I don’t remember all of the details.

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Big WWII/history movie buff here.

I’ve seen a number of Japanese-produced films on the subject of WWII. Though I wouldn’t say they’re revisionist per se, they do tend to simply ignore some of the bigger issues and reasons behind the war and their own wrong doings. Instead, they focus on their own suffering and the consequences. It’s kind of like a kid starting a fight he loses and then tattling about the beating he received while failing to mention the circumstances or why he was in a fight in the first place.

Typically, the protagonist will be very patriotic and eager to die for his country. If he is asking others to make sacrifices, he’ll be stoic and full of internal regret about it. The Americans aren’t really played as the bad guys - just a faceless, mechanized enemy. The war itself is the bad guy. They never mention why they’re in the war in the first place or that they started it or that they committed atrocities. If there are any gung-ho pro-war Japanese portrayed, it is never the protagonist, but merely other officers or characters whom the protagonist look down upon.

I’ve seen:

Japan’s Longest Day
Battle of Okinawa
Father of the Kamikaze
Yamato.

They tend to be over-wrought with Japan as the victim.

If we could count American films “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Tora Tora Tora”, each of which were made with Japanese participation and cooperation, we might see a more balanced representation of the Japanese attitudes of the time.

For German films, there are more. As with the Japanese, the protagonist is never a dyed in the wool Nazi or SS man. However, the evil actions of other true Nazis are not avoided or denied.

A few have been mentioned here already - Das Boot, Stalingrad, Die Brücke, Der Untergang . “Hitler Jugend” and “Europa” are also very good. There are also a few decent miniseries “Generation War” and “Dresden” which show the civilian impact without avoiding the reasons for the war in the first place. I’d say the Germans are definitely more intellectually honest about the war that the Japanese.

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Not to completely defend the Japanese, but it is worth noting that there are some large Nationalist organizations within the country who have done things like firebomb teachers and politicians who admit to atrocities during WWII. So even if 90% of the country would be open to accepting what all happened during WWII, it may not be safe for anyone to delve into that realm.

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There is also (I remembered, after my original posts) a live-action movie adaptation of this manga.