It’s not a feature film, but the OP might enjoy A Welcome to Britain. This is a 1943 US Army training film, that was intended to introduce American soldiers to the British way of life.
It’s “hosted” by Burgess Meredith. I say “hosted,” because Meredith plays a US soldier-filmmaker who is tasked with producing such a film, but he breaks the fourth wall constantly, speaking to the viewer about what he encounters. And he encounters a lot: British pub culture, the education system (he visits a classroom at a school), home life when he is invited for dinner at a couple’s home. Really interesting film; it checks in at 38 minutes, but packs a lot in that time. The OP might enjoy it.
Mrs. Miniver (1942) - Life in Britain in the early days of the war
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - Soldiers coming home to America after the war
Casablanca (1942) - I don’t think I have to explain this one
The Zone of Interest (2023) - A German family living next door to Auschwitz
The Pianist (2002) - A musician hides in Warsaw to escape the Nazis
If you’re going to museums be aware of the Tizard Mission. England literally boxed up all their secret projects and sent them to the US to bring them to fruition. It’s probably the single most import event in the war. The Magnetron alone allowed the US to miniaturize radar for use in aircraft. It completely turned the tables on U boats.
Numbers 3 and 2 in your post are 1 and 3 on my list of all-time favorite movies.
I think 2008’s Valkyrie deserves mention in this thread. Tom Cruise was good as Claus von Stauffenburg, and the film was a fairly accurate depiction of the plot to assassinate Hitler.
I’d watch 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, whose title character is infatuated with Mussolini and jack-booted Fascists, just to see the young Maggie Smith in her prime.
Spitfire (1942). Leslie Howard portrays aircraft designer Reginald Mitchell in the story of Britain’s greatest fighter plane. Howard died a year later, when the airliner he was flying in was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.
Reach for the Sky (1956). Kenneth More plays legless RAF ace Douglas Bader, who became a POW after he was shot down over France in 1941. The Germans allowed a prosthetic limb to be dropped by parachute to replace the one Bader lost while baling out of his damaged Spitfire.
Known in the UK as The First of the Few - and for William Walton’s music, which he cannily turned into a concert piece. He also composed for Battle of Britain (1969), and turned that into a concert piece too, which was just as well, since in the end it wasn’t used for that movie.
Another one that’s occurred to me, though it may not be on OP’s destination list: Malta Story (1953) - a combination drama/romance/spy story set under the onslaught on the island and its touch-and-go survival.
The story of the famed truck convoy system that supplied the Allies in Europe.
It may not sound glamorous. But the trucks were targeted heavily. Truck convoys were hunted just like the ships that crossed the atlantic. The convoys relied on speed to make them more difficult to target.
This movie used to run regularly on the cable channels. I’m not sure it’s remembered now.
Yeah, I’d definitely put the Hanks/Spielberg WW2 shows in the list, if only because they have tried their best to accurately portray those events and brought all their Hollywood mojo to bear in the process. Saving Private Ryan is another by them that I’d recommend.
I do want to point out that all three series are based on source material- Band of Brothers was more or less adapted from Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name about Easy Company of the 506th PIR, The Pacific was adapted from two books- “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie, and “With the Old Breed” by Dr. Eugene Sledge, both of the 1st Marine Division, albeit from different regiments (Leckie was in the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines and Sledge was in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines), and Masters of the Air was based on the book of the same name by Donald L. Miller.
As to why The Pacific suffered (and why Band of Brothers was so good), it’s because there isn’t any contiguous source material- I think Leckie (who got wounded at Peleliu) and Sledge (whose first battle was Peleliu) was as close to overlapping as they could find. I haven’t seen Masters of the Air yet, but I have read the book, and I am curious to see how it worked out- the book did not chronicle the 100th Bomb Group specifically- it was more about the 8th Air Force and strategic bombing initiative overall- how the pre-war theories didn’t work, how they adapted, how the crews fared, etc. with lots of individual anecdotes and tales, but not the history of one particular unit all the way through like we had in Band of Brothers And I suspect that The Pacific was late enough in time that most of the veterans were probably dead by then, unlike when Band of Brothers was being produced and filmed.
As far as films go, I’ve always liked “12 O’Clock High” with Gregory Peck, and “The Longest Day” with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and a whole host of other stars.
For the other side of Europe, “Cross of Iron” by Sam Peckinpah, starring James Coburn and Maximilian Schell is an excellent film, if a bit of a hard watch.
That would pair well with another racially progressive film that highlights the contributions of American minorities on the battlefront. Go For Broke! (1951) tells the story of the Nisei (442nd) Brigade. Van Johnson plays the bigoted white officer who is shown the error of his ways.
The Outsider (1961) tells the tragic story of US Marine Ira Hayes, the Native American who helped raise the American flag on Mt Suribachi after the landings on Iwo Jima.
