# WWII in pictures; or, how much of the war can be told in movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 11, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354 "2018-11-11T13:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/1 "2018-11-11T13:56:14Z")
We were watching _Darkest Hou_r last night, and got to thinking about _Churchill_, and _Ike: Countdown to D-Day_, and started to wonder how much of WWII can be told in movies. How many reasonably accurate, fact-based movies are there of WWII? How long can you sit down and watch WWII in the movies and get a fairly accurate feel for the events in the war? We thought of: Darkest Hour Dunkirk Battle of Britain Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo The Longest Day Patton Churchill Ike mentioned above Downfall Movies like _Pearl Harbor_, well, it’s based on actual fact, but really isn’t that good or accurate of a movie. I’m not sure it counts. Movies like Twelve O’Clock High, which, while accurate to the experience of daylight bombing, isn’t based more than peripherally on actual events. Are there more that would work? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/2 "2018-11-11T14:53:26Z")
Grave of the Fireflies ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/3 "2018-11-11T15:23:06Z")
Midway Tora! Tora! Tora! ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/4 "2018-11-11T16:00:26Z")
all Hollywood movies leave things out or change them. HBO miniseries the Pacific and Band of Brothers (Euro theater) are both 10 hours long and are excellent. Since they are HBO shows they don’t pull any punches. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/5 "2018-11-11T16:24:10Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Midway > Tora! Tora! Tora! Definitely NOT _Midway_. _Letters From Iwo Jima_ \*Das Boot Enemy At the Gates\* ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/6 "2018-11-11T16:33:32Z")
_Sink the Bismarck!_ ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/7 "2018-11-11T16:38:49Z")
[_A Bridge Too Far_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(film)), which I believe is a reasonably accurate depiction of Operation Market Garden. [_The Bridge at Remagen_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_at_Remagen) is perhaps too highly fictionalized to qualify. I have not seen the movie, but I understand that _Valkyrie_ sticks pretty close to the facts of the Hitler assassination plot (although aspects are fictionalized), if you can get over the distraction of Tom Cruise in the lead role. [Fat Man and Little Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man_and_Little_Boy) sticks reasonably close to the historical facts about the Manhattan Project. For the Pacific: _Flags of Our Fathers_ (in part) _Letters from Iwo Jima_ Although they focus especially on individual stories, I believe they depict the battle accurately. _The Thin Red Line_ takes place during the battle for Guadalcanal, but also focuses more on personal stories than the historical aspects of the battle. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/8 "2018-11-11T17:04:16Z")
Two different aspects might be movies which attempt to stick to the big picture facts of the war or certain episodes, or ones which are focused on ‘what it was like’. Since “The Pacific” as mentioned though not technically a movie, “Band of Brothers” is pretty similar. “Saving Private Ryan” also in that general category for the ‘what it was like part’, though focusing a small story where it doesn’t particularly matter if that particular story happened. Whether the modern generation ‘don’t pull any punches’ depictions of WWII are really accurate I don’t know, since I’ve never been in a war. I’m not sure veterans of recent wars would even know, different sort of combat for the most part. Some of the 90’s-2000’s projects spent a lot of time with veterans trying to hone this, but Hollywood always has its own ideas and production values. Reading the title I thought it might be about historical footage or photographs. In many cases those sources fill in technical details that weren’t recorded otherwise. For example when people ask, how many GI’s carried this or that weapon? It wasn’t necessarily written down, and official tables of organization and equipment weren’t always reflective of reality. Pictures and film can add significant information. All the more so for less plentifully equipped armies than the US. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/9 "2018-11-11T17:13:50Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Definitely NOT _Midway_. > > _Letters From Iwo Jima_ > > \*Das Boot > > Enemy At the Gates\* _Das Boot_ is fiction. _Enemy at the Gates_ is mostly fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/10 "2018-11-11T17:24:29Z")
If you accept background and want to go before the US involvement you could actually use The Sound of Music to portray the _Anschluss_. While the story itself is fictionalized and sanitized you could certainly get a feel for ‘We’re Austria! We’re not?’ from it. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/11 "2018-11-11T17:47:19Z")
What’s wrong with _Midwa_y? I had thought it was pretty accurate? It’s got characters that are based on real people. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/12 "2018-11-11T17:59:22Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > _Das Boot_ is fiction. > > _Enemy at the Gates_ is mostly fiction. The OP said “fact based.” All films that aren’t strict documentaries are fiction. The OP wants a “feel for the events” as he puts it. _Das Boot_ gives that feel in spades. _Midway_ is a fucking joke. If you went through the movie and edited out about half of it, you could probably get a semi-coherent picture of the code breaking and the battle. You’d just have to cut out the leads. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/13 "2018-11-11T19:32:22Z")
_Atonement_ has a very powerful closing sequence set on the beaches of Dunkirk. _Battle of the Bulge_ covers that battle pretty thoroughly - not sure how accurate purists consider it, though (I remember they didn’t have actual German tanks for filming). _The Imitation Game_ is about Alan Turing and British codebreaking. _PT-109_ is about JFK’s experiences in the Pacific. _They Were Expendable_ is about earlier PT boat operations. _The Cruel Sea_ (not nearly as good as the book) is about grueling Royal Navy convoy duty. There’ve been two movies named _Stalingrad_, I think; I saw the German one, which is very good. _Valkyrie_ is about the 1944 German military plot to overthrow Hitler. _Conspiracy_ is a good film about the Wannsee Conference, although several of the actors (most notably Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich) look very little like the men they’re playing. _Red Tails_ is about the Tuskegee Airmen. \*The Man with the Iron Heart \*and _Anthropoid_ are both about Heydrich and the British-Czech plot to kill him. _Their Finest_ is about the British propaganda filmmaking industry during the war. _Fury_ is about U.S. Army tankers in the last days of the war. _Hope and Glory_ is about life on the British homefront. _The Captain_, a potent German B&W film from last year which I saw recently, is based on the true story of Willi Herold, a deserter who passed himself off as a Luftwaffe captain using a discarded uniform he’d found. He waged his own little reign of terror at a camp for German military prisoners, again in the last days of the war. Got to have _Schindler’s List._ ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/14 "2018-11-11T20:33:32Z")
_The Good German_, too. To cover the aftermath and occupation. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/15 "2018-11-11T21:00:10Z")
Not all the action was at the front. The Dambusters and Enigma Game both cover aspects of the technological development that underpinned the war effort. There was also the raid on the Norwegian heavy water plant - The Heroes of Telemark, which apparently had one of the actual participants playing a German guard and, if television movies count, then you can also add Copenhagen, about the German bomb effort. There are numerous fairly biographical movies about the resistance movement, ranging from Valkyrie [Tom Cruise plot to kill Hitler], Sophie Scholl [German civilian resistance] and, of course Schindler’s List. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/16 "2018-11-11T21:14:56Z")
There was a lot more to the Eastern Front than Stalingrad, which seems to be the only episode that gets any attention (at least in the West). _Come and See_ is great, so’s _Cross of Iron_. Neither is strictly historical, but they do cover things other films don’t (Khatyn and other Belorussian massacres and partisan actions, and the Kuban bridgehead and Caucasus front) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/17 "2018-11-11T22:39:43Z")
[Au Revoir les Enfants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_revoir_les_enfants) [Wartime Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_Farm) (not a movie) ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/18 "2018-11-12T12:26:23Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Not all the action was at the front. > > The Dambusters and Enigma Game both cover aspects of the technological development that underpinned the war effort. > > There was also the raid on the Norwegian heavy water plant - The Heroes of Telemark, which apparently had one of the actual participants playing a German guard and, if television movies count, then you can also add Copenhagen, about the German bomb effort. > > There are numerous fairly biographical movies about the resistance movement, ranging from Valkyrie [Tom Cruise plot to kill Hitler], Sophie Scholl [German civilian resistance] and, of course Schindler’s List. Well, that was a sloppy bit of scholarship. Clearly I meant the Imitation Game, and while I was composing this I got distracted reading all about German heavy water production and was soundly beaten by Elendil’s Heir for several of the suggestions. In return I offer Empire of the Sun - JG Ballard’s autobiographical novel adapted by Stephen Spielberg, and Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, based on Spike Milligan’s memoir. Have never seen PT109, but the accuracy issues raised in the wikipedia entry seem within the range of tolerance of others above. ---
**Author:** ![ohiomstr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/82dd89/32.png) [@ohiomstr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ohiomstr2)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/19 "2018-11-12T15:02:43Z")
The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far are perhaps the most historically accurate WW2 films I have seen. Battle of the Bulge would be better titled Battle of the Bilge, being in no way an accurate portrayal of the events. Band of Brothers is the best series about the war. I have not seen Pacific but the reviews seem to be favorable in terms of the accuracy. As much as i dislike Speilburg, parts of Saving Private Ryan were exceptional in recreating the “feel” of combat and the attention to detail was astounding. Most recently, Dunkirk seemed well researched and portrayed but I found it boring. What i would really like to see is a A Bridge Too Far quality film about Vietnam ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354/20 "2018-11-12T15:40:20Z")
A movie that presents an aspect of the war little seen otherwise is [_Soldier of Orange_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_of_Orange), about a group of Dutch students who either join the Resistance or Allied Forces, or become collaborators with the Germans. It’s based on an autobiographical book, but it’s years since I’ve seen it and so can’t say where it falls on the accuracy spectrum. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-in-pictures-or-how-much-of-the-war-can-be-told-in-movies/824354.md?page=2)