What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
USSR, Late November, 1941. Based on the account by reporter Vasiliy Koroteev that appeared in the Red Army's newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, shortly after the battle, this is the story of Panifilov's Twenty-Eight, a group of twenty-eight soldiers of the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, under the command of General Ivan Panfilov, that stopped the advance on Moscow of a column of fifty-four Nazi tanks of the 11th Panzer Division for several days. Though armed only with standard issue Mosin-Nagant infantry rifles and DP and PM-M1910 machine guns, all useless against tanks, and with wholly inadequate RPG-40 anti-tank grenades and PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles, they fight tirelessly and defiantly, with uncommon bravery and unwavering dedication, to protect Moscow and their Motherland.
In a tale of double agents and decoys, this documentary reveals, for the first time, the story of King George VI's elaborate ruse to divert German attention away from the Normandy landings in 1944.
Ajay Dixit, an ordinary history teacher in a high school, enjoys mini celebrityhood in his town courtesy of the fake image he has built. He shares a strained relationship with his newly-wed wife. Circumstances force him to take a trip to Europe for the World War II trail accompanied by his wife. Will his relationship with his wife survive this trip? Will he manage to win the war within?
Biographical account of America's President for the latter part of WWII. Shows Truman's rise from small-town nobody to leader of the USA, his decision to use the Atomic Bomb against Japan, and subsequent election as the US' post-war President.
At the start of World War II, Cmdr. Ericson is assigned to convoy escort HMS Compass Rose with inexperienced officers and men just out of training. The winter seas make life miserable enough, but the men must also harden themselves to rescuing survivors of U-Boat attacks, while seldom able to strike back. Traumatic events afloat and ashore create a warm bond between the skipper and his first officer
During World War II in the freezing winter of 1944-45 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.
Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 75 Years Later is told entirely from the first-person perspective of leaders, physicists, soldiers and survivors.
A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?
In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink.
Berlin, 1943, during World War II. Martha Liebermann, an elderly upper-class Jewish woman, faces the decision of her life: should the widow of the world-famous and revered painter Max Liebermann continue to try to obtain an exit permit from the Nazis or, with the help of a resistance group, should she flee to Switzerland?
The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.
This documentary follows the steps of the boys of H Company as they fight on the island of Iwo Jima.
Stella, grows up in Berlin during the rule of the Nazi regime. She dreams of a career as a jazz singer, despite all the repressive measures she is forced to go into hiding with her parents in 1944, her life turns into a culpable tragedy.
Israel, 1961. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, responsible for organizing the extermination of European Jews, is sentenced to death.
A Polish spy who works for the British during the Second World War. After a betrayal, she is compromised in Warsaw and finds herself in a murky world of treachery.
The true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. Based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film.
How did Nazi Germany, from limited natural resources, mass unemployment, little money and a damaged industry, manage to unfurl the cataclysm of World War Two and come to occupy a large part of the European continent? Based on recent historical works of and interviews with Adam Tooze, Richard Overy, Frank Bajohr and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent, and drawing on rare archival material.
July, 1941. After the beginning of the German invasion, an Italian soldier, a veteran of the colonial wars, is sent to the Soviet front. As he remembers the fairy tales his Russian mother used to tell him, the train he is travelling in crosses Europe on its way to the vast Ukrainian plains, where the enemy and a cruel winter await him… (Based on the experiences of several Italian soldiers.)