Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought- provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

Category: WWII Movies & Films  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Hitler Movies', 'WWII Documentaries', 'WW2-era Footage', 'WW2 Photograph Collections', 'WWII Medals: Most decorated soldiers'.

Real To Reel: World War II In Film at The National World War II Museum
The crucial years of WW2 have influenced and inspired filmmakers, documentarians and the media for 60 years. To commemorate and reflect upon this era, The National World War II Museum in New Orleans will present "Real to Reel: World War II in Film, Documentaries & Newsreels", April 10-12, 2008. "WW2 has been the focus of many important and compelling film productions, including The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, The Shooting War, and most recently, Ken Burns' THE WAR," said Gordon H. Mueller, President and CEO of The National World War II Museum.     [ huliq :: 2008-04-08 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Sophie Marceau's film sparks resistance by the French resistance
Heroines of the French resistance have taken issue with a film that was supposed to honour their fight against the Nazis. Les Femmes de l'Ombre (women of the shadows), starring Sophie Marceau, had got praise from film critics for at last recognising the mostly ignored role of women resistance fighters. French recruits of the Special Operations Executive, set up in 1940 by Winston Churchill, say the film dishonours their fallen comrades by hinting that women were coerced into the resistance. "This film is worse than if they had done nothing," says resistance member Denise Vernay.     [ telegraph :: 2008-03-09 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Film about Wilhelm Gustloff: Women, children torpedoed by a Soviet submarine
A film about the sinking of a Nazi ship carrying thousands of German refugees at the end of World War II has lifted the lid on one of Germany's most painful memories. The film, Die Gustloff, tells the story of the Nazi cruise ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", torpedoed by a Soviet submarine on Jan. 30, 1945. 9300 people died, thought to be biggest loss of life on a single ship. Yet the tale of the Gustloff remains unknown outside the country due to the reluctance of postwar generations to probe Germans' WW2 suffering. Launched in 1937, Gustloff was named after the assassinated head of the Swiss Nazi party.     [ reuters :: 2008-03-03 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

German filmmakers take control of their nation's Nazi past
Nazi storm troopers and battle tanks heading through the streets or even the appearance of the Fuhrer at mass rallies would seem to be at odds with modern Berlin, which has emerged as a background for a wave of new films exploring the horrors of the Third Reich which have underlined the moves by German filmmakers to take charge of their history. The flood of WWII films have included stories about an elite Nazi school (Napola), the life of Joseph Goebbels, a uprising by Jewish prisoners' women forced to work as prostitutes for Nazi Germany's wartime army, along with interview with Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge in Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary.     [ earthtimes :: 2008-01-23 :: Documentary films: War, History & Nazi Germany ]

Miracle of Sant'Anna: Rewriting World War II history
4 companies of the 16th SS Panzer-Grenadier Division arrived in Sant'Anna before dawn on 12 August 1944. After a flare fired at 6am, SS men killed everyone they came across. In all 560 people died. A Spike Lee film - based on a novel The Miracle of Sant'Anna by James MacBride, a black WWII veteran - will document the atrocity, but some survivors think he is rewriting history. Lee's aim was "to restore the voice of black soldiers who ... fought with great courage... but back home they were still considered second-class citizens." But one scene in the film has convinced some villagers that he is going to depict the massacre as a reprisal for partisan attacks.     [ independent :: 2007-11-10 ]

Documentary film The Forgotten Eagles - Mexico in World War II
A documentary The Forgotten Eagles by Victor Mancilla will make its Northwest debut on August 2 in a special screening in Portland. The film tells the story of the "Aztec Eagle" fighter pilots of Fighter Squadron 201: the only Mexican military unit to serve in combat outside their country. Created by special accord between Franklin Roosevelt and Manuel Avila Camacho, the elite unit of aviators helped American forces liberate the Philippines. The pilots' exploits were highly publicized; they became national heroes in Mexico and symbols of U.S. - Mexico wartime solidarity. The unit was decorated by the governments of all 3 countries for valor in the cause of freedom.     [ pacificu :: 2007-08-03 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Film on Czechoslovak troops in WW2 North Africa - Tobruk in 1941
Film director Vaclav Marhoul will start shooting the film Tobruk about Czechoslovak soldiers fighting in north Africa during World War II. The film will show an WW2 episode in which 650 Czechoslovak soldiers along with British, Australian, Polish and South African troops defended Libyan Tobruk - the last strategic port in the area controlled by the Allies - against Italian and German forces in 1941. The main role actors are undergoing hard training in WW2 uniforms with replica guns in the Vyskov military area separated from the outside world.     [ praguemonitor :: 2007-07-24 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

1933 Reichstag Fire - Germany's UFA lights up over 'Fire'
Nazi Germany's darkest period remains a treasure trove for filmmakers. In "Der Reichstagsbrand" (The Reichstag Fire), Potsdam-based UFA Filmproduktion will explore the circumstances of the unexplained fire that destroyed Germany's parliament building, the famed Reichstag, in the early days of Adolf Hitler's reign. The 1933 blaze paved the way for Adolf Hitler's consolidation of power over the country after the Nazi government blamed the fire on a communist conspiracy. In the wake of the attack, Hitler won a vote granting him powers to rule by decree, making him in effect, a parliamentary-approved dictator.     [ variety :: 2007-04-18 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Black Book - Resistance by the Dutch during the Nazi occupation
Black Book, Set in the Netherlands during World War II, is a war film with raw violence, intense action and a twisting plot that offers a series of surprises. Breaking records in the Netherlands as the highest-grossing Dutch-made film, it explores underground Resistance by the Dutch during the Nazi occupation. The story's focus is a woman who forms allegiances with whomever she can in order to avoid capture by the Nazis. Rescued by Resistance fighters, she becomes an arms smuggler, infiltrating Nazi headquarters. Abruptly seizing an opportunity, she seduces a high-ranking Nazi soldier in a move that changes the outcome of several lives.     [ usatoday :: 2007-04-05 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Video: German Paratroopers ambush 5 american Sherman tanks
Wehrmacht fallschirmjager and infantry troops ambush and destroy five Sherman tanks during the combats in Normandy.     [ youtube :: 2007-02-23 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Black Book - Dutch Resistance to Nazi rule
Like Adolf Hitler in his bunker and the crew of a German U-boat, the Dutch had no hiding place in World War II. The Nazis and the geography of the Netherlands made sure of that; and Verhoeven captures the sense of fascist terror closing in not in Amsterdam, but in the political capital Den Haag. The movie presents both the resistance and the occupiers as penetrated by each other's spies. Verhoeven's picture of the Liberation, in which Dutch mobs exact terrible revenge on Nazis and their sympathisers, is open to debate. The scenes are ugly, and probably pretty accurate in terms of what happened.     [ spiked-online :: 2007-02-14 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Movie about Allied torpedoing of refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff
Germans are marking the 62nd anniversary of history's worst sea disaster: the Allied torpedoing of a German refugee and troop ship in the closing days of WW2 that claimed 9,000 lives, mostly women and children. In what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, a major German tv broadcaster has plans for a movie about a long-forgotten incident which was an embarrassment for the Allies. In what has become an annual ritual in recent years, German media is devoting coverage to the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff on Jan 30, 1945, as the Red Army crossed the eastern border of the Third Reich.     [ monstersandcritics :: 2007-01-27 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler
The first German-language comedy about Adolf Hitler is to be shown Jan 2007. Dani Levy's "Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler" will be a fantasy version of the last days of the Fuehrer. Like the film Downfall this film focuses on the nazi leaders. But Levy wants people to see his film as a "counter" to films that put Hitler on a pedestal. Germany has never made a comedy about the Third Reich, but films such as The Great Dictator have had a cult following in the country. The filming caused buzz when Levy covered Berlin with swastikas and filled streets with extras wearing Nazi uniforms.     [ ejpress :: 2006-12-07 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

The Japanese perspective "Letters From Iwo Jima"
Clint Eastwood wanted to make a movie about the way war destroys young lives, and in "Letters From Iwo Jima," youth is seen sacrificed in huge, bloody, burned numbers. "Flags" shone a klieg light onto the dark art of wartime propaganda, casting America's WWII leadership in cynical hues. But the Japanese made only rare cameos, mostly just to die, horribly. So he shot a second film, approaching the battle from the Japanese perspective. "Letters" is the view of combat from the carved tunnels of the other side, and it tries to bestow humanity upon soldiers that Hollywood has always treated as a faceless enemy.     [ latimes :: 2006-11-25 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

A film about the last trainload from Berlin to Auschwitz in April 1943
A film about the last trainload of Jews from Berlin to Auschwitz has its premiere amid controversy over the German rail operator's refusal to allow exhibitions in stations about its role in transporting people to their deaths. The Deutsche Bahn has financed The Last Train (Der letze Zug), which portrays the journey in April 1943 of 688 persons from the German capital to the death camp where. Deutsche Bahn is prepared to allow the exhibition to travel around the country to be displayed in museums, but stations themselves "are not the place for a subject as important as the Holocaust."     [ metimes :: 2006-11-10 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

The Top 12 World War II war films
With so many WWII films and such variety to choose from, a best-of list is almost impossible. But here are 12 of the finest, covering combat, espionage, homefront and even the dreary boredom of war: "Patton" - George C. Scott was born to play General George Patton in Franklin J. Schaffner's portrait of a man who was scourge to the Germans in battle and both hero and villain to his own side. "Das Boot" - Wolfgang Petersen launched the greatest of submarine flicks, following a German U-boat on a mission. The film is available in the 2 1/2-hour U.S. cut and a 3 1/2-hour director's cut. Fans should check out the 5-hour miniseries.     [ cantonrep :: 2006-10-11 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Film on the Wehrmacht on the Russian front in World War II
Jim Jones is making his debut as a film actor in the film "Rhineland." He has lots of experience as a re-enactor with 38th Jaeger Regiment, 8th Infantry Division, 1st Company, a group portraying an unit that fought with the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front in World War II. His group is associated with the WWII Historical Re-Enactment Society Inc. The 38th Jaeger's purpose is: To preserve the memory of the WWII soldier through re-enactment battles and preservation of WWII memorabilia. When they undertake a re-enactment, the unit commanders get maps and a scenario of an actual battle for the re-enactors to portray.     [ goedwardsville :: 2006-10-11 :: Reenactment & Reenactors: Living History ]

Film honours africans who liberated France from Nazi occupation
Yoube Lalleg expressed no regrets about leaving his village to liberate France from the Nazi occupation. He just wished more people knew his story. On August 15 1944, more than 100,000 African soldiers landed on the beaches of Provence and made their way up to the bloody standoff with the Nazis in Alsace. Despite being overshadowed by the Normandy D-day landings, the African assault was crucial in freeing occupied France. More than 23 nationalities from the French empire fought to free the motherland, and a new action film is about the forgotten, but mistreated, north African heroes.     [ guardian :: 2006-09-26 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Film portraying "human" Emperor Hirohito to open in Japan
A film painting a "human" portrait of Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War II, is set to be shown in Japan for the first time despite fears of right-wing anger. Revered as a god until Japan's defeat in 1945, Hirohito is still such a sensitive topic in ultra-conservative circles that the identity of the actor was kept secret before the movie's release. Hirohito's role in wartime decision-making has never been fully pursued in Japan due to a decision by U.S. occupation regime to keep him on the throne and turn the emperor into a symbol of a newly democratic Japan.     [ chinadaily :: 2006-07-29 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks ]

Silent Wings - Film of Glider pilots: do-or-die WWII missions
According to one General, glider pilots were "the most uninhibited individuals ever to wear an American uniform," they had no motors, no parachutes, and no second chances. Once they released from the C-47 tow plane, the glider pilot had one chance to guide the unarmed glider safely behind enemy lines. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, 6,000 daring men volunteered as pilots in the U.S. Glider Corps. Documentary will include interviews with journalists Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, who flew into Holland with the 101st Airborne Division. "Silent Wings" reveals the critical role gliders played in WWII offensives through rare archival footage and photographs.     [ historynetshop :: 2006-06-06 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Peter Jackson is working on WWII film The Dam Busters
Film director Peter Jackson is working on a spectacular £100million remake of the classic Second World War film The Dam Busters, complete with stunning special effects. Jackson will have to work with Sir David Frost, who last year bought the rights to Paul Brickhill's 1951 book about 617 Squadron's daring low-level bombing of German dams. Jackson, a selfconfessed 'war buff', has a lifelong interest in British military history after being inspired by a childhood visit to London's Imperial War Museum. He owns replicas of two WW1 fighters and a tank and spent £50,000 of his own money restoring the only film of Anzac troops at Gallipoli.     [ dailymail :: 2006-05-07 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Film crew to document WWII training
There isn't much about this military base that resembles the way it looked in 1942. The technology is new and the men who trained here with the First Special Service Force are mostly gone. But next week, a film crew will begin producing a documentary that chronicles the arduous training that shaped an elite group of soldiers 64 years ago. The outfit went on to achieve fighting fame in World War II and to serve as a model for the Army's modern Special Forces. "We're looking at recreating some of the training the First Special Service Force did at Fort Harrison and the Helena area back in 1942."     [ helenair :: 2006-04-29 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

French movie rescues forgotten history of Africa's WWII soldiers
A handful of Allied troops stare at the barrels of Nazi panzers, hurling grenades that bounce harmlessly off the vehicles' armoured skin. The Germans aim squarely at the Allied hideout and fire. These soldiers, giving their lives to defend a deserted village, are Africans - and the subject of a new French movie. Les Enfants du Pays (Hometown Boys) is the story of the so-called Senegalese Infantrymen, soldiers from France's former colonies in Africa who fought in Europe's wars. Formed to bolster France's dwindling ranks, colonial men fought in both World Wars. 300,000 soldiers from French colonies fought in the WW2.     [ msnbc :: 2006-04-28 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

World War Two: The Rewrite - It Happened Here
It is one of the most striking scenes in British cinema: Nazi stormtroopers marching through Parliament Square. Clearly designed to alarm and provoke, it is an image that could have been ripped from a WWII Nazi propaganda film. In actual fact, it is a scene from the 1964 British feature film, It Happened Here. The intervening decades have done little to diminish its worrying, subversive power. Made by debutante director Kevin Brownlow, together with his colleague Andrew Mollo, It Happened Here rewrites history to suggest what might have happened if Britain had been occupied by the Nazis.     [ findarticles :: 2006-04-24 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Kokoda tale of the 39th Militia Battalion hits big screen
64 years ago, Australian soldiers from the 39th Militia Battalion carried their weapons and the hopes of their homeland into the Papuan jungle to confront a vastly superior Japanese force along the Kokoda Trail. At the start of the campaign, these militiamen were derisively called "chocolate soldiers". By the end, they were known as "ragged bloody heroes" for their part in stopping the Japanese advance. The world premiere of a film dramatising a small part of the Kokoda campaign finally reaches the big screen. But the movie's release has sparked a fresh skirmish over whether it really captures the spirit of Kokoda.     [ abc :: 2006-04-12 :: Australia during WWII ]

Actor Freeman producing a film of 761st Black Panther Battalion
Morgan Freeman has motivation for producing a project on the 761st Tank Battalion, the first all-black armored unit to enter combat during WWII. "They were called up in late 1944 after General Patton had pretty much burned out much of the mechanized portion of the 33rd Army and needed more tanks. Against General Eisenhower's wishes, he called up this group. Attached to the 26th Infantry they fought their way to the Rhine River. In spite of attempts by brass to keep them back, they were the first American units to hook up with the Russians at the Rhine River, they had to steal gasoline and ammo to get there, but they did it."     [ eurweb :: 2006-03-21 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Berlin: Nazi rallying with giant swastika banners
An alarming sight in Berlin: The city's central "Lustgarten" square transformed into a Nazi rallying ground complete with giant swastika banners and a ranting Führer. But Germany's first comedy film about Hitler was bound to break taboos. Tourists stared open-mouthed at the scene in central Berlin: huge red banners bearing the Nazi swastika fluttering in the winter sun outside the city's cathedral, Wehrmacht soldiers in their steel helmets standing guard between the imposing pillars of the Old Museum and a crowd of hundreds cheering their Führer with enthusiastic Hitler salutes and chants of "Sieg Heil!"     [ spiegel :: 2006-03-07 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Battle for the Desert - footage from the frontlines of WWII
Some of the most famous battle footage from the frontlines of WWII is included in this five-hour marathon of newsreel and documentary film. The highlight of the first disc is Roy Boulting's Oscar-winning 1943 morale-booster Desert Victory. Using footage shot in North Africa by cameramen of the Army Film and Photographic Unit (4 of whom were killed during the campaign), it tells the story of the Allied defeat of Rommel's Afrika Korps and climaxes with the Battle of El Alamein.     [ smh :: 2006-03-04 :: Footage & Films of WWII Era ]

First German fictional film on Dresden bombing confronts taboos
Germany's first fictional film about the Allied bombing of Dresden was screened on the 61st anniversary of the firestorm, in a fresh sign the country is finally confronting its own wartime suffering. "Dresden -- The Inferno" tells the story of how the architectural jewel in eastern Germany known as Florence on the Elbe was reduced to rubble within hours in the British and US bombing of February 13-14, 1945. At least 35,000 people perished, including hundreds of refugees who had fled the horrors of the Eastern front.     [ afp :: 2006-02-15 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

Three Precious Leni Riefenstahl Alpine Fantasies Released
Kino has released 3 Alpine fantasies, all of them directed by Dr. Arnold Fanck and starring Leni Riefenstahl, a robust leading lady from the silents who became the Third Reich's most notorious propagandist. S.O.S. Iceberg (1933) was her final acting job, before she filmed Triumph of the Will. What we have with the mountaineering epic is a formula of calamity and tireless rescue, with Riefenstahl's heroine tromping up real glaciers herself. The stories may be stock, but the real-time grappling between actors and genuine icebergs, crevices and polar bears can be astonishing. The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929) and Storm Over Mont Blanc (1930) fill out the mold as well. Supplements include a rare Fanck-directed short and a 2002 interview with Riefenstahl.     [ villagevoice :: 2006-01-22 :: Footage & Films of WWII Era ]

Russian documentary on WWII angers politicians
Local politicians have pilloried a new documentary film, 'Baltic Nazism,' covering the Nazi period in the Baltic states. They have gone so far as to appeal to the Russian Embassy and the local prosecutor in an effort to stop the film's premiere in January. It includes a march to the Freedom Monument by members of All For Latvia and some veterans of the Latvian legion on the day honoring the legion.     [ baltictimes :: 2005-12-22 :: Latvia Divided - Nazi Past ]

The film version of the hit(ler) musical, The Producers
My grandfather Lt. Joachim von Busack was fortunate enough to meet Gen. Heinz Guderian, author of Achtung! Panzer. It was on the Eastern Front in 1942. Granddad was looking a little chopfallen due to his wounds and the 15-below-zero weather. Suddenly, the general entered his bunker. Granddad leapt to attention, but before he could salute, Guderian noted his mood. Clapping him on his remaining shoulder, the general rumbled, "Cheer up, soldier! They'll probably make one of those verdamnt musical comedies out of all this." The Producers is a sick joke that is nearly 40 years old.     [ metroactive :: 2005-12-22 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

The Wannsee meeting is the subject of the film
The Nazis' "Final Solution" began with a top-secret meeting at a magnificent mansion in Wannsee, on the outskirts of Berlin on Jan. 20, 1942. The conferees - 15 men around a large table - agreed to it over a buffet lunch. The meeting is the subject of the HBO film, "Conspiracy," which starred Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, the man who organized the conference.     [ bbc :: 2005-12-10 :: Path to Final Solution ]

Forgiving Dr. Mengele - Eva Kor's path to forgiving her persecutors
The documentary chronicles Eva Kor's path to forgiving Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi scientist who performed experiments on Kor and her twin sister, Miriam, while they were interred at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The film itself explored the concept of forgiveness, specifically in the context of a survivor forgiving her former persecutors.     [ calendarlive :: 2005-11-14 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

The Goebbels Experiment: Enthralling film of excerpts from Goebbels's diaries
Entries are spoken over montages of archival footage that span Goebbels's miserable childhood at the start of the 20th century to his ghastly family suicide in 1945. He loved Germany to death, and he remained a defiant nationalist even as the Allies invaded Berlin. The diary entries the film culls present a man teeming with schadenfreude for all things non-German.     [ Boston :: 2005-11-11 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks ]

Four New German Films Confront Holocaust
Article no longer available from the original source.
Sixty-seven years ago, on Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi-organized mobs burned and looted thousands of German synagogues and stores during Kristallnacht, the opening salvo of the Holocaust. How are the grandchildren of the perpetrators dealing with this legacy? Four new German movies show that far from forgetting its nation's past, today's generation is still wrestling with it, at times obsessively.     [ JT :: 2005-11-04 :: WWII Movies & Films ]

A nation shamed - Extent of French collaboration with the Nazis
The Sorrow and the Pity is one of the greatest films about the Nazi occupation of France. But when director Marcel Ophüls submitted the completed over 4-hour documentary in 1969, the station refused to screen it. Not because of its length, but because of its disturbing content. Network head told a government committee that the film "destroys myths that the people of France still need". The documentary painfully showed the extent of French collaboration with the Nazis.     [ guardian :: 2004-01-24 :: French Collaboration with Nazi Germany ]

See also

'Hitler Movies'

'WWII Documentaries'

'WW2-era Footage'

'WW2 Photograph Collections'

'WWII Medals: Most decorated soldiers'.

What's new - recent & interesting categories.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2008. All rights reserved.