Best movies like Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals Starring Nicole Engeln, Jochen Böhler, Dawid Golik, Detlef Fetchenhauer, and more. If you liked Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals then you may also like: The Zookeeper's Wife, Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike, The Ogre, Rabbit à la Berlin, Jew Suss: Rise and Fall and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
September 1st, 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The campaign is fast, cruel and ruthless. In these circumstances, how is it that ordinary German soldiers suddenly became vicious killers, terrorizing the local population? Did everyone turn into something worse than wild animals? The true story of the first World War II offensive that marks in the history of infamy the beginning of a carnage and a historical tragedy.
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Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
The second film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. It introduces Germany as a nation whose aggressive ambitions began in 1863 with Otto von Bismarck and the Nazis as its latest incarnation.
Rabbit à la Berlin
The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Jew Suss: Rise and Fall
This intricate historical drama tells the story of actor Ferdinand Marian (Tobias Moretti), who is ordered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to star in the 1940 anti-Semitic film Jew Suss. Despite his cooperation, Ferdinand's actions have unexpected costs. Ferdinand's Jewish wife, Anna (Martina Gedeck), is sent to a concentration camp, and as World War II intensifies, he rebels against the Nazis, leading to the destruction of his career.
Babiy Yar
Autumn 1941. The Russian army flees Kiev, chaos reigns, soldiers attempt to trade their uniforms for civilian clothes in order to escape unnoticed. The war and pending capture of Kiev by the Germans is the only topic of discussion. Everyone has heard of the horrible things that have happened in other areas, where Jews were brutally and inhumanely murdered. Indecision and despair spread like wildfire among the population. As the German army marches in, fear and horror take over.
Battle of the Bulge
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.
Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler
The rise and fall of Nazi Germany in part through the use of classical allegory.
Charlotte
The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.
Conspiracy
The historical recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered in a Berlin suburb to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, this group of high ranking German officials came to the historic and far reaching decision that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated in what would come to be known as the Holocaust.
Schindler's List
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Tobruk
In September 1942, the German Afrika Korps under Rommel have successfully pushed the Allies back into Egypt. A counter-attack is planned, for which the fuel dumps at Tobruk are a critical impediment. In order to aid the attack, a group of British commandos and German Jews make their way undercover through 800 miles of desert, to destroy the fuel dumps starving the Germans of fuel.
I'll Find You
Inspired by stories of Polish musicians from the 1930s and 40s. Two young lovers, Robert, a Catholic opera singer, and Rachel, a Jewish violin virtuoso, dream of one day performing together at legendary Carnegie Hall. When they're torn apart by the German invasion of Poland, Robert vows to find Rachel, no matter what the war may bring. His search leads him on a life-threatening journey through the heart of Nazi Germany, to a reckoning that Rachel may be lost to him forever.
Escape from Sobibor
The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.
Labyrinth of Lies
A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.
All This and World War II
Peter Gabriel is among the rockstars performing the music of Lennon and McCartney against a montage of World War II newsreel footage.
Stolen Children
June 1941, during World War II. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler orders the mass abduction of particularly well-bred young children from Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union in order to be educated in German culture, by both state schools and German families…
The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler
Irena Sendler is a Catholic social worker who has sympathized with the Jews since her childhood, when her physician father died of typhus contracted while treating poor Jewish patients. When she initially proposes saving Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, her idea is met with skepticism by fellow workers, her parish priest, and even her own mother Janina.
My Name Is Sara
The true life-story of Sara Góralnik, a 13 year-old Polish Jew whose entire family was killed by Nazis in September of 1942. After a grueling escape to the Ukrainian countryside, Sara steals her Christian best friend’s identity and finds refuge in a small village, where she is taken in by a farmer and his young wife. She soon discovers the dark secrets of her employers’ marriage, compounding the greatest secret she must strive to protect, her true identity.
Stalin's James Bond
An account of the troubled life of Richard Sorge (1895-1944), a Soviet spy of German origin who played a decisive role in the outcome of World War II.
Erna, Helmut and the Nazis
Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.
Ordinary Men: The "Forgotten Holocaust"
The Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial of 1947/1948 is considered the largest murder trial in history against members of four death squads from the security police and SD (the security service of the SS). During World War II, six million Jews were murdered. Four million died in the extermination camps, but two million people were killed in systematic mass shootings. The perpetrators came face to face with their victims. They shot at men, women, children - day after day, obediently and assiduously, as if it were normal work. Tens of thousands of Germans belonged to the mobile commandos of the task forces and police battalions. Who were these men, how could they commit such murders? What did the few survivors tell, how were they able to escape the mass extinction and live on with the horrific experience? Based on written traditions, original documents, film footage and photos as well as expert statements, the documentary traces the path of one of these murder battalions.
1945: The Savage Peace
How, in 1945, after the end of World War II and the fall of the Nazi regime, the defeated were atrociously mistreated, especially those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in Germany's neighboring countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. A heartbreaking story of revenge against innocent civilians, the story of acts as cruel as the Nazi occupation during the war years.
Filmmakers for the Prosecution
In 1945, two young American soldiers, brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg, are commissioned to collect filmed and recorded evidence of the horrors committed by the infamous Third Reich in order to prove Nazi war crimes during the Nuremberg trials (1945-46). The story of the making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, a paramount historic documentary, released in 1948.
Death Camp Treblinka: Survivor Stories
The only two survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp recount the horrors they experienced and tell how their lives were after escaping during a revolt in 1943.
The Eagle and the Lion: Hitler vs Churchill
Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.
St. Louis
Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.
Little Ships - The Miracle of Dunkirk
To mark the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, Dan Snow tells the story of the 'little ships' which made the perilous cross-channel voyage, as 50 of them return to France.
The Guard of Auschwitz
Nazi occupied Poland, during the World War II. Hans, a former brilliant student, has become an SS officer stationed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. When he is commissioned by his superior officer to build an efficient gas chamber, Hans, facing the harsh reality, begins to realize the magnitude of the atrocious acts of which he is being accomplice.
Battle of the Bulge: Winter War
Lt. Robert Cappa and his platoon of 2nd Infantry Division soldiers must defend a vital supply depot from being captured by attacking German soldiers.
The Soldier
A story of a boy, forced to grow mature before his time and to die too early because of the cruel war circumstances. This film is dedicated to all the children who have died during the National Liberation War.
The Zookeeper's Wife
The account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion.