Top 250 Movies Like Schicksalsjahre

In occupied France, a convicted thief and murderer escapes the guillotine when a bombing raid strikes the prison, but is quickly re-captured by the inspector of the Surete responsible for his original arrest. Fearing the guillotine more than his actual death, the convict inveigles the inspector to help him with a plan to rescue 100 Frenchmen taken by the Gestapo following an act of sabotage: he will confess to being the saboteur and allow himself to be executed by firing squad, the Gestapo's method of execution, thus freeing the 100 men.

A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.

Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.

At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.

The ex-girlfriend (Juliette Greco) of a German fugitive hides with the captain (O.W. Fischer) and crew of a ship on the Rhine.

True story of three British POWs and their attempt to escape from Nazi Germany

A small group of soldiers capture a German observation post, but in turn are captured themselves. They soon escape and--with the aid of two women--try to fight their way to safety.

An indictment of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. The film tries to give a reconstruction of the events during the students' uprising in the Athens Polytechnic (November 1973) by documents, rehearsals, interviews, songs and poems.

A dramatic reconstruction of the July 1944 attempt by German Army Officers to assassinate Hitler with a bomb and end the war before Germany was totally destroyed.

When Naomi, a young refugee from Nazi-occupied Paris, moves into Alan Silverman’s building in New York, he does his best to avoid her. But despite Naomi's strange behavior and the language barrier, they slowly develop a deep and touching friendship.

The film focuses on the naval warfare around the Battle of Coronel and Battle of the Falkland Islands during the First World War. It was the last in a successful series of documentary reconstructions of First World War battles by British Instructional Films made between 1921 and 1927.

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

Tensions arise when a US military base is built in a small village in post-war Germany.

Students on a camping trip discover something sinister is lurking beyond the trees.

A young, Scottish RAF gunner is debriefed by French officials about his escape from Nazi-occupied territory. They are particularly interested in one person who may or may not have been a German agent.

In 1944, in the Belgian - German border, seven German soldiers survive an American attack in the front and lock themselves in a bunker to protect the position. Under siege by the enemy and with little ammunition, they decide to explore underground tunnels to seek supplies and find an escape route. While in the tunnel, weird things happen with the group.

During Civil War Reconstruction, the Connelly family is romantically restored to their former glory when Will Connelly marries a Yankee farm girl, Joanna Tate, despite the objects of his temperamental father Bob Connelly.

When Elizabeth is abducted by a fugitive sexual predator, she realizes she must take matters into her own hands and plot her escape. Based on a true story.

Uncle Remus draws upon his tales of Br'er Rabbit to help little Johnny deal with his confusion over his parents' separation as well as his new life on the plantation.

A guerilla leader falls in love with a mysterious woman in World War II Lisbon.

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.

In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.

Occupied France, 1940. A Nazi Commander discovers one of his prisoners, Danny is a champion boxer. He forces him to fight for his company's entertainment. But the POWs realise they can use these contests, as cover for an audacious breakout, before they re sent to Germany, where escape will be almost impossible. Their fate and freedom may all come down to how long Danny can keep fighting.

A gang hold a family hostage in their own home. The leader of the escaped cons is bothered by a recurring dream that the doctor of the house may be able to analyze.

Max Manus is a Norwegian 2008 biographic war film based on the real events of the life of resistance fighter Max Manus (1914–96), after his contribution in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. The story follows Manus through the outbreak of World War II in Norway until peacetime in 1945.

During the World War II, the prisoners of a German camp in a Greek island are trying to escape. They not only want their freedom, but also seek an ineffable treasure hidden in a monastery at the summit of the island's mountain.

During WWII, when an allied bomber is shot down over Germany, the five surviving crew are captured but cleverly escape detention after learning German secret information and knocking out a Nazi major. With the angry major in hot pursuit, aided by military personnel, Gestapo agents and Hitler-loyal citizens, the five wend their way across perilous Germany, intent on reaching the UK with the secrets they have learned.

A married couple are traveling on a deserted desert road at night. They stop at a diner and the husband goes to the men's room. He never returns and the wife begins to suspect serious foul play.

A teen girl disappears after trying to meet men online in order to escape her small town. Apparently, only her best friend worries enough to investigate the mystery.

An American goes to Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.

In 1959, in a small German village, the annual fair is set up. When a carousel is fixed firmly in the ground, a fair worker discovers a skeleton, a steel helmet, and a machine gun. The skeleton belongs to Robert Mertens, a plain soldier, who deserted in 1944 und flew to his home village. But when he arrived, no one wanted to help him, neither his former friends nor the minister, or even his own parents.

In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.

A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.

Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.

An escaped World War 2 Nazi doctor impersonates a murdered English doctor so he can work on a vaccination to protect the Germans in their planned germ warfare.

An American ex-WW II POW returns to Germany 30 years after the war. He teams up with the former commander of his prison camp. Together they spring a Nazi war criminal from jail. He's the only one left who knows where a secret wartime cache of gold is hidden.

A group of US Navy weathermen taking measurements in the Gobi desert in World War II are forced to seek the help of Mongol nomads to regain their ship while under attack from the Japanese.

After the North defeats the South, Union Maj. Jeff Clanton heads to Missouri to provide the Confederacy's Quantrill's Raiders a chance to claim allegiance to the Union, thereby clearing their wanted status. But standing in Clanton's way are the corrupt lawmen Joad and Fowler, who would rather keep the men outlaws to collect the reward on their heads. After Joad and Fowler frame Clanton for murder, he manages to escape, becoming an outlaw himself.

During the Second World War a British schoolteacher working in Denmark is caught up when the Germans invade.

Just after the Civil War a Texan and his men are fighting a ruthless Commissioner and his excessive taxes. After a Lieutenant is falsely accused of a pay wagon massacre by the Commissioner's men, he deserts the Army and tries to clear himself. At first he belives the Texan was behind the massacre but then learns it was the Commissioner and joins the Texan in his fight.

After watching the news on 9/11 with his family, Fernando travels from Mexico to New York City to find his father, an undocumented worker at the World Trade Center's famous Windows on the World restaurant.

In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.

A 14-year-old boy, struggling with gender identity and religion, begins to use fantasy to escape his life in the inner city and find his passion in the process.

Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.

An escaped convict and a woman ponder what to do with a not-quite-dead body.

Founding father, commander of the Continental Army and America's first president—George Washington's face is as familiar as the dollar bill. Today, archaeologists, scientists and historians are applying innovative forensic techniques to reveal the man behind the myth. We join a team, funded by the National Geographic Society, that has discovered the ruins of George Washington's childhood home—its exact location had been a mystery until now. As they comb the site, they unearth two cellars and a collection of incredible artifacts that help set the record straight on his fabled youth.

On the eve of the annual Scarecrow Festival, two St. Charles police officers search for a return killer the same night four teenagers go missing on Munger Road

Comedy about idiotic (the two can't even add 1+1) kidnappers, both played for unknown reasons by Joe Piscopo, who capture two young girls and hold them for ransom. However, in "Home Alone" fashion, the two girls make fools of the two men. The film becomes even sillier as two horses who talk to one another decide to rescue the girls from the kidnappers

A screenwriter does research for his new script by actually kidnapping and drowning young girls. He then places them in his "garden" of other dead girls coming back daily to check on them. One girl narrowly escapes and the other bodies are found leading to an ingenious plot to try and capture the killer.

An escaped mental patient kidnaps an illiterate teenage farm girl and takes her to his mountain hide-away, where they soon become friends and, eventually, lovers.

Diana arrives in a town to start a new job. She's threatened into working as an exotic dancer. She's later kidnapped and let loose naked in the wilderness as prey for the psycho hunter, like many women before her. Will she survive?

Jeff Elliot is an American GI investigating a black market gang in Munich.

A revelation about Oscar Torres, her unknown and once world-famous queer filmmaker cousin, sends Victoria down a path of self-discovery through reconstructions of his intimate memories living in the 1950's authoritarian Caribbean, as Victoria leads re-enactments of his unproduced screenplays with the family who erased him.

During World War II, American officer Capt. Lee Mitchell (Stuart Whitman) and a British military unit boldly infiltrate German-occupied enemy territory and attempt to kidnap brilliant Nazi scientist Dr. Von Heinken (Pinkas Braun) and bring him back in one piece. While shuttling their prized captive to safety, the Allied forces courageously assist desperate refugees and tussle with overpowering German and Russian forces.

A reconstruction, made from still photographs, of the lost 1927 Tod Browning film London After Midnight (1927) starring Lon Chaney.

This movie is about the love and protection of a man from another culture for the lowly horsemen of the the plains in Hungary during World War II.

Allied prisoners tunnel out of a stalag, then return to avenge fellow escapees executed by the Nazis.

A British naval officer has a brief affair with a woman in England and never knows that she bears him a son. 20 years later the boy is on a ship under his command when he is tracking a German Raider. When the boy is captured after his ship is sunk, he finds a way to slow the German's progress while a lethal hunt for him goes on.

A biography of Hildegard Knef, one of Germany's biggest post-war stars.

The story of Henry Purcell.

Tells the story of probably the world's greatest pilot through an extensive and in-depth interview: Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown CBE, DSC, AFC. From his flight with WW1 German fighter ace Ernst Udet in 1936 through to commanding a squadron of Buccaneers at the height of the Cold War, we hear how "Winkle" Brown experienced the rise and fall of Nazism; how he flew the most dangerous, uncontrollable aircraft, how he cheated death countless times.

Danny La Rue stars in this 1970s drag comedy as Fred Wimbush, a Shakespearean actor who is drafted into WWII and is appearing in a camp show in France when the Nazis advance. Unless he continues in his female costume, Fred is certain to be shot as a spy. The risque gags and double entendres fly as he attempts to make his escape in the company of a troupe of Girl Guides.

During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp in France.

Four pilots become stranded on a tropical island inhabited by beautiful women.

A forger is forced to work for a Nazi spy ring. His conscience gets the better of him, though, and he secretly conspires with the FBI to turn over the gang.

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.

What lies beneath the ocean? World War Two left a great number of ships and submarines hidden beneath the waves. Now, as the oceans drain, each vessel reveals its secrets through new data-based 3D reconstructions. From the Arizona in Pearl Harbour’s shallows, whose destruction brought America into the war, to Nazi super ship the Bismarck and its mysterious end three miles down. From the flaming merchant ships secretly torpedoed by U-boats off tourist beaches of the USA, to the covert inventions of the Allies' costly D-Day beachhead, and lastly to the troopship Leopoldville sunk with the needless deaths of 400 soldiers. Drain The Ocean exposes the truth.

Detailed and fascinating documentary telling the history of the famous German battleship of World War II. The urgent British hunt and the German ship's efforts to escape are described through vintage film and recollections of both British and German veterans of the battles.

The story of Hitler’s final hours told by people who were there. This special features exclusive forgotten interviews, believed lost for 65 years, with members of Hitler’s inner circle who were trapped with him in his bunker as the Russians fought to take Berlin. These unique interviews from figures such as the leader of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, have never before been seen outside Germany. Using rarely seen archive footage and dramatic reconstruction, this special tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.

The film explores the background and build-up to this final flight to disaster. Using dramatic reconstruction, archive footage and exclusive interviews with leading historians and engineering experts, the special delves into the political and scientific events that led up to the catastrophe.

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.

David Attenborough tells the story of the discovery and reconstruction in Argentina of the world's largest-known dinosaur, a brand new species of titanosaur.

The Battle of Shanghai has been described as the last battle of World War I, and the first battle of World War II. It was a warning to the world, a warning that was ignored. And it was the place where the destiny of modern China was set in motion. Based on the book “Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze” by Danish author Peter Harmsen, this film introduces key figures in the conflict, chronicles how the battle unfolded over the course of three months, and explores the aftermath and years of war that followed.

A "What if?" alternative history sees Nazi Germany prevailing in the second World War. First the occupiers establish their power bases, before they find themselves under attack from the underground resistance.

Dan Cruickshank returns to his childhood home of Warsaw for the first time in almost 60 years. In a personal and moving film, he recalls his boyhood memories to explore the memories of the city and the memories of its people. No city in Europe suffered so much destruction in the Second World War, no city rose up so heroically from the ashes. The Nazis had razed Warsaw to the ground, but after the war the people fought hard to bring their city back from the dead in one of the greatest reconstruction jobs in history. As a boy, Cruickshank lived in the rebuilt old town and it inspired his love of architecture and made him the man he is today.

How does one trigger a revolution? In the Romanian uprising in 1989, everything seemed to happen by itself. The people were fed up and were plagued by poverty and terror. There comes a time when action must be taken! But, it turns out that history is not that simple, as this investigative documentary proves. The film is a thorough and revealing reconstruction of the events leading up to Ceaucescu’s downfall and execution. In actual fact, the Romanian revolution was a strictly managed operation, controlled from the outside. Hungary, Germany and especially America had big fingers in the pie.

An 18 year old girl called Joy has gone missing. Another girl called Helen is a few weeks away from leaving her care home. Helen is asked to 'play' Joy in a police reconstruction that will retrace Joy's last known movements. Joy had everything. A loving family, a boyfriend, a bright future. Helen, parent-less, has lived in institutions all her life and has never been close to anyone. Gradually Helen begins to immerse herself into the role, visiting the people and places that Joy knew; quietly and carefully insinuating her way into the lost girl's life. But is Helen trying to find out what happened to Joy that day, or is she searching for her own identity?

An anti-Nazi on the run and a young Jewish couple race across Europe trying to escape Hitler's ever powerful influence.

British Captain Terence Stevenson (Robert Donat) accepts an assignment even more dangerous than his everyday job of defusing unexploded bombs. Fluent in Romanian and German and having studied chemical engineering, he is parachuted into Romania to assume the identity of Captain Jan Tartu, a member of the fascist Iron Guard. He makes his way to Czechoslovakia to steal the formula of a new Nazi poison gas and sabotage the factory where it is being manufactured.

French soldiers (Jean-Pierre Aumont, Gene Kelly) surrender to lying Nazis and are herded into a barbaric prison camp.

James Mink is a black man in Canada who has built a very successful livery business, and enjoys a white wife and a beautiful daughter, Mary. An excellent match is arranged with an American businessman, but when he takes his new wife Mary across the border his true character emerges - he sells her into slavery. James and Elizabeth must go to Virginia to rescue their daughter.

A WW2 veteran destined for life in a retirement home escapes his difficult family situation and embarks on a cross country adventure to find the last remaining members of his B-17 bomber crew with the help of a beautiful accomplice.

In 1942, the young Jewish girl Misha, her Russian mother Gerusha and her German father Reuven hide from the Germans in a small house in Ardennes, Belgium. Misha is very connected to her mother that advises her that if one day a person comes to her saying "love of my life", she would follow him or her without any question. When her parents are captured by the Nazis, Misha is delivered to a German family and the abusive matriarch gives a bad treatment to the girl. However, she finds support in the family of Ernest and his deranged wife Marthe that supplies groceries to foster family. Misha loves Ernest's dogs and the old man gives a compass to her and tells that her parents have been sent to East to forced labor. When the old couple is denounced for sheltering the girl and arrested by the Germans, Misha flees through the woods heading east. Along her journey seeking out her parents...

In melodramatic fashion, the film tells the tale of a young German woman who finds herself alone in the world when the rest of her family is killed in a WWII air raid. Helping an American military man escape the Gestapo, she finds herself on the run from the Russian Army. Escaping to the American (and safe) side of Berlin, she registers herself as a prostitute (unknowingly) and finds herself caught between the German officer who thinks she is for sale and the American officer who she saved and is now in love with her.

A geneticist wakes up from an accident with only fragments of his memory intact and is forced to relearn who he is via his twin brother. But as he digs deeper, he discovers he might not be who he thought at all.

A group of Norwegians cross the North Sea in winter to deliver Allied soldiers and ammunition to their Nazi-occupied country.

In the young Federal Republic of Germany, which in the late 1950s in politics and justice is still interspersed with only superficially purified Nazi cliques, leads the Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer a lonely fight against the coverup of Nazi crimes and the restorative policy of the government Adenauer - he is firmly convinced that only in this way can the young democracy be consolidated. Not only his attitude, but also his temperament make Bauer vulnerable, again and again resistance forms from politics, intelligence services and the judiciary against the lone fighter.

Taped live at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Valery Gergiev conducts this landmark production of Giuseppe Verdi's operatic masterpiece. This opera premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1862, and is performed here in its original St. Petersburg version using reconstructions of the magnificent painted scenery.

A few months after the end of the civil war, Major Drango is sent as military governor in a southern small town, whose citizens he must face the obstility.

Richard Dix as Dan Taylor and Preston S. Foster as Paxton Bryce are two longtime friends seeking their fortune in Texas after the war. The two men decide, not without problems, to establish a cattle empire. Paxton becoming too ambitious, distances himself from Dan and Abby, Paxton's wife. It will only be after a personal tragedy that he will come back to his senses.

End of the WWII, concentration camp somewhere in Poland. Prisoners have heard that Germans have plans to kill them all, before the Allies come. One of the prisoners escapes, and tries to find the Allies. A manhunt begins.

1934, Germany. Jan is a 13 year old boy, who is raised without a mother. His father, a communist, is accused of a political murder, and predicted to be shot by the police when he was on the run. Jan lives with his aunt and finds a friend, Max, who wants to help him to find out what really with his father happened. During a conspirative gathering Max is shot by SA (Nazi paramilitary) and Jan succeed to escape in a barge. Erika, the daughter of the captain of the barge, and a boatman hide him. They try to help Jan to escape from police and find his father, who really survived.

Reconstruction of several battles which took place on the Somme.

In 1925, with the cooperation of the War Office, British Instructional Films set out to make a dramatic, feature-length reconstruction of the five Ypres battles in which 1.7 million soldiers lost their lives. Directed by William Summers, the result is a silent classic. Unlike the famous 1916 documentary The Battle of the Somme, the Ypres footage is entirely ”faked” and the film shares some of Somme‘s propagandist approach. Regardless, the film is no less fascinating as an artistic endeavour of its time and it features some stunning images. A degree of authenticity is provided by real soldiers taking part and by the filming having taken place in the actual Ypres trenches.

A flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods.

Munich, 1968: a period of liberation, student revolts, state repression. Amidst the restlessness, chemistry student Robbie meets the Irish cello player Nancy. They feel compelled to pursue a passion in spite of their careers. But does romantic love have a place in such convoluted, contesting times?

Fourteen-year-old Li Xing lives in a district full of ruins and reconstruction. School brings him nothing but problems and his family is no help at all. One day, he finds an underground shelter where strange things happen...

In this ode to resilience and life, Jean decides to set off on a one-way trip to a country destroyed by war with a minimum of luggage and a drill. But nothing is going exactly as planned. His despair quickly strikes him as derisory in the face of the fate of those who welcome him, clinging to the slightest hope of reconstruction. Upon contact with them, the urgency to end it no longer becomes so pressing, to the point where Jean little by little rediscovers a meaning in his existence.

With Hitler's army rapidly closing borders in August 1939, 85 American missionaries serve their church inside Germany. As the German military preparations escalated, word came to speedily move those LDS missionaries to safety in adjacent countries. Taken from the personal diaries of those missionaries, this riveting story is a testimony that God truly leads and protects His servants, opens doors, and provides timely inspiration.