The Top 10 Best World War 2 Movies
5. The Great Escape
Not only is The Great Escape one of the best World War 2 movies of all time, but it also earned a spot on my list of the Best Escape movies of all time. The film centers around a group of POW’s being held in a German camp. The scrappy bunch refuses to give up hope despite the best efforts of their fascist wardens and concoct a plan just crazy enough to work. Banning together they start digging a series of tunnels that will hopefully allow them to escape the prison. The film is based on a true story and has an incredible cast of actors including, Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. As with so many World War 2 movies, The Great Escape is about refusing to give up no matter how hopeless the situation might be.
4. The Dirty Dozen
Sometimes you need bad guys to fight bad guys. That’s the premise of The Dirty Dozen, a film that 9 out of 10 dads agree is one of the best World War 2 movies of all time. It features an all-star cast with some of the biggest names of yesteryear, including Charles Bronson, Lee Majors, and Donald Sutherland. The film follows a group of military convicts recruited for an attack on a Chateau hosting a meeting of high-level Nazi officials. It’s a suicide mission if there ever was one and that’s why these men are put through the wringer as they’re trained to be elite commandos in order to stand a chance of pulling it off. While they might start off as the dirty dozen, they finish the movies as heroes in one of the best redemption tales of all time.
3. Casablanca
Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine is a perfect metaphor for America in not only one of the best World War 2 movies but one of the best films of all time. Rick is a guy who just wants to mind his own business and live a peaceful existence. Because of that, he doesn’t like Nazis but doesn’t want to get on their bad side. He claims that he’s neutral and that the war doesn’t concern him. That is until it does. His lost love Ilsa (Ingred Bergman) walks through the doors of his Gin joint with trouble two-steps behind her. Turns out she’s been fighting the Nazis tooth and nail since they last saw each other and they’re a little pissed about that. Wrestling with his morality and own self-interest, Rick eventually agrees to help the Resistance fighter and her husband escape from the Reich.
2. Schindler’s List
Not all the heroes in World War 2 movies saved the day by rushing in with guns blazing. Schindler’s List tells the tale of just such a hero. At the beginning of the film, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) hopes to make a fortune by joining the Nazi Party. Things go pretty well for him at first as he acquires a factory and hires Jewish workers because “they are cheaper.” However, he grows a conscience as he sees just how nightmarish the Party is and soon his goals shift from making money to saving lives. Schindler continues to play the bureaucracy game but secretly starts saving Jews from Nazis as he plans to help them escape from the horrors of the Holocaust. Despite the fact that Schindler only saves a fraction of the Jews killed by the Nazis, those he rescues remind him of the Talmudic saying, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”
1. Saving Private Ryan
People talk about the nobility and heroism of war but tend to leave out the horrors. Saving Private Ryan is one of those rare World War 2 movies that doesn’t shy away from the bloody brutality of battle. The first ten minutes is one of the most breathtaking and gut-wrenching scenes ever portrayed on screen. It only gets harder from there as a group of 8 soldiers are sent to rescue a Private so that he can be sent home. These men put everything on the line for the sake of comradery and walk through hell in order to save the young man. It’s a story that reminds us that at the end of the day, those that served weren’t just heroes, they were ordinary men and women who fought not just for their country, but for those standing beside them. That dedication to the cause and one another is what made them heroes in the end.
Honorable Mention: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indian Jones and the Last Crusade
Though technically not war movies, these Indiana Jones films do take place during the Second World War. It also features a character who isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the Nazis as he races to stop them from obtaining supernatural artifacts that will give them limitless power, potentially turning the tide of the war for them. Jones’s efforts might not be historically accurate, but when it comes to causing problems for Nazis, no one does it better than him.
There are literally dozens of World War 2 movies out there and I did my best to pull together a list of the best films I’ve seen over the years. Let me know in the comments what you think of the picks I made and if there were any other movies you would have liked to have seen earn a spot. As always, I’ll be updating this list as new and improved World War 2 movies hit theaters. So, be sure to check back from time to time to see how the rankings change in the future.