Beiderseits der Rollbahn (1953)

June 1940, the Great Chaos

From May 10, 1940, France is living one of the worst tragedies of it history. In a few weeks, the country folds, and then collapsed in facing the attack of the Nazi Germany. On June 1940, each day is a tragedy. For the first time, thanks to historic revelations, and to numerous never seen before images and documents and reenacted situations of the time, this film recounts the incredible stories of those men and women trapped in the torment of this great chaos.

The Dead Nation

A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.

The Man Who Cracked the Nazi Code: The Story of Alan Turing

During the Second World War, the allies' key objective was to crack the German army's encrypted communications code. Without a doubt, the key player in this game was Alan Turing, an interdisciplinary scientist and a long-forgotten hero.

WWII: Saving the Reality

See Kenneth W. Rendell's collection of over 6,000 artifacts that range from the end of World War I and the rise of Nazism to the start of World War II and the fight in Europe and the Pacific.

The Day Hitler Died

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.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening

The story of the only three minutes of footage —a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938— showing images of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk (Poland) before the beginning of the Shoah.

The American Invasion

In January 1942, the order activating the 'US Air Forces in the British Isles' was announced. On 12th May, the first contingent of USAAF personnel arrived in England, the beginnings of what was to become the largest air force in the world. The British people had never seen anything like them. Michael Brandon (Dempsey and Makepeace) presents the story of the courageous young Americans who fought the war from the foreign fields of eastern England. And of the local populations who welcomed them, resented them, admired and loved them. "The American Invasion" provides a powerful record of a momentous period in American and British history.

The Bloody Hundredth

Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.

From Island to Island

During World War II, Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire. This documentary explores the experiences of Taiwanese soldiers, doctors, and overseas residents in Southeast Asia during that time. Using cross-generational memory dialogues, family letters, diaries, and videos, the film addresses the complexities of Taiwan's historical memory and diverse identities during that period.

Manouchian et ceux de l'Affiche rouge

Plot unavailable

Elie Wiesel Goes Home

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?

D-Day: Normandy 1944

June 6, 1944: The largest Allied operation of World War II began in Normandy, France. Yet, few know in detail exactly why and how, from the end of 1943 through August 1944, this region became the most important location in the world. Blending multiple cinematographic techniques, including animation, CGI and stunning live-action images, “D-Day: Normandy 1944” brings this monumental event to the world’s largest screens for the first time ever. Audiences of all ages, including new generations, will discover from a new perspective how this landing changed the world. Exploring history, military strategy, science, technology and human values, the film will educate and appeal to all. Narrated by Tom Brokaw, “D-Day: Normandy 1944” pays tribute to those who gave their lives for our freedom… A duty of memory, a duty of gratitude.

Thanks Girls and Goodbye

Documentary using archival footage, newsreels and contemporary interviews with women of the WW2 Australian Women's Land Army.

Appointment in Tokyo

Produced by the Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, with the cooperation of the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy, and released by Warner Bros. for the War Activities Committee shortly after the surrender of Japan. Follow General Douglas MacArthur and his men from their exile from the Philippines in early 1942, through the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 1, 1945. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Attack! The Battle for New Britain

Actual footage by the United States Signal Corps of the landing and attack on Arawe Beach, Cape Glouster, New Britain island in 1943 in the South Pacific theatre of World War Two, and the handicaps of the wild jungle in addition to the Japanese snipers and pill-box emplacements.

Fascism in Colour

After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)

Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Songs That Won the War

Wartime sweetheart Vera Lynn presents this documentary which sets archive footage and newsreel film from World War Two to the popular sounds of the day. Artists featured include Flanagan and Allen, Gracie Fields, George Formby, Bing Crosby, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers.

Projekt Marmor - verdrängt und vergessen

Plot unavailable

Guy Martin's D-Day Landing

Guy Martin undertakes a challenge to restore a plane from the Second World War, and recreate a parachute jump into Normandy, as thousands of Allied soldiers did during D-Day.

Britain and the Blitz

Documentary looking back at a Britain during the darkest days of WWII using stunning new archived footage and interviews with people who lived through it.

Why We Fight: Prelude to War

Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.

Report from the Aleutians

A documentary propaganda film produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps about the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. The film opens with a map showing the strategic importance of the island, and the thrust of the 1942 Japanese offensive into Midway and Dutch Harbor. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Combat America

Produced in 1943 under the guidance of Army Air Force Lieutenant Clark Gable, this film follows a single 8th Air Force B-17 crew from training through a series of missions over Europe.

The Light of Dawn: The Normandy Landings

The Normandy landings of 6 June 1944 were pivotal to the outcome of WW2. We learn when Churchill and Roosevelt first proposed the operation and how preparations started—finishing with the key events of D-Day and the far-reaching effects of its outcome.

La France de l'épuration, entre vengeance et justice

Plot unavailable

The Last Days

Five Jewish Hungarians, now US citizens, tell their stories: before March 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April 1945.

Warsaw: A City Divided

The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.

Mein Kampf

Using exclusively archival footage, this documentary traces the rise and collapse of the Third Reich, from Adolf Hitler’s early years to the devastation of Europe and his suicide in 1945. Directed by Erwin Leiser, the film draws heavily on material produced and preserved by the Nazi propaganda apparatus to confront the mechanisms, imagery, and consequences of totalitarian power.

Lise Meitner: The Mother of the Atom Bomb

To historians, physicist Lise Meitner deserves to be placed on a par with Einstein, Heisenberg and Otto Hahn. In the 1930s on the verge of World War II, she led a small group of scientists who discovered that splitting the atomic nucleus of uranium releases enormous energy. This extraordinary film tells the story of a woman who was far ahead of her time as a scientist and a pioneer of feminism.

Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

Misa's Fugue

The true story of one boy's journey as a victim of Nazi oppression. While exposed to some of the most horrific events of the Holocaust, Misa was able to endure the atrocities of genocide through his love of art and music.

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Steven Okazaki presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of nuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.

Twice: The Extraordinary Life of Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Tsutomu Yamaguchi is a hibakusha. A survivor of both atomic bomb blasts in 1945. First at Hiroshima, then again at Nagasaki. Now nearing 90, Yamaguchi finally speaks out. Breaking taboos of shame and sorrow, he responds to a call to fight for a world without nuclear weapons by telling his story, so that no one else will ever have to tell one like it again. Twice reconstructs Yamaguchi’s experiences in 1945 Japan, interviews him on the after-effects of exposure and documents the last five years of the late-blooming activist’s life.

The Jack King Affair

England, 1940, during World War II. An MI5 officer, codenamed Jack King, infiltrates a network of conspirators, a British fifth column sympathetic to Nazi Germany, in order to control the organization and destroy it in the event of a German invasion. But who was he? A single person or several?

I Betrayed Hitler

During the worst days of World War II, the British government asks the mathematician Alan Turing to unravel the mysteries of the German Enigma encryption machine, an impossible task to accomplish without the invaluable information that Hans-Thilo Schmidt, a disenchanted but greedy German citizen, had been handing over to the French secret services since 1931.

Nazi Death Camp: The Great Escape

The secret Nazi death camp at Sobibor was created solely for the mass extermination of Jews. But on the 14th October 1943, in one of the biggest and most successful prison revolts of WWII, the inmates fought back.