5 World War II Movies That Got History Right, Ranked

Hollywood has been turning World War II into cinema since before the United States formally entered the war. As one of the 20th century’s most consequential and dramatic chapters, the conflict has long offered filmmakers the kind of stakes, tragedy, heroism, and moral tension that naturally lend themselves to the big screen. Still, even with history this powerful, some World War II movies have taken significant liberties with the truth.

Historical accuracy in World War II films can differ wildly from one production to the next. Many wartime dramas trade realism for spectacle, reshaping real events to heighten suspense or emotional impact. Yet a select group of Second World War movies has earned praise for doing the harder work: recreating the conflict with a level of detail, discipline, and respect that brings audiences as close to the historical record as cinema can reasonably get.

Some World War II films are intentionally revisionist, of course — Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” being an obvious example. Those kinds of alternate-history stories are not the focus here. The films below stand out because they have been recognized for their commitment to portraying real wartime events with notable fidelity. That they also work as powerful, memorable movies only makes their achievement more impressive.

By the time Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks joined forces on “Saving Private Ryan,” neither was new to World War II-era storytelling. Spielberg had already directed the best picture-winning “Schindler’s List,” while Hanks had starred in the acclaimed wartime-set sports drama “A League of Their Own.” Together, they brought the influence and skill needed to create what is widely regarded as one of the greatest World War II movies ever made. From its opening moments, “Saving Private Ryan” signals that it is aiming for something unusually intense and immersive. Set during the Allied invasion of occupied France, the film follows Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), who is ordered to lead a squad across the Western Front in search of Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon). After Ryan’s four brothers are killed in the war, he is granted a chance to return home — but finding him in the middle of combat proves far more dangerous than issuing the order.

The film’s first 20 minutes remain among the most harrowing depictions of battle ever put on screen, presenting the Allied landings at Normandy on D-Day with almost unbearable immediacy. The Omaha Beach sequence is frequently cited as one of cinema’s greatest battle scenes, and many veterans who survived the real assault praised its historical accuracy. “Everybody was stunned by it,” D-Day survivor John Raaen told Time. “It just brought back so many memories that your mind was racing through all the things that happened to you.” The response was so intense that the Department of Veterans Affairs established a special phone line in expectation of trauma reactions from former soldiers. “It felt like I was right there again,” Frank L. Davis, who was a 21-year-old sergeant when he landed on Omaha Beach, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was so damned real.”

For Germany, the end of World War II arrived with devastating speed, though Adolf Hitler remained trapped in denial as defeat became unavoidable. In the final days of both the war and his life, the Nazi dictator retreated into an underground bunker, surrounded by loyal aides while Soviet forces closed in and fighting consumed the streets of Berlin above. The German film “Downfall” depicts that collapse with grim precision, focusing not only on Hitler but also on the staff, officers, and soldiers caught in the final disintegration of the Third Reich. The movie drew controversy for presenting Hitler in recognizably human terms, but that does not mean it treats him with sympathy. Rather, it portrays him as witnesses described him — volatile, delusional, and monstrous without turning him into a caricature.

“Downfall” is widely noted for its close attention to the details of Hitler’s final days and personal behavior. Screenwriter Bernd Eichinger relied heavily on primary sources while developing the script, drawing from firsthand testimony by people who had survived the bunker. Rochus Misch, Hitler’s personal bodyguard, said the film was broadly accurate, with only small dramatic changes, including moments where characters raised their voices more than they had in reality. Erna Flegel, a nurse who was also present in the bunker, supported that assessment, reinforcing the film’s reputation as one of the most historically faithful portrayals of the Nazi regime’s last hours.

Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy” for a reason. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, pulled the United States into World War II and left an indelible mark on Americans who lived through it. Hollywood has returned to the event many times, with Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” among the most famous dramatizations. But when it comes to capturing the confusion, scale, and shock of the surprise assault, the 1970 film “Tora! Tora! Tora!” — directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda, and Kinji Fukasaku — is often regarded as the version that comes closest.

“Tora! Tora! Tora!” is one of several ’70s war movies that still hit hard today. It shows the events of the Pearl Harbor attack from both the Japanese and American perspectives, with separate film crews devoted to each side of the story. While its narrative merits can be questioned, the accuracy of its depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack is undeniable. Filmed on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the combat scenes look so real because they are — all the flying and explosions are legit. “If you worked on this movie, you thought you were in World War II,” stuntman Charlie Piecerni told HistoryNet. “This was real. There was no faking, no bulls**t.”

The film even features a real-time, totally unintentional plane crash — the people you see scrambling to safety are actually stunt performers running for their lives. The scene was supposed to depict an American fighter plane bursting into flames soon after taking off as if it had been hit, but the radio-controlled Curtiss P-40E Warhawk, which was packed with gasoline and explosives, spun out of control and burst into flames on the runway. It’s a minor miracle that this didn’t join the list of movie scenes that actually killed stunt performers.

File this one under World War II movies that are accurate but are too emotionally devastating to watch more than once. The 1985 Soviet film “Come and See” tells the tale of the Eastern Front and the brutality that unfolds around Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a Belarusian boy who unintentionally brings tragedy upon his village. Hoping to join the partisans in the area, he digs up a rifle that had been buried to avoid Nazi reprisals. He later returns home to discover that his entire community has been massacred as a result of his actions.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing about “Come and See” is how true to life its atrocities are. The script was co-written by Ales Adamovich, who had himself served as a Belorussian partisan fighter in his youth, joining up at age 15. The film actually faced an eight-year delay due to the State Committee for Cinematography refusing to allow it to be made because the violence it contained was too realistic.

At once a lyrical anti-war abstraction and a vivid look at the Second World War in Belarus, “Come and See” forces audiences to confront the reality of what war actually looks like. According to director Elem Klimov, a former Wehrmacht officer once vouched for the film’s authenticity, saying, “I marched through Poland, Belarus, and even reached Ukraine. I testify: everything told in this film is true. And the most terrible and shameful thing for me is that my children and grandchildren will see this film.”

One of the most emblematic components of the German navy during World War II was the fearsome U-boat, submarines capable of carrying out sneak attacks before enemies knew they were around. But as we see in 1981’s “Das Boot,” life in a wartime submarine is not exactly a walk in the park. In its depiction of a sub in the midst of the Battle of the Atlantic, “Das Boot” — which is based on wartime journalist Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s 1973 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name — devotes itself to realism from start to finish.

For the shoot, director Wolfgang Peterson had five reconstructions of a U-96 commissioned, some for exterior shots (one of which was rented by Lucasfilm for “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which came out the same year) and others for the inside of the sub. Peterson was particularly pleased with the replica of the interior. “It was a perfectly reconstructed submarine,” he said in a 1982 interview. “They worked about one and a half year on that to recreate and reconstruct it. It was a tube. It was a real submarine insert.” Of course, this wasn’t cheap — Peterson spent a staggering amount of money bringing “Das Boot” to life.

The decision to film sequentially over the course of one year meant that the men playing the submariners took on an increasingly pale and unhealthy appearance from having spent so much time inside the dark, cramped submarine model. The actors spent time training to more accurately mimic actual submariners and were even forbidden from staying outdoors for too long so they didn’t catch a tan. It’s no wonder War History Online called Peterson’s classic “the most realistic submarine movie ever released.”