The small but immensely powerful Admiral Graf Spee was the pride of Hitler's naval fleet. Restricted to a limited size due to the impositions of the Treaty of Versailles, this 'pocket battleship' was still a formidable fighting force. It was faster than a battleship, and had firepower far beyond other ships of this size. It was responsible for the sinking of as many as nine Allied merchant vessels in the autumn of 1939 in the space of three months. Then, late in the year, the ship was ambushed off the coast of Uruguay by British cruisers determined to sink her. Faced with insurmountable odds, the ship's captain, Hans Langsdorff, opted to destroy his own vessel rather than capitulate to the enemy. Hitler's Lost Battleship retraces the events leading up to the ship's destruction. With high-end re-enactments, CGI reconstructions, and surprising revelations from naval researchers - all add up to shed new light on this fascinating episode in wartime history.
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Recounts the harrowing end of World War II through the eyes of 24 men who lived through the events and using never-before-seen footage.
Richard Overton, at 109 years old, is the oldest living WWII veteran. He lives alone, still drives, and has a 91 year old girlfriend named Ms. Love. In this snapshot of his daily life, we learn something about what life is like at 109 years. As he says, 'I may give out, but I'll never give up.'
An epic family saga told by the women around the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
A remarkable film that takes a special look at the first war to be truly reported and recorded by one of the more unsung heroes of World War II: the combat photographer. Through the unflinching eye of their camera's lenses, these courageous soldiers continually risked their lives in their brave attempts to capture history.
The experimental stop motion story of a London boy in World War 2, we witness war drawing inexorably closer as he comes of age. 14 when war begins, our young hero lives through bombings, the evacuation of his siblings, the privations of wartime. Yet he survives and even thrives. He sets out to search for his friend in the East End during those turbulent and frightening times, and with his own voice tells his story with a wit and verve few would believe today. Finally we leave him at the brink on D-Day, a hero already in the making.
In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.
The director’s mother, Mirka Mora, avoided Auschwitz by one day. On his father’s side many perished in the Holocaust. These facts triggered three visits to Auschwitz by Mora from 2010 to 2014 in an effort to understand and remember.
The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.
Not just another documentary on the French resistance movement, this film focuses on one particular group of underground fighters in France: those from Eastern Europe. Many were Jews and all had fled their native countries before the war broke out. They were among the most staunch and fearless enemies of fascism, as shown here in personal interviews and memoirs of war-time experiences. But the most famous of these immigrants were 23 who were rounded up among several hundred Parisians in 1943, tried for their activities, and executed -- all were immigrants under the leadership of the Armenian poet Manouchian. After their execution, Paris was papered with posters decrying these 23 martyrs as "foreign communists."
How Germany was when its people entered the nightmare of World War II? Despair and fear lead a hungry population to follow the chilling call of just one man to world domination. A real-life horror story, an ominous tale of violence and deception, which takes place from 1919 to 1934. (Entirely made up of restored, colorized archival footage.)
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
An extraordinary journey into the past to that fateful day, June 6, 1944. Relive the event of D-Day on the beaches of Normandy with Company Sergeant-Major Charlie Martin of the Queen's Own Rifles. Experience an emotional and intensely personal account of D-Day through a combination of interviews, archival film and Charlie Martin's diary excerpts.
During the Second World War, to give himself every chance of winning the conflict, Adolf Hitler instructed the most brilliant German scientists to develop advanced technology weapons of mass destruction. Among them were the V1, the first cruise missile, and the V2, the first ballistic missile. The document looks back at the context in which their creators worked and succeeded in designing innovations that laid the foundations of modern aviation and aerospace.
Story of a Dog is a 1945 short documentary film under the supervision of Gordon Hollingshead. In the film, a dog trains for the battlefield and becomes a crucial part of the United States military. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short, One-Reel.
This short film, produced at the end of WWII, warns that although Adolf Hitler is dead, his ideas live on.
Oscar winning postwar propaganda film in support of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Strident but poignant, focusing on children. The film surveys the Nazi/Japanese atrocities, post-war devastation and the early relief efforts. This film was responsible for raising over $200,000,000, making it a top moneymaking film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.