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1940s War Movies

Public list by WPS with 216 movies or TV shows/series

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213 movies found (page 1/8):

49th Parallel(1941)

2h 3min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller, War
3.5/5 (with 44 votes)

In the early days of World War II, a German U-boat is sunk in Canada's Hudson Bay. Hoping to evade capture, a small band of German soldiers led by commanding officer Lieutenant Hirth attempts to cross the border into the United States, which has not yet entered the war and is officially neutral. Along the way, the German soldiers encounter brave men such as a French-Canadian fur trapper, Johnnie, a leader of a Hutterite farming community, Peter, an author, Philip and a soldier, Andy Brock.

Directed by Michael Powell - With Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Massey, Anton Walbrook, Eric Portman, Finlay Currie, ...

Sahara(1943)

1h 37min | Action, Adventure, Drama, War
3.6/5 (with 54 votes)

Sergeant Joe Gunn and his tank crew pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command after the fall of Tobruk. Tambul, the Sudanese leads them to an abandoned desert fortress where they hope to find water. Soon a detachment of German soldiers arrives and attempts to barter food for water, but Gunn and his followers refuse. When the Germans attack, Gunn leads his desert-weary men in a desperate battle, hoping that British reinforcements can arrive in time.

Directed by Zoltan Korda - With Humphrey Bogart, J. Carrol Naish, Lloyd Bridges, Rex Ingram, Dan Duryea, Bruce Bennett, ...
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Rome, Open City(1945)

1h 43min | Drama, History, War
4.0/5 (with 361 votes)

During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the leader of the Resistance is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini - With Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero, Maria Michi, Francesco Grandjacquet, Giovanna Galletti, ...
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Paisan(1946)

2h 5min | History, Drama, War
3.8/5 (with 127 votes)

Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini - With Maria Michi, Renzo Avanzo, Gianfranco Corsini, William Tubbs, Giulietta Masina
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To Have and Have Not(1945)

1h 40min | Adventure, Romance / Love, War
3.7/5 (with 208 votes)

A Martinique charter boat skipper gets mixed up with the underground French resistance operatives during WWII.

Directed by Howard Hawks - With Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael, Marcel Dalio, ...
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Sergeant York(1941)

2h 14min | History, Romance / Love, War
3.7/5 (with 82 votes)

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

Directed by Howard Hawks - With Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, NONE OF YOUR BUSSINES, George Tobias, Margaret Wycherly, Ward Bond, ...

Destination Tokyo(1943)

2h 15min | War
3.5/5 (with 25 votes)

During World War II, Captain Cassidy and his crew of submariners are ordered into Tokyo Bay on a secret mission. They are to gather information in advance of the planned bombing of Tokyo. Along the way, the crew learn about each other as they face the enemy and some of them lose their lives.

Directed by Delmer Daves - With Cary Grant, John Garfield, Alan Hale, William Prince, Faye Emerson, Dane Clark, ...

They Were Expendable(1945)

2h 15min | Drama, War
3.3/5 (with 45 votes)

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philippines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy's attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.

Directed by John Ford, Robert Montgomery - With Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jack Holt, Ward Bond, Marshall Thompson, ...

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo(1944)

2h 18min | Drama, History, War
3.4/5 (with 21 votes)

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy - With Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Spencer Tracy, Don DeFore, Phyllis Thaxter, Stephen McNally, ...

Flying Tigers(1942)

1h 42min | War, Action, Drama, History
3.1/5 (with 17 votes)

Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers.

Directed by David Miller - With John Wayne, John Carroll, Anna Lee, Paul Kelly, Mae Clarke, Bill Shirley, ...

Objective, Burma!(1945)

2h 22min | Action, Drama, War
3.5/5 (with 34 votes)

A group of men parachute into Japanese-occupied Burma with a dangerous and important mission: to locate and blow up a radar station. They accomplish this well enough, but when they try to rendezvous at an old air-strip to be taken back to their base, they find Japanese waiting for them, and they must make a long, difficult walk back through enemy-occupied jungle.

Directed by Raoul Walsh - With Errol Flynn, James Brown, George Tobias, Henry Hull, William Prince, Mark Stevens, ...

Story of G.I. Joe(1945)

1h 48min | Drama, War
3.2/5 (with 14 votes)

War correspondent Ernie Pyle joins Company C, 18th Infantry as this American army unit fights its way across North Africa in World War II. He comes to know the soldiers and finds much human interest material for his readers back in the States.

Directed by William Augustus Wellman - With Burgess Meredith, Robert Mitchum, Freddie Steele, Wally Cassell, William Murphy
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Edge of Darkness(1943)

1h 59min | Drama, War
3.1/5 (with 15 votes)

The film pivots around the local Norwegian doctor and his family. The doctor's wife (Ruth Gordon) wants to hold on to the pretence of gracious living and ignore their German occupiers. The doctor, Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston), would also prefer to stay neutral, but is torn. His brother-in-law, the wealthy owner of the local fish cannery, collaborates with the Nazis. The doctor's daughter, Karen (Ann Sheridan), is involved with the resistance and with its leader Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn). The doctor's son has just returned to town, having been sent down from the university, and is soon influenced by his Nazi-sympathizer uncle. Captain Koenig (Helmut Dantine), the young German commandant of the occupying garrison, whose fanatic determination to do everything by the book and spoutings about the invincibility of the Reich hides a growing fear of a local uprising.

Directed by Lewis Milestone - With Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Helmut Dantine, Judith Anderson, Nancy Coleman, ...

Army(1944)

1h 27min | Drama
3.6/5 (with 5 votes)

A widow raises her sickly son to be strong enough to join the army and fight on the front lines.

Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita - With Chishū Ryū, Kinuyo Tanaka

Northern Pursuit(1943)

1h 33min | Drama, Adventure, War
2.9/5 (with 8 votes)

Canadian Mountie Steve Wagner captures a German Luftwaffe officer on a spy mission, who later escapes from the prison camp. To catch the spy ring, the Mounties employ a ruse so that the spies, believing Steve to be sympathetic, enlist him in their plans.

Directed by Raoul Walsh - With Errol Flynn, Julie Bishop, Helmut Dantine, Tom Tully, Alec Craig, Monte Blue, ...

Bataan(1943)

1h 54min | Action, Drama, War
3.3/5 (with 14 votes)

During Japan's invasion of the Philippines in 1942, Capt. Henry Lassiter, Sgt. Bill Dane and a diverse group of American soldiers are ordered to destroy and hold a strategic bridge in order to delay the Japanese forces and allow Gen. MacArthur time to secure Bataan. When the Japanese soldiers begin to rebuild the bridge and advance, the group struggles with not only hunger, sickness and gunfire, but also the knowledge that there is likely no relief on the way.

Directed by Tay Garnett - With Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Bowman, Robert Walker, ...

Went the Day Well?(1942)

1h 28min | Thriller, War
3.7/5 (with 26 votes)

The quiet village of Bramley End is taken over by German troops posing as Royal Engineers. Their task is to disrupt England's radar network in preparation for a full scale German invasion. Once the villagers discover the true identity of the troops, they do whatever they can to thwart the Nazis plans.

Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti - With Leslie Banks, Mervyn Johns, Basil Sydney, C.V. France, Valerie Taylor, Thora Hird, ...

Bon Voyage(1944)

12
| 26min | War
2.8/5 (with 28 votes)

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.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock - With John Blythe

Crash Dive(1943)

1h 46min | War, Romance / Love, Drama, Action, Adventure, Thriller
3.1/5 (with 9 votes)

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Directed by Archie Mayo, Otto Brower - With Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, James Gleason, May Whitty, Harry Morgan, ...

Wake Island(1942)

1h 27min | Action, Drama, War
2.8/5 (with 11 votes)

In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.

Directed by John Farrow - With Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, William Bendix, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Walter Abel, ...

We Dive at Dawn(1943)

1h 38min | War
3.1/5 (with 9 votes)

A gripping tale of WWII naval warfare in the Baltics, starring John Mills as Lt. Freddie Taylor, a British submarine Captain. The crew of the Sea Tiger are summoned from leave on shore with their families, and sent on a secret mission to intercept the Nazi battleship Brandenburg. In the ensuing battle the British submarine is damaged by a German destroyer. The submarine is leaking fuel so badly that the crew won't be able to make it back to Britain before running out somewhere along the Danish coast. When it seems that their only option may be to blow up the submarine and try to escape to Denmark, seaman James Hobson hatches a plan...

Directed by Anthony Asquith - With John Mills, Eric Portman, Jack Watling, Niall MacGinnis, Philip Friend, Reginald Purdell, ...

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing(1942)

1h 42min | War, Drama
3.2/5 (with 14 votes)

During the Allied Bombing offensive of World War II the public was often informed that "A raid took place last night over ..., One (or often more) of Our Aircraft Is Missing". Behind these sombre words hid tales of death, destruction and derring-do. This is the story of one such bomber crew who were shot down and the brave Dutch patriots who helped them home.

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger - With Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams, Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden, Emrys Jones, ...

The North Star(1943)

1h 48min | Drama, War
3.1/5 (with 9 votes)

A Ukrainian village must suddenly contend with the Nazi invasion of June 1941. Later re-edited and released as "Armored Attack.".

Directed by Lewis Milestone - With Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Erich von Stroheim, Ann Harding, ...

Air Force(1943)

2h 4min | Action, Drama, History, War
3.2/5 (with 20 votes)

The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.

Directed by Howard Hawks - With John Garfield, John Ridgely, Gig Young, Harry Carey, Arthur Kennedy, George Tobias, ...

'Pimpernel' Smith(1941)

2h | Adventure, Drama, Thriller
3.6/5 (with 10 votes)

Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation. However, he has a secret agenda: to free inmates of the concentration camps.

Directed by Leslie Howard - With Leslie Howard, Francis L. Sullivan, Mary Morris, David Tomlinson

Destroyer(1943)

1h 39min | Adventure, Drama, War
3.5/5 (with 6 votes)

Flagwaving story of a new American destroyer, the JOHN PAUL JONES, from the day her keel is laid, to what was very nearly her last voyage. Among the crew, is Steve Boleslavski, a shipyard welder that helped build her, who reenlists, with his old rank of Chief bosuns mate. After failing her sea trials, she is assigned to the mail run, until caught up in a disparate battle with a Japanese sub. After getting torpedoed, and on the verge of sinking, the Captain, and crew hatch a plan to try and save the ship, and destroy the sub.

Directed by William A. Seiter - With Edward G. Robinson, Glenn Ford, Marguerite Chapman, Edgar Buchanan, Leo Gorcey, Regis Toomey, ...

Commandos Strike at Dawn(1942)

1h 38min | War, Drama
2.5/5 (with 8 votes)

A gentle widower, enraged at Nazi atrocities against his peaceful Norwegian fishing village, escapes to Britain and returns leading a commando force against the oppressors.

Directed by John Farrow - With Paul Muni, Anna Lee, Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke, Rosemary DeCamp, Alexander Knox, ...

Captains of the Clouds(1942)

1h 54min | Action, Drama, War
3.4/5 (with 10 votes)

Inspired by Churchill's Dunkirk speech, brash, undisciplined Canadian bush pilot Brian MacLean and three friends enlist in the RCAF.

Directed by Michael Curtiz - With James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias, J. Farrell MacDonald, ...

Fighter Squadron(1948)

1h 36min | Action, War
3.3/5 (with 4 votes)

During World War II, an insubordinate fighter pilot finds the shoe on the other foot when he's promoted.

Directed by Raoul Walsh - With Edmond O'Brien, Robert Stack, John Rodney, Henry Hull, Rock Hudson, James Holden, ...

Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water(1948)

1h 38min | Action, War, Drama
2.6/5 (with 7 votes)

A factual reconstruction of the sabotage events which took place to prevent Hitler's Germany from getting the heavy water needed to make an atomic bomb during the Second World War.

Directed by Jean Dréville - With Jens-Anton Poulsson, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Knut Haukelid, Lew Kowarski, Raoul Dautry, Henki Kolstad, ...
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Tags: #movies #war #decade #1940
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