10 Best World War II Films of All-Time

One of the most popular genres of film is movies with a war setting. No matter if it is fiction or based on a true story, the most popular war to put on the big screen is World War II. The list of great movies about World War II is probably just about as good as a top 10 list of any other genre. These are the top 10 movies that are set in World War II.

10. The Guns of Navarone
The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 film starring Gregory Peck and is based on a novel by Alistair MacLean. The plot is about a German fortress that is set on the Aegean Sea. The fortress is blocking 2,000 British ships from being rescued but so far nobody has been able to destroy the fortress. A small team of Allied commandos is sent to try and penetrate the fortress.

9. The Longest Day
One year after The Guns of Navarone the Longest Day was released. The Longest Day was based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, which was a historic book about what took place on D-Day during World War II. Many of the consultants and advisors that were on the set for the filming of the Longest Day were people that lived through D-Day and the producers drew from their experiences for the movie.

8. Patton
Patton is a 1970 film based on the book Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago. The book was an biography about U. S. General George S. Patton, who was portrayed in the movie by George C. Scott. Patton dominated at the Academy Awards that year winning seven awards including Best Picture.

7. Letters from Iwo Jima
Letters of Iwo Jima is the second of two World War II movies directed by Clint Eastwood in 2006. Eastwood's vision was that he would film two movies about the Battle of Iwo Jima, one from the perspective of the Americans and one from the perspective of the Japanese. The first movie, Flags of Our Fathers, got average reviews, but Letters from Iwa Jima was critically acclaimed and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

6. Inglorious Basterds
The Quentin Tarantino hit is clearly the most factually correct movie on this list. Inglorious Basterds tells the story of Brad Pitt (long before he met Angelina Jolie) as he helped assassinate Hitler to win World War II and along the way he killed many Nazis.

5. The Dirty Dozen
The Dirty Dozen is a classic film starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson and Jim Brown. In the Dirty Dozen Major Reisman is charged with whipping a group of soldiers into shape. This group of a dozen soldiers is very special in that they are all convicted criminals and since they are waiting for execution anyway there is no risk in sending them on a dangerous mission.

4. The Great Escape
Charles Bronson makes the list again but this time he has help from Steve McQueen and James Garner. The Great Escape doesn't take place on the battlefield but instead is about a group of Allied prisoners that have been captured by the Germans. These prisoners have all tried to escape prison before so they are sent to an especially hard camp to escape. The Great Escape is based on a book by Paul Brickhill, which was written about a true event in which there was a mass escape from the Stalag Luft III in Zagan.

3. Das Boot
Das Boot, the telling of a fictional story about a crew on a German U-boat, is probably the greatest German film of all-time and one of the 25 best films from any country. The film was directed by Wolfgang Peterson and he received an Academy Award nomination while the movie received six nominations in all.

2. Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan is a rare film that not only gained as many positive reviews as possible but was also a big hit at the box office. This film is about a small group of soldiers that is sent to find a Private Ryan and bring him home to his grieving mother after she found out that all of his three other brothers were killed within days of each other. Saving Private Ryan had an incredible cast that included Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi and many others.

1. Schindler's List
Schindler's List is a film about Oskar Schindler. During World War II Schindler employed over a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees in factories and therefore saved them from being executed during the Holocaust. Schindler's List is the 8th best American film of all-time according to the American Film Institute and was also a success at the box office. The only three movies about World War II that grossed more than Schindler's List are Inglorious Basterds, Pearl Harbor and Saving Private Ryan.