1945: The Savage Peace

Downfall

September 2004 •German

In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

January 1970 •English

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.

Ahnenerbe : Les Terribles Savants d'Hitler

June 2017 •French

The Ahnenerbe (The adopted heritage). A pseudo-scientific organization which, under Heinrich Himmler's orders, has sought by all means to prove the superiority of the Aryan race over the centuries.

All Men Become Brothers

September 2023 •Slovak

A film about the phenomenon of Alexander Dubček, a Czechoslovak politician, one of the most prominent personalities of the Prague Spring of 1968, author of the concept of “socialism with a human face”.

Hélène Berr, une jeune fille dans Paris occupé

December 2013 •French

Invasion

August 1980 •English

Docu-drama surrounding the events leading to the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Mains basses sur les savants d'Hitler, le plan secret français

November 2023 •French

Hitler's Forgotten Victims

October 1997 •English

The story of black and mixed race people in Nazi Germany who were sterilised, experimented upon, tortured and exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps. It also explores the history of German racism and examines the treatment of Black prisoners-of-war. The film uses interviews with survivors and their families as well as archival material to document the Black German Holocaust experience.

Carter's Army

May 1975 •English

A racist officer is put in charge of an all-black squad of troops charged with the mission of blowing up an important hydro-dam in Nazi Germany. Their failure would delay the Allies' advance into Germany, thus prolonging the war.

The Devil's Arithmetic

March 1999 •English

An American-born Jewish adolescent, Hannah Stern, is uninterested in the culture, faith and customs of her relatives. However, she begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941. There she meets a young girl named Rivkah, a fellow captive in the camp. As Rivkah and Hannah struggle to survive in the face of daily atrocities, they form an unbreakable bond.

The Death of Captain Pilecki

May 2006 •Polish

Captain Witold Pilecki was a Polish intelligence officer during WWII who volunteered for a Polish resistance operation to get imprisoned in the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in order to gather intelligence and enable the Polish government-in-exile to inform the allies about the ongoing Holocaust in occupied Poland. The film also tells the story of Witold Pilecki’s fate at the hands of the Communist government after the end of WWII. The film is a reconstruction of the trial which took place in Warsaw during the communist regime in Poland. Captain Pilecki described his investigation as more cruel than his stay at Auschwitz.

Lee

September 2024 •English

The true story of photographer Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.

Shadow World

October 2016 •English

A detailed investigation into the political and economic interests that, since the beginning of the 20th century, have pulled the strings of the arms trade, hidden in the shadows, feeding the shameful corruption of politicians and government officials and promoting a state of permanent war throughout the world, while they cynically asked for a lasting and universal peace.

Operation Dunaj

July 2009 •Czech

Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The fleet of Polish tanks which arrive to liberate their neighbor, ostensibly threatened by a counter-revolution, includes the old tank nicknamed Ladybird, which is the last to leave the barracks.

Language Does Not Lie

November 2004 •French

Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), a professor of literature in Dresden, was Jewish; through the efforts of his wife, he survived the war. From 1933 when Hitler came to power to the war's end, he kept a journal paying attention to the Nazis' use of words. This film takes the end of 1945 as its vantage point, with a narrator looking back as if Klemperer reads from his journal. He examines the use of simple words like "folk," "eternal," and "to live." Interspersed are personal photographs, newsreel footage of Reich leaders and of life in Germany then, and a few other narrative devices. Although he's dispassionate, Klemperer's fear and dread resonate

Men Behind the Sun

December 1988 •

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.

Návrat k životu

January 1946 •Czech

Frank mezi námi

March 1946 •Czech

Escape from Sobibor

April 1987 •English

The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.

Old Man River

March 1999 •English

Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.