Date With History: Hiroshima

Why We Fight: Prelude to War

May 1942 •English

Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.

Report from the Aleutians

July 1943 •English

A documentary propaganda film produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps about the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. The film opens with a map showing the strategic importance of the island, and the thrust of the 1942 Japanese offensive into Midway and Dutch Harbor. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The Last Days

October 1998 •English

Five Jewish Hungarians, now US citizens, tell their stories: before March 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April 1945.

Electronic Control System of the C-1 Auto Pilot Part 1: Basic Electricity as Applied to Electronic Control System

January 1943 •English

Animated training film depicting the fundamentals of electricity and how electrical signals can be used to keep an airplane on correct course and altitude through an autopilot.

The Battle of Normandy: 85 Days in Hell

June 2019 •English

On the morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of ships reached the French coast of Normandy as part of an Allied operation to take back France from the Germans. For the next 85 days, U.S., British, and Canadian soldiers engaged in conflicts of unimaginable violence, conquering and liberating the region's cities, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. From the D-Day invasion to the final Nazi surrender in Argentan, this is the definitive story of the three-month Battle of Normandy as it's never been seen before.

Guy Martin's Lost WW2 Bomber

July 2024 •English

Guy joins an ambitious engineering project to recover a crashed WW2 Lancaster Bomber – and the remains of its missing crew members – from the depths of the Dutch lake where it’s lain for 80 years.

Elie Wiesel Goes Home

February 1997 •Hungarian

A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?

The Rape of Europa

March 2007 •English

World War II was not just the most destructive conflict in humanity, it was also the greatest theft in history: lives, families, communities, property, culture and heritage were all stolen. The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.

Combat America

January 1943 •English

Produced in 1943 under the guidance of Army Air Force Lieutenant Clark Gable, this film follows a single 8th Air Force B-17 crew from training through a series of missions over Europe.

WWII: Saving the Reality

January 2013 •English

See Kenneth W. Rendell's collection of over 6,000 artifacts that range from the end of World War I and the rise of Nazism to the start of World War II and the fight in Europe and the Pacific.

Where the Stone Dropped

January 2021 •English

Created in the Victorian era to widen the mouth of the River Tees for shipping, South Gare is a man-made peninsula extending four kilometres into the cold North Sea. Today, the industry it was built for has gone, but the Gare remains as a haven for all sorts of unexpected communities - kite-surfers, photographers, bird-watchers, scuba-divers and the people who simply appreciate its strange, lonely beauty.

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.

761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers

August 2023 •English

The riveting story of the first all-Black tank battalion to fight in US military history. Under General George Patten's command, the 761st fought heroically throughout WWII and were the furthest east of all US troops in the European theater of war.

Les SS de la Das Reich, un parcours de la désolation

May 2016 •French

If Only I Were That Warrior

November 2015 •Italian

If Only I Were That Warrior is a feature documentary film focusing on the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935. Following the recent construction of a monument dedicated to Fascist general Rodolfo Graziani, the film addresses the unpunished war crimes he and others committed in the name of Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. The stories of three characters, filmed in present day Ethiopia, Italy and the United States, take the audience on a journey through the living memories and the tangible remains of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia — a journey that crosses generations and continents to today, where this often overlooked legacy still ties the fates of two nations and their people.

The King Who Fooled Hitler

May 2019 •English

In a tale of double agents and decoys, this documentary reveals, for the first time, the story of King George VI's elaborate ruse to divert German attention away from the Normandy landings in 1944.

Honeymoon in Oak Ridge

March 2024 •English

A filmmaker embarks on a poignant journey with his parents to the secret city where they unknowingly contributed to the creation of the first atomic bombs.

Nous étions soldats - Les oubliés de la Seconde Guerre mondiale

May 2024 •French

Night and Fog

April 1959 •French

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Bataan Death March

January 2021 •English

Within hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, bombs rained down on U.S. and Filipino forces in the Philippines. After months of vicious fighting, Allied forces surrendered on the island only to be met with a brutal march to P.O.W. camps dotted across the islands. Thousands died on the marches, before reaching the P.O.W. camps where countless more died. The surrender of the Philippines, now almost forgotten in U.S. history, is commemorated in the Philippines every year.