1930's WWII Movies
A work in progress. Yes, most of these predate the war's official start.
1930's WWII Movies
1940's WWII Movies
1950's WWII Movies
1960's WWII Movies
1970's WWII Movies
1980's WWII Movies
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1930's WWII Movies
1940's WWII Movies
1950's WWII Movies
1960's WWII Movies
1970's WWII Movies
1980's WWII Movies
1990's WWII Movies
2000's WWII Movies
2010's WWII Movies
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- DirectorAlfred T. MannonStarsIsobel Lillian SteeleThe history of Germany from 1924 through Hitler's rise in power is described through newsreel footage. Freelance press representative Isobel Lillian Steele travels to Germany to work as a translator/journalist for the English language magazine Germany and You . Thinking a story on the German film industry would be interesting, she becomes acquainted with Herr Luger, the Nazi representative in charge of motion picture employment. Through him she becomes friendly with German actress Catherine Stoloff and eventually Baron Yurick Von Sosnowski, a modern-day Casanova whose parties are the talk of Berlin. While an overload of work on 28 Feb 1934 causes Isobel to miss one of the wealthy nobleman's soirees, the secret police arrest the baron on charges of espionage and his guests are detained, some for weeks, for questioning. Unaware of the imprisonments because the police feign ignorance, Isobel searches for Catherine, which arouses police suspicion that she is a collaborator. Even after Catherine is released a month later, she reveals nothing to Isobel, for the actress, like the other detainees, have been sworn to an oath of silence, which if violated would mean three years imprisonment. On 3 May, the People's Court is formed in Germany. It issues new edicts concerning foreign nationals and anti-Hitlerite activities. Film producer Henry Reicher, a communist sympathizer, contacts Isobel about writing a screenplay for his film Social Espionage which would depict the arrest of the baron and his guests by the secret police. Unaware of his propagandist motives, Isobel begins writing the script with Baroness Von Elmendorff, another of the baron's acquaintances. Although they plan to change the names of the characters in their final draft, the first version of the script contains the real names of the people involved. By 10 August, after President Von Hindenburg has died, removing the last obstacle to Hitler's control, Isobel's script is completed. Two secret policemen, having infiltrated Reicher's company as his secretaries, arrest Reicher and Isobel. Sent to Alexanderplatz, she is charged with espionage when confronted with her first draft. Other charges follow, including treason and associating with communists. Detained as a political espionage prisoner, she is taken to a women's prison. Only slowly does she acclimate to the harsh conditions and bad food. When finally allowed to receive the American Consul as a visitor, she is forbidden to discuss details of her case. Isobel's mother, on the eve of a trip to the United States to seek help for her daughter, is allowed a short visit, but is told not to discuss Isobel's imprisonment. After a constant barrage of distorted accusations by the police, on 11 Sep Isobel is suddenly transferred to Moabit prison, where the Sosnowski women victims have been retained. Her personal belongings confiscated, Isobel finds comfort in a small yarn doll, named Malvina after the first initials of her friends, which becomes her "fetish of hope" in a lonely existence. Denied the simplest pleasures, her condition worsens. Mrs. Steele, having arrived in Boise, Idaho, to recruit the assistance of her son, contacts Senator William E. Borah in Washington, D.C., whose involvement in the matter at year's end forces Isobel's case to be "temporarily closed," allowing for her deportation and freedom. Clutching her doll, she sails for New York. As her ship enters New York Harbor, she proudly smiles as the Statue of Liberty rises in the background.
- DirectorYunwei YingStarsMuzhi YuanHong HongBo'er Chen800 Chinesse soldiers guard the important warehouse district against the invading Japanese ArmyAKA: The Eight Hundred Heroes
- DirectorDomenico GambinoStarsAntonio CentaDria PaolaPaola BarbaraForeign spies steal the formula of a new explosive
- DirectorTakeshi SatôStarsKamatari FujiwaraKiyoshi HosoiYûko IchinoseAKA: Chocolate and Soldiers
- DirectorAleksandr MacheretStarsOleg ZhakovSerafima ShirokovaIvan KudryavtsevThis story of the Nazi prison camps in the 1930s deals with the attempts of the Nazi guards to break the spirit of the Communists in concentration camps. The film ends with a large worker's strike looming that makes the escape of Paul possible. Shown in the USA in April of 1939 at the Waldorf Theater in NYC, with Russian dialogue and English titles.
- DirectorTomotaka TasakaStarsIsamu KosugiBontarô MiakeIchirô IzawaA patrol of Japanese troops in China goes on a patrol into enemy territory in this realistic ,if propagandistic, war drama.
- DirectorFyodor OtsepStarsViviane RomanceRoger DuchesneAbel JacquinOff Gibraltar ,British ships blow up;there might be a mole among the British officers .
- DirectorGeorg Wilhelm PabstStarsChristl MardaynLouis JouvetRaymond RouleauA Russian emigrant sings in a Shanghai nightclub under the assumed name of Kay Murphy. All she dreams of is a peaceful life with her daughter Vera. But this is only a pipe dream as she has been forced by her former lover Ivan to work for a secret criminal organization, "The Black Dragon". Vera, who studies in a Hong Kong boarding-school, knows nothing about her mother's past. When Ivan, who is also Vera's father, resurfaces and blackmails Kay, the young woman is determined to fight back...
- DirectorJohn BaxterStarsBasil RadfordSilvia St. ClaireThorley WaltersA British secret service agent and his sister travel to Berlin to recover a top secret RAF invention which was stolen from the French government.
- DirectorTim WhelanArthur B. WoodsStarsLaurence OlivierRalph RichardsonValerie HobsonA quirky British Secret Service Agent named Major Hammond tries to discover who is using a secret weapon to steal experimental planes.
- DirectorAnatole LitvakStarsEdward G. RobinsonGeorge SandersFrancis LedererFBI agent Ed Renard investigates the pre-war espionage activities of the German-American Bund.
- DirectorSam NewfieldStarsRoland DrewSteffi DunaGreta GranstedtHans Memling, a young intellectual, patriotic German, is secretly opposed to the Nazi regime. With the aid of Gustav Schultz, Father Pommer, Anna Wahl and others, he is gleaning accurate information from foreign radio broadcasts and distributing it through Germany with an underground-press operation. He convinces his brother-in-law Karl Bach, the brother of his wife Elsa, that Hitler is leading Germany toward a second world war. Karl, in love with Anna, joins the movement, determined to restore German culture and save the people from the brutality of the Storm Troopers and the Gestapo. The group has an inside link through Albert Stalhelm, a Storm Trooper and one of Hitler's Elite Guards. Albert is sickened by the brutalities he sees and wants to resign and flee Germany, but Hans persuades him to remain until they can find a replacement. He agrees, but warns the group that he is forced to join in the Nazi orgies and liquor loosens his tongue. Elsa is about to have a baby and lives in terror that her husband's activities will be discovered, and she tries to persuade Hans to immigrate to the United States as she does not want their child to grow up as a Nazi. He decides to stay because his duty to his country and civilization can not be put aside, and Elsa refuses to leave without him. Warned by Lustig, a beer-garden bartender, that the Gestapo is watching them, Hans and Erlich, another active anti-Nazi, escape. Lustig is jailed and tortured but can not be made to talk. Hans is later captured and turned over to Albert and two other SS men to be tortured, and Albert does not dare move to save his friend. Sickened by the brutality, Albert tries to go home, but is forced to join a party, where he gets drunk and says he has to go warn his friends. The SS men listen to him reveal the names of the group members, then shoot him. Hans, Lustig, Schultz, Karl and Father Pommer are thrown into a concentration camp, where the commandant is Hans' friend from World War I, Colonel Hess, who orders that Hans be treated decently, but the others do not fare well, as they are beaten, humiliated and forced to praise Hitler. Erlich, who has escaped the dragnet, tells Elsa and Anna that Lippert, a crooked Nazi lawyer, can secure Hans' release for a thousand marks. Hans and the others are sold out as slave labor by the camp guards who only see the oppressed prisoners as a means of personal profit. Hans bitterly tells Hess that Hitler is strangling Germany and that he will never submit to the rule of a lunatic. Hess orders him beaten and refuses to release him when Lippert's order comes through. Through the help of a guard, Braun, Hans escapes and he and Elsa reach the border, but Hans decides he can not leave Germany while the Nazis rule and he returns to help Erlich rebuild the anti-Nazi organization. Elsa stays with him.
- DirectorAdrian BrunelBrian Desmond HurstMichael PowellStarsMerle OberonRalph RichardsonJune DuprezA look at the current might of the Royal Air Force. Place - Great Britain, time - two months after the start of World War ll.
- DirectorFlavio CalzavaraStarsGiovanni GrassoRiccardo FredaCarlo DuseDuring the Ethiopian war, thirteen boys embark clandestinely on a merchant ship bound for Africa. Following the shipwreck, they are castaway on a desert island...
- DirectorGeorge ShermanStarsGene AutrySmiley BurnetteJune StoreyFederal Agent Gene Autry and his sidekick Frog are sent to Mexico to prevent foreign powers from gaining control of Mexican oil refineries and fomenting revolution among the Mexican people. Gene falls in love with Senorita Dolores but finds he must leave for the island of Palermo, where her uncle, Don Diego, is being prevented from transporting his cattle to market by the foreign agents, who have co-opted Dolores' brother Andreo into joining them. While trying to load cattle by sea into a waiting cargo ship Gene and his men are attacked by Andreo and his revolutionaries, with fatal results.Gene Autry vs. Nazi Agents
- DirectorWalter SummersStarsBruce CabotMarta LabarrTamara DesniTed Healey, a British man, is employed in a factory which makes anti-submarine patrol boats fitted with a secret torpedo device. Healy is in the pay of the German Secret Service and his wife, Freyda, constantly reproaches him for treachery to his country. He promises her as soon as he has made his fortune, he will stop his spy activities. He refuses to turn over the pictures he has taken of the blueprints to Lemnel, head of the German spies, until he has been paid 5000 Pounds. The Germans have a plan to get the pictures and dispose of Healey and he takes a bit of drastic action of his own. He kills a man of his own build, decapitates and mutilates the body and plants papers on the torso to make the Germans and the British Intelligence assume he is dead. But both discover he is still alive and set traps for him. The Brit trap is a beautiful British agent, Maria Dufreyne, who meets Healey and gains his confidence. Gaining his confidence leads to a series of embraces between Maria and Healey, and when the British agents show the pictures to Freyda she is somewhat incensed about her husband's infidelity... and the Germans are also closing in.
- DirectorTomotaka TasakaStarsShirô IzomeRyôichi KikuchiIsamu KosugiAKA: Mud and Soldiers