What WW2 movie would you like to see made?


  • There have been so many bad ones like ‘Swing Kids’, ‘Pearl Harbor’, and the ‘Great Escape’ that it kind of blows my mind that they have ignored some of the really great movie concepts that happened during WW2.  First and foremost I would love to see a movie about the Japanese Americans in Italy during WW2.  If you want to talk about the best America has to offer, it is them.  Despite their families being interned they went to fight, and got more Medals of Honor than anyone else in American history.

    I would also like to see a movie about the siege of Berlin.  I think in the last days of the war too many people think that the average German soldier was fighting because they were fanatical.  For the most part that was not the case.  Desertion meant being publicly hanged, and even if your own government didn’t get you who would you surrender to?  The Russians?  I think not.  I would sooner put a bullet in my own head because at least than I knew I would not get tortured for sport.

    I also think that a movie portraying Japanese savagery towards the Chinese would be good on an educational level.  Or perhaps the Bataan Death march.  I think the inhumanity that made up the Nazis is pretty well covered, but Japan gets more of a pass IMO and people should know the truth.


  • @Zooey72:

    I also think that a movie portraying Japanese savagery towards the Chinese would be good on an educational level.  Or perhaps the Bataan Death march.  I think the inhumanity that made up the Nazis is pretty well covered, but Japan gets more of a pass IMO and people should know the truth.

    Try “City of Life and Death”. A Chinese film about the rape of Nanking.

    Also about the PoW experience (and resulting long term psychological scars) - “The Railway Man”.

    I thought both were excellent.


  • I’d like to see a Battle of Midway remake with all of the new CGI effects…

  • '17 '16

    @Der:

    I’d like to see a Battle of Midway remake with all of the new CGI effects…

    It might be funny if it open with Doolittle raid and impact on IJN and Japan military leaders.
    Seeing that Japan is not too far from USA bombers range.
    And wanting to enforce their outer perimeter strategy.


  • No well known actors, no love story and nation representing actors.
    If it is a German soldier, then a German actor should play him.
    No big bla bla.

    The Pacific series was ok, just a little bit less movie make up next time.

  • '17 '16

    How about… World War II: the movie… from Poland to Nagasaki.


  • I’d love to see a film dramatizing (and doing so accurately) the story of the 1940 engagement between the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay (seven 6-inch guns, no armour, and a speed of 15 knots) and the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer (six 11-inch guns, eight 5.9-inch guns, armour up to 5.5 inches thick, and a speed of 28 knots).  Jervis Bay was the only escort for a convoy of 37 merchantmen.  When the Scheer intercepted the convoy, Captain Edward Fegen of the Jervis Bay ordered the convoy to scatter then proceeded to fight the greatly superior Scheer to buy time for the cargo ships he was protecting.  At the cost of his ship and of his own life and of almost three-quarters of his crew, Fegen succeded: of the 37 merchantmen, 32 managed to escape the Scheer.  Fegen was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for this action, and even the captain of the Scheer reputedly expressed admiration for his opponent’s heroism.

  • '17 '16

    How about a proper modern Graf Spee movie… with current special effects and an accurate pocket battleship.


  • @Wolfshanze:

    How about a proper modern Graf Spee movie… with current special effects and an accurate pocket battleship.

    That would be a good idea.  I’ve seen the old version dating from the (I think) 1950s, and although it has its good moments there are too many cringe-worthy elements.  The shell splashes from the Spee’s 11-inch guns, which should be quite large, look like buckets of water being thrown upward by stagehands next to the Exeter bridge set (maybe that’s what they actually were), and the movie’s implied excuse for using a U.S. heavy cruiser (the Salem, as I recall) as the Spee – the excuse being that Langsdorff had disguised his ship – is pretty laughable, given that the ship in the movie is seen firing both of its forward main turrets even though the Spee only had one forward main turret.  (A dummy turret I can believe; a functional dummy turret is hard to swallow.)  And it’s too bad that the movie descends into low comedy – worse still, slow-paced and boring low comedy – once the Spee arrives in Montevideo.


  • I would like to see a movie about Erich Hartmann. Hartmann was the highest scoring fighter ace in history, with 352 victories. The highest-scoring non-German ace of all time is Ilmari Juutilainen of Finland, who had 94 victories.

    Hartmann said that he was more proud of the fact he’d never lost a wingman in combat than he was of his (very high) number of enemy planes shot down. He wrote to his fiancee every day of the war. He was never shot down by an enemy plane. But there were times when he was forced to crash land, due to flying into the debris of enemy aircraft he’d just shot down. On one of those occasions he landed behind enemy (Soviet) lines. The Soviets captured him. Upon being captured he very convincingly faked an injury. The Soviets left him lightly guarded. When the one man guarding him became distracted by a German attack, Hartmann overpowered the guard, and quickly fled his Soviet captors. Bullets whizzed past him as the soldiers attempted to recapture him. He safely made it back to German lines.

    Near the very end of the war he was ordered to surrender to the British, while the rest of his unit would surrender to the Soviets. He’d never disobeyed an order–except for that one order only. He felt it would be bad character to abandon his men to Soviet captivity (a very strong likelihood of death) while he himself enjoyed the comparative safety of British captivity. He remained with his unit, with himself and the rest of the unit eventually surrendering to the Americans.

    However, at Yalta FDR had agreed that any German servicemen who’d engaged primarily in fighting against the Soviet Union would be handed over to that nation; regardless of who they’d actually surrendered to. As a result of which, Hartmann and the rest of his unit were handed over to the Soviets. Hartmann spent years in Soviet captivity, during which the Soviets used torture and threats to attempt to get Hartmann to turn traitor to West Germany. Hartmann steadfastly refused, at one point physically attacking his Soviet interrogator. Fortunately, Hartmann’s celebrity status prevented him from joining the many, many German servicemen who’d died in Soviet gulags due to hunger, overwork, cold, and disease.

    In the 1950s, large numbers of German servicemen were liberated from Soviet captivity due to a trade deal between West Germany and the U.S.S.R. Hartmann was among them. He rejoined his wife, and learned that his son had died while he was away. Hartmann then put his energies into building up the West German air force. Due to political corruption and bribery, some of the aircraft used by the West German air force were unsafe, leading to the deaths of West German pilots. Hartmann took a stand against that corruption. He was punished for this good behavior, and forced into an early retirement.


  • It would not sell because his adversary’s were 99% Soviets. Adolf Galland might be a better choice ( 100+ western allied planes shot down, Soviets had not many good pilots or had inferior planes).


  • One of the hard sells in doing anything with WW2 is that the pull is to make everyone who was in the German military evil.  While there is no dispute about the atrocities the Germans committed in the war, people like to make them cartoon evil at times (twirling mustaches and tying maidens to railroad tracks kind of thing).  The worst WW2 movie of all time “Swing Kids”, said that Nazis hated dancing.  It was kind of like “Footloose” but in Nazi Germany.  Hate dancing eh?  I bet they killed kittens and declared war on rainbows too!

    At any rate in order to make a German soldier anything other than a mustache twirling idiot the movie has to be something like “Valkarie” where Tom Cruise is trying to take down Nazis.  There are a few exceptions like “Das Boot”, but nothing really recent that I can think of.

    I think a biography/dramaitization of Rommel’s life would be amazing.  And very doable in the “Nazis are evil” vein that is the criteria that must be met to make a WW2 movie (to be clear, Nazis are evil; but to make a movie about a German soldier who is not evil, that horse has to be beaten to death).  If they keyed in on Rommel’s brilliance from Poland to Normandy, along with him being one of the few to stand up to Hitler… that would make for a great movie.  Not to mention it has a rags to riches component since Rommel was really the only non-Prussian Field Marshall.


  • How about some fantasy movie about how it was Churchill’s fault the Germans starved during and after WW2 and the murder of ten’s of millions of people was merely Germany making “a choice” to feed her own people, which as an argument was used by neonazi’s as a form of Holocaust denial. It would be narrated by some actor that looks and dresses like Herman Goering, and who like Boss Hogg is always talking with a hotdog in his mouth. It would be a new form of sarcasm and Historical commentary. The followup sequel would be how the Reich was forced into war and had no choice and how Japan was forced into attacking the US and attack China 10 years earlier in case the oil got cut off.

  • Customizer

    Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.

    Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?

    I’d like to see:

    A movie showing the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of German civilians and “collaborators” from other nationalities that took place after the war, including the extent to which the western Allies helped the Soviets carry them out.

    A movie showing Polish resistance to Soviet occupation which went on into the 1950s ignored by the West (which went to war in 1939 to “guarantee” Polish sovereignty, remember?)

    A movie about the Germans who were executed after the Nuremburg trials for carrying out the Katyn massacre which everyone knew was really committed by the Soviets.


  • @Imperious:

    How about some fantasy movie about how it was Churchill’s fault the Germans starved during and after WW2 and the murder of ten’s of millions of people was merely Germany making “a choice” to feed her own people, which as an argument was used by neonazi’s as a form of Holocaust denial. It would be narrated by some actor that looks and dresses like Herman Goering, and who like Boss Hogg is always talking with a hotdog in his mouth. It would be a new form of sarcasm and Historical commentary. The followup sequel would be how the Reich was forced into war and had no choice and how Japan was forced into attacking the US and attack China 10 years earlier in case the oil got cut off.

    IL, you trying to imply you want Kurt to be the lead actor or producer in this movie ?


  • @Flashman:

    Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.

    Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?

    I’ve seen actors becoming presidents. So Yes everything is possible.


  • A German soldiers life, from '39 to '45.

  • '22 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    @Flashman:

    Or how Bush and Blair were forced to invade Iraq to prevent Saddam’s planned attack on the west with WMDs.

    Problem is, can they find an actor dumb enough to play Bush or one slimy enough to accurately portray Blair?

    W is not one of Oliver Stone’s best but worth an online stream. Josh Brolin (of Goonies fame) does a decent job as Dubya.

    For the topic at hand a Kursk movie would be a helluva show.


  • I want someone like that to play Herman to see the ridiculousness of some ideas and faulty reading. Every scene he would get larger and his uniform would entail a greater degree of mustard and ketchup stains as he describes the starving nature of everyday Germans. I might play Hoover and cook Chickens in front of starving NAZI victims, while recanting their plight.


  • You don’t like Hermann much, don’t you?

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