World War II was exactly as it was billed, fought all over the world. World War II movies, of which there are many, are set in all the world as well. Across Europe, Africa, and Asia, if there was fighting, there is probably a movie about it. Here is a list of some of those many movies — some of which are among the best war movies of all time — and where they took place.
Saving Private Ryan (France)
For a movie that feels like it’s set all over the place, Saving Private Ryan actually takes place in a condensed area. Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) and his men landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day and they found Private Ryan (Matt Damon) in the fictional town of Remelle, also in Normandy, so all the action in the movie takes place in a small area of Northwest France.
The Great Escape (Poland)
One of the great World War II movies of all time, The Great Escape mostly takes place in a prisoner-of-war camp in German-occupied Poland. After the escape, the soldiers are all over Europe, including Switzerland, Germany, and beyond. The movie is a highly fictionalized account, however, and it never really pins down exactly where the camp is.
The Thin Red Line (Guadalcanal)
Terence Malik’s The Thin Red Line is a very different kind of war movie, as you’d expect from the director. The action in the movie takes place on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Much of the movie was shot on location in the Solomons, including some near the actual sites of the battle, highlighting just how beautiful the islands are and how brutal the battle was.
Das Boot (North Atlantic)
The German film Das Boot is often hailed as one of the best World War II movies of all time. Of course, most of the movie was filmed in a very cramped and realistic-looking set of a submarine, but the titular German U-boat was patrolling the North Atlantic in the film.
The Bridge On The River Kwai (Thailand)
Considered a stone-cold classic of the war movie genre, The Bridge On The River Kwai is an amazing movie. It tells a fictional story of British POWs in a Japanese prisoner camp charged with building a bridge over the Khwae Yai River in Thailand for the Burma Railroad. Though it is set in Thailand, the movie was filmed in Sri Lanka.
Flags Of Our Fathers (Iwo Jima)
While both Flags of Our Fathers and its companion piece Letters From Iwo Jima take place on the island of Iwo Jima, both were filmed mostly in California (and weirdly, Iceland). The movies tell the story of the pivotal Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American side of the battle and the Japanese side.
Downfall (Berlin)
Downfall has become one of the most-memed movies of all time, with people using Hitler’s meltdown for thousands of different things they are upset about. It’s also an incredibly powerful movie that shows the final days of the Third Reich, taking place in and around the infamous Fuhrer Bunker in Berlin as the Allied forces close in on the capital.
Pearl Harbor (Hawaii)
The attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 has been turned into a lot of movies. The 2001 Michael Bay film, Pearl Harbor actually takes place in quite a few locations, though, obviously, mostly at the naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. Hawaii was not a state in 1941, that wouldn’t happen for another 18 years or so.
Dunkirk (France)
Another movie where the location is revealed right in the title is Dunkirk. Director Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece was filmed at the actual beach in northern France, in the town of Dunkirk, near the Belgian border, where the evacuation happened in 1940. There are pluses and minuses to this approach, as the town and the beach look very different today than they would have in 1940, still, it’s really cool to see a movie filmed where the events took place.
Patton (North Africa, Europe)
Patton tells the story of the legendary General George S. Patton (George C. Scott) and follows his path across northern Africa and Europe in World War II. It starts with Patton in Tunisia, then through Sicily. It also depicts Patton’s push across northern Europe during the decisive Battle of the Bulge, where he “rescued” the 101st Airborne, though as Band of Brothers taught us, the 101st didn’t believe they needed to be saved.
A Bridge Too Far (The Netherlands)
One of the most impressive casts of all time assembled for A Bridge Too Far. James Caan, Robert Redford, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, and Ryan O’Neill are just a few of the big names in the film. The movie tells the story of the disastrous Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands which was meant to “end the war by Christmas” but failed miserably.
Empire Of The Sun (China)
Empire of the Sun doesn’t land in many lists of Steven Spielberg’s best films, but it should. The story takes place in China, which is somewhat unique, and it stars a very young Christian Bale as a snobby English prep school kid who is forced to adapt to the harsh life in a Japanese internment camp near the Chinese city of Suzhou.
Fury (Germany)
Most of the action in 2016 Fury takes place in the cramped quarters of a Sherman tank. With a great cast including Brad Pitt and Jon Bernthal, that tank crew battles it out with Germans across the countryside and small towns of Germany in the last days of the war.
The Imitation Game (England)
The Imitation Game is a war movie with no battles and no violence. Still, it tells one of the most important stories of World War II. In the movie, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch, in maybe his best role) and the other codebreakers race to unlock the secrets of the Enigma Machine and the German codes. The movie takes place in an English country manor called Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, northwest of London.
Escape To Victory (Paris)
Escape To Victory or simply Victory does something very few other movies do, it combines the war movie genre with sports. In the movie, the Allied prisoners of war in a German camp take on the Germans in a soccer match. It stars Sylvester Stallone as the goalie and the great Pele as one of the Allied players. The match takes place in Paris before the prisoners make their escape.
Hacksaw Ridge (Okinawa)
In Hacksaw Ridge Andrew Garfield portrays conscientious objector Desmond Doss in the Battle of Okinawa. Based on a true story, the movie is a heartwrenching look at the battle for which Doss won the Medal of Honor as a medic on the island of Okinawa during the final days of the war in the Pacific.
Unbroken (Kwajalein Atoll, Japan)
Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is a mixed bag. At times it is brilliant, at others, it’s a letdown. It is the story of American pilot Louis Zamperini who survived 47 days at sea after his plane crashed into the Pacific. When he is rescued by the Japanese military, he is imprisoned first on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, then on mainland Japan.
Schindler’s List
There isn’t a more powerful film in history than Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, Schindler’s List. The movie gives an unvarnished look at the atrocities of the Holocaust through the story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson). It takes place mostly in Poland and in what is now Czechia, both parts of Germany during the war after the Nazis invaded them.
Midway (Pacific Ocean)
The Battle of Midway has been told in a few films over the years. The most recent, Midway, directed by Roland Emmerich tells the same story as the others. The epic naval battle near Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean was a decisive victory for the United States in the war and turned the tide completely. Today Midway Atoll is still a US territory.
Enemy at the Gates (Stalingrad)
The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest of the war, indeed of any war in history. The Soviets held off the advancing German army for almost six months a horrific battle of attrition. Enemy at the Gates portrays the brutality and desperation of the battle that took place in Stalingrad, modern-day Volgograd, in southern Russia.
Casablanca (Morocco)
Many decades since its release during World War II in 1942, Casablanca remains one of the most beloved Hollywood films of all time, one that is still influencing movies today. Humphrey Bogart stars as Rick Blaine, a nightclub owner riding out the war in Casablanca, Morocco.
Windtalkers (Saipan)
Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands is the setting for most of Windtalkers. The movie tells a little-known-at-the-time story of the Navajo Indians who served in the war as communications experts, using their native language to code orders and plans over the radio. It’s not the best movie, but it tells an important story.
The Pianist (Warsaw)
The Pianist is the story of the Holocaust told through the eyes of one man, Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody). It’s a brutal, true telling of his struggle to survive the war in hiding after the German invasion of Poland. Living through the war in different hideouts around Warsaw, Szpilman ultimately survives, but many who helped him were not as lucky.
The Dirty Dozen (France)
The Dirty Dozen is a good, old-fashioned romp through France. It’s the kind of war movie that is rarely made today, filled with the biggest stars of the day and without a lot of real stakes. Still, it’s a true classic.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (Hawaii)
The first movie to really tell the full story of Pearl Harbor was the classic Tora! Tora! Tora!. Obviously, as the story implies, most of it takes place on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base.
The English Patient (Tunisia, Italy)
The English Patient, one of the many war movies to win Best Picture, is a war movie and a love story. Hungarian aristocrat László Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) tells his story to his Italian nurse, (Juliette Binoche) of being lost in the desert as he recovers from his wounds. While the story is told from a bed in Italy, much of the story he tells takes place in North Africa, especially Tunisia.
Inglourious Basterds (France, Germany)
The opening scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds is intense. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interrogating the LaPadites at the French farm is one of the most enduring scenes ever filmed. Of course, large parts of the alternate history movie take place in Berlin (the famous final scene) and elsewhere around Europe.
The Guns of Navarone (Turkey, Greece)
In The Guns Of Navarone a group of soldiers led by Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, climb a cliff in to take out a German gun instillation on the fictional Aegean Island, Navarone, between Greece and Turkey. It’s another one of those early ’60s World War II movies that are as much an adventure film as it is a sober look at war.
Valkyrie (Tunisia, Germany, German-Occupied Poland)
The action in Valkyrie starts in Tunisia when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) sustains his injuries early in the war. Von Stauffenberg later attempts to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret hideout in the forest in German-occupied Poland. Most of the rest of the movie takes place in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany as they hatch the plan.
The Longest Day (Normandy)
Before Saving Private Ryan set the standard for D-Day depictions, The Longest Day stood alone in it’s glorious telling of the story. With an all-star cast with seemingly every big star of the day, the movie was a huge hit and became a template upon which many war movies were built in later years. Of course, it takes place on the beaches of Normandy and in nearby towns like Sainte-Mère-Église.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
In a classic example of a movie not living up to the true story it’s trying to tell, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage is just not that good. It’s too bad, too, because the story of the USS Indianapolis, from transporting the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima to its sinking and the shark attacks that followed is incredible. Instead of watching the movie, mostly set in the middle of the Philippine Sea, just watch Quint’s famous speech in Jaws.
The Final Countdown
Is it fair to call The Final Countdown a World War II movie? It does that rarest of things, combining a World War II story with science fiction, which sends a modern (by 1980 standards) aircraft carrier through a time porthole back to 1941 with a chance to stave off the Pearl Harbor attack. It sure seems like a WWII movie when the Japanese planes are shot down over the Pacific which means it counts.
One of the best things about films is seeing exotic locations and nothing frames those locations quite like a war film.
