There are literally hundreds of movies that are set in WW2, and their settings and stories are equally diverse, so there’s something there for everyone. Spy thrillers are but one of many niches of WW2 films, and they’re also some of the best. Films like these take the focus off the conventional battlefield and tell the obscure and unknown stories of war through espionage.
Updated on December 18, 2022, by Kristy Ambrose: It’s not always the famous events that define a war. Espionage, weak links in the chain of command, and medieval politics were also big factors in what happened during World War II.
Everyone should see these new and old spy thrillers about this crucial time in history just to get an idea of where a lot of the most important fighting took place; in secret, and mostly unknown until now.
10 Operation Mincemeat (2021)
Some decisive battles were always in the public eye and have been the subject of intense scrutiny for decades, while others were kept secret and have only been uncovered recently. Operation Mincemeat is one of the latter, and what makes it even more interesting is that it involves some real historic figures. One of them is none other than Ian Fleming, the creator of the character James Bond.
The real Operation Mincemeat was an attempt to feed the German forces false information about the Allied invasion points in Europe. The movie recreates the true story with some dramatic flair, but for the most part, the adaptation is accurate.
9 Shining Through (1992)
It was a few years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Linda Voss applies for a job with a law firm but ends up working as a translator for the form’s top lawyer instead, a dour fellow named Ed Leland. After a while, she notices some strange behavior on the part of her boss, and Ed reveals that he’s a spy.
Linda doesn’t have much of a background in espionage when she begs Ed to recruit her to help with the war effort. All she has are her language skills and a determination to seek out her lost cousins in Berlin. Aside from the family drama, her mission is to seek out information on “flying bombs,” or what a modern viewer would call a missile.
8 A Soldier Of Orange (1977)
Movies about the resistance forces in Europe focus on guerilla warfare and espionage, the main tools left for an army after their country has come under occupation. A Soldier Of Orange is about the Nazi occupation of Holland, the official color of that country being orange, and it’s a story about the battlefield along with life as a spy.
Overall, the story is a sad one, recalling other war movies like All Quiet On The Western Front, which followed a group of former school chums into the fog of war. Instead of trenches, however, our heroes have to survive fascist student organizations, absentee monarchs, and friendly traitors, and not all of them make it.
7 Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Where Eagles Dare isn’t just a great movie about spies in WW2, it also broke a lot of technical ground. The project was filmed in difficult mountainous terrain on location in Austria and Bavaria and used anamorphic projection lenses, or Panavision, during the filming process. This is comparable to an early version of IMAX, so the setting alone blew a lot of minds.
The plot is thick with intrigue and tells the story of a daring paratrooper operation intended to rescue a person of interest held in a Nazi interrogation center, which happens to be a castle on top of a snowy mountain peak. Aside from the peril of the location itself, there are also double and even triple spies in this operation, making it even more dangerous.
6 Flame & Citron (2008)
Known as Flammen & Citronen in its native Danish, this movie is based on real events that took place within the Danish resistance during the years of Nazi occupation. Director Ole Christian Madsen worked on the story for years, partly because he had been obsessed with the story of the resistance since he was a child, and also because he thought the story had been either maligned or overlooked in previous versions.
The main characters are Bent, also known as Flammen, and Jørgen, code name Citronen, both part of the same resistance group fighting the Nazis. The movie isn’t just an espionage thriller, but also a film noir. It’s intended to be a realistic depiction of human relationships as well as wartime when the lines between good and evil aren’t so easily drawn.
5 The Exception (2016)
For those who also enjoyed Soldier of Orange and might be interested in more obscure European history involving the scattered royal families, there’s The Exception. Hardly anyone remembers the Holy Roman Empire or Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, whom the Nazis deposed when they took over the country, and this movie is a fictionalized account of an attempt on his life.
Most of the movie takes place at Huis Doorn, the Emporer’s residence near Utrecht, Netherlands, where he did stay for a few years until 1941. The main characters in the story are actually Mieke de Jong, a spy pretending to be a maid who has a secret mission to assassinate Wilhelm, and Captain Stefan Brandt, the Nazi officer who falls in love with her.
4 The Imitation Game (2014)
The scientific fields of cybernetics, electronics, and artificial intelligence owe a lot to Alan Turing, and we haven’t even started on his contributions when it came to beating the Nazis in WW2. Turing’s brilliant mind was instrumental in the cracking of many Nazi codes, giving the Allies a crucial edge when it came to espionage and intelligence.
The Imitation Game is based on the 1983 biographical novel by Andrew Hodges, and includes the early triumphs of Turing during the war, along with his tragic downfall and passing that followed later. Law enforcement of the time viewed Turing’s contributions to humanity as less important than Britain’s “indecency laws,” which are just coded language for any homosexual activity, and their persecution eventually put an end to his work.
3 Casablanca (1942)
What’s interesting about this movie is it starts under the pretense that this isn’t Europe, just a French colony, and there’s no war here. That tends to be the misconception even today, that WW2 was confined to Europe. Even if other places weren’t getting bombed, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a thriving underground resistance.
It’s a historical fact that “neutral” Casablanca was used as a travel hub for refugees trying to get out of Europe, and this movie was a contemporary reflection of a real issue at the time. What makes this story special is the human drama involved, with the main character Rick Blaine insisting he never “sticks his neck out” for anyone, including anyone fighting the war back in Europe. However, when former girlfriend Ilsa walks in looking for travel papers for her and her husband, his neutrality is tested.
2 Charlotte Gray (2001)
Adapted from a novel by the same name, which was written by Sebastian Faulks in 1999, Charlotte Gray is a story of a British spy working behind enemy lines in France. The lead character has her own personal motivations when the Secret Service recruits her, but one of the themes of almost every war movie is that all decisions are personal.
The film is beautiful, showing the best of 1940s French clothing and design, but it’s not an action film. Like a classic spy film, it has more of a slow burn when it comes to the plot, and the ending is more realistic as opposed to satisfying.
1 Lust, Caution (2007)
World War II had a slightly different dynamic on the other side of the planet, where Japan had been waging various wars on the mainland with the intent of expanding its empire since the early 1930s. Lust, Caution begins in 1938, during the second Sino-Japanese war, when the protagonist Wong Chia Chi is first recruited into a life of espionage in Hong Kong.
The rest of the film is set in Shanghai in 1942 when Chia-Chi reunites with her fellow students who were also recruited as spies. Now they work for the Kuomintang, an undercover organization working against the Japanese occupation forces. This isn’t just an espionage film, but also an erotic thriller, so be advised that it’s NSFW.
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