War: 95

In 1943, the United Kingdom is deeply entrenched in World War II. Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, a Jewish lawyer, remains in England while his wife, Iris, and children travel to safety in the United States. Montagu takes a hiatus from practising law when he is appointed to the Twenty Committee. His loyal secretary, Hester Leggett, comes with him. Winston Churchill has promised the United States that the Allies will invade Sicily by July of that year in order to push northward into Europe. However, Sicily is considered an obvious target and may be defended by the Wehrmacht. Admiral Godfrey informs the Twenty Committee that Britain must trick Nazi Germany into believing the Allies ...

During the Battle of the Atlantic, convoy HX-25, consisting of 37 Allied ships, is making its way to Liverpool. The convoy’s escort consists of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling DD-548, radio call sign “Greyhound”, captained by Commander Ernest Krause of the United States Navy; the British Tribal-class destroyer HMS James, call sign “Harry”; the Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor, call sign “Eagle”; and the Canadian Flower-class corvette, HMCS Dodge K136, call sign “Dicky”. Krause is overall commander of the escort ships, but despite his seniority and extensive naval education, it is his first wartime command.

Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter, born and brought up in the small village of St. Radegund, is working his land when war breaks out. Married to Franziska, colloquially Fani, the couple are important members of the tight-knit rural community. They live a simple life with the passing years marked by the arrival of the couple’s three girls. Franz is called up for basic training in the German army and is away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he is sent back from training. With his mother and sister-in-law Resie, he and his wife farm the land and raise their children amid the mountains and ...

In December 1937 in Tokyo, American naval attaché intelligence officer Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton and his counterpart are discussing the US and Japanese positions in the Pacific Ocean during a state function. Layton is warned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto that if the Japanese oil supply is threatened by the US, the Japanese will take immediate action. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese use their carrier fleet to strike at Pearl Harbor. The attack leads the US to enter World War II. Naval aviator Lieutenant Dick Best and the Air Group (CAG) of the carrier USS Enterprise fail to find the Japanese carrier fleet, exacerbating his rivalry with his commanding officer Lieutenant ...

On 6 April 1917, aerial reconnaissance has observed that the German army, which has pulled back from a sector of the Western Front in northern France, is not in retreat but has made a strategic withdrawal to the new Hindenburg Line, where they are waiting to overwhelm the British with artillery. In the British trenches, with field telephone lines cut, two young British lance corporals, William Schofield, a veteran of the Somme, and Tom Blake, are ordered by General Erinmore to carry a message to Colonel Mackenzie of the Second Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, calling off a scheduled attack the next morning that would jeopardise the lives of 1,600 men, including Blake’s ...

The Photographer of Mauthausen is a 2018 Spanish biography drama historical film starring Mario Casas, Macarena Gómez and Alain Hernández. The film tells the history of the photographer Francisco Boix during his life in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex. Actor Mario Casas lost 12 kg in weight while preparing to play the part of the malnourished Boix.[ Based on the true story of Spanish Civil War veteran Francisco Boix, a prisoner at ...

Moe Berg, a 15-year baseball veteran, joins the war effort as a spy to beat Nazi Germany in the race to build the first atomic bomb. In 1936, Berg is playing for the Boston Red Sox near the end of a long if undistinguished pro career. On a goodwill baseball exhibition tour of Japan, Berg sneaks onto the roof of a Tokyo hospital to covertly film Tokyo’s harbor and Navy shipyards. The Office of Strategic Services Chief to whom he presents the film is impressed by Berg’s enterprise, as well as the extensive language skills that Berg has picked up at Princeton and elsewhere, and Berg is hired. Werner Heisenberg, who won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for pioneering quantum physics, is now ...

The young Second Lieutenant Raleigh is sent to the front lines of the war, the trenches in Northern France. He requests of General Raleigh, his uncle, that he be sent under the command of Captain Stanhope of C Company, a man whom he knew from school. Stanhope used to holiday with Raleigh and his sister Margaret. Stanhope has taken to heavy drinking to numb himself to the horrors of his war situation. Raleigh is greeted by a nice older gentleman, Lieutenant Osborne, who asks to be called ‘Uncle’. At any moment, the Germans could launch an offensive, in what would come to be known as the German spring offensive. Some intel from a deserter ...

During the Vietnam War, the fighting spills over into neighboring Cambodia when the United States military begins bombing North Vietnamese forces attempting to shelter in the neutral territory, commencing the Cambodian Civil War. The U.S. then pulls out of Cambodia and evacuates its embassy. An officer of the Khmer National Armed Forces, Ung, known as “Pa” to his seven children, including 5-year-old Loung Ung, expresses regret for having trusted the Americans as the Khmer Rouge draw closer. The Khmer Rouge forces all families to leave the city as refugees, under the pretext that it will be bombed by Americans. Pa Ung denies working for the government when questioned by the ...

In the summer of 2009, four-star General Glen McMahon, having won renown for his effective leadership in Iraq, is sent to Afghanistan to prepare an assessment so that the government can end the ongoing war. He is given wide latitude to write it, on the sole condition that he not request more troops. McMahon and his staff, particularly his right hand man Major General Greg Pulver, are united in their belief that the war can be won, and decide to recommend that President Obama authorize a surge of 40,000 additional troops to secure Helmand province in order to stabilize the country. However, the Secretary of State informs McMahon that, because he requested more troops, and such a surge ...

At the close of the Iraq War, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews is a sniper who is sent to investigate a pipeline construction site in the desert of the country, with his spotter, Sergeant Allen Isaac. The pair patiently wait 22 hours on overwatch before determining that the site is clear. Matthews proceeds to investigate the site, but is shot by famed Iraqi sniper nicknamed “Juba.” Isaac tries to rescue the dying Matthews, but he is also wounded in the right knee and has his radio damaged and his water bottle destroyed in the process. Alone, Isaac takes cover behind an unsteady wall and tends to his wounds. The sniper has a radio tuned ...

In 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers have retreated to Dunkirk. Tommy, a young British private, is the sole survivor of a German ambush. At the beach, he finds thousands of troops awaiting evacuation and meets Gibson, who is burying a body. After a Luftwaffe dive bomber attack, they attempt to get aboard a hospital ship, but are ordered off. The ship is sunk by dive bombers; Tommy saves another soldier, Alex. They get aboard a destroyer, only to have it torpedoed and sunk before it can depart. With a single, vulnerable mole available for embarking on deep-draft ships, the Royal Navy requisitions civilian vessels in Great Britain ...

Mikael Boghosian is an apothecary who lives in the small Armenian village of Siroun in the southeast part of Turkey, within the Ottoman Empire. In order to help pay the expenses for medical school, he promises to marry Maral, the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople and attend the Imperial School of Medicine. There, he befriends Emre, the son of a high-ranking Ottoman official. Through his wealthy uncle, Mikael also meets Ana Khesarian, an Armenian woman raised in Paris, who is involved with an American reporter for the Associated Press, Chris Myers. Mikael falls in love with Ana just as international ...

In 1942 during World War II, Wing Commander Max Vatan, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot with intelligence duties, travels to Casablanca in Morocco to assassinate a German ambassador. He is partnered with a French Resistance fighter, Marianne Beauséjour, who escaped from France after her resistance group was compromised and killed. They pose as a married couple and grow close, despite agreeing that in their line of work feelings can get people killed. Marianne, who is trusted by the Germans, secures Max an invitation to the party where they plan to conduct the assassination. On the day itself, they have sex inside a car in the middle of a desert sandstorm, knowing they might not ...

In 1929 Lynchburg, Virginia, young Desmond Doss nearly kills his brother during roughhousing. That event and his Seventh-day Adventist upbringing reinforce Desmond’s belief in the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Fifteen years later, Doss takes an injured man to the hospital and meets a nurse, Dorothy Schutte. They strike a romance, and Doss tells Dorothy of his interest in medical work. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Doss enlists in the United States Army to serve as a combat medic. His father, Tom, a Great War veteran, is deeply upset by the decision. Before leaving for Fort Jackson, Desmond asks for Dorothy’s hand in marriage, and she ...

In 1942, Homer Macauley is a boy determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger of the small fictional town of Ithaca, CA. His older brother, Marcus, along with most of the young men of the town, has gone to serve in World War II, leaving the families worried. His father has died recently in the war and the boy has to take care of his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother. Homer delivers letters that bring messages of love, wishes, pain, and death, hoping that one of them announces the return of his brother.

Home Fires is a British period television drama about the life of Women’s Institute members on the Home Front during the Second World War. Set in a rural Cheshire community called Great Paxford, the series is produced by ITV, and launched its first series in May 2015. The first series is set between September 1939 and early 1940. The series was inspired by the book Jambusters by Julie Summers. With the first series having an average viewing ratings of 6.2 million ITV commissioned a second six-part series, aired in April 2016. The show focuses on a largely female cast, including notable actresses Francesca Annis, ...

In 2012, Benghazi in Libya is named one of the most dangerous places in the world, and countries have pulled their diplomatic offices out of the country in fear of an attack by militants. The United States still has a diplomatic compound, not an official consulate, open in the city. Less than a mile away is a top secret CIA base, “the Annex,” which is protected by a team of private military contractors from Global Response Staff (GRS). New to the detail is ex-US Navy SEAL Jack Silva, who arrives in Benghazi and is picked up by fellow ex-US Navy SEAL Tyrone “Rone” Woods, the commander of the GRS team and a personal friend of Silva. Arriving at the Annex, Silva ...

Growing up in Texas, Chris Kyle is taught by his father how to shoot a rifle and hunt deer. Years later, Kyle has become a ranch hand and rodeo cowboy, and returns home early, to find his girlfriend in bed with another man. After telling her to leave, he is mulling it over with his brother when he sees news coverage of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and decides to enlist in the Navy. He qualifies for special training and becomes a sniper with the U.S. Navy SEALs. Kyle meets Taya Studebaker at a bar, and the two soon marry. He is sent to Iraq after the September 11 attacks. His first kills are a woman and boy who attacked U.S. Marines on patrol with ...

In 1943, the Allies are making good progress driving back the Axis powers in Italy. Frank Stokes convinces President Roosevelt that victory will have little meaning if the artistic treasures of Western civilization are lost. Stokes is directed to assemble an Army unit nicknamed the “Monuments Men”, comprising museum directors, curators, art historians, and an architect, to both guide Allied units and search for stolen art to return it to its rightful owners. In July 1944, Claire Simone, a curator in occupied France, is forced to assist Nazi officer Viktor Stahl in overseeing the theft of art for either Adolf Hitler’s Führermuseum ...