An extended international journey across the Asian, European, Atlantic and Pacific theatres, genocide, resistance, liberation and the postwar reckoning. Optional entries deepen selected chapters.
The war became global through interconnected European, African and Asian-Pacific campaigns. Genocide, forced labour and occupation were central to the conflict rather than footnotes. Fictional characters or compressed incidents are identified in each title’s contextual note.
1937
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1937
Begin the global background in East Asia, where large-scale Japanese–Chinese war preceded the European outbreak.
The film dramatizes the 1937 Nanjing massacre through composite characters. Its violence and historical setting are grounded in events, but individual stories are fictional.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
29.09.1938 → 30.09.1938
REPRESENTED HISTORY 29.09.1938 → 30.09.1938
Understand failed diplomacy and the fear of another European war immediately before 1939.
The Munich Agreement was signed in September 1938. The espionage friendship at the film's centre is invented; the appeasement debate is simplified.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1938 → 1988
Explore rescue networks that helped endangered children leave Czechoslovakia before occupation and war.
Nicholas Winton helped organize refugee transports in 1939; rescue depended on many collaborators. The film alternates wartime events with later remembrance.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
01.09.1939 → 07.09.1939
REPRESENTED HISTORY 01.09.1939 → 07.09.1939
See the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 from the defenders' perspective.
The assault on Westerplatte accompanied the start of the European war. Dramatized disagreements among its defenders should not obscure the wider Polish campaign and Soviet invasion on 17 September.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 01.09.1939 → 1945
Confront Poland's fate under both Nazi and Soviet power at the beginning of the war.
The Soviet NKVD murdered thousands of Polish officers and other prisoners in 1940. The film uses family stories to convey the long suppression of responsibility.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
09.05.1940 → 04.06.1940
REPRESENTED HISTORY 09.05.1940 → 04.06.1940
Follow Britain's wartime leadership crisis during the German assault on Western Europe.
Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 as the German offensive unfolded. The celebrated Underground encounter is fictionalized.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 26.05.1940 → 04.06.1940
Experience the evacuation from northern France through soldiers, civilians and airmen.
Operation Dynamo evacuated Allied troops in May–June 1940. The film uses fictional composite characters and interwoven timelines instead of a survey of the campaign.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1940
Examine the collapse of France and the beginnings of Free French resistance.
Charles de Gaulle rejected the 1940 armistice and broadcast an appeal from London. Family subplots and intimate conversations are dramatized.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
07.12.1941
REPRESENTED HISTORY 07.12.1941
Examine the decisions and failures that preceded Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
The 7 December 1941 attack brought the United States into war against Japan; the film presents events from US and Japanese perspectives, though dialogue is reconstructed.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1941
Enter the Battle of the Atlantic through the claustrophobic experience of a German U-boat crew.
Based on a novel informed by wartime reporting, this fictional patrol captures the conditions of submarine warfare without representing one literal mission.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
1941 → 1944
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1941 → 1944
Trace Jewish armed resistance and the survival of civilians in occupied Eastern Europe.
The Bielski partisans operated in German-occupied Belarus. Individual events and moral dilemmas are condensed in the dramatization.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1942
Understand how bureaucrats coordinated the machinery of genocide.
The Wannsee Conference met in January 1942 to coordinate policies for the genocide of Europe's Jews. Mass murder was already underway; this meeting did not mark its beginning.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 01.09.1939 → 17.01.1945
Look at Jewish civilian survival and the destruction of Warsaw through one person's experience.
Władysław Szpilman's memoir underpins a story spanning the 1939 invasion, the Warsaw Ghetto and the city's destruction. It is not a general account of every occupied community.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 01.09.1939 → 08.05.1945
Examine persecution, exploitation, complicity and efforts to rescue people during the Holocaust.
Oskar Schindler helped save Jewish workers, but the film compresses his change of heart and reconstructs intimate encounters. The Holocaust was far broader than this exceptional rescue story.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
23.08.1942 → 02.02.1943
REPRESENTED HISTORY 23.08.1942 → 02.02.1943
See the Eastern Front's human cost as Germany's 1942 offensive becomes a struggle for survival.
The Battle of Stalingrad lasted from 1942 into February 1943. This is a fictional German-unit perspective and should be paired with wider context on Soviet forces and civilians.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 07.08.1942 → 15.08.1945
Follow the island campaigns, terrain and costs of war in the Pacific from 1942 onward.
This dramatization follows US Marines across several operations, not one calendar year. It omits much of the Chinese theatre and other Allied forces.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1942 → 1944
See the Allied struggle over German access to heavy-water production in occupied Norway.
Norwegian resistance and Allied missions targeted the Vemork heavy-water plant in 1942–43. This drama compresses operations and private choices.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
1943
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1943
Discover civilian moral resistance inside Nazi Germany.
Sophie and Hans Scholl were arrested and executed in 1943 for White Rose resistance. The film uses surviving interrogation and trial records but reconstructs some conversations.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 30.04.1943 → 10.05.1943
Explore Allied deception and the preparation for the 1943 Mediterranean campaign.
Operation Mincemeat used false papers to misdirect Axis intelligence ahead of the invasion of Sicily. Characters and dialogue are dramatized.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 06.1943 → 04.1945
Follow the US air war over Europe and its growing human and strategic costs.
Inspired by the Eighth Air Force's 100th Bomb Group, the miniseries spans bombing missions, imprisonment and the 1943–45 air campaign.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
06.06.1944 → 13.06.1944
REPRESENTED HISTORY 06.06.1944 → 13.06.1944
Enter the Normandy landings and the human cost of the liberation campaign.
The Omaha Beach opening evokes D-Day on 6 June 1944; the rescue mission and central characters are fictional.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1942 → 08.05.1945
Follow an Allied airborne unit from pre-invasion training through Western Europe's liberation.
Based on Easy Company's experiences, this miniseries spans 1942–45 and is strongest as a sustained unit perspective, not a single-day account of D-Day.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1943 → 1944
Examine military opposition to Hitler and the failed coup of July 1944.
Stauffenberg's bomb failed to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. The film condenses networks of conspirators and should not imply that the broader German military uniformly opposed the regime.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 01.08.1944 → 02.10.1944
Understand the desperation and civilian catastrophe of the Warsaw Uprising.
The Home Army began the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944. The young protagonists are fictional, and spectacle should not replace the military and diplomatic context.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 17.09.1944 → 25.09.1944
Follow Operation Market Garden and the risks of bold Allied offensives in 1944.
The September 1944 airborne offensive failed to secure a crossing of the Lower Rhine. The large ensemble compresses command decisions and battlefield experience.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
1944
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1944
Confront the destruction machinery of Auschwitz from a deliberately restricted viewpoint.
The story is fiction set against the operations of the Sonderkommando and the 1944 Auschwitz revolt. Its narrow perspective is intentional, not a comprehensive camp history.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
20.04.1945 → 02.05.1945
REPRESENTED HISTORY 20.04.1945 → 02.05.1945
Witness the collapse of Hitler's regime during the battle for Berlin.
The film reconstructs April 1945 around Hitler's bunker using testimony and memoirs. Its focus on individuals must not eclipse the regime's crimes.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 19.02.1945 → 26.03.1945
View a key Pacific island battle through Japanese soldiers rather than a US-only perspective.
The battle of Iwo Jima ran from February to March 1945. The film fictionalizes personal stories while evoking the defenders' conditions.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1945
End the military story with Japanese civilian devastation in the war's final months.
This animated fiction draws on Akiyuki Nosaka's semi-autobiographical story. Air raids and deprivation were real, while the central sibling narrative is dramatized.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 14.08.1945 → 15.08.1945
Follow the internal crisis surrounding Japan's decision to accept surrender in August 1945.
The atomic bombings, Soviet entry into the war and discussions around the emperor all shaped the decision. The film dramatizes deliberations and a failed coup attempt.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
1945 → 1946
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1945 → 1946
Reflect on postwar accountability, propaganda and the effort to prosecute leading perpetrators.
The international trial began in November 1945. The film's psychiatric framing is a dramatized entry point, not a replacement for court evidence.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
REPRESENTED HISTORY 1940 → 1945
Confront the camps and the ethics of remembering crimes after liberation.
Alain Resnais's 1956 documentary uses postwar footage and archival images. It is about the Nazi concentration-camp system and its memory, not a film set exclusively in 1940.
Season 0 and specials cannot be tracked here.
In 1945, the war ended but occupation, reconstruction, displacement, decolonization and prosecution continued. The rivalry between the Soviet Union and Western powers reshaped international life. Continue with the Cold War journey; this is a future Watch Next editorial link, not yet an active app feature.