The 40 most popular 1960s war movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1964 · 1h 35m · UK
After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop it.


Lawrence of Arabia
1962 · 3h 48m · UK
During World War I, English officer Thomas Edward 'T.E.' Lawrence sets out to unite and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes to fight the Turks.


The Great Escape
1963 · 2h 53m · US
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.


Where Eagles Dare
1968 · 2h 35m · UK
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.


The Dirty Dozen
1967 · 2h 29m · UK
12 American military prisoners in World War II are ordered to infiltrate a well-guarded enemy château and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers, most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety of violent crimes, agree to the mission and the possible commuting of their sentences.


The Guns of Navarone
1961 · 2h 40m · UK
A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.


The Longest Day
1962 · 2h 58m · US
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"


Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!
1966 · 2h 12m · FR
During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops – and the consequences of their own blunders.


Shame
1968 · 1h 44m · SE
In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.


100 Rifles
1969 · 1h 50m · US
When half-breed Indian Yaqui Joe robs an Arizona bank, he is pursued by dogged lawman Lyedecker. Fleeing to Mexico, Joe is imprisoned by General Verdugo, who is waging a war against the Yaqui Indians. When Lyedecker attempts to intervene, he is thrown into prison as well. Working together, the two escape and take refuge in the hills, where Lyedecker meets beautiful Yaqui freedom fighter Sarita and begins to question his allegiances.


Play Dirty
1969 · 1h 58m · UK
During World War II in North Africa, a group of British commandos disguised as Italian soldiers must travel behind enemy lines and destroy a vital Nazi oil depot.


Battle of Britain
1969 · 2h 12m · UK
In 1940, the Royal Air Force fights a desperate battle against the might of the Luftwaffe for control of the skies over Britain, thus preventing an attempted Nazi invasion.


Doctor Zhivago
1965 · 3h 20m · IT
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.


The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
1961 · 3h 10m · JP
After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his old life, he faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his men sneak behind enemy lines.


The Bridge at Remagen
1969 · 1h 57m · US
In March of 1945, as the War in Europe is coming to a close, fighting erupts between German and American troops at the last remaining bridgehead across the Rhine.


Khartoum
1966 · 2h 14m · UK
English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.


A Child
1967 · SU
The German-Soviet war. A group of scouts discovers a four-year-old girl at a bombed-out railway station who hid during the bombing and fell behind the echelon of evacuated orphanage children, and takes her with them. Soon the scouts are ambushed by the Germans in the forest.


The Battle of Algiers
1966 · 2h 2m · IT
Former petty criminal Ali la Pointe becomes a commander of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directing a guerilla insurgency against the colonial French occupation. Paratrooper commander Colonel Phillippe Mathieu, a veteran of World War II and the First Indochina War, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings.


Atrás de las nubes
1962 · 1h 35m · MX
All it says in my notes is "Like 'Juan Sin Miedo', only with soldiers." So... Army officer seeks revenge for... something...


Ivan's Childhood
1962 · 1h 35m · SU
In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.


La Valentina
1966 · 1h 39m · MX
A smuggler, condemned to be shot, is pardoned in exchange for kidnapping "La Valentina."


The Alamo
1960 · 3h 22m · US
The legendary true story of a small band of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in hopeless combat against a massive army in order to prevent a tyrant from smashing the new Republic of Texas.


Trigo limpio
1962 · ES
No overview available


Is Paris Burning?
1966 · 2h 53m · FR
Near the end of World War II, General Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he's unable to maintain control of the city. After much contemplation, Choltitz ignores orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, alongside Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a leader organise his forces.


Five Cartridges
1960 · 1h 30m
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), five International Brigade soldiers of different nationalities are given a crucial assignment as their commander lies dying: they are to smuggle top-secret information across enemy lines.


Passenger
1963 · 1h 2m · PL
A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.


Lafayette
1962 · 2h 38m · FR
The story of Lafayette, the 19 year old pacifist who takes the side of the Colonials during the American war of Independence.


El Cid
1961 · 3h 7m · IT
Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid" to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.


55 Days at Peking
1963 · 2h 34m · US
Diplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite for survival despite competing factions, overwhelming odds, delayed relief and tacit support of the Boxers by the Empress of China and her generals.


Battle of the Bulge
1965 · 2h 49m · US
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.


The Heroes of Telemark
1965 · 2h 11m · UK
Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.


Flying Circus
1968 · 6m · US
Ace, a World War I aviator hero, duels with Fritz Von Wienerschnitzel, an enemy German army officer who has posed as Ace's superior...


Hell Is for Heroes
1962 · 1h 30m · US
World War II drama where the action centers around a single maneuver by a squad of GIs in retaliation against the force of the German Siegfried line. Reese joins a group of weary GIs unexpectedly ordered back into the line when on their way to a rest area. While most of the men withdraw from their positions facing a German pillbox at the far side of a mine-field, half a dozen men are left to protect a wide front. By various ruses, they manage to convince the Germans that a large force is still holding the position. Then Reese leads two of the men in an unauthorized and unsuccessful attack on the pillbox, in which the other two are killed; and when the main platoon returns, he is threatened with court-martial. Rather that face the disgrace, and in an attempt to show he was right, he makes a one-man attack on the pillbox.


Counterpoint
1967 · 1h 46m · US
In December of 1944, Lionel Evans, an internationally renowned American conductor, is on a USO tour with his 70-piece symphony orchestra in newly-liberated Belgium. While fleeing from a German counterattack, Evans and his orchestra members are captured by a Panzer division and taken to an old chateau in Luxembourg. Despite orders to execute every prisoner, General Schiller, an avid music lover, commands Evans to give a private concert for him.


The Night of the Generals
1967 · 2h 28m · FR
A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.


Stars of Eger
1968 · 2h 25m · HU
This romantic and grandiose historical film depicts the era of the constant incursions and heroic battles fought by the defenders of the castle of Eger, led by captain István Dobó, against the heavy odds of superior numbers through the lives and love of Bornemissza Gergely and Cecey Éva. Gergely is inaugurated as a fighter already at the age of 7, when he escapes the captivity of the half-eyed Turk, Jumurdzsak, with Vica and the war-booty. In thirty years' time he becomes the first assistant of captain Dobó and the brain of the castle in the defence of Eger.


Zulu
1964 · 2h 18m · UK
In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, man-of-the-people Lt. Chard and snooty Lt. Bromhead are in charge of defending the isolated and vastly outnumbered Natal outpost of Rorke's Drift from tribal hordes.


The Fall of the Roman Empire
1964 · 3h 8m · US
In the year 180 A.D. Germanic tribes are about to invade the Roman empire from the north. In the midst of this crisis ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius has to make a decision about his successor between his son Commodus, who is obsessed by power, and the loyal general Gaius Livius.


Alféreces provisionales
1964 · 1h 50m
Javier López Cronwell, journalist, son of an American and a Spaniard, comes to Spain to write a series of anti-communist articles. The boy is politically neutral and emotionally and personally cold. He comes into contact with his paternal grandfather and the friends of his father, who died in our Liberation War, who propose that he take the provisional ensigns as a topic for his article. He prepares his return to North America without waiting to see the 25th anniversary Victory Parade, despite the wishes of his father's friends, old ensigns who will parade to show the world that they are still in the breach.


Rodzina Milcarków
1962 · 1h 23m · PL
The fate of a working-class family during the third Silesian Uprising.
The 1960s broke the old rules everywhere at once — the French New Wave, the collapse of the Hollywood Production Code, and new waves across Europe and Japan reshaping what a film could show and say.
War films range from combat spectacle to anti-war argument, and often try to be both at once. The genre is a reliable index of how a country understands its own history.