The 40 most popular german history movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Kingdom of Heaven
2005 · 2h 24m
country: United States
After his wife dies, a blacksmith named Balian is thrust into royalty, political intrigue and bloody holy wars during the Crusades.


The Uprising
2026 · 2h 8m
country: Germany
As war and plague devastate 14th-century England, a humble peasant ignites a rebellion, uniting an army of commoners to defy the King’s might in a desperate fight for justice and survival.


Elizabeth: The Golden Age
2007 · 1h 54m
country: France
When Queen Elizabeth's reign is threatened by ruthless familial betrayal and Spain's invading army, she and her shrewd adviser must act to safeguard the lives of her people.


Downfall
2004 · 2h 35m
country: Austria
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.


Das Boot
1981 · 2h 30m
country: Germany
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.


The Physician
2013 · 2h 35m
country: Germany
England, 1021: Born in a miserable mining town, Robert Cole swears to become a physician and vanquish disease and death. His harsh path of many years, a quest for knowledge besieged by countless challenges and sacrifices, leads him to the remote Isfahan, in Persia, where he meets Ibn Sina, the greatest healer of his time.


Pompeii
2014 · 1h 45m
country: Germany
In 79 A.D., Milo, a slave turned gladiator, finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.


Colonia
2016 · 1h 46m
country: Germany
A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody ever escaped from.


The Tin Drum
1979 · 2h 42m
country: France
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.


K-19: The Widowmaker
2002 · 2h 18m
country: Canada
When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.


The Ghost and the Darkness
1996 · 1h 49m
country: Germany
Sir Robert Beaumont is behind schedule on a railroad in Africa. Enlisting noted engineer John Henry Patterson to right the ship, Beaumont expects results. Everything seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of the project's foreman, seemingly killed by a lion. After several more attacks, Patterson calls in famed hunter Charles Remington, who has finally met his match in the bloodthirsty lions.


Never Look Away
2018 · 3h 8m
country: Germany
German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.


Balloon
2018 · 2h 5m
country: France
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.


Stalingrad
1993 · 2h 14m
country: Germany
A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.


Two Prosecutors
2025 · 1h 58m
country: France
In 1937, amidst Stalin's Great Terror, a newly appointed prosecutor for the USSR is made aware of alleged corruption in the Secret Police, and takes it upon himself to investigate.


Cross of Iron
1977 · 2h 13m
country: Germany
It is 1943, and the German army—ravaged and demoralised—is hastily retreating from the Russian front. In the midst of the madness, conflict brews between the aristocratic yet ultimately pusillanimous Captain Stransky and the courageous Corporal Steiner. Stransky is the only man who believes that the Third Reich is still vastly superior to the Russian army. However, within his pompous persona lies a quivering coward who longs for the Iron Cross so that he can return to Berlin a hero. Steiner, on the other hand is cynical, defiantly non-conformist and more concerned with the safety of his own men rather than the horde of military decorations offered to him by his superiors.


Chuck Norris vs Communism
2015 · 1h 20m
country: Germany
In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.


Aguirre, the Wrath of God
1972 · 1h 35m
country: Germany
A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.


Rhinegold
2022 · 2h 18m
country: Germany
Xatar’s way from the ghetto to the top of the charts is as dramatic as it is daring. From the hell of an Iraqi jail, Giwar Hajabi emigrated to Germany as a young boy with his family in the mid-1980s and has to start right at the bottom. There are opportunities, but far more obstacles. Giwar’s rise from petty criminal to major dealer is swift. Until one shipment goes missing. In order to clear his debts with the cartel, he plans a legendary gold heist. But just as everything goes wrong, another door opens for Giwar thanks to his passion for music …


Firebird
2021 · 1h 47m
country: Estonia
At the height of the Cold War, a troubled soldier forms a forbidden love triangle with a daring fighter pilot and his female comrade amid the dangerous surroundings of a Soviet Air Force Base.


The Red Baron
2008 · 1h 46m
country: Germany
Richthofen goes off to war like thousands of other men. As fighter pilots, they become cult heroes for the soldiers on the battlefields. Marked by sportsmanlike conduct, technical exactitude and knightly propriety, they have their own code of honour. Before long he begins to understand that his hero status is deceptive. His love for Kate, a nurse, opens his eyes to the brutality of war.


Chess Story
2021 · 1h 50m
country: Austria
1938. While the Nazi troops march into Vienna, the lawyer Josef Bartok hastily tries to escape to the USA with his wife but is arrested by the Gestapo. Bartok remains steadfast and refuses to cooperate with the Gestapo that requires confidential information from him. Thrown into solitary confinement, Bartok is psychologically tormented for months and begins to weaken. However, when he steals an old book about chess it sets him on course to overcome the mental suffering inflicted upon him, until it becomes a dangerous obsession.


The Captain
2018 · 1h 58m
country: Germany
Germany, 1945. Soldier Willi Herold, a deserter of the German army, stumbles into a uniform of a Nazi captain abandoned during the last and desperate weeks of the Third Reich. Newly emboldened by the allure of a suit that he has stolen only to stay warm, Willi discovers that many Germans will follow the leader, whoever he is.


13 Minutes
2015 · 1h 54m
country: Germany
The breathtaking story of a man who nearly would have changed the world. In 1939, when Hitler tricked millions of people at the height of his power, radical Georg Elser — disparaged as an assassin — is one of the greatest resistance fighters.


Not All Were Murderers
2006 · 1h 35m
country: Germany
Based on the childhood memories of actor Michael Degen, the movie deals with the everyday struggle to survive as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany. As his father had died in 1940 after being released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Michael and his mother fear to be deported themselves. They manage to live in Berlin with false names and faked papers, hidden by several, often broken, people...


Pope Joan
2009 · 2h 29m
country: Germany
A 9th century woman of English extraction born in the German city of Ingelheim disguises herself as a man and rises through the Vatican ranks.


The Damned
1969 · 2h 38m
country: Germany
In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime.


Luther
2003 · 2h 3m
country: Germany
During the early 16th century, idealistic German monk Martin Luther, disgusted by the materialism in the church, begins the dialogue that will lead to the Protestant Reformation.


The Paper Brigade
2018 · 1h
country: Belgium
Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.


The Devil's Bath
2024 · 2h 1m
country: Austria
In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.


The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
1974 · 1h 49m
country: Germany
The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.


The Baader Meinhof Complex
2008 · 2h 29m
country: Czech Republic
When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.


Black Death
2010 · 1h 42m
country: United Kingdom
As the plague decimates medieval Europe, rumours circulate of a village immune from the plague. There is talk of a necromancer who leads the village and is able to raise the dead. A fearsome knight joined by a cohort of soldiers and a young monk are charged by the church to investigate. Their journey is filled with danger, but it's upon entering the village that their true horror begins.


The Countess
2009 · 1h 40m
country: France
Kingdom of Hungary, 17th century. As she gets older, powerful Countess Erzsébet Báthory (1560-1614), blinded by the passion that she feels for a younger man, succumbs to the mad delusion that blood will keep her young and beautiful forever.


Girl You Know It's True
2023 · 2h 4m
country: France
The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli, a studio group assembled by German producer Frank Farian and fronted by nightclub dancers Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan. After a string of worldwide hit singles, awards and performances, it was revealed that the duo never sang a note of their songs, leading to one of the biggest scandals in music history.


Confessions of Felix Krull
2021 · 1h 54m
country: Germany
Literary adaptation: a handsome youth of humble origins rises in society through his connections made as an elevator attendant in a luxury hotel.


Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
2005 · 1h 57m
country: Germany
In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.


Run Boy Run
2014 · 1h 48m
country: Germany
A true story of Jurek, an eight-year-old boy, who escapes from the Warsaw ghetto, then manages to survive in the woods and working as a farmhand, disguising himself as a Polish orphan.


Plan A
2021 · 1h 49m
country: Germany
Germany 1945, Max, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, meets a radical group of Jewish resistance fighters, who, like him, lost all hope for their future after they were robbed of their existence and their entire families were killed by the Nazis. They dream of retaliation on an epic scale for the Jewish people. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Max starts identifying with the group's monstrous plans...


Sisi & I
2023 · 2h 12m
country: Austria
After an elaborate application process, Empress Elisabeth of Austria hires Countess Irma as her new lady-in-waiting and takes her to her summer residence on Corfu. As the two women become closer there, this soon leads to tensions back in Vienna.
German cinema's two great periods bookend the century: Weimar-era Expressionism, whose shadows and angles built the visual grammar of horror and noir, and the New German Cinema of the 1970s under Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders.
Historical films reconstruct the past, whether faithfully or as deliberate myth-making. The genre attracts big budgets and big performances, and it reveals as much about the era that produced the film as the one on screen.