10 Great World War II Movies You've Probably Never Seen

Everybody has seen the memes based on Downfall. The scene in which Hitler flips out at his generals has been re-subtitled to cover seemingly every conceivable scenario, with hilarity resulting from the fact that one of the most despicable men in human history is losing his rag over something such as trivial as a sports result or a development in a reality TV show.

Either side of that scene, which depicts the moment when the Fuhrer seems to realise that his war is finally lost, is a haunting portrayal of the final days of the conflict in Berlin, with the merciless Soviet army closing in on a downtrodden civilian population and the fanatical last remnants of the Third Reich.

Though the action is shown through the eyes of Traudl Junge, a secretary of Hitler’s who proved to be a bastion of knowledge for historians in the war’s aftermath, all of the attention went to Bruno Ganz’s chilling depiction of Hitler. He faced criticism at the time of the film’s release for injecting a degree of humanity into the performance rather than playing it one dimensionally, but won plaudits for a realistic portrayal.