WWII Movies That Show A Side Of The Past Even History Buffs Don't Know About

Paradise Road condenses many of the stories and experiences of women in POW camps during WWII, but several of the characters are based on actual individuals. Adrienne Pargiter (played by Glenn Close) and Daisy “Margaret” Drummond (portrayed by Pauline Collins) were inspired by Norah Chambers and Margaret Dryburgh, respectively.

Paradise Road focuses on English, American, Dutch, and American women confined on the island of Sumatra. Chambers was a musician and Dryburgh was a missionary. The former was captured trying to flee Australia (her boat was bombed and sank) while the latter was serving as a missionary in Singapore when the Japanese captured it in 1942.

The movie highlights how these women and their fellow prisoners found ways to survive as disease and malnutrition raged. Chambers and Dryburgh united to form a choir that sang at the church services arranged by Dryburgh. 

Reviews of The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler identified the titular Polish social worker and nurse as a female “Oskar Schindler” of sorts, but Sendler was a very different rescuer during WWII. Played by Anna Paquin, Irena Sendler smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw ghetto as part of the Polish Underground Resistance. 

The movie, described by The Hollywood Reporter as devoid of “compelling moments," did highlight an unknown individual who risked her life to save others amid German occupation. Sendler took children out of the ghetto via ambulances, “some children were placed in coffins… other children were smuggled out in potato sacks.” Sendler not only aided children in escaping Warsaw, she also placed them with Polish families once outside the ghetto. 

Sendler was arrested in 1943 and the Gestapo nearly found the lists of the children she had saved when they searched her home. She was beaten and nearly executed but she escaped with the help of Zegota, the Polish resistance organization. 

Sendler later said,

I could have done more.… This regret will follow me to my death.

She passed away in 2008.

Lee, a biopic about model-turned-photographer Lee Miller, offered a gritty look at what she endured as a war correspondent. Miller, played by Kate Winslet, documented the work of nurses in England. She was later sent to Normandy, France, and reported on what she saw in the aftermath of D-Day in June 1944:

For an hour or so I watched lives and limbs being saved, by skill, devotion and endurance. Grave faces and tired feet passed up and down the tent aisles. We discussed whether doubling the staff of doctors and nurses would relieve them of overwork — it seemed not, as everyone by his own volition would still do double his duty.

Lee continued to photograph what she saw on the continent, often teaming up with colleague David Scherman (played by Andy Sandberg). It was Scherman who captured what is perhaps the most famous image of Lee - one of her taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub. He said of the shot:

Lee took a leisurely, overdue bath in Hitler’s tub while an angry lieutenant of the 45th, soap in hand, beat on the locked door outside.

Lee brought a realism to her war reports that was as bold as she was with her descriptions of what she heard, saw, and felt among the troops. After the war, Lee spoke little about her experiences and, according to her son, Antony Penrose, spent her post-war years “in a misery of depression and alcohol abuse.” 

With a stellar ensemble cast that included director George Clooney, The Monuments Men is about efforts to retrieve stolen works of art from the Germans who took them during the war. 

The characters in The Monuments Men are based on real scholars and the like, although their names differ. George Clooney as Frank Stokes is akin to George L. Stout, a conservationist and museum director, while Bill Murray as Richard Campbell is an amalgamation of art and architecture scholars Ralph Warner Hammett and Robert K. Posey.

Despite different names and some changes to the story, Clooney later said, 

Listen, the good news is, 80 percent of the story is still completely true and accurate, and almost all of the scenes happened. Sometimes they happened with other characters, sometimes it happened in smaller dimension.

All told, there were “345 men and women from fourteen nations who served as monuments men.” The movie did take liberties to make a story that was appealing on the big screen, The Monuments Men also highlighted a group of overlooked war heroes. 

Based on the book of the same name by Diane Ackerman, The Zookeper's Wife detailed the efforts of Jan and Antonina Zabinski as they hid Polish Jews in the zoo in Warsaw during the War. Jan Zabinski, played by Johan Heldenberg, and his wife, Antonia (Jessica Chastain), were in charge one of the biggest zoos in Europe.

Jan Zabinski was in charge of the zoo and other parks in Warsaw during the war, his wife, Antonina, was a writer who, along with their son, Ryszard, used the facility to hide Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. Antonia's diary later revealed that,

Jan obtained a pass for himself to the [Warsaw] ghetto on the pretext that there were "green areas" there too. There really was so little greenery in the ghetto! Jan therefore had no "plant" interests there, and he used the pass to visit people who needed to be cheered up, to whom he needed to smuggle some kind of a handout or a secret message.

Saving animals was not possible, as German troops either exterminated or moved the fauna in the zoo. Many of the creatures were exterminated or moved. Some were also used in scientific experiments. 

All told, the Zabinskis saved roughly 300 Jews. The individuals they saved called the zoo a “Noah's ark” in the war. Jan also took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and was imprisoned afterward. In 1945, after Poland was liberated, Jan returned to the zoo and resumed his post. 

When Louis “Louie” Zamperini's plane crashed in the Pacific during WWII, he survived on a raft for more than a month before being captured by Japanese soldiers. His story is told in Unbroken, with Jack O'Connell starring as Zamperini.

Zamperini's personal journey from troubled teen years to participating in the 1936 Olympic games as a distance runner is covered in flashbacks throughout Unbroken. At those games, Zamperini met Adolf Hitler before attempting to steal a Nazi flag as a souvenir.

When Zamperini joins the military and enters combat, he spends 47 days on a raft with fellow soldiers Russell “Phil” Philips (Domhnall Gleeson) and Francis “Mac” McNamara. After Mac's death, Philips and Zamperini are captured and sent to an internment camp in Tokyo.

The experiences of Phillips and Zamperini as they are brutalized at the camp highlight the sheer vulnerability of prisoners of war. The men are separated, but Zamperini, specifically, enters into a tete-a-tete with Japanese officer Mutsuhiro Watanbe (Miyavi) as the latter vies for dominance over him and promotion in the Japanese military alike.

The movie didn't depict everything about how POWs were “beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death… shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism” - all of which was covered in Laura Hillenbrand's book, Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the text upon which the movie was based.