20 best movies like The Wings of Eagles (1957)

In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories?

The film portrays MacArthur's (Gregory Peck) life from 1942, before the Battle of Bataan, to 1952, the time after he had been removed from his Korean War command by President Truman (Ed Flanders) for insubordination, and is recounted in flashback as he visits West Point.

This 1942 fictionalized biopic chronicles the true story of how two of the most remarkable men in aviation history - visionary Spitfire designer R.J. Mitchell and his test pilot Geoffrey Crisp - designed a streamlined monoplane that led to the development of the Spitfire.

When the commander of the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber is killed in action in a raid over Sicily in 1943, his replacement, a young, naive pilot struggles to be accepted by the plane's already tight-knit Irish American crew.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1944, during World War II. Andries Riphagen, a powerful underworld boss, has made his fortune by putting his many criminal talents at the service of the Nazi occupiers. But the long battle is about to end and the freedom fighters, who have been persecuted and murdered for years, are abandoning their hideouts to mercilessly hunt down those who have collaborated with the killers.

Spend time on both sides of World War I, partly with German flying ace Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (John Phillip Law), aka "The Red Baron," and his colorful "flying circus" of Fokker fighter planes, during the time from his arrival at the war front to his death in combat. On the other side is Roy Brown of the Royal Air Force, sometimes credited with shooting Richthofen down.

Battle Hymn was inspired by the true story of American minister Dean Hess, played here with rare sensitivity by Rock Hudson. A bomber pilot during World War II, Hess inadvertently releases a bomb which destroys a German orphanage. Tortured by guilt, Hess relocates in Korea after the war to offer his services as a missionary. Combining the best elements of Christianity and Eastern spiritualism, Hess establishes a large home for orphans. The preacher's efforts are threatened when the Korean "police action" breaks out in 1950.

Two Navy fighter pilots find themselves in the midst of a forbidden relationship throwing their lives and careers into disarray.

U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle takes his sole mission—protect his comrades—to heart and becomes one of the most lethal snipers in American history. His pinpoint accuracy not only saves countless lives but also makes him a prime target of insurgents. Despite grave danger and his struggle to be a good husband and father to his family back in the States, Kyle serves four tours of duty in Iraq. However, when he finally returns home, he finds that he cannot leave the war behind.

Bolívar was instrumental in Latin America’s struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of the most influential politicians and emancipators in American history. Libertador is told from the viewpoint of Bolívar, portrayed by Ramírez, about his quests and epic military campaigns, which covered twice the territory Alexander the Great conquered, and his vision to unify South America.

The "Memphis Belle" is a World War II bomber, piloted by a young crew on dangerous bombing raids into Europe. The crew only have to make one more bombing raid before they have finished their duty and can go home. In the briefing before their last flight, the crew discover that the target for the day is Dresden, a heavily-defended city that invariably causes many Allied casualties

In 2002, cable news producer Kim Barker decides to shake up her routine by taking a daring new assignment in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dislodged from her comfortable American lifestyle, Barker finds herself in the middle of an out-of-control war zone. Luckily, she meets Tanya Vanderpoel, a fellow journalist who takes the shell-shocked reporter under her wing. Amid the militants, warlords and nighttime partying, Barker discovers the key to becoming a successful correspondent.

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II.

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.

The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.

WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A WWII pilot, bombardier, and radioman find themselves adrift on a lifeboat without food or water after being forced to ditch their plane during a scouting mission.

Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-American foster family. After Pearl Harbor, his foster family is interned at the Manzanar camp for Japanese Americans, while he enlists in the Marines, where his ability to speak Japanese becomes a vital asset. During the Battle of Saipan, he convinces 800 Japanese to surrender after their general commits suicide.

When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their number, Vasili and Gavrilo, begin a contest of bravery to win the hand of a local maiden.

Untold and lost history. A true story of the American Pathfinders, the volunteer paratroopers whose deadly mission was to land 30 minutes before the Normandy invasion, locate and mark strategic "drop zones" and set up the top-secret navigation equipment needed to guide the main airborne assault on D-Day.

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

In 1960, a team of Israeli secret agents is deployed to find Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi architect of the Holocaust, supposedly hidden in Argentina, and get him to Israel to be judged.

The account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion.

A story of love, friendship, survival and triumph spanning five decades from the Texas Revolution through the Civil War, Reconstruction and beyond.

A group of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq struggle to integrate back into family and civilian life, while living with the memory of a war that threatens to destroy them long after they've left the battlefield.

During the Second World War, a special project is begun by the US Army Air Corps to integrate African American pilots into the Fighter Pilot Program. Known as the "Tuskegee Airman" for the name of the airbase at which they were trained, these men were forced to constantly endure harassement, prejudice, and much behind the scenes politics until at last they were able to prove themselves in combat.

British soldiers guarding the Kajaki Dam set out to rescue a three-man team after one of them loses a leg to a landmine.

Germany, May 1945, deep in the Harz Mountains a U.S. tank crew discovers a platoon of Germans preparing to ambush U.S. supply trucks.

The story of the final seven months in the life of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend that draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody ever escaped from.

A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of top scientists in humane livestock handling.

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.

Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.

The film begins in 1857, when India was ruled by the British East India Company. Mangal Pandey is a sepoy, a soldier of Indian origin, in the army of the East India Company. Pandey is fighting in the Anglo-Afghan Wars and saves the life of his British commanding officer, William Gordon. Gordon is indebted to Pandey and a strong friendship develops between them, transcending both rank and race.

Dramatization of President John F. Kennedy's war time experiences during which he captained a PT boat, took it to battle and had it sunk by a Japanese destroyer. He and the survivors had to make their way to an island, find food and shelter and signal the Navy for rescue.

From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) was the Japanese Naval commander who was given the order to attack Pearl Harbour, an order he was duty bound to obey which went against his own personal beliefs. While this infamous attack is a low point in Japanese and US history it wouldn’t have happened if the Japanese government had listened to Yamamoto in 1939 and searched for a more peaceful way to end their war campaign, proving his many ominous presages of the outcomes of the attack to come true.

1968 American war film about the formation and first mission of the joint Canadian-American WWII special forces winter and mountain unit formally called 1st Special Service Force, but commonly known as “The Devil’s Brigade”. The film dramatises the Brigade's first mission in the Italian Campaign, the task of capturing the German mountain stronghold Monte la Difensa, in December 1943. The film is based on the 1966 book of the same name, co-written by American novelist and historian Robert H. Adleman and Col. George Walton, a member of the brigade.

The film spans from Hepburn's early childhood to the 1950s which details her life as a Dutch ballerina, coming to grips with her parents' divorce, and enduring life in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. She then settles in the U.S. where she succeeds in making it big as a movie actress, in such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. Based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film.

In December 1941, Czech soldier Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich

Toward the end of World War II, two American soldiers fighting in Southern France become romantically involved with a young, American woman. Her background will reveal more about them than her.

This movie tells the story of Omar Mukhtar, an Arab Muslim rebel who fought against the Italian conquest of Libya in WWII. It gives western viewers a glimpse into this little-known region and chapter of history, and exposes the savage means by which the conquering army attempted to subdue the natives.

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.

True story of boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling and their enduring friendship.

The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, meets the older Dutch woman Rika van der Lans and they fall in love. In pre-WWII Netherlands they could not be more different. The one black, the other white, 17 years between them and on top of that Rika already has four children with another man. They love each other, but then Rika appears to be pregnant...

Richard Burton plays a Scottish Army officer put in charge of a disparate band of ANZAC troops on the perimeter of Tobruk with the German Army doing their best to dislodge them