10 War Movies That Show A Different Perspective

Most war films present the conflict from the perspective of the winning side, which means the biggest movies show the Americans or British and their efforts in the major World Wars. This was even true with old-school war movies from the Wild West, where most historical stories are told from the winner’s point of view.

However, some of the best war movies show both sides, and some even take place from the loser’s side of the war. There are also war films that show the effects on civilians, rather than the soldiers who are fighting in the war, and even from the enemy’s point of view. These different perspectives offer experiences unlike any other in the genre.

This shift is often important because there are victims on both sides of any war. In many cases, the soldiers fighting in the wars were conscripted or drafted, and they have no choice but to fight. In some cases, they aren’t even fighting for their countries, but are fighting alongside their fellow soldiers, wanting to save their lives above all else.

It is also interesting to see characters who have been vilified in war movies. This includes German soldiers or commanders during the Nazi regime. This movie shows them as real people forced to do things they are not happy with, but know that they have no choice. At the same time, the “heroes” often have morally reprehensible people on those sides as well.

These war movies are shown from a different perspective, and it is often important why that shift really matters in these stories. The best of these reveal things about the war that conventional productions cannot or will not show viewers.

Stalingrad (1993)

Released in 1993, Stalingrad is a German war movie by director Joseph Vilsmaier. It follows a German infantry unit as they travel from the beaches of Italy to the frozen tundra of the Battle of Stalingrad. This movie presents what might be the most unflinching depiction of that part of the war that has been depicted on film.

Not only is it horrific, but the entire story is told from the German soldiers’ point of view. The real battle had over two million casualties, and it was the turning point for the Eastern Front and helped lead to Germany’s defeat and the movie does not shy away from this big loss for the German forces.

What is really impressive about this war movie is that it is a story where the German soldiers are never considered heroes and characters are never portrayed as heroic or redeemed. They show up to the battle overconfident, commit war crimes against civilians, and then end up destroyed by the Soviet forces. This is a movie Germans watch without pride.

Paths Of Glory (1957)

What really makes Paths of Glory such a fantastic war movie from a different perspective is that it takes the form of a legal drama and shows how unfair the entire military machine really is. Stanley Kubrick directed the World War II film that showed some French soldiers being court-martialed for “cowardice.”

Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, a defense attorney who is assigned to defend the men being court-martialed, knowing full well that they will be executed no matter what he proves in the case. This is a movie that shows inept military leaders sending soldiers on an ill-advised suicide mission, and then lying about the situation.

Paths of Glory is an anti-war movie, showing military commanders who don’t really care about their soldiers as long as they continue to rise up the ranks. They will do anything to hold onto their spots, even if that means the deaths of other soldiers, and only Colonel Dax showed any morality in the situation.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

Released in 1983, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, is a war movie set in a Japanese POW camp in Java in 1942. David Bowie stars as a British prisoner in the camp, and Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese officer who develops a fascination with him. That said, war films don’t get much more unusual than this.

This isn’t concerned about the war or the battles on the field, and it is instead a psychological study about repressed desire and masculinity, and the culture clash between Western ideas of honor compared to the Japanese system. Sakamoto is also a musician, and he scored this brilliant release.

What makes this war movie come at audiences from a different perspective is that it doesn’t show the Japanese captors as generic villains. Instead, they are humans who are shaped by their country’s moral codes. This was one of the first movies to show a Japanese POW camp without painting them as villains.

Cross Of Iron (1977)

Sam Peckinpah directed the Willi Heinrich novel Cross of Iron and released it in 1977. This story followed a German infantry platoon in 1943, fighting on the Eastern Front. This took the idea of the German troops retreating from a brutal loss to the Soviet military forces, and it showed it from the German soldiers’ perspective.

One way that this is able to really show the Germans in World War II sympathetically is by making the main character, Sergeant Steiner (James Coburn), a man who has no loyalty to the Nazi ways and personally despises the military force sending him and his men to die. This was an American war movie from the German point of view.

While the movie was a box office failure when it was released, critics and film scholars put it up with titles like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line as essential anti-war movies in history. Even Orson Welles called this the best anti-war movie he had ever seen.

Downfall (2004)

Downfall was highly criticized when it was released because it presented Adolf Hitler and his leaders in the Nazi government as real people, humanizing men who most history has chosen to demonize. However, what resulted from this choice made the story more disturbing than most World War II movies.

Bruno Ganz starred as Hitler during the final 12 days in the Führerbunker when he and his leaders were in his bunker as the war was coming to an end. His performance showed Hitler as a regular man, but one who was sick, shaking, and in a physical decline. It made him more pathetic than monstrous.

The story was told from the point of view of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s private secretary, who survived the war and whose memoir was the influence of the movie. What really makes this war movie so special is that it asks how normal men can commit the atrocities that the Nazis did, and it had to make them human to show this.

Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)

Grave of the Fireflies is an animated war movie, and it might be the most heart-wrenching and heartbreaking one ever made, not to mention one of the most devastating animated movies in history. The film follows two children, teenage Seita and his little sister Setsuko, after the American firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II.

When looking at most World War II movies, it is rare to see any mention of the Americans firebombing Tokyo in March 1945, and killing countless innocent citizens, comparable to the atomic bombs did. This was the story that Grave of the Fireflies showed, and by putting it in the eyes of children, it had greater impact than anyone could have believed.

Isao Takahata directed the movie for Studio Ghibli, and it is a film that everyone should study as an example of civilian suffering during major wars. This never once says that Japan was right. It only shows that children starved to death and died, and they should never be forgotten.

The Grand Illusion (1937)

Jean Renoir created his masterpiece film in 1937, titled The Grand Illusion. This movie, made before World War II, took place in a German POW camp during World War I. What really makes this war movie connect from a different perspective is that it shows that class loyalty was more important than national loyalty.

This is shown through the relationship between a French aristocratic officer (Pierre Fresnay) and his German captor (Erich von Stroheim). The main plot point here is that these two men have more in common with each other than they do with their own working-class countrymen. If anything, it is an argument against European nationalism.

The Grand Illusion was such a great success that it ended up as the first non-English-language film ever nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. This is another anti-war movie that says wars are manufactured by the ruling classes, and the real enemy is the system that puts soldiers on the field.

All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front was made in 1930, and then remade in another great version in 2022. Both are based on the German novel in 1928 by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel was an anti-war story, and it was banned in Germany for many years. It was also one of the first-ever anti-war movies.

The story follows young soldiers from their pointless enlistment into the German army and then follows them as German officials send them out to die in the World War I trenches. The movie was so disheartening that it had Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels organize riots at screenings before banning it outright.

The 2022 remake won four Academy Awards, telling the same story. This was all about the gap between the propaganda young soldiers are programmed with at the start and the real-life war, where they realize they are not fighting for their country, but only trying to survive.

Das Boot (1981)

Released in 1981, Wolfgang Petersen released Das Boot, a film about the crew of a German U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic. What really makes this movie stand out is that it keeps the story inside the submarine for the movie, and it allows viewers to live the lives of the men onboard fighting for a regime they despise.

These crew members are Germans, but they are not Nazis and have no love for the regime that sent them out to possibly die. Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars and is one of the highest-grossing German movies ever made when adjusted for inflation.

This movie deserves credit for changing how international movie fans viewed German soldiers in World War II, with a look at how several men didn’t support the Nazi regime, but did what they were forced to do to survive. Steven Spielberg said Das Boot was an influence on Saving Private Ryan.

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

In 2006, Clint Eastwood released two movies. One of these was a typical war movie, with Flags of Our Fathers telling the story of the U.S. Marines as they stormed Normandy and planted their flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. However, the second movie was from the other perspective, showing the Japanese viewpoint of the same battle.

Ken Watanabe was the biggest star in Letters from Iwo Jima, and Eastwood took the interesting direction of having the entire film in Japanese, which is almost unheard of for a Hollywood production. Watanabe is the general who sends his men out knowing they will die, and the film doesn’t condemn or celebrate this, only showing it is historically accurate.

This shows the Japanese soldiers as people with families, doubts, and individual personalities, and humanized the soldiers that most films showed only as the “enemy” in the past. Unlike the American film, Letters from Iwo Jima earned four Oscar nominations. This war movie is also taught in Japanese schools.