Battle of Britain is a 1969 British war film directed by Guy Hamilton, and produced by Harry Saltzman and S. Benjamin Fisz. The film documents the events of the Battle of Britain. The film drew many respected British actors to accept roles as key figures of the battle, including Laurence Olivier as Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Trevor Howard as Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, and Patrick Wymark as Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory. It also starred Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, and Robert Shaw as Squadron Leaders. The script by James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex was based on the book The Narrow Margin by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster.
George Montgomery was an American actor, best known for his work in Western films and television. He was also a painter, director, producer, writer, sculptor, furniture craftsman, and stuntman. He was a boyfriend of Hedy Lamarr.
Annabella was a French cinema actress who appeared in 46 films between 1927 and 1952, including some Hollywood films during the late 1930s and 1940s.
No. 487 (NZ) Squadron was a light bomber squadron established for service during the Second World War. It was a New Zealand squadron formed under Article XV of the Empire Air Training Plan. Although many of its flying personnel were largely drawn from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the squadron served in Europe under the operational and administrative command of the Royal Air Force as part of Bomber Command. Formed in mid-1942, it operated the Lockheed Ventura and then the de Havilland Mosquito and took part in over 3,000 operational sorties before being disbanded at the end of the war in late 1945.
Kurt Kreuger was a Swiss-reared German actor. Kreuger once was the third most requested male actor at 20th Century Fox. He starred with, among others, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart.
The North Star is a 1943 pro-resistance war film starring Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Erich von Stroheim It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Milestone, written by Lillian Hellman and featured production design by William Cameron Menzies. The music was written by Aaron Copland, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and the cinematography was by James Wong Howe. The film also marked the debut of Farley Granger.
Operation Hydra was an attack by RAF Bomber Command on a German scientific research centre at Peenemünde on the night of 17/18 August 1943. Group Captain John Searby, commanding officer of No. 83 Squadron RAF, commanded the operation, the first time that Bomber Command used a master bomber to direct the attack of the main force. Hydra began the Crossbow campaign against the German V-weapon programme. The British lost 215 aircrew and 40 bombers, and killed several hundred enslaved workers in the nearby Trassenheide forced labour camp. The Luftwaffe lost twelve night-fighters and about 170 German civilians were killed, including two V-2 rocket scientists. Prototype V-2 rocket launches were delayed for about two months, testing and production was dispersed and the morale of the German survivors was severely affected. However, the impact of the operation on German war production was deemed insufficient.
Northern Pursuit is a 1943 American World War II film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who tries to uncover a Nazi plot against the Allied war effort. The film was set in Canada during the early years of the war.
Louis V. Arco was an Austrian stage and film actor whose career began in the late 1910s.
The Adventures of Tartu is a 1943 British Second World War spy film directed by Harold S. Bucquet and starring Robert Donat. It was a morale booster of the era portraying Nazis as highly corruptible due to their desire to seduce women and to gain personal advancement.
Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which killed 145 civilians. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, the Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The Danish Resistance had long requested the British conduct a raid against the site. The building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and Nazi anti-resistance activities were disrupted. Part of the raid was mistakenly directed against a school which was roughly 1.6 km (1 mi) to the west-southwest; the raid caused 125 civilian deaths, including 86 schoolchildren and 18 adults at the school. The Aarhus Air Raid was a similar attack against the Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus on 31 October 1944, which succeeded.
The Oslo Mosquito raid was a British air raid on Oslo, Norway, during the Second World War. The target of the raid was the Victoria Terrasse building, the headquarters of the Gestapo. It was intended to be a "morale booster" for the Norwegian people and was scheduled to coincide with a rally of Norwegian collaborators, led by Vidkun Quisling. The raid is also known for it being the moment when the Royal Air Force revealed the existence of the Mosquito aircraft to the British public, when the BBC Home Service reported on the raid the following day.
Martin Kosleck was a German film actor. Like many other German actors, he fled when the Nazis came to power. Inspired by his deep hatred of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kosleck made a career in Hollywood playing villainous Nazis in films. While in the United States, he appeared in more than 80 films and television shows in a 46-year span. His icy demeanor and piercing stare on screen made him a popular choice to play Nazi villains. He portrayed Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, five times, and also appeared as an SS trooper and a concentration camp officer.
Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas is a war film made by Twentieth Century Fox in 1943. The film starred Philip Dorn, Anna Sten, and Martin Kosleck.
Arnold Frey was a German actor who portrayed the Nazi villain Dr. Lang in the Frank Buck movie Tiger Fangs (1943).
Hitler is a 1962 black and white American film. The film stars Richard Basehart in the title role of Adolf Hitler; Cordula Trantow stars as Geli Raubal, Maria Emo as Eva Braun and John Banner as Gregor Strasser. The film depicts Hitler through the years, beginning with the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 and focuses mainly on his private life, in particular, his relationships with niece Geli and longtime companion/wife, Eva Braun. According to film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, Basehart "gives a cerebral interpretation" of Hitler during the timeframe he was the leader of Nazi Germany. For her performance, Cordula Trantow was nominated for a 1962 Golden Globe in the category: Most Promising Newcomer - Female. The film was produced by Three Crown Productions, Inc. and distributed by Allied Artists Pictures.
The Hitler Gang is a 1944 American pseudo-documentary film directed by John Farrow, which traces the political rise of Adolf Hitler. Described as a "documentary-propaganda" film by its studio, Paramount Pictures, the historical drama is based on documented fact and marks the first serious effort to portray Hitler in film. The filmmakers chose to avoid casting stars in the lead roles, assembling instead a remarkable company of lookalikes to play Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göring, and other leading Nazis.
Hostages is an American war film produced by Paramount Pictures and released in 1943. It was directed by Frank Tuttle from a script by Frank Butler and Lester Cole based on the 1942 novel of the same name by Stefan Heym. The film stars Luise Rainer, Arturo de Córdova, William Bendix and Paul Lukas and features Katina Paxinou and Oskar Homolka.
The Aarhus Air Raid took place on 31 October 1944, when 25 Mosquitoes from 140 Wing Royal Air Force (RAF) of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, bombed the Gestapo headquarters at the University of Aarhus. After the Second World War, the RAF called the mission the most successful of its kind during the war.
Target Unknown is a 1951 American war film directed by George Sherman and starring Mark Stevens, Alex Nicol and Robert Douglas. An American bomber crew are forced to bail out over Occupied France in 1944 and are captured by the Germans, who subject them to strenuous interrogation. The film begins with a written foreword that reads: "In the making of this picture, the cooperation of the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force is gratefully acknowledged."
