The Best World War II Movies and TV Shows on Free Services

What it's about: In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 8 services (iTunes, Google Play & 6 others).

What it's about: A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: In 1919, Mathilde was 19 years old. Two years earlier, her fiancé Manech left for the front at the Somme. Like millions of others he was "killed on the field of battle." It's written in black and white on the official notice. But Mathilde refuses to believe it. If Manech had died, she would know. She hangs on to her intuition as tightly as she would onto the last thread of hope linking her to her lover. A former sergeant tells her in vain that Manech died in the no man's land of a trench named Bingo Crepescule, in the company of four other men condemned to die for self-inflicted wounds. Her path ahead is full of obstacles but Mathilde is not frightened. Anything is possible to someone who is willing to challenge fate...

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: An epic tale of three brothers and their father living in the remote wilderness of 1900s USA and how their lives are affected by nature, history, war, and love.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle), stream on a popular subscription service (Showtime), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Showtime) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: A graduate student and obsessive runner in New York is drawn into a mysterious plot involving his brother, a member of the secretive Division.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix), stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Prime Video), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: True story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling, dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video).

What it's about: The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: Wilson of the War Crimes Commission is seeking Franz Kindler, mastermind of the Holocaust, who has effectively erased his identity. Wilson releases Kindler's former comrade Meinike and follows him to Harper, Connecticut, where he is killed before he can identify Kindler. Now Wilson's only clue is Kindler's fascination with antique clocks; but, though Kindler seems secure in his new identity, he feels his past closing in.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix, Prime Video, Starz & 3 others), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Starz & Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: Widowed shopkeeper Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter Rosetta flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the second World War; they travel to the remote village where Cesira was born. During their journey and in the village and onward, the mother does everything she can to protect Rosetta. Meanwhile, a sensitive young intellectual, Michele, falls in love with Cesira.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (SnagFilms), stream on a subscription service (FilmBox) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: A hardcore American racist skinhead who, because of his intelligence, leads a gang dedicated to fighting the enemy: the supposed American-Jewish conspiracy for domination. However, he's hiding a secret: he's Jewish-born, a brilliant scholar whose questioning of the tenets of his faith has left him angry and confused, turning against those who he thinks have a tragic history of their own making.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & rent or buy from $4.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: Secret agent OSS 117 foils Nazis, beds local beauties, and brings peace to the Middle East.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix), stream on a subscription service (Fandor) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Austrian mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Llaso, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women - one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Sundance Now).

What it's about: On 9 April 1940, German soldiers arrive in the city of Oslo. The King of Norway faces a choice that will change his country forever. The King's Choice is a story about the three most dramatic days in Norway's history, the royal family's escape and King Haakon's difficult choice after Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: When the Nazi high command learns in late 1943 that Winston Churchill will be spending time at a country estate in Norfolk, it hatches an audacious scheme to kidnap the prime minister and spirit him to Germany for enforced negotiations with Hitler.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shout Factory TV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi TV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Five American soldiers fighting in Europe during World War II struggle to return to Allied territory after being separated from U.S. forces during the historic Malmedy Massacre.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & ConTV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: A ruthless German spy, trying to get out of Britain with vital information about D-Day, must spend time with a young woman and her crippled husband.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: World War II was not just the most destructive conflict in humanity, it was also the greatest theft in history: lives, families, communities, property, culture and heritage were all stolen. The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Fandor) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: In 1948, a group of World War II pilots volunteered to fight for Israel in the War of Independence.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Starz), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Starz) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: World War I has left golfer Rannulph Junuh a poker-playing alcoholic, his perfect swing gone. Now, however, he needs to get it back to play in a tournament to save the financially ravaged golf course of a long-ago sweetheart. Help arrives in the form of mysterious caddy Bagger Vance.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: Zeitgeist: the Movie is a 2007 documentary film by Peter Joseph examining possible historical and modern conspiracies surrounding Christianity, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Federal Reserve bank. It was officially released online on June 18, 2007 on www.ZeitgeistMovie.com

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Daring Docs) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country during which, Axel challenges Eyal's values.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & PlayStation Store).

What it's about: A feature documentary about the people and the planes that helped win World War War II. Through people personally connected to the events, the film investigates the story of how the Spitfire, its stable-mate, the Hawker Hurricane and its great adversary, the Messerschmitt 109 came into being during the huge advances in aviation in the interwar period—and then how the pilots fared in combat, three miles up in the skies over Europe, Africa and Asia.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (Google Play, Prime Video & 3 others).

What it's about: Neighborhood boy Todd Bowden discovers that an old man living on his block named Arthur Denker is nazi war criminal. Bowden confronts Denker and offers him a deal: Bowden will not go to the authorities if Denker tells him stories of the concentration camps in WWII...

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Prime Video & 3 others).

What it's about: The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix), stream on a subscription service (Fandor & Realeyz) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: This gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on 30 operations against the Nazis in 1943. The Nazis branded the group an Army of Crime, an anti-immigrant propaganda stunt that backfired as the team's members became martyrs for the Resistance.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a subscription service (Fandor) & rent or buy from $2.00 on 3 services (Google Play, Vudu & YouTube).

What it's about: Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 8 services (iTunes, Google Play & 6 others).

What it's about: In 1980, the US Navy's most powerful warship, the USS Nimitz, is caught in a storm during routine maneuvers in the Pacific. Enveloped by a strange green light, the ship passes through a vortex and when they emerge, their communications have been cut off. The ship's Captain sends out a patrol and the F-14 pilots are shocked to encounter vintage Japanese warplanes.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (Google Play, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: High above the harsh Norwegian wilderness British and German pilots shoot each other to the ground after a violent chance encounter. Isolated, they must fight to survive the brutal winter. Though war has made them enemies, antagonism is hard to maintain as days go by. Through mutual need, unlikely friendships bloom. Somehow, they become comrades. War, after all, is absurd.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 8 services (iTunes, Google Play & 6 others).

What it's about: Winner of a Best Documentary Academy Award, Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape--with U.S. help--to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (SnagFilms).

What it's about: In the last moments of World War II, a secret Nazi space program evaded destruction by fleeing to the Dark Side of the Moon. During 70 years of utter secrecy, the Nazis construct a gigantic space fortress with a massive armada of flying saucers.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: A tale of the World War I love affair, begun in Italy, between American ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry and British nurse Catherine Barkley. Eventually separated by Frederic's transfer, tremendous challenges and difficult decisions face each as the war rages on.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix, SnagFilms & Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Dove Channel & Secrets of Cinema), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: A gang of young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election, only to hole up at an Inn run by neo-Nazis.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: The Marx Brothers are employed at a hotel in postwar Casablanca, where a ring of Nazis is trying to recover a cache of stolen treasure.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Shout Factory TV & Tubi TV) & stream on a subscription service (Shout Factory TV).

What it's about: Drama set in 1942, during one of the most important battles of World War II, which stopped the progress of Nazi forces and turned the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Soviet army mounts a counter-attack on the Nazi forces that occupy half of Stalingrad on the other side of the Volga, but the operation to cross the river is unsuccessful. A few soldiers who managed to get to the other side take refuge in a house on the bank of Volga. Here they find a girl who didn’t escape when the Germans came. While the whole might of the German army descends onto them, the heroes of Stalingrad experience love, loss, joy and the sense of ultimate freedom that can only be felt by those about to die. They defend the house at all costs while the Red Army prepares for another attack.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: A child escapes from Poland during World War II and first heads to Greece before coming of age in Canada.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: This is a drama set in Nazi-occupied France at the height of World War II. Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot. Based on the best-selling novel by Sebastian Faulks.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: In the 1940s, school teacher Fang Lan becomes embroiled with the resistance efforts of local guerilla group Dongjiang during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Fang is recruited by one of the resistance group's captain Blackie Lau after assisting the group with a rescue mission of novelist Mao Dun. Fang's mother volunteers to take her place as a courier for a mission and is arrested. To save her mother, Fang finds herself turning to a childhood sweetheart, who now works at the Japanese occupation headquarters.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & FandangoNOW).

What it's about: Five carnival workers are kidnapped and held hostage in an abandoned, Hell-like compound where they are forced to participate in a violent game, the goal of which is to survive twelve hours against a gang of sadistic clowns.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu), stream on a subscription service (Shudder & Tribeca Short List) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 8 services (iTunes, Google Play & 6 others).

What it's about: Set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Sony Crackle) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: The German soldier Clemens Forel - determined to be reunited with his beloved family - makes a dramatic escape through bitter cold winters, desolate landscapes, and life threatening ventures from a Siberian labor camp after World War II. 8000 miles and three endless years of uncertainty later, he is finally about to reach his destination...An edge of your seat drama that celebrates the power of the human spirit and the force of will, while inspired and impowered by love.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (SnagFilms).