Best War Movies of 1959

A Union Cavalry outfit is sent behind confederate lines in strength to destroy a rail supply center. Along with them is sent a doctor who causes instant antipathy between him and the commander. The secret plan for the mission is overheard by a southern belle who must be taken along to assure her silence.

Set during the Burma Campaign of World War 2, this is the story of courage and endurance of the soldiers struggling at close quarters against the enemy. The film examines the moral dilemmas ordinary men face during war, when the definitions of acceptable military action and insupportable brutality become blurred and distorted

A Communist officer falls hard for a married woman trying to escape from Hungary.

In a small New England town during the American War of Independence, Dick Dudgeon, a revolutionary American Puritan, is mistaken for local minister Rev. Anthony Anderson and arrested by the British. Dick discovers himself incapable of accusing another human to suffer and continues to masquerade as the reverend.

Korean War, April 1953. Lieutenant Clemons, leader of the King company of the United States Infantry, is ordered to recapture Pork Chop Hill, occupied by a powerful Chinese Army force, while, just seventy miles away, at nearby the village of Panmunjom, a tense cease-fire conference is celebrated.

Two rivals (Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance) from a German bomb squad are left to deactivate duds in postwar Berlin.

Lieutenant Braden discovers that Sally, the woman he's been falling in love with, has actually been checking out his qualifications to be a U.S. Navy frogman. He must put his personal life behind him after being assigned to be smuggled into a Japanese-held island via submarine to photograph radio codes.

The career of Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones, from his youth in Scotland through his service to Catherine the Great of Russia.

A U.S. military troop takes command of a band of Burmese guerillas during World War II.

Drama set in an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War 2, where a group of British soldiers find their plans for escape thwarted by a mysterious traitor in their midst.

A short story narrated by an unknown British soldier who reveals his hopes, fears, and disillusionment while heading into battle against the German army.

A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.

The movie takes place during WWII. A dashing British RAF Officer is earmarked for a secret mission behind enemy lines in occupied France, but wishing to distract the enemy, enlists a person to double for him and thereby draw attention to North Africa . An unlikely airman is found and tutored in the ways of an English officer.

During World War II, four British soldiers are commissioned to set up an observation post on a seemingly deserted island in the Mediterranean. However, while surveying the island, the Brits come across four German soldiers holed up in a monastery. The Brits and the Germans agree to a truce, sharing the monastery together until either the British or German troops arrive. But when a shipwrecked Slavic girl ends up on the island, a battle over her erupts amongst the men.

A World War II farce that follows the antics of an ENSA (Entertainment National Service Association) group. Fresh from the music halls, they bumble their way from army camp to camp.

When Germany invades Holland in 1940, a British intelligence officer and two Dutch diamond merchants go to Amsterdam to persuade the Dutch diamond merchants to evacuate their diamond supplies to England.

A US submarine and its crew are captured by the Japanese on the eve of a major WWII battle.

Directed by cult British director John Krish, the film was sponsored by the Army Kinematograph Corporation. This tightly plotted drama shows British POWs enduring brainwashing and torture during the Korean War, thereby revealing what a soldier could expect if he was ever captured by enemy forces.

An American wheeler-dealer woos a colonel's wife amid danger at a French Foreign Legion fort.

Nazis chase a U.S. newsman (Robert Mitchum) paid to smuggle names of Greek resistance leaders to London.

The fanatical son of a Nazi General leads a squad of German commandos, disguised as American Troops, behind the lines in order to sabotage the Allied Forces.

Charlie becomes a paratrooper, but, while serving in North Africa, he mistakenly kills one of his fellow U.S. soldiers, who is masquerading as a Nazi in order to wipe out a nest of the enemy. Shunned by his fellow soldiers, including his childhood friend Ace, Charlie is forced to prove himself when it is left up to him to transport a generator across an open road in full view of Nazi attackers.

During World War II, a Royal Artillery officer is assigned to an anti-aircraft battery that is filled with female soldiers of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. His wife who has enlisted is mistakenly posted to the battery in violation of regulations of husbands and wives serving together in the same formation. She becomes jealous of what she perceives as him paying too much attention to the other Auxiliary Territorial Service women.

A group of nurses, doctors and nuns are taken hostage in Vietnam and sent up river to a castle hideout so they can cure an ailing war general.

A demolition squad searches for how the Germans are getting tanks across a river. An Italian boy leads them to a bridge under the surface of the water.

A pastiche of three episodes from the 1958 TV series Northwest Passage, stitched together as a feature and released theatrically in Europe.

During the Spanish Civil War, an American allied with the Republicans finds romance during a desperate mission to blow up a strategically important bridge.

During the Korean War, a troupe of traveling USO entertainers find themselves behind enemy lines with a squad of American soldiers. Together they try to find their way back to their own lines while trying to avoid capture, but the North Koreans discover their presence and set out after them.

An Air Force pilot finds romance with his war buddy's widow.

This unaired pilot for a series Fuller pitched to CBS about a U.S. infantry troop fighting its way through Nazi-held North Africa offers a fascinating new angle on Fuller’s relationship with the average foot soldier and moral complexity of war.

Director John Barnwell's 1959 WWII drama stars Keith Andes as an American soldier in the Philippines who trains a village of headhunters to fight the Japanese. Also in the cast are Susan Cabot and Paraluman.

Errol Flynn, playing himself as a war correspondent, reports the dangerous goings-on of a band of Cuban rebels- Two of which are misguided teenage girls from America. The film was shot with Castro's cooperation while he was still fighting Batista's forces.

The trials and tribulations of a platoon of U.S. Marines, led by 1st Lt. Frank Davis, during the Korean War.

Native girl helps US Seabees free her villagers from Japanese troops.

In 1942, a man (Nehemiah Persoff) from Germany does not remember how he boarded a British ship heading for New York, but he does have a feeling the ship will be sunk.

The Second and final part of CBS studio's production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The completion of the mission has tragic consequences.

The fanatical son of a Nazi General leads a squad of German commandos, disguised as American Troops, behind the lines in order to sabotage the Allied Forces. Stars Van Johnson, Kerwin Matthews, Dick York and Larry Storch.