Jun 21, 2026
95 min
Full-HD

1939-1940: A Strange Defeat (2026)

In late summer 1939, the French learned that Adolf Hitler had attacked Poland. On September 3, France entered the war, twenty years after the carnage of World War I. Although France was considered the world’s leading military power, with a vast empire and a powerful ally in the United Kingdom, everyone was overcome with a sense of dread. Yet the fighting would not begin until May 1940 and would end with France’s defeat in June. How did the French people experience those few months—among the most decisive and darkest in the country’s history?

Category

Documentary History War

Country

France

Companies

ECPAD Roche Productions France Télévisions

Jean-Pierre Darroussin

Narrator (voice over)

Recommended For You

Documentary
2012
Movie

WWII From Space

WWII From Space

7.4
2012

WWII from Space delivers World War II in a way you've never experienced it before. This HISTORY special uses an all-seeing CGI eye that offers a satellite view of the conflict, allowing you to experience it in a way that puts key events and tipping points in a global perspective. By re-creating groundbreaking moments that could never have been captured on camera, and by illustrating the importance of simultaneity and the hidden effects of crucial incidents, HISTORY presents the war's monumental moments in a never-before-seen context. And with new information brought to the forefront, you'll better understand how a nation ranked 19th in the world's militaries in 1939 emerged six years later as the planet's only atomic superpower.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
1985
Movie

Shoah

Shoah

8.2
1985

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
1942
Movie

Why We Fight: Prelude to War

Why We Fight: Prelude to War

6.5
1942

Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2025
Movie

2000 Meters to Andriivka

2000 Meters to Andriivka

7.9
2025

Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.

Genre : Documentary

War
2024
Movie

The Bloody Hundredth

The Bloody Hundredth

7.1
2024

Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.

Documentary
1993
Movie

The War Room

The War Room

6.8
1993

A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2011
Movie

The Extraordinary Voyage

The Extraordinary Voyage

7.7
2011

An account of the extraordinary life of film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938) and the amazing story of the copy in color of his masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (1902), unexpectedly found in Spain and restored thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of true cinema lovers.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2019
Movie

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

6.9
2019

The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
1982
Movie

The Atomic Cafe

The Atomic Cafe

7.3
1982

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2016
Movie

Lumière!

Lumière!

7.9
2016

A collection of restored prints from the Lumière Brothers.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2012
Movie

The Untold History Of The United States

The Untold History Of The United States

8.2
2012

Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2015
Movie

Red Army

Red Army

7.4
2015

A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2000
Movie

The Endurance

The Endurance

7
2000

Documentary on the Shackleton Antartic expedition. A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance', which was trapped in the ice floes and frigid open ocean of the Antarctic in 1914. Shackleton decided, with many of his crew injured and weak from exposure and starvation, to take a team of his fittest men and attempt to find help. Setting out in appalling conditions with hopelessly inadequate equipment, they endured all weather and terrain and finally reached safety. Persuading a local team of his confidence that the abandoned team would still be alive, he set out again to find them. After almost 2 years trapped on the ice, all members of the crew were finally rescued.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2021
Movie

9/11: Inside the President's War Room

9/11: Inside the President's War Room

6.8
2021

Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2007
Movie

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Zeitgeist: The Movie

7
2007

A documentary examining possible historical and modern conspiracies surrounding Christianity, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Federal Reserve bank.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2017
Movie

Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron

Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron

6.6
2017

For the 20th anniversary of "Titanic," James Cameron reopens the file on the disaster.

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2015
Movie

Best of Enemies

Best of Enemies

7.2
2015

A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"

Genre : Documentary

Documentary
2013
Movie

The Unknown Known

The Unknown Known

6.8
2013

Former United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Genre : Documentary