Concentrating on the personal lives of those involved, a war correspondent takes us through the preparations, landing and initial campaign on Guadalcanal during WWII.
In Libya, an American tank commander, along with a handful of Allied soldiers, tries to defend an isolated well with a limited supply of water from a German Afrika Korps battalion during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.
It is a comic book propaganda film which has Beery as a retired USMC NCO who, when the Japanese invade the Philippines, leads a heroic defense, first by strangling a Nazi agent, and then dying in his dress blues uniform while blowing up a bridge.
Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan—who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era—has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress.
Merchant Marine sailors Joe Rossi (Humphrey Bogart) and Steve Jarvis (Raymond Massey) are charged with getting a supply vessel to Russian allies as part of a sea convoy. When the group of ships comes under attack from a German U-boat, Rossi and Jarvis navigate through dangerous waters to evade Nazi naval forces. Though their mission across the Atlantic is extremely treacherous, they are motivated by the opportunity to strike back at the Germans, who sank one of their earlier ships.
During Japan's invasion of the Philippines in 1942, Capt. Henry Lassiter, Sgt. Bill Dane and a diverse group of American soldiers are ordered to destroy and hold a strategic bridge in order to delay the Japanese forces and allow Gen. MacArthur time to secure Bataan. When the Japanese soldiers begin to rebuild the bridge and advance, the group struggles with not only hunger, sickness and gunfire, but also the knowledge that there is likely no relief on the way.
A documentary/drama about the training of bombardiers during WWII. Major Chick Davis proves to the U.S. Army the superiority of high altitude precision bombing, and establishes a school for bombardiers. Training is followed in semi-documentary style, with personal dramas in subplots. The climax is a spectacular sequence.
Somewhere in Europe, in a city occupied by the Nazis, a gentle school teacher finds himself torn between collaboration and resistance, cowardice and courage.
A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.
The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.
U. S. Navy Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, of The Harvard and Boston Back Bay Mastermans, learned about the sea while winning silver cups sailing his yacht. He climbs swiftly in rank, and is now Junior Aide to Rear Admiral Stephen Thomas.
A gentle widower, enraged at Nazi atrocities against his peaceful Norwegian fishing village, escapes to Britain and returns leading a commando force against the oppressors.
French woman Michele de la Becque, an opponent of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris, hides a downed American flyer, Pat Talbot, and attempts to get him safely out of the country.