World War II

Tag Area: Real-World Event
Novella

Special Knowledge

A man in WW2 Britain trades minds with his descendant, an officer on a spaceship. They are shipwrecked on Venus, where his 20th century seaman’s experience saves the day.
—Dave Hook
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

The Monster Awakes

Av aviator in China during World War II unintentionally awakens a 100-foot tall, sadistic giant named Garaz from a centuries-long sleep. —Michael Main
Thank you for awakening me and freeing me from my prison! Wait! I will not harm you! You are my friend! You will come with me!
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  • Horror
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e10)

Judgment Night

Carl Lanser finds himself on a transatlantic voyage of the cargo liner S.S. Queen of Glasgow, in 1942, not knowing much about himself or how he got there, but knowing volumes about submarine warfare. —Michael Main
There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.
Patrick Macnee (as First Officer McLeod) stands behind a disoriented Nehemiah Persoff (as Carl Lanser) in the bar of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #30

A Small Matter of Time

The title suggests that Professor Amos Shute’s intrepid travelers are going back in time to four planets that are identical in every way to our own, but then again, perhaps those four planets were merely at earlier times to begin with. We won’t say one way or another, but we are glad that the Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, and World War III were all averted on some Earth. —Michael Main
In what time period will you find yourselves when you land at your particular destinatoin!
In two large panels with spaceships and a large model of Earth, Professor Amos Shute explains a mission to four space pilots.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy Pilgrim’s life, unstuck in time, is faithfully brought to the big screen, including the role of fellow patient Mr. Rosewater who, I believe, is reading a Kilgore Trout story. —Michael Main
I have come unstuck in time.
A Nazi soldier aims a gun at a dark figure on a snow-covered horizon.
  • 1973 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Final Countdown

Observer Warren Lasky is aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz when a storm takes the carrier back to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Should they prevent the attack? What will be the consequences of saving a politician who may become Roosevelt’s running mate? Then the ship is returned to the present before they can do anything vaguely cool. —Michael Main
Today is December 7, 1941. I’m sure we are all aware of the significance of this date in this place in history. We are going to fight a battle that was lost before most of you were born. This time, with God’s help, it’s going to be different. . . . Good Luck.
The U.S.S. Nimitz emerges from a stormy time portal into a scene with World War 2 planes.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

Twilight Zone: The Movie

Time Out

  • written and directed by John Landis
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 24 June 1983)
The Twilight Zone anthology movie reprises three of the original show’s stories along with one new story, “Time Out” by John Landis, in which disgruntled bigot Bill Connor finds himself as a Jew in World War II German occupied Europe, a black man facing the clan in mid-20th century America, and a man in a Vietnamese jungle during the Second Indochina War. —Michael Main
Ray, help! Larry! It’s me!
Five startled faces superimposed over a starry sky above a logo for Twilight Zone, the Movie.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Philadelphia Experiment I

The Philadelphia Experiment

Seaman David Herdeg and his pal are thrown from 1943 to 1984 during a naval experiment gone awry, and in that future, David is the only one who can save a missing town (provided he can dodge enough bullets and perhaps win the heart of Allison Hayes). —Michael Main
Navy owes me 40 years back pay.
Michael Paré and Nancy Allen race out of a projected landscape into the bright lights of a crawling tank.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Boy Meets World (s05e06)

No Guts, No Cory

As part of ABC’s Friday night crossover, Salem (the cat from tag-4138 Sabrina) transports the Boy Meets World world to 1940s America where Cory, his dad, and Shawn all ship off to war. —Michael Main
I don’t know how I would handle living back then. You know, I wonder what it was like during World War II.
Down on one knee, Ben Savage (as Cory Matthews in a World War 2 uniform) proposes to Danielle Fishel (as Topenga in a 1940s dress).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

Oxford Historians 2

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last

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  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Todd Family 1

Life after Life

In one instantiation of her life, Ursula Todd dies just moments after her birth in 1910. Fortunately (for the sake of the novel), time seems to be cyclic, so she and the rest of the world get many chances at life. At times, she partially recalls her other lives, resulting in many consequences to history and her personal development. —Michael Main
So much hot air rising above the tables in the Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.

“Time isn’t circular,” she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a palimpsest.”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “That sounds very vexing.”
“And memories are sometimes in the future.”
A young girl faces a wall with Roman numerals of a clock and an arch leading to a war scene.
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novella

Magic Tree House: Super Edition 1

Danger in the Darkest Hour

The magic tree house takes Jack and Annie back in time to England in 1944, where the country is fighting for its life in World War II. Before long, Jack and Annie find themselves parachuting to Normandy, France, behind enemy lines, and they realize that they’ve arrived on the day before D-Day. Will the brave brother and sister be able to make a difference during one of the darkest times in history? —based on fandom.com
Dressed in G.I. gear from tip to toe, the children Jack and Annie parachute through exploding artillery at night.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Debatable Time Travel
Audio Play Series

3 seasons

ars Paradoxica

—pending
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Future ’38

  • written and directed by Jamie Greenberg
  • (Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 24 January 2017)
In this “lost” film from 1938, fascist powers are rising in Europe, so Mr. Essex is sent forward to 2018 to retrieve a piece of formica that’s been put into a vault where, over the decades, it will have matured into superbomb material. I don’t know whether the bomb ever worked, but surprisingly, the campy film did work—at least toward the end when the full contents of the vault are revealed. —Michael Main
If I kill you now, you will never go back in time, there is no formica bomb, and Adolf Hilter takes over the world . . . with me as his heir.
Startled Nick Westrate (as Essex) and Betty Gilpin (as Banky) walk through a spect-a-color futuristic city.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

In Another Time

Hanna Ginsberg—a young Jewish violinist in Germany during the rise of Hitler—awakens in a field in 1946 with no memory of the past decade. —Michael Main
“Do you have a time machine,” he’d asked his father. It was hard to fathom, unbelievable even as he’d said it, but the idea fascinated him with little-boy wonder.
In a diagonally split photo a man on one side holds the hand of a woman on the other while a World War 2 plane flies overhead.
  • Romance
  • Music and Musicals
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Remington Mansion 2

The Tinseltown Murderer

Josie Matthews and her husband, David Remington, travel to 1936 Los Angeles after discovering that her prior trip to 1929 has changed history—specifically by prolonging World War II. They meet up with friends from 1929 and attempt to find and fix the problem. While doing so, they encounter communists, Nazis, the Los Angeles chapter of the Hitler Youth, movie studio executives, and several murders. —Tandy Ringoringo
“What? You live almost a hundred years in the future and you’ve never seen microfilm before?” asked Grant, who shook his head. “Women.”

“We have computer code which can store a warehouse of microfilm in a space the size of a pinhead.”

“How the hell do you do that?”

“With a series of zeros and ones.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever.”

“Yeah, I don’t really understand it myself.”
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  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

Not This Tide

Through the eyes of young Rosemary (in 1944 London during the time of buzz bombs and V-2 rockets) and old Rosemary (now called Mary in 2035 Oslo), we see the picture of her whole life from her imaginary friend during the war to her physicist grandson at Princeton. —Michael Main
A World War 2 Maunsell Fortress on tall pylons in the English Channel with purplish concentric circles and a list of years behind it.
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

What If  . . . ? (s1e01)

What If . . . Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?

The Watcher tells us of a universe where a change in a single decision made Peggy Carter (rather than Steve Rogers) become the Allies’ super-soldier. Like Steve, Peggy also manages to find her way into modern times via a technique that’s related to time travel. —Michael Main
Agent Carter, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the booth?
A mash-up drawing of Hayley Atwell (as Captain Carter, the first super-soldier) with parts of Captain America mixed in.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Secret Agent Moe Berg #6

Billie the Kid

In an alternate history leading up to a 1945 atomic bomb in southern California, young Billie “the Kid” Davis grows up in the mid-20th century, playing shortstop better than any of the boys, flying B-25s with her Dad, and eventually—with Moe Berg and the woman-with-many-names—taking on that bomb. —Michael Main
This is your moment, Billie. Coming up right now. Save the worlds, Billie. Change everything. You can do it.
A woman in a U.S. astronaut suit pulls a sled over a yellow landscape with a black dragon roaring in the distance.
  • Science Fiction
  • Sports
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Paean for a Branch Ghost

In the far future, a woman who had lived through the Sobibor extermination camp manipulates the system to go back and rescue the rest of her family. —Michael Main
“Twentieth century,” said Davos, and I whistled, long, and low, and falling. “Special assignment,” he said, and I whistled again. I’d never heard of anyone going that far back.
Outbuildings and a parking lot with a lake and a spaceport in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones and his goddaughter set out to find the missing half of Archimedes’s “clock” (or Antikythera Mechanism). With all the usual hair-raising chases, stunts, Nazis (or former Nazis), and the added twist of some actual time travel near the end. —Tandy Ringoringo
Helena: Well, for starters, you’d have changed the course of history.
Indy: That supposed to be a bad thing?
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Miniseries

8 episodes

Bodies

Slowly, the investigations of four different appearances of the same body come together in four different years from 1890 to 2053. —Michael Main
My thesis dared to posit that cause and effect is malleable, right? Which therefore makes time, as we know it, totally changable and fluid.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel