Tom Hanks' 4 WW2 Series Ranked

Tom Hanks has been involved with four World War II-focused series over his long, celebrated career, and they each offer a different look at the largest conflict of the 20th century. In an interview with People in 2026, Tom Hanks explained his interest in World War II began when he was a child, when he witnessed a conversation between his father and another WWII veteran in a grocery store.

This conversation sparked a lifelong fascination with the subject, and it's not a fascination he's been able to explain even to himself. Hanks says he's asked himself, "'Why do I keep turning to it again and again for that combination of poetry and solace and enlightenment?'"

His answer,

"And I divined that it has to be about today. It has to be more about the palpable choices that we face here in 2026 as opposed to, look what those tough guys did back in the 1930s."

For Hanks, television about World War II is more than just an opportunity to put on uniforms, deliver stirring speeches, and depict terrible, though exciting, sequences of war. His shows about the subject, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Masters of the Air, and WWII with Tom Hanks, are ways for Hanks to grapple with the modern world.

He sees the lessons from that time period as applicable to our current time and has so since 2001, when Band of Brothers first premiered. As a producer on these four shows, Hanks has done more to explain that era than most, save for his frequent collaborator, Steven Spielberg, and each show offers a unique perspective on the conflict.

4 World War II With Tom Hanks (2026)

The latest World War II project from Tom Hanks, World War II with Tom Hanks, is an ongoing 2026 documentary series for the History Channel, presented by Hanks himself. The 20-episode show premiered on May 25, 2026, with three episodes dropping at once, and every week, two more episodes have dropped.

This series attempts to cover the breadth of the conflict from a bird's-eye view, beginning with the aptly titled "The Beginning", and coming to an end on July 27 with "The Fallout". WWII with Tom Hanks is co-produced by Jon Meachem, the author of several presidential biographies.

The series covers every theater of World War II with a scope that the 1974 documentary series, The World at War, did previously. However, that ITV series, narrated by another legendary actor, Laurence Olivier, was a combined 22 hours and 32 minutes. WWII with Tom Hanks, in comparison, runs around 14 hours, and those 8.5 extra hours make quite the difference.

Hanks' previous forays into the war were hyper-focused, often following just one Company or Batallion; he bites off more than he can chew in WWII with Tom Hanks. The documentary has to be compared to the British classic, and in that comparison, it pales to one of the greatest war documentaries of all time. Still, if you are just beginning to learn about the conflict, WWII with Tom Hanks is not a bad place to start.

3 Masters Of The Air (2024)

The third of the World War II companion pieces from Spielberg and Hanks, Masters of the Air is a war drama miniseries that premiered on Apple TV+ (now Apple TV) in 2024. The series follows the crew of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit in the Eighth Air Force, whose missions include targets deep within German-occupied Europe.

Masters of the Air features a cast of male actors who were on the cusp of mega stardom at the time, including Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, and Barry Keoghan. Not only a star vehicle, Masters of the Air is also an excellent character study and a thrilling tale of heroism and danger.

It's an impeccably produced series, with the interior of the B-17 feeling claustrophobically real. It slots in well to the trilogy of shows Spielberg and Hanks made together, but doesn't quite reach the heights of those shows. Masters of the Air makes the mistake of buying a little too much into its own myth-making.

What has made Hanks such a great ambassador for World War II shows and movies is that he always attempts to make an objective retelling of the war, never sliding too far into jingoistic storytelling. Masters of the Air doesn't quite reach that point, but there are moments of the series that feel like old-fashioned war films of the '50s, and not in a good way, taking you right out of the story.

2 The Pacific (2010)

The Pacific is an HBO miniseries that retells the events of the Pacific Theater of Operations during the Pacific War. We follow the Marines of the 1st Marine Division, who embarked upon a slow, hot, violent campaign through the jungles of the Pacific Islands, fighting the Japanese in intense, often close-quarters battles.

There is heroism in The Pacific, but there is mostly tragedy, pain, and horror. The series is relentless and unafraid to show the damage the war did to the men who participated in it. There's a theory that you can't make an anti-war movie; the very act of putting it on screen in some way immortalizes and eulogizes it.

The Pacific offers a counter-argument. Few, if any, of the Marines we stay with come out of the war better than when they left it, and the series makes a point to show that even the most hardened veterans were experiencing something beyond what anyone should be allowed to experience.

It's a powerful series but one that can be hard to watch. The structure of The Pacific also makes it a tad less easy to follow than Band of Brothers. We follow different regiments of the same Marine Division, but they don't intersect, and one character's story can be entirely separate from another's. It makes for a less smooth viewing experience when compared to Band of Brothers.

1 Band of Brothers (2001)

The first World War II TV show produced by Tom Hanks is still his best. Band of Brothers is one of the greatest miniseries of all time, not just one of the greatest war TV shows of all time. Based on Stephen E. Ambrose's non-fiction book of the same name from 1992, Band of Brothers follows the soldiers of "Easy" Company.

Easy was a company within the 101st Airborne Division, a division of specially trained soldiers tasked with parachuting into France in anticipation of D-Day. We follow Easy from their beginnings, training at Camp Toccoa, to the end of their tours, leaving Europe and all the dead behind.

When we begin Band of Brothers, Easy is filled with capable, likable, well-trained soldiers. Every episode, however, someone or another dies, or has a leg blown off, or loses themselves in the constant horror and pain they are forced to endure day in and day out. It's an exhausting series but one that you can't look away from.

It's a beautiful show about bonds between soldiers and friends, and the monumental obstacles that had to be overcome to win World War II. Hanks and Spielberg put the perfect distance between what we see on screen and hero-worship, illustrated by Band of Brothers' most important quote, spoken by the real-life Major Dick Winters. Retelling a memory of when his grandson asked if he was a hero in the war, Winters recalls responding, "No, but I served in a company of heroes."