If you don’t have anything else to do on a boring night, you may as well take a trip into the past with our list of the 11 best history documentaries on Hulu.
I was always passionate about history and firmly believe that the saying “Historia est Magistra Vitae” (history is life’s teacher) is on point. When I was younger, I couldn’t get enough of history books and read everything I could get my hands on. Ancient civilizations, recent historical events, it didn’t matter. That is when I discovered that history isn’t unanimous, as crazy as that may sound. The best explanation for that is Winston Churchill’s quote “History is written by the victors”. And it really is. I will just take the example of the mass raping that took place in World War II. After the occupation of Germany, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women were raped by Soviet Troops, with more than 200,000 women dying. British, French and American soldiers also committed the same crimes, although in considerably fewer numbers. Let me remind you that all of this happened when the war was basically over. Did you read about this in your history books? I doubt it, since this is a rarely mentioned dark side of the Allies in World War II.
I am mentioning the subject of World War II because it is one of the most important events in our recent history. That being the case, World War II is a huge inspiration for many documentary filmmakers. The conflict was huge, was happening all over the world, and had an impact on billions of lives. Because of that, there are many stories left to be told and presented to people. We are not talking just about the overall presentation of the conflict, but also stories about common people that deserve to be told. One more thing that makes the topic of World War II interesting for filmmakers is the availability of material evidence and even witnesses. So, don’t be surprised if you see lots of documentaries exploring this subject on our list of the 11 best history documentaries on Hulu. In case you have opted for Netflix instead of Hulu (or have both), you may want to check this list of the 11 Best History Channel Documentaries on Netflix as well.
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A joint venture of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (NASDAQ:FOX), Hulu was founded in 2006 with the goal of being the preeminent video streaming platform, thanks to the wealth of content at its fingertips from its creators. Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) also took a 10% stake in the venture as well, and added its own content into the mix. Hulu also carries programming from several other entertainment companies, including Showtime (for an extra $8.99/month), Starz, Dreamworks Animation Skg Inc (NASDAQ:DWA), MGM, Sony Pictures, and more. The streaming platform also produces original programming.
To get our list of best history documentaries on Hulu, we browsed through the catalog of Hulu documentaries available on Something To Stream. We checked each documentary and singled out those which talk about historic events or rely on history as their main subject. Each documentary was then checked on IMDb for its rating among movie buffs. Those that had the highest ratings are featured on this list. Let the journey into history begin on the next page.
