Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject)

This is a list of movies by year that they received an Oscar. Also listed are the other nominations for best documentary short subject.

List of winners and nominees

1940s

1941 - Churchill's Island - National Film Board of Canada
- Adventure in the Bronx
- Bomber
- Christmas Under Fire
- A Letter from Home
- Life of a Thoroughbred
- Norway in Revolt
- Soldiers of the Sky
- Warclouds in the Pacific
1942 - At the 15th Academy Awards, 25 movies were nominated and four special awards presented in the Documentary category. This was in recognition of the Allied war in effort in World War II:^[1]
The Battle of Midway -- United States Navy
Kokoda Front Line! -- Australian News & Information Bureau
Moscow Strikes Back -- Artkino
Prelude to War -- United States Army Special Services
- Africa, Prelude to Victory -- The March of Time
- Combat Report -- United States Army Signal Corps
- Conquer by the Clock -- Frederic Ullman, Jr., Producer
- The Grain That Built a Hemisphere -- Walt Disney, Producer -- Walt Disney Productions
- Henry Browne, Farmer -- United States Department of Agriculture
- High over the Borders -- National Film Board of Canada
- High Stakes in the East -- The Netherlands Information Bureau
- Inside Fighting China -- National Film Board of Canada
- It's Everybody's War -- United States Office of War Information
- Listen to Britain -- British Ministry of Information
- Little Belgium -- Belgian Ministry of Information
- Little Isles of Freedom -- Victor Stoloff and Edgar Loew, Producers
- Mr. Blabbermouth!—United States Office of War Information
- Mr. Gardenia Jones—United States Office of War Information
- The New Spirit -- Walt Disney, Producer -- Walt Disney Productions
- The Price of Victory -- William H. Pine, Producer
- A Ship Is Born -- United States Merchant Marine
- Twenty-One Miles—British Ministry of Information
- We Refuse to Die -- William C. Thomas, Producer
- White Eagle} -- Concanen Films
- Winning Your Wings -- United States Army Air Force
1943 - December 7th - United States Navy
- Children of Mars
- Plan for Destruction
- Swedes in America
- To the People of the United States
- Tomorrow We Fly
- Youth in Crisis
1944 - With the Marines at Tarawa - United States Marine Corps
- Hymn of the Nations
- New Americans
1945 - Hitler Lives - Gordon Hollingshead, Producer
- Library of Congress
- To the Shores of Iwo Jima
1946 - Seeds of Destiny - United States Department of War
- Atomic Power
- Life at the Zoo
- Paramount News Issue#37
- Traffic with the Devil
1947 - First Steps - United Nations Division of Films and Visual Information
- Passport to Nowhere
- School in the Mailbox
1948 - Toward Independence - United States Army
- Heart to Heart
- Operation Vittles
1949 - (tie):
- A Chance To Live - Richard de Rochemont, Producer
- So Much for So Little - Edward Selzer, Producer
- 1848
- The Rising Tide

1950s

1950 - Why Korea? - Edmund Reek, Producer
- The Fight: Science Against Cancer
- The Stairs
1951 - Benjy - Made by Fred Zinnemann with the cooperation of Paramount Pictures Corporation for the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital
- One Who Came Back
- The Seeing Eye
1952 - Neighbours - Norman McLaren, Producer - National Film Board of Canada
- Devil Take Us
- Epeira Diadema
- Man Alive!
1953 - The Alaskan Eskimo - Walt Disney, Producer - Walt Disney Productions
- The Living City
- Operation Blue Jay
- They Planted a Stone
- The Word
1954 - Thursday's Children - World Wide Pictures and Morse Films
- Jet Carrier
- Rembrandt: A Self-Portrait
1955 - Men against the Arctic - Walt Disney, Producer - Walt Disney Productions
- The Battle of Gettysburg
- The Face of Lincoln
1956 - The True Story of the Civil War - Louis Clyde Stoumen, Producer
- Man in Space
- A City Decides
- The Dark Wave
- The House Without a Name
1957 - none given
1958 - Ama Girls - Ben Sharpsteen, Producer
- Employees Only
- Journey Into Spring
- The Living Stone
- Oeuverture
1959 - Glass - Bert Haanstra, Producer
- Donald in Mathmagic Land
- From Generation to Generation

Note: A press release by AMPAS in 2005 says that "Documentary Short Subject winners Benjy (1951) and Neighbours (1952) are among a group of films that not only competed, but won Academy Awards in what were clearly inappropriate categories. Benjy, directed by Fred Zinnemann and narrated by Henry Fonda, is the fictional tale of a crippled boy. The film was used as a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital. ... Norman McLaren's Neighbours, which today would compete in the Animated Short category, used "pixilation" – animation using living people - to create an allegory of war."