"Why We Fight" was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower's . Although it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, it received a limited public cinema release on January 22, 2006, and then was released on DVD on June 27, 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for television productions and a Peabody Award in 2006.