Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Anatole Litvak

Writers:

Leon G. Turrou (book)
Milton Krims (writer) ...

Release Date:

6 May 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Ed Renard is a G-Man investigating a huge Nazi spy ring in the United States. Contacts are discovered and arrested in the U.S....

Plot Keywords:

Spy | Nazi | FBI | Scotland | Patriotism

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Edward G. Robinson	...	Edward 'Ed' Renard
Francis Lederer	...	Kurt Schneider
George Sanders	...	Franz Schlager
Paul Lukas	...	Dr. Kassell (Credits) / Dr. Karl F. Kassel
Henry O'Neill	...	U.S. Atty. Kellogg
Dorothy Tree	...	Hilda Kleinhauer
Lya Lys	...	Erika Wolf (Credits) / Erika Wolff
Grace Stafford	...	Mrs. Helen Schneider
James Stephenson	...	British Military Intelligence agent
Hedwiga Reicher	...	Mrs. Kassell (Credits) / Mrs. Lisa Kassel (as Celia Sibelius)
Joe Sawyer	...	Werner Renz
Sig Ruman	...	Krogman (Credits) / Dr. Julius Gustav Krogmann (as Sig Rumann)
Lionel Royce	...	Hintze
Henry Victor	...	Hans Wildebrandt
Hans Heinrich von Twardowski	...	Max Helldorf (as Hans von Twardowski)

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono | Vitaphone

Certification:

Norway:16 (1945) | Norway:(Banned) (1939 - 1945) | Australia:G | Sweden:(Banned) | USA:Approved (PCA #5084)

Company:

First National Pictures

Trivia:

On Manday, July 3, 1939, Warner's legal department advised company's theaters that "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" must not be publicized as "based on the book written by Leon Turrou."

Goofs:

Factual errors: In one scene there is a large sign on a fence reading, "Fort Wentworth Base Hospital." The Army does not refer to its installations as "bases." A correct sign would have read "Post Hospital."

Movie Connections:

Featured in Warner at War (2008) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Annie Laurie

The party doesn't want criticism only total obedience!

(Some Minor Spoilers) Released in April 1939 the movie "Confession of a Nazi spy" was re-edited and re-released late in 1940. This was to take advantage of the by then changing world situation. Hitler's Germany had a;ready overran Poland in September 1939 as ell as Norway and Denmak in the early spring of 1940. Next on Hitler's list of conquests came the low countries and then France in the late spring and early summer of 1940. The Nazis then opened up a major air offensive against besieged Great Britan in the summer and fall of 1940 as well as a sea blockade to force that nation to surrender. Under these world-wide changing events the re-release made a much bigger impact on the American movie-going public then it would have in the spring of 1939 when the movie was originally released. Of the danger that Nazi Germany represented at that time.

The movie itself showed the Nazis, or at least the ones operating in the USA, as being anything like the ones in real life. Acting as if they were so arrogant and sure of themselves, in being able to turn over America to their landsmen across the Atlantic, that they screwed themselves up by easily getting caught by the FBI led by agent Edward Reward, Edward G. Robinson,and his men. This even before the great victories in Europe by the vaunted German Wehmacht and Luftwaffe even began.

Having established German/American Bundts all over the United States the Nazis plan to use their propaganda ministry, headed by the sinister Dr.Joesph Geobbels (Martin Kosleck),to flood the USA with a campaign of what Geobbels called stupidity. This was done to soften up the unconcerned and naive American people for the big takeover of their country without as much as them having to fire a single shot. The only problem that they have is that the Nazis in the USA were anything but up to do the job.

The Nazis bank on the head of newly appointed, by non other then the German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself, leader of the German/American Buntds organizations Dr. Karl Kassel, Paul Lukas, to organize the take-over of America. Kassel has the oddest bunch of weirdos and oddballs imaginable to accomplish all of this. Their so into themselves that they don't even notice that their throwing suspicion on themselves, as being Nazi spies, big time by the US law enforcement agencies; Like the FBI and local police departments.

The Nazi master-spy on the east coast who's job it is to find out the number of US troops that are stationed in NYC as well as troop movements all over the eastern seaboard is Kurt Schnielder, Francis Lederer. Schnielder is a bumbling jerk who went AWOL from the US army and later embezzled the funds of the company that he worked for.

Thinking of himself as a super German patriot an giant intellectual as well as military genius Schnieder arrogance leads him to get caught as he tries to talk officials in the State Department, telling them that he's the assistant to the US Undersecretry of State, to send him 35 blank passports. He plans use them in falsifying the names of German spies entering the USA from the German passenger liner "Bismark".

It didn't take that long for Agent Reward to get the pompous Schneider to spill the beans on himself as well as his fellow spies. Reward does that by buttering him up with what a great man he is, and what a great mind he has, in the history of world espionage which Schneider obviously is one of it's greatest personalities and shining lights.

Dr. Kassel himself is easily made to turn in his cohorts by Agent Reward threatening to expose him, not as a Nazi spy, as having an affair with a young woman member of his German/American Bundt organization to his unsuspecting wife, Hedwiga Reicher. Hedwiga thinks that all these night that Karl failed to show up for supper he was working late, and hard, on the job of him becoming the future American Adolf Hitler.

Schneider's friend and US Army Sgt. Warner, Joe Sawyer, who only attended the German/American Bundt meetings, in the Yorktown section of New York City, because of the free food and drinks served there is also drawn into the Nazi spy ring. Sgt. Warner's job is getting the information, to Schneider Nazi controller Herr Schlager(George Sanders), about the US Army's secret Z Code about the secret communications between the US Army and US Army Air Force. In the end he also ends up behind bars and in danger of being strapped into the Sing Sing electric chair for being a traitor to his country.

The entire Nazi spy ring collapses even before there's a war in Europe, or for that matter with the USA, in March 1938 eighteen month before the start of WWII. You wonder by watching the movie what made the Nazis so successful on the field of battle, at least up to the time that the movie was released or re-released, when they were such dismal failures in the field of espionage and subversion?

The movie "Confessions of a Nazi spy" fails to show what a real threat the Nazi regime really was to the US as well as the free world. It does it showing the Nazis in the movie as a bunch of helpless buffoons and nincompoop's instead of the very dangerous and effective scoundrels that they really were in real life.