Confessions Of A Nazi Spy

Anatole Litvak’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy, the first anti-Nazi feature film produced by a Hollywood studio, was released by Warner Bros. on May 6, 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. This taut espionage thriller stars the Romanian-born Jewish actor Edward G. Robinson as an FBI agent who breaks up a Nazi espionage ring in the United States.

A box office hit screened recently on the Turner Classic Movie channel, it was re-released in 1940 with a new ending to incorporate Germany’s invasions of Poland, France, Holland, Belgium and Norway.

As expected, the Nazi regime was outraged by its harsh portrayal of Germany. German officials let it be known that all future films that used its cast or crew would be banned in Germany. German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels went one step further. He ordered the state-owned movie industry to produce retaliatory documentaries that cast American society in a negative light.

Attempting to curry favor with Germany, a number of countries ranging from Japan and Italy to Ireland and Brazil banned Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

When word got out that Warner Bros. was making this film, the German consul-general in Los Angeles tried to nip it in the bud.

Its growing notoriety was such that some German-born actors, including Marlene Dietrich and Anna Sten, apparently rejected roles in it because they feared that their participation would endanger their relatives still living in Germany.

Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization, attempted to block its release by filing a $5,000,000 libel suit against Warner Bros. and requesting a temporary injunction against the exhibitors. A federal judge denied his request.

In response, Warner Bros. filed a counter suit against Kuhn, contending that the German-American Bund was an “active militant propaganda agency” of the Nazi regime, and that its members were “abusing the rights and privileges of American citizens.”

Kuhn dropped his suit following accusations that he had embezzled Bund funds. From that point onward, Kuhn and the Bund would be on a downward trajectory.

Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which is one hour and 50 minutes in length, is based on a series of New York City newspaper articles that exposed the subversive activities of a group of American Nazi traitors in the employ of the German government. They all appear to be linked to the German-American Bund, which aspired to establish a fascist, antisemitic, pro-German government in the United States.

The main character, Dr. Karl Kassel (Paul Lukas), is directly modelled after Kuhn. Like Kuhn, he is a German national who immigrated to the United States. A reserve officer in the U.S. Navy, Kassel is proud of the “new Germany” and adores its authoritarian fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.

Kassel believes that German Americans like himself must save America from chaos and racial defilement and lead it into a mutually beneficial alliance with Germany. He promotes “Americanism,” but rails against the U.S. constitution and the Bill of Rights. Oddly enough, he does not mention Jews in his tirades. Presumably, Warner Bros. deliberately kept Jews out of the picture so as to universalize the danger that Nazis posed to all Americans.

One of Kassel’s associates, Franz Schlager (George Sanders), an officer on the German passenger ship SS Bismarck, is driven by a belief that the future belongs to Germany. His girlfriend, Hilde Keinhauer (Dorothy Tree), who works as a beautician on the vessel, shares his ideas.

Eager not to tar the German American community with the brush of pro-Nazism, the film features several German Americans who are dubious of the Nazi regime. Among them is a nationalist who claims that the Nazis are soiling “the best of German culture.”

Another key character, Kurt Schneider (Francis Lederer), agrees to spy for Germany in exchange for a monthly retainer. Schneider is portrayed as a ne’er-do-well and adulterer who lost the respect of his wife long ago. He convinces a naive American soldier, Werner Renz (Joe Sawyer), to obtain top-secret material about U.S. military capabilities.

An off-screen announcer, speaking in stentorian tones, warns Americans that the Nazis are creating a fascist dictatorship in Germany, casting a dark shadow over Europe, and fomenting racial and religious discord in the United States by means of propaganda leaflets and books.

Robinson, an outspoken anti-Nazi in Hollywood, appears in the film as FBI operative Edward Renard. In his view, Germany is hostile to the U.S., which remained neutral and stayed out of the war until Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s unilateral declaration of war against the United States. His task is to ferret out “Hitler-happy Americans” who have condemned themselves as Fifth Columnists.

He interrogates Schneider, who admits that hundreds of German Americans are working as spies for Germany in defence plants and shipyards. Under duress, Keinhauer implicates Kassel as a traitor. He, in turn, confesses that the German government has planted agents in major American cities and in Montreal.

By every yardstick, Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a competently-crafted production, intended to warn Americans of the perils of fascism in general and of Nazism in particular. One imagines that it succeeded in turning some Americans against Germany’s genocidal regime.