confessions of a nazi spy by anatole litvak from 1939 starring edward g. robinson.

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Warning: spoilers below!

"Confessions of a Nazi Spy" opens with three seemingly unconnected sequences: an announcer reporting the recent conviction of members of a Nazi spy ring in America; a postal delivery to a woman called Mary McLaughlin in Scotland; and a Hitler-style address by a Dr Kassel to a rally held by a German-American organisation known as the Bund. The common link between the three sequences is a network of Nazi espionage and subversion centred on Franz Schlager, an officer on a German passenger liner, the SS Bismarck, which makes regular trips to New York. On the voyage from Germany, the Bismarck brings Nazi propaganda material for distribution by Kassel's organisation, and on the homeward run she takes US military plans and other classified information obtained by Schlager's agents. Schlager is also the ship's political leader. As such he is able to lord it over everyone, even the captain, and he warns the crew that they will not escape the `protecting eye' of their government even when they are on American soil - a veiled reference to the Gestapo, whose agents are seen keeping tabs on Germans in America. One of Schlager's recruits is a man called Kurt Schneider, who fancies himself as a spy. Initially Schneider has some success, partly because American security is wide open. He recruits a former army colleague, the simple-minded Werner, who is now a private in Army Air Corps. But he comes undone when he goes over Schlager's head and writes (via Mary McLaughlin) to Berlin, proposing the kidnapping of an American colonel. Tipped off by the postman, who has become suspicious of McLaughlin's frequent letters from abroad, British Military Intelligence arrests McLaughlin and tips off the FBI about Schneider. FBI agent Edward Renard, who has so far specialised in combating gangsters, now turns to counter-espionage and makes a clean sweep of the spy ring, including Kassel. When Kassel is released on bail, he gets a taste of his own medicine: he is kidnapped by the Gestapo and sent back to Germany, as others have been before him. As the remaining spies are convicted, spinning newspaper headlines report how the `fifth column' (pro-Nazi Germans) have used subversion and sabotage to pave the way for Hitler's conquest of Western Europe. Following the trial, a conversation between Renard and the attorney who prosecuted the case serves as a warning to Americans not to take their liberty, or their security, for granted.