Thu 4 Sep 2014
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[12] Comments
CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY. Warner Brothers, 1939. Edward G. Robinson, Francis Lederer, George Sanders, Paul Lukas, Henry O’Neill, Dorothy Tree, James Stephenson, Joe Sawyer, Sig Ruman. Director: Anatole Litvak.
Reviewing Confessions of a Nazi Spy, from the vantage point of 2014 is quite a different undertaking than writing about it in 1939 when it was first released. While it remains a well above average spy thriller, some of the film’s immediacy has been lost by the passage of time. That said, the Anatole Litvak-directed project remains a significant and quite well constructed film.
The movie, based on the real life exposure of Nazi spies operating in the United States, depicts in semi-documentary style the emergence of a pro-Nazi spy ring in New York City. Interspersed among the dramatic sequences is actual newsreel footage.
As the first major studio production to detail the growing Nazi threat to American national security, Confessions of a Nazi Spy was harsh in its condemnation of German-American groups that allied themselves with Hitler. Although it seems to deliberately avoid any explicit reference to Nazi anti-Semitism, the movie does repeatedly portray Nazism as maddening, barbaric, and contrary to the very fabric of Americanism. Nazi expansionism is made out to be very real danger to democracy.
Edward G. Robinson, whose family was a target of Romanian anti-Semitism prior to their emigration to the United States, portrays FBI Agent Edward Renard. It is his mission to both expose the Nazi spy ring and turn them over to the Justice Department for prosecution. The message is clear. Unlike in Nazi Germany, the United States gives all men a fair trial.
Apart from their Nazi handlers, the ring consists primarily of three German-Americans: a megalomaniac loser and U.S. Army deserter, Kurt Schneider (Francis Lederer), his dimwitted chum, Werner Renz (Joe Sawyer), and the fanatical Dr. Karl Kassel convincingly portrayed by Paul Lukas.
The latter character is, in many ways, the most interesting. He’s a bespectacled, mild mannered, physician working in the Yorkville section of Manhattan who is also a fanatical Nazi sympathizer active in the German-American Bund. Rounding out the cast are George Sanders, who portrays a Nazi official, and his female partner who ends up having a quite important role in the FBI’s successful unraveling of the spy ring.
Watching this film, I could not help but wonder. How many people today are even aware of Nazi espionage in the United States prior to Germany’s declaration of war upon the United States? Even further, how many people are aware of the rise and fall of those German-American societies that supported the Third Reich? There’s an especially captivating scene in which Dr. Kassel visits a pro-Nazi youth camp based somewhere in what is presumably supposed to be the northeastern United States.
Despite its grave subject matter, the film does end on a semi-optimistic and patriotic note. Renard is sitting in a diner with the federal prosecutor. A paperboy comes in with the latest edition, the headline noting that the feds have taken down the spy ring. A diner worker and talk for a moment among themselves, glad that those Nazis have been found out. This is America, not Europe. We are different from those hatemongers, they say. We’re Americans.
September 4th, 2014 at 10:04 pm
Critic Konrad Lorenz review of this one was “Everybody Duck! Warner Brothers has declared war on Nazi Germany!”
This was an eye opener for many people who were unaware how pervasive the German American Bund’s were. An older journalist friend of mine always said his proudest moment was he started a riot and got beat up covering a Bundist rally in Colorado.
Many important Americans were dragged down by this, and some like Charles Lindbergh were so tainted by it that no one would trust him during the war — certainly not the Roosevelt administration. He never did quite throw off the taint even with his important work post war.
No Japanese American betrayed his country in WWII (or since as far as I know) and indeed many fought courageously in Europe, but German Americans were not as loyal, though it was still a relatively small minority and they certainly served as bravely in all theatres of the war.
Of course we exploited that suspicion and no few German agents in this country and Europe were actually American agents.
This movie was important in the change in American attitudes to the war. Even many isolationists were disturbed to learn how active German and Japanese spies were, and while it is true an FBI agent cracked this ring he fought Hoover every inch as did every Allied intelligence agency throughout the war. Most of the Bureau’s successes came in spite of Hoover’s jealous need for the limelight rather than because of him.
September 4th, 2014 at 10:29 pm
That “pro-Nazi youth camp” was most likely a reference to Camp Nordland in Andover Township, New Jersey, a notorious Bundist hangout. My parents told me of seeing uniformed German-American Bund members in the back room of a beer garden in my hometown of Irvington, NJ before the war and making the proprietor very nervous by asking him about it. Of course, many of these folks were more deluded than sinister, but it’s still a disturbing image.
September 4th, 2014 at 10:51 pm
For 3+ years, I lived in an apartment on East 87th Street, east of Lexington and Third Avenue. That region — Yorkville — was the heart of NYC’s German-America in the 1930s and also a central location for the German-American Bund. There isn’t too much there anymore, but when I lived there over a decade ago, there was still a German restaurant on 2nd Avenue. There was also quite a Hungarian presence in the 1940s and 1950s, as I understand it. I recall some men in their 70s and 80s reading Hungarian newspapers. German, not so much.
September 4th, 2014 at 10:55 pm
Of possible interest
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/when-the-bund-marched-in-manhattan/
September 5th, 2014 at 1:35 am
Over in Britain we had the Blackshirts, led by Oswald Mosley. Initially they aimed to recruit a wide spectrum of supporters, but by the mid-30s they had begun to lose a lot of support amongst the general population as their anti-semitism became ever more obvious. They clashed violently with locals and national anti-fascist groups in the East End in the mid-30s, which didn’t help them. By 1940 Mosley was under arrest in Holloway Prison, and the movement was illegal. It says a lot about both the US and Britain that the fascists were such a minor footnote rather than a major force. Mosley’s most lasting influence seems to have been inspiring P G Wodehouse’s comic character Roderick Spode, leader of the Blackshorts, whom Bertie Wooster describes as a ‘frightful ass’ and ‘a perfect perisher’.
September 5th, 2014 at 1:46 am
In general, the Anglo-American world, from Australia to Canada, England to New Zealand and the United States, didn’t produce much in the way of potent fascist movements similar to those of Continental Europe. Says something about the Anglo-American political tradition.
One interesting aspect of the film was the degree to which the German-American Bund was connected with propagandists in Berlin. How true that is, I don’t know for certain, but the film depicts Berlin as the nerve center for diaspora Germans who were sympathetic to, or manipulated into being sympathetic to, Nazism.
September 5th, 2014 at 2:02 am
Well, there is certainly proof that Nazi Germany supplied money to Mosley’s political party, so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Bundists had some sort of connection. The degree to which German/Americans were actually sympathetic to Nazism is difficult to judge. I remember reading the author Fritz Leiber saying that his father (the actor Fritz Leiber) remained pro-German for much of the war, only really changing his mind when the full extent of Nazi atrocities became clear. I imagine that the difference between being pro-German and pro-Nazi could become blurred amongst some people.
September 5th, 2014 at 3:16 am
The story is that Warners ws prompted to make this film when their Jewish representative in Berlin was stomped to death during an anti-Semitic demonstration.
September 5th, 2014 at 3:41 am
Four years later, Warner Brothers would have Errol Flynn as a German-Canadian Mountie in “Northern Pursuit”. In it, he pretends that his heritage makes him open to being sympathetic to Nazism and Germany, but of course, there is a twist….
September 5th, 2014 at 9:53 am
The best scholarly account is Sander Diamond’s he Nazi Movement in the United States: 1924–1941.
September 5th, 2014 at 6:02 pm
Though it was never a serious threat many people had thought America might go into WWI on the German side because of our large German population. Early on many Italian Americans were supporters of Mussolini including some mob figures who changed their tune only when we cut a deal with capo d capo Luciano to aid in invading Sicily.
Most of those people were never disloyal, just ignorant or confused. It is odd though that there were few if any pro Nippon Japanese, and despite being interred in the war no case where any Nisei (Japanese American) even considered treason at any level.
And while we admire them, no few Americans aided or served with the British and French in both wars with high level collaboration that reached the White House in the case of the UK, as today there have been cases of Americans illegally supplying our intelligence to Israel.
But the Germans did seem to be more insidious and successful before WWII, perhaps because it was an important policy for them, and because of a cultural heritage.
I agree with Jonathan though that it is a fact that the democracies in the West had loud but very minor fascist movements that petered out with only a few sparks. Sinclair Lewis seemed to be wrong, it couldn’t happen here. Of course, save for England, America, Australia, and New Zealand were all settled by malcontents and criminals — a certain anti-fascist resistance was born and bred into us. We can barely organize to form governments at times, much less march in step en mass.
Culture and history seems to have been the deciding factors — that and our national senses of humor which meant we have a tendency to laugh at anyone in silly uniforms shouting nonsense. One reason we were so late recognizing the danger of Hitler was how hard we were laughing at him. We could not believe anyone took him seriously.
Even Peter Cheyney, who was Moseley’s secretary for a while, got out of it early on before being very tainted.
April 18th, 2015 at 8:33 am
The reviewer asks: “Even further, how many people are aware of the rise and fall of those German-American societies that supported the Third Reich?”
I would ask further: How many people are aware of the support provided to Third Reich by large US corporations, such as Ford, General Motors, and IBM right up until the end of the war?