Dnka Schon

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2012)

***SPOILERS*** Far more effective then almost all of the films made during WWII in Hollywood in it showing the dreaded Nazis or Germans as formidable enemies not mindless brute's whom we ,the good guys, easily out think and fight to the point where you begin to wonder, in spite of the Nazis amazing military success in the early years of WWII, how did they even happen to get that far in the first place.
After being sunk and it's passengers shelled by a Nazi U-Boat in the North Atlantic the U-boat itself is hit by allied naval fire and sunk. As the survivors of the passenger ship assemble on a life boat they get an unexpected new passenger or visitor the captain of the U-boat that sunk and shelled them Willie, Water Slezak. Debating if to throw the "water rat" overboard or keep him as a POW the people on the lifeboat are convinced by both the high class and sophisticated writer and critic Connie Porter, Tallulah Bankhead, and industrialist Ritt Rirtterhoue,Henry C. Hull, to keep him alive. Since as Ritt says were not the inhuman savages that he his.
As the people on the life boat soon find out that not only Willie speaks perfect English he's, by being a U-boat captain, also very helpful in their survival at sea. But what they later realize is that Willie is only interested in his own survival not theirs. He's steering the lifeboat to a pre arranged rendezvous with a Nazi supply ship not to the island of Bermuda as he's been telling them all along. And when rescued by the German supply ship they'll all end up in a Nazi concentration camp where for the most part they won't survive the war!
***SPOILERS*** It's when Willie gets a bit too over confident in his actions that he gives himself away. Thinking that he's a member of the Master Race and the passengers on the life boat are nothing but sub humans Willie makes his mistake by shoving the wounded and helpless American seaman Gus Smith, William Bendix, overboard in order to lighten the load. Confidently feeling he can put this one, the murder of Gus, over on his shocked fellow boat-mates the outraged passengers storm Willie and deep six him instead. Finally about to be rescued by a US naval destroyer who just sunk the German supply that was about to "rescue" them up pops another German sailor survivor from the sunken ship, William Yetter Jr, with the same ideas that Willie had in taking control of the life boat. But this time around the now wiser passengers on the boat don't let their guard down like they did before. Which to their benefit guarantees their survival as well as the befuddled , in thinking that they'll throw him overboard, German sailor.
P.S Alfred Hitchcock got a lot of criticism for making out Willie the German U-boat captain the real brains behind the shipwrecked passengers surviving in their ordeal at sea. But as Hitchcock correctly explained in that by underestimating your enemies you give then the edge to defeat you! Which is exactly why the Germans were so successful in the beginning and even end of WWII by them inflicting far more losses on the victorious allies, in some case like on the critical Eastern Front as much 8 to 1 in their favor, then they suffered in return!