Build a movie plot around this: How do the prisoners get their war news? Clandestine radio.
The answer to this question is:
Stalag 17 begins on "the longest night of the year" in 1944 in a Luftwaffe prisoner-of-war camp somewhere along the Danube River. The story is narrated by Clarence Harvey "Cookie" Cook (Gil Stratton). The camp holds Poles, Czechs, Russian females and, in the American compound, 640 sergeants from bomber crews, gunners, radiomen, and flight engineers.Manfredi (Michael Moore) and Johnson (Peter Baldwin) try to escape through a tunnel, but are shot by waiting guards when they emerge outside the barbed wire fence. The other prisoners conclude that one of their own must have told the Germans. Suspicion falls on Sefton (William Holden), an enterprising cynic who barters openly with the German guards for eggs, silk stockings, blankets and other luxuries. He also runs a distillery, and organizes mouse races and various other profitable ventures. Sefton tells the men it is foolish to try to escape.The lives of the prisoners are depicted: they receive mail, eat terrible food, wash in the latrine sinks, and collectively do their best to keep sane and defy the camp's commandant, Oberst [Colonel] von Scherbach (Otto Preminger). They use a clandestine radio, smuggled from barracks to barracks, to pick up the BBC and the war news. One German guard, Feldwebel [Staff Sergeant] Schulz (Sig Ruman), confiscates the radio in another success for the "stoolie.""Animal" Kuzawa is infatuated with movie star Betty Grable, and becomes depressed when he learns she has married bandleader Harry James. Harry "Sugar Lips" Shapiro gets six letters at mail call and makes Animal think they are from women. When Kuzawa sees a finance company letterhead, Harry admits they repossessed his Plymouth.Sefton bribes the guards to let him spend the day in the Russian women's barracks. The other prisoners conclude that this is his reward for having informed the Germans about the radio. When he returns, he is accused of being a spy. Later, von Scherbach takes Lieutenant James Schuyler Dunbar (Don Taylor), a temporary inmate, away. Dunbar admitted to...