Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) on Netflix
Dr. Karl Kassel urges a German-American audience to carry out Hitler's wishes. Unemployed Kurt Schneider writes to Hitler's newspaper hoping to be a spy. FBI agent Ed Renard takes the case.
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- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb6.7/102,483 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
A postman in Scotland grows curious about the letters he carries to Mrs. MacLaughlin, and British Military Intelligence learns that she forwards messages for spies around the world. In New York, Dr. Karl Kassel tells a German-American Bund audience at the Café Nuremberg that Hitler has declared war on democracy and that they should seize power. Kurt Schneider, out of work, writes to Hitler's newspaper and is taken on as a spy; naval officer Franz Schlager is ordered to contact him. Beauty operator Hilda Kleinhauer passes word about her customers to the Gestapo, and she brings material for Schlager. With only a major and one assistant handling counterespionage in New York, American military intelligence asks the FBI for help, and agent Ed Renard takes the case.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A 60-pound boom was sabotaged to fall on the set of Confessions of a Nazi Spy during filming, nearly killing one of the main actors.
- Confessions of a Nazi Spy stayed banned in Germany for 32 years after the fall of the Nazis and was only shown in West German cinemas in 1977, when West Germany lifted its ban on "hard-core" anti-Nazi films.
- So many actors feared reprisals that nobody would play Adolf Hitler at any price, so the script was rewritten to show Hitler only in newsreel footage.
- Nazi supporters picketed or vandalized U.S. theaters showing the film, and German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn sued Warner Bros for $5 million, claiming it libelled him.
- German émigré actors appeared uncredited or under aliases to protect relatives still living in Germany; among them were Hedwiga Reicher, Wolfgang Zilzer, Rudolph Anders, Wilhelm von Brincken and Martin Kosleck.
- The Production Code Administration first recommended shelving the film over losing the German market, German officials in Los Angeles lobbied against anti-Nazi movies, and after its release the PCA barred any further anti-Nazi films.
- Confessions of a Nazi Spy was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film produced by a major Hollywood studio, released in May 1939, four months before World War II began in Europe.
- Parts of the film fictionalize the case of Guenther Gustave Maria Rumrich, arrested on February 14, 1938, after trying to obtain 50 passport application forms in New York; Francis Lederer's Schneider is his screen equivalent.
