Resisting Enemy Interrogation
Academy Award nominated training film which instructs soldiers how to handle the interrogation techniques practiced by the Nazis.
1945 1h 5m Documentary TV-PG
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Among the five new prisoners arriving at Dulag Luft, a German Interrogation center for captured American air crews, are wounded flier Ralph Cole; Capt. James N. Spencer, the pilot commander; First Lieutenant Frank L. Williams, the co-pilot; Cooper, a frightened, young flier; and Technical Sergeant Alfred Mason. The Americans were captured in Italy, where their B-99 crashed while on a sortie to destroy German communication lines, and the German commander is frustrated by the discovery that much of their equipment, including bombs and identification papers, has been destroyed. The Nazis know that one of the crew is missing, but have few leads on the identities of the five prisoners, other than a newspaper clipping about Williams' father, who is the founder of the New England League Against Nazism. Initial interrogations by the Nazis reveal that Williams is talkative, and that Macson is fiercely loyal to his commander. Hoping to get more information by breaking the will of the weakest prisoner, the Nazi commander sends Cooper to solitary confinement. Spencer, meanwhile, is interrogated by the Nazis, but he refuses to divulge any information beyond his name, rank and serial number. Herr Mahler, a Red Cross representative, asks Spencer to sign admission papers, but Spencer knows it is a trick and refuses to complete the form. The Nazi commander abruptly ends his interrogation of Spencer by calling him the "uncooperative type." Later, Williams carelessly discusses Col...
Aside from brief voice-over narration at the beginning and a speech by Lloyd Nolan at the end concerning the dangers of talking too much to the enemy, the film is presented in dramatic form. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary. According to a modern interview with screenwriter Owen Crump, who was working for the First Motion Picture Unit, the secluded Bavarian chateau that appears in the film was a process shot based on a picture post card. After the war, Crump said, two aviators visited Warner Bros. studios and revealed that during the war, they were taken to the same chateau for interrogation. Recognizing it from the film, the two fliers were so amused that they kept breaking into laughter, completely baffling their captors.
