In 1944, Nazi Germany was on the brink of defeat but stubbornly resisting surrender, so in a daring push to gain key intelligence, the U.S. Army began recruiting German prisoners to spy behind their own lines.
DECISION BEFORE DAWN is the story of the mission of three war-weary men who take on this thankless job, each for his own reasons. Director Anatole Litvak filmed in post-war Germany because of the surplus of bombed-out buildings and tanks, weapons and uniforms, and so accurate and realistic were the script, acting and setting that anyone watching the filming in Wurzberg in 1950-51 might have wondered whether the war ever ended. This not your typical war picture: no stereotypes, no action heroes, no grand and glorious finale, simply a realisatic depiction of a key period of time during the final days of World War II in all its tragedy and irony, co-starring three extraordinary actors now long departed – Gary Merrill, Richard Basehart and Oskar Werner (as a young German spy-recruit torn between his love of the Fatherland and loathing of its Nazi oppressors).
