Andre de Toth's None Shall Escape (1944)

None Shall Escape is a harrowing film.  It is directed by Hungarian émigré Andre de Toth,  who directed several films in Hungary and filmed the Nazi invasion of Poland, before fleeing to America; None Shall Escape was de Toth's second film in the U.S., written by Lester Cole (later of the Hollywood Ten) and photographed by the estimable Lee Garmes, who had earlier worked with Josef Von Sternberg. In a manner of speaking the film is a fantasy, a prophetic film taking place after the war ends at a "United Nations" tribunal to investigate war crimes (the film was made in 1943 and released in 1944).  On trial is Wilhelm Grimm, played by Alexander Knox, and he is the subject of flashbacks from his one-time fiancée (Marsha Hunt), his brother (Erik Rolf) and his priest.(Henry Travers)  It all takes place in a small town in Poland from Grimm's return there in 1919 after WWI to the end of the WW II.  Grimm lost a leg in the first World War, wants to get even with someone and thinks he is worthy of better things than the life of a small-town schoolteacher.  Grimm feels he is being condescended to by everyone and breaks off with his fiancée when she doesn't share his dreams of greatness and glory.  He begins to feel superior and when he molests one of his students the student commits suicide.  He flees the country after he is acquitted, due to lack of evidence, and is given money by his friends (including the priest) to help him.

When Germany invades Poland Grimm returns as a powerful Nazi, who takes a great deal of pleasure in mistreating everyone in the village, from burning books to using the synagogue as a stable.  When Grimm rounds up the Jews for deportation to concentration camps they are encouraged by their rabbi to fight back and they are all slaughtered.  De Toth's film was one of several by émigré directors that exposed the horrors of Nazism, once we were at war with Germany, including Douglas Sirk's Hitler's Madman in 1943 (see my post of 12/20/16) and Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die in 1944.  De Toth not only emphasizes the horrors of Nazism, he also exposes the psychology of those who become Nazis, including the insecurity, the misogyny, the need for power.  I won't here attempt to draw analogies with our current political landscape, though I do recommend Christopher R. Browning's "The Suffocation of Democracy" in the Oct. 25 issue of The New York Review of Books.