Interesting to see some of the comments here, questioning how realistic the movie is. The movie is an excellent depiction of the very techniques used by the very real-life WWII German interrogator, Hanns-Joachim Scharff. Scharff, who originally wasn't even supposed to be an interrogator, found the traditional ideas of using brutality distasteful and ineffective. The methods shown in the movie, such as making small talk, pretending to know all the details, a change of scenery, etc are all very well-documented, and are still recognized interrogation approaches taught to this day. Incidentally, Scharff (who's notoriety I can only suspect inspired this training film) emigrated to the U.S. after the war and became a big time mosaic artist; some of his artwork can be seen on Disney properties.

Not made for US movie audiences consumption in that the film is far too disturbing as well as accurate in how successful interrogations tactics by the Germans in WWII worked. The film or documentary "Resisting Enemy Interrogation" is the exact opposite of the Hollywood made film "The Purple Heart" in how US airmen bravely resist and make their captors, in this case Japanese, look ridicules as well as stupid that was released the very same, 1944, year.Here we see the Germans use psychology and trickery to get the results that they want. That without those being interrogated not even knowing it. Not through torture and humiliation but through letting their captive US Airmen try to outsmart them and make them look like fools by instead tripping themselves up in them doing that. If the US and its allies used the same sound and tried tactics on captured suspected Al-Qeada and Taliban fighters after the attacks on 9/11 they would have gotten a lot more information and prevented, by putting their leaders out of commission, terror attacks then they had by instead getting false information out of them. That resulting in having sent the US military on a number of fruitless wild goose chases all over the globe.In the movie the Germans suspect a major low level attack on one of their oil installations in Southern occupied Europe and have captured a new B-99 US bomber's crew that was to take part of that attack. With the German intelligence officer Major Franz Kohmen knowing that the plane crew really knows nothing about where the attack is to take place he and his fellow interrogators make the US airmen feel or pretend that they in fact do know but are keeping the information from him. This has them unconsciously blurt out things that they feel will fool Major Khomen that he and his second in common Captain Volbricht skillfully figure out where he raid will actually be, Munich Germany, and when it would take place; May 17, 1944!The Germans way of getting information is just by letting the captured US fliers say wherever they want for what seemed like hours at a time with Major Kohmen an his men filtering out the little truths from the vast distortions and lies. This has them put together a blueprint of where the big US raid in Southern Europe will be and when it will take place. What was so amazing about all that is that Captain Kohmen got all that vital information without the captured US airmen, who unknowingly gave him that information, knowing it! That ended up costing the USAAF 21 bombers being shot down together with their 105 man crews as they were ambushed by squads of German fighter planes over the skies of Munich Germany.Very disturbing to watch movie released at the time when the US was in a life and death struggle with Nazi Germany which was in fact not released to general American public but only at US military bases. It was those men who watched it that had to get the real and hard cold facts in how to act if captured by the enemy. Not the general American public who were to be both propagandized and entertained, in lifting civilian moral at home, in watching the highly gong-ho inaccurate and feel good war movies that Hollywood was cranking out back in those days.

Other comments cover the quality; the interesting part is how the Germans identify the weaknesses of each man and play to them. I don't know if the Nazis were always as subtle as this (I imagine a lit cigarette to the groin or pulling out a few fingernails to a subject or his friends would encourage a frank and open discussion).Good film, relatively propaganda free. It's interesting to watch the way American WWII propaganda treats the Germans as opposed to the Japanese. The Germans are usually portrayed as sophisticated and slimy while the Japanese are shown as little more than cunning animals. Compare "Identification of the Japanese Zero" with this film.Watchable on its own terms, interesting to watch the Germans working on each guy in their own way and piecing together the scraps they get from each man to finding the whole story. I imagine the black-bag boys at Gitmo are doing much the same thing.

Thanks to TCM for giving us an opportunity to see this gem. Made by the Army Air Force's famous First Movie Unit well into the war (1944), this is one of their most polished efforts. It has a simple, but effective narrative: a US air crew of 5 is downed by the Nazis, who use every trick in the book (short of torture) to pump information out of them: ingratiation, intimidation, deceit and psychological welfare. None of the downed fliers means to co-operate with the enemy, but each in his own way contributes some information to their clever Nazis captors, which is then pieced together by the Nazi commanding officer, somewhat flamboyantly portrayed by Carl Esmond. The consequences are disaster.The point of the film as a training device (forcefully driven home by Lloyd Nolan in the closing sequence) was that ANY information, no matter how innocent or trivial seeming on its face, could complete the jigsaw puzzle for Nazi intelligence services. All that should EVER be revealed to ANYONE outside your own crew once you were captured was name, rank and serial number. A simple lesson, you would suppose, but for 70 minutes (rather lengthy by the genre's standards, I think) the point is expertly honed by a fairly effective little drama.In addition to Nolan, the other "big name" actor here is a young Arthur Kennedy, who appeared in many excellent films over the following quarter century.