Banditen der Autobahn (1955)

The police in the newly established Federal Republic are facing a new kind of crime. Gangsters are robbing motorists using their own car, a fast black Opel Kapitän. The criminals leave no trace, because the getaway car they use disappears immediately after each robbery via a loading ramp into a truck traveling along the same route at almost exactly the same time. The heavy truck is disguised as a company vehicle belonging to the haulage firm “Möller & Co.” The firm’s co-owner, Franz Möller, is friends with police constable Willi Kollanski, who is on duty on a day that is to change his life profoundly. This is the starting point for the story that follows. The young employee Kurt Heinze is supposed to deliver 5,000 marks to a business associate on his boss’s behalf. Kurt takes his boss’s Porsche 356 and invites his girlfriend, Eva Berger, along for the drive. However, they leave the car’s papers at the company. At night on the highway, Kurt sees red flares ahead. Since bandits have been stopping and robbing innocent drivers on the highway for some time, he switches off his headlights and puts his foot down. He has no idea that the red flares mark a police roadblock. Constable Willi Kollanski is stationed at the third barrier. The sports car breaks through the first two roadblocks. Then Kollanski sees it coming toward him, takes aim at the car with his submachine gun, and fires a burst. Driver Kurt is killed by the police bullets, while his passenger Eva survives, shouting, “You murderer!” From then on, Kollanski can no longer perform his duties without being affected by what happened. He is consumed by self-reproach, even though his superior, Chief Inspector Gerber, unequivocally stands by him. The press and the public, by contrast, see the events as an instance of police brutality. Headlines such as “Murderer in Uniform” appear in the newspapers. At a cabaret, Kollanski hears a cabaret singer’s malicious song: “If you escape the highway bandits, the police will shoot you.” At the barber’s, he overhears the proprietor telling a Swiss customer: “You have a completely different sort of civil servant in Switzerland. Who joins the police here, anyway? A bunch of young punks, been in the war and learned nothing ... they don’t know what a human life is worth ... What can those guys do? Shoot and wear a uniform ... with a pension to look forward to ...” Weighed down by reactions like these, Kollanski is no longer able to make a crucial life-or-death decision during his next assignment. When he encounters the real highway bandits at another police roadblock and they try to flee, he does not use his submachine gun, and the criminals escape after shooting two policemen. Kollanski then decides to resign from the police and pursue the criminals on his own. At the same time, a tender bond develops between him, the policeman, and Eva Berger, who lost her boyfriend because of Kollanski. The gang’s leader, Paul Barra, has no intention of giving up his criminal activities despite the recent incident. He is already planning the next heist, in which a motorcycle—acting as a kind of advance unit to check the situation and pick out potential victims on the highway—the Opel Kapitän, the gang’s main car, and the heavy truck are once again to play crucial roles. But the truck’s owner, Möller, no longer wants to take part and breaks with the gang. Barra considers this too dangerous, and when Franz Möller tries to split from his accomplice, Barra tries to have him run over and killed by his own truck. At the last moment, Kollanski pulls his friend out of the truck’s path, and instead the gang member Schorsch is run over. Meanwhile, Kollanski has picked up the gangsters’ trail. He sees through the truck trick and manages to climb aboard without being noticed. The police have been alerted and follow the speeding truck. The bandits throw the Opel Kapitän onto the road while it is still moving at full speed, and the pursuing patrol car crashes into it. Willi gets into a struggle with one of the gangsters and is shot, falling out of the truck. The five-ton truck winds its way up a hairpin bend. Willi, thrown from the vehicle, draws his revolver and shoots gang leader Barra, who is at the wheel. The heavy vehicle then skids and plunges down the slope. Former policeman Kollanski manages, with his last ounce of strength, to get clear of the falling truck.