Fabrik der Offiziere (1960)

A Wehrmacht military academy during the Second World War: First Lieutenant Krafft has a strong sense of justice. This has repeatedly brought him into disfavor with his previous superiors, and he has been transferred as punishment several times. In his new post at an officers’ school, he hopes to survive the war and tries to avoid further conflicts. However, Krafft is assigned an investigation by his general: a supervising officer was blown apart by an explosive charge during a combat-engineering exercise. Although the senior military judge rules the man’s death an accident, Krafft reconstructs what happened and proves that it was a murder. Ensign Hochbauer, who enjoys the favor of the Party, is said to have deliberately shortened the fuse during the explosives exercise, so that the supervising officer could not get to safety in time. Krafft initiates proceedings against Hochbauer, a committed National Socialist, and places his trust in Ensign Böhmke, who is to give evidence against the murderer. But Böhmke, the son of a pastor, is blackmailed by the accused, and only after much hesitation does he retract his false testimony. Hochbauer then commits suicide without confessing to the murder attributed to him. After this incident, the senior military judge begins distorting the facts and tries to bring Krafft down: Böhmke had accused Hochbauer of murder only because of his National Socialist convictions, and First Lieutenant Krafft was partly to blame for Hochbauer’s death. The general’s home is then searched. Incriminating material is discovered that exposes the general as a traitor who helped plan an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. Böhmke and the general are arrested. Krafft, unwilling to accept Böhmke being punished for his honesty, attacks the judge and is shot dead by members of the Gestapo. Meanwhile, the dead Hochbauer is buried as a victim of anti-state conspiracies.