Kennwort... Reiher (1964)

Belgium and France in the penultimate winter of the war, 1944: American fighter pilot Philip Sturgess has been shot down over German-occupied Western Europe. He is lucky in his misfortune: a local resistance group called the “River Line” takes him under its wing and hides him. Sturgess is not the only Allied soldier the resistance members have taken in. They are also hiding Sturgess’s fellow countryman, Frewers. Later, British Major Barton, who operates under the code name “The Heron,” joins them as well. The resistance group’s main contact is Marie, a slight, serious young Frenchwoman who, among other things, arranges the various rural hideouts—farmhouses and remote homes—for the three men. Her aim is to smuggle them all the way to neutral Spain. But before long, a terrible suspicion arises: one of the three Allied soldiers is said to be a Nazi spy. Suspicion eventually falls on the level-headed, experienced Barton, who claims to have escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp. They hold a secret trial for him, take a vote, and conclude that he should be executed, even though there is no concrete evidence whatsoever. They believe the danger is too great that the “River Line’s” operations might be betrayed to the enemy. Major Barton is stabbed to death, but when new Allied fugitives soon join the resistance group and recognize Barton from earlier, the execution turns out to have been a terrible mistake.