They Came to Blow Up America (1943)

Very Cool!!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is a hastily slapped-together but enjoyable fictional treatment of an incident from the early years of the war, in which half a dozen Nazi saboteurs land on the coasts of Long Island and Florida with instructions to attack aluminum plants and other targets.Some of the scenes are dragged out and lack pep despite the strutting and throwing of ceramics, but they're not really boring because the whole story is rushing headlong at such a pace. (A more important weakness is that these comic scenes are supposed to be funnier than they are.) The film needed an editing that it didn't get, probably because the incident itself took place in June, 1942, and the film was rushed through to cash in on the sensation. That's what I mean by "hasty." George Sanders is the fabricated FBI agent sent to Germany under another identity. His mission: attend the Nazi espionage school and find out what they're up to. But unexpectedly he finds himself ordered to keep an eye on a blond suspected of being a dissident -- Poldi Dur, who is a winning presence. He saves her from the jaws of death, so to speak, and then is assigned to lead the team of genuine saboteurs.The saboteurs land in a fog at Amagansett, Long Island, and begin to dispose of the evidence of their intentions. Two points about this scene.One is that I was glad they landed at Amagansett because the civilians there are all too comfortable. It's a tony residential beach-front settlement and everyone sits around and listens to Borodin, nibbles on the occasional amuse-bouche, and sips martinis while playing bridge. A little entropy never hurt anyone.The second point is that these miscreants are interrupted by the arrival of a Coast Guardsman, who appears to accept their lies and the three-hundred dollar bribe (the historical amount). However, this Coast Guardsman takes off and reports the entire incident to his superiors, leading to the ultimate capture of all eight of them, and the execution of six. I thought it was an accurate depiction of Coast Guard integrity. I spent four of the most productive years of my life in the U. S. Coast Guard, and everyone I worked with was a treasure. Well, except for one chief boatswain's mate whose name, Montmorency Queeg Malon, will go unmentioned here.I'm having fun at the expense of the movie but I'm following its spirit. None of it is to be taken seriously. The suspense is limited because it's evident from the start that nothing tragic will happen. And it doesn't. The good guys win. The bad guys are blown up.There are some decent documentaries available free on YouTube that deal with "Operation Pastorius," as the mission was called.

(Some Spoilers) Somewhat fictional account of the cracking of a Nazi sabotage ring by the FBI back in 1942 which in fact the FBI had very little or nothing to do with. The truth is that one of the saboteurs involved in the plot to blow up America suddenly got cold feet and ratted out his comrades to save his own neck. These lame brain Nazis, the cream of crop in fact, saboteurs screwed up as soon as they landed, from a German U-Boat, on US soil. It's when they were spotted by a US Navy sentry and offered him $300.00 in US currency in order for him to shut up and not report them! This instead of just killing him like any other nations saboteurs, like the US & UK, would do as a matter of policy! As well as keeping themselves from getting caught and executed as enemy spies!The film has patriotic German/American Carl Steelman, George Sanders,infiltrate a chapter of the German American Bund and later take up the identity of fellow member Ernst Reiter, Fred Nurney, who was shot and killed by the police when they raided the Bund's headquarters. This raid which took place while the US was already at war with the Axis powers made no sense at all! Since the Bund was disbanded, by its own leadership, soon after the Jananese attack on Pearl Harbor with Nazi Germany, Japan's ally, declaring war on the USA!Steelman working undercover for the FBI sails to Germany from New York City when at the time-in 1942-all traveling from the USA to Germany was suspended because of the state of war that existed between the two countries. Steelman then, after being thoroughly checked out by the Nazi Gestapo, ends up being trained by the Nazis as a saboteur under the name of the deceased Ernst Reiter. You would think that the German Government would have had at least one photo of Reiter to make sure if Steelman was really him but for some strange reason it didn't! The Nazis are so brainless that even when the late Ernst Reiter wife, Anna Sten,complains to them that Steelman is not her husband but an impostor they believe him not her with Steelman telling the head of Nazi sabotage operations Col. Taeger, Dennis Holey,that she's insane. Didn't Frau Reiter have at least a wedding photo of her and her late husband to prove that Steelman was in fact not him? Or better yet didn't she have any friends, like members of the wedding, to vouch for her that Steelman wasn't her husband Ernst?Steelman with Frau Reiter declared insane and later executed, on orders of Col. Taeger, is now freed to sabotage the Nazi plan to blow up America by blowing up the Nazi U-Boat that dropped him and his fellow Nazi saboteurs off on the beaches of Long Island New York. Now safe at home, the USA, and in no danger from Hitler's Gestapo Steelman fingers, or expose, the Nazi saboteurs to the proper authorities the FBI and his boss Chief Craig, Ward Bond.There's even a comical side to the movie involving Steelman's father Julius, Ludwig Stossel, who disowned his son thinking that he's a loyal Nazi not a patriotic American like himself. With Julius sick and what looked like on his death bed Chief Craig, against his better judgment, comes to visit the sick old man to assure him that his son Carl is actually working undercover for the FBI against the hated Nazis. ***SPOILER ALERT*** With his son's patriotism now confirmed what does the silly old guy do but shoots his mouth off to everyone within earshot, after promising Chief Craig not to, about how patriotic his son Carl is! One of those whom Julius tells about Carl's secret mission is Dr. Herman Baumer, Sig Ruman, who's secretly working for the Nazis as a top spy in America! luckily Dr. Baumer's warning to the German Government about Carl Steelman's anti-German activities got there too late for the Nazis to both arrest and execute him before he actually got on shore and turned in the saboteurs, who had no idea what was going on, that were with him.Wartime propaganda at its best showing how the US Government was on top of things in preventing a 9/11 type, German not Islamic, terrorist attack engineered by the Nazis. It did in fact prevent it but it did it only with the help of the Nazis, or one Nazi who chickened out, themselves!

This is a fine example of the kind of patriotic films that were produced by Hollywood during the Second World War, a far cry from the anti-American, terrorist-sympathetic views being promoted by contemporary filmmakers.George Sanders, a successful mining engineer working in South America, returns home to visit his German immigrant parents, who are unashamedly patriotic about the USA. They are dismayed to find that Sanders is working for the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group active in the early years of the war.But there is more to the story. The plot gets more involved, as secret missions and identities are revealed, and betrayals threaten the lives of the main characters. In the end, a gang of Nazi saboteurs is rounded up and executed, much to everyone's satisfaction.THEY CAME TO BLOW UP America (what an ominous title for us today!) reveals how attitudes have changed in the film industry over the past 60+ years. This film is not ashamed to be overtly pro-American. No one hesitates when it comes to punishing members of anti- American organizations. And no one bats an eye when a teacher talks about using his belt to keep ornery grade school kids in line! This is a fine example of a WW2 espionage movie designed to stir the sentiments of the American viewing audience.

The first person we see in this movie is Ludwig Stossel, best remembered as the father of Lou Gehrig in PRIDE OF THE YANKEES. He is German, naturlich, and has spent the last twenty years teaching in Milwaukee, so of course, his son is George Sanders with that British Public School Accent. Oh well.Still, the story is a good one, based on a true incident, and for an apparent B movie, the acting, direction and photography -- by the wonderful and sadly forgotten Lucien Andriot -- are well up to par. Notice, for example, whose picture is on the dartboard at SS headquarters. And besides Mr. Stossel, we see some wonderful supporting actors, including Anna Sten, Ward Bond and Sig Ruman. So, while this is not a great movie, it is certain worth your time