As a German teenager, Frank Brandenburg is frustrated and confused about his country’s history. The official story is unconvincing, and no one wants to talk about the past at all. He takes it upon himself to find out the truth. Was there a “holocaust” or not? What happened to all the leaders when Hitler died? This leads him to interview numerous key players in the Third Reich, from retired Generals to Hitler’s secretary. The more he probes, the deeper he sinks. His contacts begin to trust him and see him as new blood, taking the Nazi cause to a new generation. He learns a top secret password that gets people to talk to him, and a general’s ring that immediately opens doors for him. At several points he gets in over his head. Quick thinking and occasional luck save him, again and again. There are several narrow escapes. Every visit provides more clues. People tell him too much, and he leverages it with the next interview.

As he digs deeper, he comes to the conclusion that Martin Bormann did not die with the fall of Berlin. He escaped along well prepared routes, aided by the Vatican. He ended up in South America, as planned. Hitler’s documents, managed by and for Bormann, made it out to Madrid, where they were never found. The film, which was never made, was to end with these (then) startling revelations, and Brandenburg throwing away the cursed ring.

It’s all very cliché, very Hollywood Nazi. This is a screen adaptation of the autobiography of Frank Brandenburg, whose insatiable appetite for truth was apparently more important than life itself. The screenplay is an easy read. The story is totally straightforward and linear. It’s pretty much static scene after static scene, mostly interviews with old men and women. Brandenburg appears in all but one scene near the end. But for all its pedestrian construction, the overarching tension it engenders comes from the fact that it is all verified true. Ib Melchior went to the trouble of vetting everyone and everything. The intro comes from Simon Wiesenthal, who all but begs for someone to produce this picture.
David Wineberg