None Shall Escape is a remarkable WWII movie made and released during the war but set after it, at the international war-crime tribunal of a Nazi (Alexander Knox).  It also deals more explicitly with the Holocaust than any other Hollywood film made during the war.  And in attempting to make a Nazi a three-dimensional lead character, and chart his evolution, the film, again, feels years ahead of its time.  It also connects the aftermath of WWI to the inevitabilty of WWII.  Essentially a B movie, this exceptional war picture is the best film ever made by director Andre de Toth (House of Wax).  Efficiently and cleverly plotted, the film utilizes a flashback format via the testimonies of three witnesses. 

Alexander Knox, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar that year for Wilson, is far more impressive here (as the central Nazi) than he was as Woodrow Wilson.  Knox plays a German WWI veteran who returns to a Polish village to resume his teaching job.  He lost a leg in the war and walks with a cane.  Marsha Hunt, in one of her typically fresh and honest performances, is his love interest, but she rejects him once she learns his post-war political views.  After raping and impregnating a student, Knox returns to Germany and by 1933 is an S.S. leader.  In 1939, the Polish village is Nazi-occupied, with Knox returning in glory to punish his former friends and associates, even organizing a whorehouse using local girls.  This is not your average war movie, and, even more so, not your average 40s picture.   

Knox’s performance seethes with resentment for every former slight, creating a portrait of a man filled with self-pity and insecurity, which is expressed through cruelty.  As Knox moves from spurned lover to vengeance wielder, losing a little more of his humanity each step of the way, the character becomes increasingly twisted, soulless, and ultimately irredeemable. 

The film’s railway massacre of Jews seems a direct anticipation of Steven Spielberg’s black-and-white Schindler’s List.  As the Jews are about to be taken away by train, a rabbi urges them to fight back.  They are gunned down.  The movie ends by telling us that it’s now up to us to dole out punishment and get justice.  This overlooked film packs a wallop, making it one of the very best films about the war, especially among those that came out during the war.