The Silver Fleet

A production of The Archers.

The diary of a Dutch shipbuilder under the German Occupation.

He accepts his position and continues as head of the firm, though branded a quisling, so as to carry out two contracts for the Dutch Navy nearing completion, two submarines rechristened by the Nazis U107 and U108, the one is liberated on its trials and sent to England, the other sunk.

The film roughly covers the period from May to August or September, 1940.

Piet Hein and the Spanish galleons three hundred years before are referred to in the title.

An extraordinarily clever chap, “something of a genius” and quite fortunate, he brings down the Nazi leadership in Holland with him.

A perfectly astounding film, of course, and note the chalk-mark “Q” from Fritz Lang’s M.

Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review describes it as “disarming skepticism”.