First Comes Courage 1943

In 1942, in occupied Norway, Nicole Larsen [Merle Oberon] is a key member of the Stavik resistance. She masquerades as a lovestruck ally of Major Paul Dichter [Reinhold Schünzel], the district’s Nazi commandant, using their precarious closeness to siphon out military intelligence she is carefully relaying to the British through the optometrist Dr. Henrik Aanrud [Fritz Leiber]. Through these quiet acts, Nicole becomes a vital link between the occupied town and the larger resistance, a role that makes her both valuable and dangerous in the eyes of the occupiers.

As the raids in the district grow bolder and more frequent, Colonel von Elser [Reinhold Schünzel] Kawalk von Elser pressure Dichter to root out the source of the leaks, and Nicole senses the noose tightening around her. To protect her, Aanrud discreetly conceals a message on an eyeglass, urging the British to dispatch an assassin to eliminate Dichter. The plan suggests that Dichter’s death could become Nicole’s only viable escape route, and the moral tension in Stavik deepens as loyalties are tested.

The British plan a daring commando raid on Stavik’s oil dumps, intending to stage Dichter’s death as a casualty of the operation so that local reprisals would be avoided. Captain Allan Lowell [Brian Aherne] volunteers to travel to Stavik a few days early to orchestrate Dichter’s assassination, setting in motion a sequence of perilous choices for everyone involved. Allan arrives on the Norwegian coast by submarine and fishing boat, joining forces with Ole, a Norwegian commando based in England.

Their arrival is short-lived, however, as Ole’s cousin Thorsten [Niels Bagge] betrays them to the Nazis. The resulting capture leaves Ole dead and Allan wounded, a brutal setback for the resistance and a personal blow for Nicole, who had hoped to turn Allan’s mission into a strategic advantage. Yet Allan survives, aided by Nicole and the nurse Rose Lindstrom [Isobel Elsom], and finds safety in Nicole’s basement. When a search sweep comes through town, Colonel von Elser probes Nicole’s home—only to be deflected when Dichter announces their forthcoming marriage, momentarily shielding her from suspicion.

The wedding becomes a double-edged turning point. Nicole, believing marriage might shield her and sharpen her usefulness, agrees to the ceremony at Dichter’s insistence, even as Allan—still tangled in his loyalties to Britain and the resistance—asks Nicole to call off the planned assassination. The union’s timing is cruelly ironic: the night of the raid overlaps with the wedding, and the act of balancing love, loyalty, and duty weighs heavily on everyone involved.

Moments after the ceremony, evidence that implicates Nicole in espionage surfaces, threatening Dichter’s dangerous career. He resolves to proceed with the marriage trip, intending to dispose of Nicole in a staged accident, but Allan intervenes and shoots Dichter before he can strike. With Dichter dead, Allan and Nicole load the body into Dichter’s car and drive to join the planned assault on the oil dumps, hoping to complete the mission that Nicole had helped to set in motion.

The pursuit is swift: von Elser arrives with soldiers, having anticipated Nicole and Dichter’s departure and come to search her house. He gives chase as Dichter’s car pulls away, with Allan at the wheel. The road runs past the very oil dumps that the commandos are targeting, and in the tense escape, Allan and Nicole manage to slip through the danger just ahead of the explosions. But von Elser and his men are claimed by the blast, their pursuit ending in tragedy.

In the aftermath, Nicole faces a stark choice about her future. Believing she can still be useful to the resistance as Dichter’s widow, she chooses to remain in Stavik, where her double life continues to shape the town’s fate. Allan, meanwhile, returns to England with his unit, left to wonder if a future might still bring them back together someday.