The Hour Before the Dawn 1944

In 1923 England, General Hetherton, Henry Stephenson, instructs his grandson Jim Hetherton, Franchot Tone, to shoot a rifle. Jim aims at a target, but his loyal dog darts into the line of fire and is killed. The accident leaves Jim profoundly unsettled and seeds a deep, enduring pacifism that shadows him as he grows from boyhood into adulthood. The quiet tragedy establishes a moral undertone that the story will carry as time advances and a new, broader conflict begins to loom.

By 1939, Jim has become a headmaster at a school and has fallen in love with Dora Bruckmann, Veronica Lake, a young Austrian woman who works for his sister-in-law, May. Jim is unaware that Dora operates as a Nazi spy, entwined with shadowy networks that move behind the façade of refugees. Dora meets regularly with London-based overseers who pose as emigres: Mrs. Müller, Aminta Dyne, and Kurt van der Breughel, Nils Asther. The arrangement places Dora at the heart of a dangerous web where personal desire and political treachery collide, and where loyalty is measured in the risk one is willing to take for a cause that might never be seen clearly from the outside.

With the outbreak of World War II, Jim’s brother Roger, John Sutton, joins the Royal Air Force, while Jim’s own pacifist beliefs push him to seek exemption from combat, a request that is granted. He is nonetheless drawn into the war effort through civilian duties, tasked with finding farm work to support the war at home. The assignment proves difficult; many farmers view him as a liability rather than a helper, and the social friction around conscientious objectors casts a long, uneasy shadow over his attempts to contribute. Dora’s work intensifies, and she is ordered to provide German bombers with a bearing to a camouflaged airfield where Roger is stationed, using the headlights of May’s car. The plan depends on secrecy and timing, and it teeters on a single misstep that could expose everyone involved.

Dora’s duplicity is nearly exposed when she is caught in the act by May’s son Tommy Hetherton, David Leland. Dora attempts to deflect suspicion by claiming May must have left the lights on, yet the incident underscores the perilous proximity of truth and deception. Dora is forced to extinguish the lights before the bombers arrive, narrowly saving the airfield from being betrayed to the enemy. As the district tightens its grip on enemy aliens, Dora marries Jim as a strategic move to avoid internment, binding her fate to his in a marriage built on danger and pretense. The plot thickens as Kurt schemes to leverage Jim’s influence for political ends, sending a counterfeit letter to enlist Jim in a refugee-education project that Jim eagerly embraces, eager to do some good even as danger closes in.

Kurt’s suggestion that Germany might consider negotiating peace with Britain lingers in Jim’s mind, and he later conveys to Dora that Kurt spoke with a cadence that sounded more German than Dutch. Dora’s fear of exposure drives her to contact van der Breughel and advocate bombing the airfield that night. She pours gasoline on a hay wagon to guide the attack, but Tommy’s suspicions surface and he confronts the grim truth of what his stepmother is planning. The confrontation heightens the tension as the bombers close in, and the line between civilian life and wartime peril becomes razor-thin.

Roger finally confirms that Dora is a saboteur, and Tommy escapes, seeking out Jim to reveal the betrayal that could unravel everything he holds dear. When Jim returns home, Dora is ready to depart, having admitted her espionage, but the confrontation turns lethal: she shoots Jim in the shoulder as her gun jams, and Jim responds in self-defense, killing Dora just before Roger arrives. The immediate danger subsides, but the emotional and moral wreckage remains. In the wake of these events, Jim makes a decisive turn, joining the Royal Air Force as a gunner and carrying the weight of his experiences—the love he found, the betrayals he survived, and the unwavering belief in peace that shaped his life from the first tragic moment.