Tags: blackmail

Watch on the Rhine

Set near Washington, D.C. in 1940, the play takes place in the home of a wealthy widow, whose daughter will soon arrive with her German born husband, who was a Resistance fighter and fled the Third Reich, and their children. A Romanian count, who supports the Nazis and is also staying at the home, discovers who the son-in-law is and that he has funds to aid imprisoned colleagues in Germany; when the count threatens to reveal the resistance fighter's identity to German officials unless he is given some of the funds, he kills the Romanian and, with the help of his American in-laws, flees back to Germany to rejoin his colleagues and their fight.