Based on a story by John Steinbeck and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Lifeboat had to go through the Office of War Information several times before being released to the public.

With WWII raging in Europe and Japan, morale had to be kept up, and the OWI saw that no rabble would be raised by films. Nor would people be upset b violence and death. The only dead seen in Lifeboat are German (the dead crewmember among the debris.) The Germans are briefly questioned as enemy only to be declared such with a vengeance by the film's completion.

Summary: When a German U-Boat sinks an allied ship, the survivors cluster on board one lifeboat. The American and British must decide what to do when a German officer, Willi, is hauled out of the sea as well, ultimately choosing to keep him as a prisoner of war.

Unfortuantely for them, Willi is crafty and possesses a compass, as well as food pills. After a terrible storm, which the boat barely survives, the German takes the boat over, and the keepers become the prisoners.

After Willi kills one of the Americans, Gus, the others rush him and send him to his own death. Willi had become the personification of the German forces, overcome by the allies. In all, the film is allegorical propaganda.