It is 1940, in late spring. For the past 17 years, the German-born engineer Kurt Mueller and Sara, his American wife of 20 years, have lived modestly in Europe and raised three children. He has been deeply involved in anti-Fascist activities in Spain and Germany. The Muellers and their children Joshua, Babette, and Bodo are visiting Sara's wealthy relatives, the Farrellys, her brother David, and mother Fanny, in Washington, D.C. Sara tells the Farrellys she and her family hope to live peacefully in the U.S. The Farrellys have another houseguest, Teck de Brancovis, an impoverished Romanian count "with good manners and odious character" who has been conspiring with the Germans while living in Washington. He searches the Muellers' bedroom and in a locked suitcase discovers a gun and $23,000 intended to finance underground operations in Germany. The Muellers learn that Max Freidank, a member of the resistance, has been arrested in Germany. Because Freidank once rescued Kurt from the Gestapo, Kurt plans to return to Germany to assist Max and those arrested with him. Teck threatens to expose Kurt's plans to the Nazis unless they pay him $10,000 to keep silent. Kurt kills Teck. David and Fanny agree to help him escape capture by the American police. The play ends with Kurt saying goodbye to his wife and children and voicing his hope that they'll all be reunited someday in a freer, better Germany.
Background
Hellman wrote Watch on the Rhine in 1940, following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. The play's call for a united international alliance against Hitler directly contradicted the Communist position at the time. Its title comes from a German patriotic song, "Die Wacht am Rhein".
Hellman accompanied the production to Washington, D.C., for a command performance at the National Theatre on January 25, 1942, that celebrated President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday.
In The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote: Atkinson thought it not as well structured as her earlier plays, The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes, but termed it "the finest thing she has written." Five months later Atkinson provided another assessment of the cast, calling it "a performance that breeds vast respect for the theatre as a mature form of expression." He noted some problematic scenes but called his own comments "pedantic reservations" and praised the work again: Life magazine called Watch on the Rhine "the most eloquent" of the many anti-Nazi plays found on Broadway in recent years. The Communist New Masses faulted Hellman's vague depiction of fascism while praising "the sincerity of purpose of a dramatist who possesses potentialities far beyond the grasp of any other writer on the contemporary theater scene." The Nation said the play "avoid the flat didacticism and the thinness of characterization usually so evident in thesis plays."
