Synopsis
Fall, 1944: An injured Steve Rogers awakens in a hospital bed in a German castle, tended to by an English-speaking nurse who once lived in New York. He realizes he was captured during a military operation while in uniform and the Nazis do not know he is Captain America. Kommandant Strausburg has taken him prisoner instead of executing him because he was impressed with the tales of his battlefield prowess. After his release from the hospital, Steve meets the other American prisoners, led by Lieutenant Linkowski, and finds they are optimistic about their coming rescue. Only Steve knows that Operation Market Garden, the planned invasion of Germany through the Netherlands, failed and he refrains from telling them. That evening, Steve removes the window bar from his tower cell and manages to leap across the courtyard to the outer wall of the keep. He drops to the ground and enters the nearby town, where he ends up following the prison nurse, Emilia Becker. As he watches her care for her aged father at home, he realizes she did not return from America because of loyalty to the Nazis but to her family. The next day Steve shows Linkowski and the others a newspaper he took from the Becker home, reporting that Operation Market Garden has failed. Now their freedom seems further away than ever and Steve proposes an escape before Strausburg has the prisoners moved. When a brutal guard beats a sarcastic POW, Steve rushes to his defense and is locked in solitary for his troubles. There he explains to Emilia Becker, in veiled language, the need to sacrifice for what one loves, tacitly asking for her help. When he is released two weeks later, the escape is set for that evening. Steve again makes the big leap to the wall, this time towing a rope. The other POWs slide down to the wall and drop to the ground. They make their way to the Becker home—only to run into a German soldier leaving the house. Steve knocks him out and promises Emilia he will return for her and her family, then the Americans run as more enemy soldier arrive. Steve fights the Nazis to help the men get away, even scooping up a fallen machine gun and firing on the Germans. The group hides by day and travels by night for a week and a half before they encounter friendly troops. As Captain America, Steve joins the army of liberation and returns to the town some time later. It is now deserted and the Becker home has been burned. Cap remembers one should never make promises during a war.