with his injured executive officer Oberleutnant zur See Heini Schwaffer. Murrell tosses a line to the submarine and rescues the pair. It is clear that Schwaffer is dying, but von Stolberg refuses to leave his friend behind. Lieutenant Ware returns with American and German sailors in the captain's gig to take the three men off before the U-boat's scuttling charges detonate. Later, aboard a ship that has rescued both crews, the German crew buries Schwaffer at sea as the American crew respectfully watches. Cast Robert Mitchum as Captain Murrell Curd Jürgens as Kapitän zur See von Stolberg Theodore Bikel as Oberleutnant zur See "Heinie" Schwaffer, von Stolberg's second in command David Hedison as Lieutenant Ware, the executive officer of Haynes (as Al Hedison) Russell Collins as Doctor Kurt Kreuger as von Holem Frank Albertson as Lieutenant (junior grade) Crain Biff Elliot as Quartermaster Robbins Ralph Manza as Lieutenant Bonelli (uncredited) Doug McClure as Ensign Merry (uncredited) Darryl F. Zanuck as Chief (uncredited) Production Writing The screenplay, which was adapted by Wendell Mayes, differs substantially from the original book. In the novel, the ship is British but in the film it is American. The screenplay's final scenes of mutual respect between the protagonists are not taken from the book. In the book, the destroyer captain takes a swing at the U-boat captain while they are in the lifeboat because the U-boat captain claims that the destroyer crew are his prisoners. The film also vaguely alludes to evil as such (or the devil), not specifically the Nazis, being the "enemy" ("You cut off one head and it grows another..."). This gives the title of The Enemy Below a double meaning not present in the book. The screenplay has historical precedence. On 6 May 1944, , which was the lead ship of the same destroyer escort class portrayed in The Enemy Below, actually rammed and sank a U-boat in combat before capturing many of the German crew. Casting The anti-Nazi U-boat captain was portrayed by actor Curd Jürgens, who had been an actual critic of Nazism in his native Germany. In 1944, after filming Wiener Mädeln, he got into an argument with Robert Kaltenbrunner (brother of high-ranking Austrian SS official Ernst Kaltenbrunner), SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and a member of Baldur von Schirach's staff in a Viennese bar without knowing who they were. Jürgens was arrested and sent to a labor camp for the