When a small farming community in the Dakotas gets hit by an outbreak of the flu, farmer and community leader John Phillips (John Wayne) invites a Dr. Karl Braun (Charles Coburn) to come and be the town’s doctor.  A refugee from Austria, Dr. Braun arrives with his daughter, Leni (Sigrid Gurie).  At first, Leni is not happy living in the heart of the Dust Bowl but then she falls for John Phillips. However, Leni is still mourning his ex-fiancé (Roland Varno), who Leni and Braun believe sacrificed his life to help them reach America.

Eventually realizing that the town cannot prospers in the heart of the Dust Bowl, John suggests that everyone pack up and move to Oregon.  Almost everyone agrees and the one person who wants to go to California gets his van driven off the side of the road.  But Leni and Dr. Braun still take a detour to San Francisco because it turns out that Leni’s ex is not dead after all.  She and her father meet up with him and discover, to their horror, that he has become a fully committed Nazi.

This is an interesting change-of-pace for John Wayne.  Though the film is a western (and even features its own version of wagon train), it’s set in what was then contemporary times and it deals with issues like the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism in Germany.  The times may be hard but John Wayne isn’t going to let his community fall apart and, even more importantly, he’s not going to give up his beliefs or his ideals.  Even though the movie was made at a time when the United States was still officially neutral, the film is strongly anti-Nazi.  John Wayne, giving a strong performance, stands in for America while those who would collaborate with or make excuses for the Nazis represented by the weaselly Roland Varno.  Leni’s ex-fiancé had no problem selling out his beliefs and embracing Nazism.  Naturally, Leni and her father have no problem telling him off and then rejoining John Wayne in Oregon.  The United States may have officially been neutral but this movie had no problem letting everyone know where it stood.