World War II may have been won -- or at least its outcome hastened -- by a handful of Jews in a concentration camp.

This irresistible thesis permeates the Austrian film "The Counterfeiters," this year's winner of the Oscar for best foreign language film.

Based on a true story (one assumes the overall idea is true, rather than the details), the film presents both a little-known aspect of the war and a fascinating moral dilemma.

Karl Markovics stars as master forger Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch. At the film's beginning, the war has just ended and the disreputable-looking Sally walks into a grand casino in Monte Carlo with a briefcase full of money and a number tattooed on his arm.

It is a particularly compelling opening that leads to a movie-long flashback. In 1936, we learn, Sally is "the most charming scoundrel in Berlin." Though Jewish, he is little concerned with the Nazi takeover because he is street-smart and willing to do whatever it takes to survive.

Even when arrested for counterfeiting and thrown into a concentration camp, he soon receives preferential treatment because of his artistic ability. This ability leads him to be transferred to another camp, where (in one of those presumably fictional details) he is under the command of the man who arrested him.

He and the other men in the unit have been recruited to do what they do best, make counterfeit British and American money. As the end of the war approaches, the money will be used to buy badly needed military supplies, thus prolonging the Nazis' ability to fight.

Like some members of the better-known concentration-camp orchestras, this team of counterfeiters is allowed to survive and even thrive. Their commander isn't bad at all, for a Nazi, and he treats them well. For a Nazi.

Although they hear their fellow prisoners being shot and killed daily just outside their compound, they choose to enjoy their security and relative comfort.

It's always gratifying to watch people excelling at their craft, but our joy in seeing these characters' artistic triumphs is tempered by our knowledge that their labors are going to help the Nazi cause.

And that is the dilemma that eventually faces them: Do they continue what they are doing, ensuring their survival and well-being at the expense of the rest of Europe? Or do they sabotage the effort, leading to their certain deaths?

Unfortunately, when the filmmakers hit this point, which is the whole crux of the movie, they suddenly lose faith in the audience.

What had been restrained now turns obvious, with an overwritten script and direction that starts to telegraph and overstate its intent.

The story bogs down in scenes that become repetitive and seem included out of a misguided desire to create drama -- as if a film about Jewish prisoners helping or hindering the German war effort from inside a concentration camp were not drama enough.

Unfortunately, by the end of "The Counterfeiters," what had been so real finally turns counterfeit.