The late historian David McCullough told me something once in an interview that I’ve applied to most every historical drama I’ve reviewed ever since.

“The people living through” historical events, McCullough noted, “don’t know how any of this will turn out.”

The Founding Fathers gambled their lives that America would somehow gain independence from Britain. A lot of Germans made the decision to thow in their lot in with the Nazis before and well into World War II.

And in the Occupied Countries of Europe and Asia, nobody knew who would prevail. Some saw short term certainty and immediate gain by collaborating. Others, the real outliers, followed their conscience and clung to hope that compassion, humanity and justice would turn back the tide of fascism that had swept over much of the world at the time.

“Wil,” a Belgian thriller retitled “Will” by Netflix as a play on words, is about that awful dilemma as faced by a couple of green Belgian policemen in 1942, when the outcome of the war was very much in doubt.

Wilfried (Stef Aerts) and Lode (Matteo Simoni) are Antwerp 20somethings with two and a half weeks of training and a lecture on how they’re here to be “the buffer between our people and the Germans” by their weathered commanding officer, Jean (Jan Bijvoet).

But Jean finishes his instructions (in Flemish, or dubbed into English) to the recruits with a sing-along, an old children’s song about a bear who butters its own bread. The chorus provides their Antwerp P.D. credo.

“I stood by and watched it all.”

Uniformed but unarmed, leaned-on by the Germans, but not trusted by them, and serving in the most vital port in Europe, these peace officers are destined to see a lot, maybe even take part in things they know to be wrong. The Germans have the power, the guns and the ruthlessness. What can mere cops do? “Follow orders?”

Wil and Lode stumble into the ultimate dilemma of their age on their first night on the job. A belligerent, pill-popping non-commissioned Nazi officer has orders to arrest some Jews for “non work,” code for “Arrest them and seize their property because they’re Jewish,” and the police are required to provide assistance.

As he terrorizes the family inside, the wife begs to slip out the door, which Lode and Wil are to guard. Wil lets her pass and hand-off her little girl to a neighbor. But when the neighbor’s husband cruelly shoves the child back out the door, the wife rushes past her captor and grabs the kid and flees. The German gives chase, and when he catches them, Wil’s conscience kicks in and there’s one less Nazi on Earth.

The Jewish family escapes, and Wil and Lode, being cops, know how to get away with this killing. What they don’t know is what reprisals will come, how far they will reach and just how much their guilt will eat at them as “innocent” people are rounded-up, tortured and often summarily shot.

The two rookies find themselves connected to the White Brigade, the nascent Belgian resistance. Lode’s sister, Yvette (Annelore Crollet) becomes a prod for Wil’s conscience, and a romantic temptation.

But she isn’t the only one. A friend of Wil’s politically-connected father, Verschaffel (Dirk Roofthooft), offers the easy temptations of greed, status and go-along-to-get-along sins. He could get them through this ordeal fat, drunk and alive, but only if Wil “picks a side,” embraces Verschaffel’s anti-Semitism, his venal opportunism and his affection for “my friend Gregor.”

Gregor turns out to be the German secret police chief (Dimitrij Schaad) who is hellbent on finding out who murdered this German soldier, and in testing Wil and breaking up the resistance.

Collaboration offers Wil access to a seized Jewish home as a painting studio and an easier life for himself and his family. Resistance offers a possibly clearer conscience, but deathly risk — “the Wall” is how the Belgian cops put it, the structure the Germans stand you up against as they shoot you.

The three screenwriters of this tale introduce the artist element, and all but forget about it. But what they do really well is wrestle with the moral ambiguity of the situation, the lines that are drawn in which the two extremes face off against each other, nose-to-nose.

But true “heroes” and bloody-minded villains are merely the extremes. The vast majority of Belgians, French, Poles, Norwegians and others were versions of that Antwerp husband shoving a Jewish child out the door in a “can’t take the risk/don’t want to get involved” emphasis on “survival.”

“Conscience is a luxury,” Wil says. But Yvette and a handful of others refuse to accept that.

A few things set “Wil/Will” apart from your typical “Occupation” drama — the narrow scope, the limited efforts to fight back (merely “warning” Jews of coming raids/roundups, and “Resist” graffiti in their early days), the realistically-glum options and the inclusion of the recent scholarship that suggests that much German Army and Nazi “fanatacism” was drug-fueled.

The lead performances capture the poker-face the oppressed had to always show their oppressors, and the sinister sneer of the amp’d and sadistic Germans ordered to keep their boots on the throats of the powerless.

And the violence presented here still manages to shock, while the inhumanity maintains its power to move.

Much of the world no longer ponders the mystery of “how this could have happened” in an educated “civilized” country, thanks to the lessons provided by cruel demagogues and their minions in our own time.

“Will” allows us to take 100 minutes and wonder anew how we’d react to the unthinkable, how we’d respond to the unimaginable, what line we’d draw and perhaps what side of the line we’d allow ourselves to stand on.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sexual situations

Cast: Stef Aerts, Matteo Simoni, Annelore Crollet,
Jan Bijvoet, Dirk Roofthooft and Dimitrij Schaad

Credits: Directed by Tim Mielants, scripted by Carl Joos, Tim Mielants and Jeroen Olyslaegers. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53