Krüger continued his acting career after the Second World War with small stage roles because he could not afford an acting school. He established himself as a German film star during the 1950s. He appeared in the German version of "The Moon Is Blue" (1953), directed by Otto Preminger. Krüger looked for international roles, because he found the German Heimatfilm cinema of the 1950s rather shallow. He first came to the attention of English language audiences in the 1957 British war film "The One That Got Away", the story of Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from Allied custody and return to Germany.