This was a first step toward the rehabilitation of German musicians after World War II; an opera by a young Austrian composer who had not collaborated in the former regime's cultural policies.

Dantons Tod dramatizes legalized governmental terror, a plague which the world at the time realized had not been eradicated with the end of the war.

Dantons Tod was adapted from Georg Büchner's play by von Einem and his teacher, composer Boris Blacher.

In the first scene Danton and Camille Desmoulins express their desire for an end of the daily executions to a group of their friends playing cards.

In the trial scenes the crowd swings between demanding Danton's death and falling under the spell of his eloquent oratory.