A co-production by West Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the film stars Heinz Schubert in a dual role, as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

This plot device thus mocks both Hitler's affiliation with his own personality and his increasingly delusional state that made him more and more unable to competently lead a war the longer it lasted, as well as it mocks post-war German fascination with every little detail about historical Nazism and its people, indicating that this post-war fascination might be nothing but subconscious admiration that will once more lead Germany to repeat the same downfall as apparent in the radio broadcasts.

While Hitler is always impersonated by Heinz Schubert, Himmler's role is split into several actors, including Schubert among others, each indicating a different aspect of Himmler's personality, such as "the esoterical ideologue" (played by Rainer von Artenfels), dressed as an SS member, "the military leader" (leading a war for Nazism and Germany, against the Jews and other degenerate "un-German" influences; played by Hellmut Lange as well), dressed as an ordinary Wehrmacht officer, or "Hitler's ideological adherent and loyal servant" (dressed in an SS uniform, also played by Peter Kern).

Syberberg's off-screen narration partly philosophizes on pre-war and post-war German fascination with Hitler and Nazism, while in the beginning he tells a mythologized tale about the shortcomings of the Weimar Republic and its downfall giving rise to the Third Reich.

In order to draw parallels between Nazism and pornography, Syberberg also arranges quite graphic scenes, involving a realistic, life-sized reproduction of Joseph Goebbels's carbonized, dead body covered in his burned and melted flesh (as found and photographed by the Red Army), inflatable sex dolls, and dildos.

A similar role as the circus announcer is later introduced when a freak show compère (also played by Rainer von Artenfels) enters the film within a prop set of a cabinet of curiosities, demonstrating various oddities and Nazi relics, such as the Spear of Destiny ("as owned by Thomas the Apostle, Saint Maurice, Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto I, Henry IV, Frederick I Barbarossa, the Habsburg dynasty...and then Hitler!")

Due to the BBC's co-production, the German language used in the film, including the original World War II radio broadcasts and authentic speeches, receives a more sophisticated translation than in many US and British documentaries on Nazi Germany.