Susan Tegel, author of Nazis and the Cinema,[6] characterizes their postwar attempts to distance themselves from the film as "crass and self-serving"; she argues that their motives for accepting the roles seem to have been more driven by opportunistic ambition than by antisemitism.

[10] When Karl Alexander died suddenly, Oppenheimer was arrested and accused of fraud, embezzlement, treason, lecherous relations with the court ladies, accepting bribes, and trying to reestablish Catholicism.

[10] Although the story of Duke Karl Alexander and Joseph Süß Oppenheimer constituted a relatively obscure episode in German history, it became the subject of a number of literary and dramatic treatments over the course of more than a century; the earliest of these having been Wilhelm Hauff's 1827 novella.

However, the Duke soon becomes frustrated because the Württemberg Diet refuses him the funds needed to maintain a lifestyle comparable to his neighboring sovereigns; in particular, he wants a personal bodyguard and an opera and ballet company.

[17][18] Lacking funds even to purchase coronation gifts for the Duchess (Hilde von Stolz), the Duke sends a courtier to Frankfurt to borrow money from Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian).

[18][19] Süß suggests to the Duke that the two of them go to Ludwigsburg on the pretext of meeting the emperor's emissary and return to Württemberg only after the planned coup has established him as an absolute monarch.

However, even after Harlan rewrote the original script, the result was not antisemitic enough to suit Goebbels' propaganda needs, so he personally intervened in the editing process to the point of dropping some scenes and rewriting others, including making a substantial change to the film's ending to show Süß as humbled rather than defiant.

[7] Tegel's assessment echoes Klaus Kreimeier's assertion that the "recognized stars of the (German) stage and screen" were less aligned with the Nazi philosophy and more motivated by professional ambition and the "illusion that Goebbels would fulfill them.

When the studio head refused to approve the project, Goebbels ensured he was fired and replaced by Peter Paul Brauer, a minor director with no experience in producing films.

Actors considered for the lead role of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer included Gustaf Gründgens, René Deltgen, Rudolf Fernau, Richard Häusler, Siegfried Bräuer, Paul Dahlke, and Ferdinand Marian.

Frustrated with the delays on the Jud Süß project, Goebbels ordered Fritz Hippler, the head of his film department, to sack Brauer and bring in Veit Harlan to take over as director.

[21] Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, in her 1987 memoir, wrote that Harlan had told her of Goebbels' insistence that he direct the film and of his ardent desire to avoid involvement in the project.

However, Goebbels had to employ a combination of accommodation, generous compensation, pressure, intimidation and even threats of reprisal in order to fill the lead roles in the film with the top German cinema stars of the day.

Škvorecký attributes the reluctance of actors to participate in what he characterizes as a "politically-most-correct film" as an indication of "how aware most German artists were of the fact that antisemitism under Hitler changed from prejudice to murder."

While cast members could have declined the roles that were offered to them, Škvorecký asserts that such action would have required "extraordinary courage: the dire consequences of such an act of defiance were only too easy to imagine."

[46] He had worked with fellow left-wingers, the theatre director Erwin Piscator and dramatist Bertolt Brecht and had starred in the lead role of the film Berlin-Alexanderplatz (1931).

In an interview, Harlan explained that the decision to have Krauss play all the roles was "meant to show how all these different temperaments and characters—the pious patriarch, the wily swindler, the penny-pinching merchant, and so on—were all ultimately derived from the same (Jewish) root".

[67] David Culbert attributes the film's box-office success in large part to "its lavish sets, its effective crowd scenes, its skillful script, and the splendid acting by most of the principals.

Based on the sentiments expressed in the letter, it appears that Feuchtwanger was shocked that these men, whom he considered colleagues and who he knew were familiar with his work, would agree to participate in Goebbels' antisemitic propaganda film.

After a lengthy investigation, it was determined that another negative existed in East Germany and it was used it to make prints that were dubbed in Arabic and distributed in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Lebanon.

[34][92] In 1983, the Los Angeles-based neo-Nazi National Socialist League under Russell Veh stirred controversy in the United States when it attempted mass distribution of Jud Süß.

In contrast to Feuchtwanger's philosophical meditation on the tension between Eastern and Western philosophy, Harlan's film casts these as uniquely Jewish traits and presents Jews as a "dangerous and recklessly underestimated threat.

[37] Mike Davis writes that "A thousand years of European anti-semitism were condensed into the cowering rapist, Süß, with his dirty beard, hook nose and whining voice.

[53] Christiane Schönfeld writes that, "[t]he Jew as sexual beast and vampire, sucking the life spirit from individual and community alike is an all too common motif in anti-Semitic propaganda and is put to effective use in Harlan's film.

"[112] According to Michael Kater, the film was shown to "a large number of (German) girls" in order to warn them of the "sexual devastation that Jews had wrought in the past" and to remind them of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935.

[116] However, despite Süß's attempts to fit into Württemberg high society, Harlan will not let the audience forget that he is ultimately depicted as a "dirty Jew" and underlines this point by juxtaposing him with the elderly Rabbi Löw.

[117] Stephen Lee writes that Hitler's vision of the kind of film that was likely to engage the German public proved to be less effective than the more subtle approach advocated by Goebbels.

[119] Richard Levy attributes the effectiveness of the film in part to an "arguably engaging story" and the casting of some of the leading German stars of that period including Ferdinand Marian, Heinrich George, Kristina Söderbaum, and Werner Krauss.

To support his argument, he points to anecdotal evidence that, rather than being perceived as a despicable Jew, Marian's portrayal of Süß was considered to be quite sympathetic; so much so that he received fan mail from women who had become infatuated with his character.

[121] David Culbert notes that "[t]hose who have condemned Jew Süss as a lifeless production are presuming—understandably—a morally abhorrent film cannot possibly have redeeming artistic merit."