Otto Preminger directed and starred as the German consul in the Broadway production which was produced by Richard Aldrich.

After a preview in Princeton, New Jersey in October,[1] the play opened on November 3, 1939, at the Plymouth Theatre, where it ran for 264 performances.

[3] Officer Finkelstein, a Jewish policeman, is assigned to protect Karl Baumer, the consul for Nazi Germany in an American city.

While hosting a group of people listening to a radio broadcast of a speech by Adolf Hitler, Baumer is apparently murdered.

Baumer threatened to expose the Jewish ancestry of Baron Max von Alvenstor, and planned to kill Otto Horst.