Johnny Weissmuller had portrayed the Edgar Rice Burroughs character in six films with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but this was his first with the producer Sol Lesser at RKO Pictures.

During World War II, Tarzan and his son, Boy, are living on the Great Escarpment, though Jane has returned to the United Kingdom to tend to her sick mother.

Searching for raw materials in Sub-Saharan Africa to help Germany's cause, a small force of German paratroopers lands and takes over the lost city of "Palandrya" as an advance base and to enslave its people.

He is temporarily captured, joining Zandra and Boy, but is freed by Cheetah and defeats the German invaders with his knife and an elephant blitzkrieg.

The U.S. State Department informed Sol Lesser that a Tarzan film would be an ideal way to spread the message of democracy's battle against fascism to the American public.