Fearing that this would spoil Hitler's visit, SS leader Footh offers a local bankrupt butcher, Albert Teetjen, 2,000 Marks in order to carry out the verdict.

The film's script was adapted by Wolfgang Staudte from Arnold Zweig's novel by the same name, which the author wrote in 1943, while in exile in the British Mandate of Palestine.

Director Falk Harnack, whose own brother Arvid was executed by the Nazi regime and who in December 1943 escaped from the 999th Penal Battalion to fight with the Greek Resistance, decided to film Staudte's work in 1950.

[2] The East German political establishment and the Soviet representatives in the country disapproved of the film, which they viewed as promoting sympathy for the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities.

"[4] The film was banned after less than a month, although Zweig himself, who wielded considerable influence as the President of the GDR's Academy of Arts, resisted the move.