It was the only story that Mann was ever commissioned to write, and he finished it in just eight weeks, beginning on January 18, 1943, and ending on March 13, 1943.

[1] Publisher Armin L. Robinson, believing the Ten Commandments to be the basis on which civilization was founded, wanted to make a movie detailing the Nazis' "desecration of the Mosaic Decalogue".

Mann's novella, which he was paid $1,000 to write, was originally meant to be the introduction to the volume, but Robinson liked it so much that he decided to make it the first story, under the heading "Thou Shalt Have No Other God Before Me".

[3] Mann's story, while broadly faithful to the account given in Exodus, differs from it in several important ways: In his afterword to the 2010 English translation of book, Michael Wood suggests that Mann was not as fully devoted to Robinson's project as others.

Wood writes, "[Mann's story] disturbingly echoes and complicates rather than simply refutes Hitler's views.