Siodmak’s film is based on the true story of a postman who, toward the end of World War II, wrote a letter to Hitler’s minister Hermann Göring, his former schoolmate, asking him to bring the war to an end. Johannes Mario Simmel, an author of popular novels, took this occurrence as the starting point for his story about a simple postman who survives his honest but disastrous letter only because Göring manages to declare him medically insane; after the war, however, he cannot return to his job because he’s still officially classified as mad. Siodmak’s adaptation, co-scripted with Simmel, investigates German bureaucracy during and after the war, focusing on the tragedy and, later, tragicomedy of the system.