Trivia

Mike Nichols bought the bestselling novel for one million dollars, intending to produce it as a theatrical movie. When none of the Hollywood studios were interested, the production was reduced to a television movie for HBO.

The pompous buildings in post-war Berlin were based on actual plans by Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's favorite architect and secretary of armaments. Amongst several other landmarks we see a huge dome (the Reichhalle) a Triumph Arch, an Olympic Stadium, and the Reich's Chancellorship. Only the Stadium and the Chancellorship were actually built, but the later was wrecked by bombings and finally looted and demolished by the Red Army. The rest of them were never built, and constructions like the Arch and the Dome were so massive, that architects were unsure of their viability, until recent computer-based simulation have stated that Speer's calculations were correct, and had Hitler won the war, Berlin would have pretty much looked as the movie shows. Interestingly, the movie also portrays Berlin as bleak and gray. In the book, March describes the city looking like this from the never ending construction projects.

After President Joseph Kennedy (Jan Kohout) cancels his meeting with Adolf Hitler (Rudolph Fleischer) and drives away, a quick three second shot reveals a tall silver-haired man, wearing a gray S.S. uniform, standing on a V.I.P. platform next to several German Generals. This man was intended to be Reinhard Heydrich, who, in this version of the future, became the Reichsfuhrer-S.S. after Heinrich Himmler.

S.S.-Cadet Hermann Jost's father, who is briefly mentioned in this movie as "one of the founding members of the S.S." is intended to be the real-life Heinz Jost: S.S.-Major General, and Commander of a Russian based Special Action Execution Squad (Einsatzgruppen), during World War II.

Locations in the Czech Republic were chosen specifically for dreary and depressing-looking Cold War-era buildings.