In a scene where 50 young boys were to wear Nazi uniforms, eight of them walked off the set.
At the beginning of the film, Dr. Gerhardt mentions the Hoffmans will be sailing from Pier 86 on the S.S. Breman. Pier 86 in Manhattan on the Hudson River has been the home of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum since 1982. The S.S. Braman's maiden voyage was in 1929 and she set the transatlantic crossing records in both directions. She and her sister ship, the S.S. Europa, were the most technologically advanced ocean liners of their time. During WWII the Breman was outfitted as a troopship for the invasion of England, but mainly served as a barracks ship at Bremerhaven, Germany. There, in March 1941 she was destroyed by a fire set by a disgruntled crew-member. She was scrapped to the waterline in 1942, towed away to Nordenham, and finally sunk by explosives in 1946.
When the film played in Mexico City in December of 1940, eight theaters were disrupted by Nazi sympathizers, who used tear gas and stench bombs.
The movie is set in the summer of 1938, a year before Germany attacked Poland, setting off World War II. The movie was released in December 1940, a year and four months into World War II. The United States entered World War II a year after the movie was released, after Japan attacked US naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
According to the AFI Catalog entry for this film, the German Consul strongly objected to Twentieth Century-Fox about this film, threatening to block distribution of future films in Germany. The film fared poorly at the box office, and was pulled after a short run in theaters, and fewer than the normal number of prints were made.