The working title of this picture was "Career Man". It was released little over four months after another socially conscious Warner anti-Nazi film, Les aveux d'un espion nazi (1939). This was before America's involvement in WWII, when other studios were reluctant to antagonize the Germans. Reviews compared the film to Les aveux d'un espion nazi (1939) because of its exposé about espionage. The theme of Nazi Germany trying to disable the industrial capabilities of the U.S. would be taken up again in Alfred Hitchcock's "Saboteur" (1942), after America's entry into the war.
Future TV "Superman", George Reeves has a small uncredited part as secretary to Lowell Warrington, played by Jeffrey Lynn.
Some cast members in studio records/casting call lists did not appear or were not identifiable in the movie. These were (with their character names, if any): Lloyd Ingraham (Woodrow Wilson), Alex Melesh (Headwaiter), Eddie Acuff (Taxi driver), and Mary Forbes.
This marked Brenda Marshall's first credited screen role. Although her career never achieved the level of being a true star, she was married in 1941 for 30 years to one of the biggest box office stars of the 1940's and 1950's, William Holden (with whom she had two children before they divorced in 1971).
Filmed just before (and released just three weeks before) the outbreak of WWII in Europe on September 1, 1939. It would be over two more years before the United States became an official combatant in the war.