Did You Know?

The sinking scenes were filmed on board of the former luxury liner CAP ARCONA. This boat was later used in 1945 to evacuate thousands of prisoners of the concentration camp Neuengamme (near Hamburg) to Denmark. The CAP ARCONA was accidentally bombed by Allied forces in the bay of Luebeck. Only a few prisoners survived the sinking of the ship. Most were killed on board or shot by SS-guards and Hitler youth who took position on the beach not far from the sinking ship. But the evacuation turned out to be a ruse. The Nazis secretly ordered all prisoners to be killed and the ship was laden with explosives so everyone would perish when the ship was hit by an allied bomb.

After seeing this film, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels thought the scenes of mass panic were not appropriate viewing for Germans, who were then being subjected to British bombing. So he allowed only foreign release, with the film premiering in Paris in 1943. Beginning in late 1949 Germans could see the film, but Allied powers forbade its showing in West Germany in 1950 because of its anti-British propaganda.

After the film was confiscated by the allies in 1945, the footage from the sinking scenes would be recycled into numerous films and television shows whenever a low budget production required to show scenes of a massive shipwreck.

In the original script, Sybille Schmitz's character was a Danish aristocrat named "Sigrid Oole." For reasons unknown, Josef Goebbels ordered Sigrid to be re-written as a Russian countess and the surname changed to "Olinsky" during the shoot.