Hitler’s Madman was Detlef Sierck/Douglas Sirk’s first movie in U.S.A., after several effort with Warner and Columbia. Produced as a “very low-budget” movie by a group of German refugees (Bretianer, who produced Fritz Lang’s M, Nebenzal, Joseph), the film was shot before Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die (which deals with the same story) but released after it, since MGM bought the film and asked Sirk to make some re-takes.

“I was offered the picture, which was to be shot at some speed: I was given one week’s shooting time. It was specifically presented to me as a very low budget film, not even a B-feature, bui a C- or D feature. It could be useful, and it might launch me. […] Now, Cahiers du Cinéma have a note there saying something about how John Carradine must have been strange as Heydrick. Well, I can telI you he wasn’t strange at all, because I had met Heydrick […] In fact John Carradine was Heydrich.

How on earth did you meet Heydrick? I met him at a party […] Carradine was a stage actor and, more particularly, a Shakespearian stage actor […]. A lot of Nazis behaved like Shakespearian actors. […]

What is the confusion about the title: Hitler’s Madman / Hitler’s Hangman?

I think the original idea was to calI it Hitler’s Hangman, but this title had to be scrapped because of the Lang picture. My picture was started before the Lang went into production. I shot the film in a week, on schedule […] Now, I had shot the film almost like a documentary, since this seemed the style best suited to the theme, and given the very limited shooting time. Louis B.Mayer saw the picture and liked it very much, and bought it. This was the first outside picture that MGM ever bought. Andon the strength of it Metro hired Seymour Nebenzal, the producer […] Mayer asked me if I would shoot some re-takes he wanted done, and for this I was given plenty of time, and the MGM facilities. But my feeling is that these re-takes detracted from the documentary character of the movie. […] For various reasons, the picture got stuck in Metro’s… it was lying around for a very long time, and it wasn’t released until 1943, after the Lang had come out, and it was then re-titled Hitler’s Madman”. (from Sirk on Sirk – Interviews with Jon Halliday, Londra, 1971)