Jim Hutton's movie debut.
Douglas Sirk and Erich Maria Remarque became close friends during the shooting. Later, in Switzerland, they were even neighbors.
According to the Australian DVD sleeve notes, they state that Douglas Sirk's "standing amongst the new auteurist critics in Europe was on the rise, with Jean-Luc Godard writing on Sirk's 1957 film, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, in the influential journal 'Cahiers du Cinema'."
Author Erich Maria Remarque's appearance in this film is a rare instance that an actual novelist appears in the filmed adaptation of his own novel.
Only a few of the German speaking actors were dubbed in the English Version, the majority of the non-American cast actually spoke English in the film.
The source novel by was first published in 1954, written by author Erich Maria Remarque who wrote other war tomes such as All Quiet on the Western Front and The Arch of Triumph.
This Douglas Sirk film is an example of American 1950s Sirkian technicolor melodrama (though it is arguably less soapishy). Other examples include Written on the Wind; Imitation of Life; Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows.
This film's opening preamble states: "The Russian-German Front 1944."
This is not actually Douglas Sirk's only war movie. He also directed the Korean War movie Battle Hymn with 1950s Sirk regular Rock Hudson and the earlier black-and-white World War II films Hitler's Madman and Mystery Submarine.
This is one of few American or occidental war or World War II films where the focus, subject or main characters were the enemy (i.e. in this case German and not American nor their Allies).
This movie is novelist Erich Maria Remarque's only ever on-screen performance.
Erich Maria Remarque:
The author of the actual original source novel appears as Professor Pohlmann in the film.