Gavriel David Rosenfeld, in his book "The World Hitler Never Made" (2005), suggests that Norden might have been inspired to write his novel by a ten-day-long interview he conducted with Albert Speer, which was published in the June 1971 edition of "Playboy". During the interview, Speer commented to Norden, "If the Nazis had won, ... would be living in a nightmare". Rosenfeld sees Norden's novel as a morally informed critique of the 1970s "Hitler Wave" of renewed interest in Nazism which followed the publication of Speer's "Inside the Third Reich".