A month after the film's première, a special (a branch of the SS) SD (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS) Report was commissioned on the effect of the film which came to the conclusion that it was a resounding success.
Ferdinand Marian, who played Cecil Rhodes in this movie, starred one year earlier in Jud Süß (1940), an antisemitic propaganda movie. Emil Jannings and Gustaf Gründgens, who both star in this movie both refused the role of Süß Oppenheimer earlier.
The first film to receive the honorary title "Film of the Nation", the highest accolade awarded in Filmwelt (Filmwelt translates as ...not simply the film industry, but a term used to convey what it was like to live and work in the film world).
For his performance as Paul Krüger, President of the Transvaal Free State Emil Jannings was presented by Joseph Goebbels with the "Ring of Honour of the German Cinema".
The film cost RM 5.5 million (1941).