L'inspecteur

The character of the Inspector, Jongman, was somewhat altered for this film version, to make the part suitable for Stephen Boyd. He had had a long-term contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and it was still trying to build him into a major star. In the book, Jongman is a man well into middle-age, a burnt-out case worn down by a lifetime of compromises. In the film he is a much younger man whose unhappiness is caused by one specific incident, his failure to save his fiancee from death during the war. The film was a box-office flop, and Boyd left Fox soon after, although he would occasionally work for the company later on in his career.

British agent Dickens tells Jongman that he was a soldier in one of the army units that liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Auschwitz was located in Poland, hundreds of miles east of the places where the American/British and Russian forces met. Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians.

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