The serial incorporates several elements of What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1979), the never aired final episode of Secret Army (1977) which was also written by John Brason: Kessler married his Belgian mistress Madeleine Duclos, who has since died, and has established himself as a major industrialist in West Germany under the pseudonym Manfred Dorf, Monique has a son in his twenties and returns to Brussels for the first time since the end of the war, Albert still owns the Candide in addition to six other restaurants and the surviving members of Lifeline reunite for the purposes of a documentary series entitled "In Our Time" which attempts to expose Kessler as a Nazi war criminal.
The serial depicts Martin Bormann and Dr. Josef Mengele as still being alive in 1981. At the time, many people believed that they were. However, it was later proven that they were both dead by then. Bormann committed suicide on May 2, 1945 on a bridge near Lehrter station in Berlin. The body was discovered in 1965 but it was not conclusively identified as Bormann's until 1998, though there was a provisional determination to that effect in 1973. Mengele drowned after suffering a stroke while swimming off the Brazilian coast on February 7, 1979 and was buried under a false name. His remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985.
Colonel Hans Ruckert is based on Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a Luftwaffe ace who became a prominent neo-Nazi in Latin America and West Germany after the Second World War. Rudel was still alive at the time that the serial was made, dying on December 18, 1982 at the age of 66. While Rudel had his right leg amputated below the knee during the war, Ruckert had his left leg and arm amputated.