Casablanca (1942) stands as one of a number of propagandist entertainment productions to emerge from Hollywood after the commencement of World War II. Although a love story is central to the plot, the film’s Hungarian-born director, Michael Curtiz, makes clear his real, underlying theme through the plight of the refugees stationed in Europe and North Africa. But Casablanca is not only a film that deals with exile in thematic terms: with the exception of the Swede Ingrid Bergman and the American Humphrey Bogart, the cast was composed almost exclusively of German emigrants.

The plot centres around a black market trader named Ugarte (Peter Lorre) who entrusts nightclub owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart) with stolen transit VISAs before being arrested. When the much-lauded resistance fighter Victor László (Paul Henreid) and his wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) require travel documents to escape to the USA, Rick initially refuses to lend his help, as a result of Ilsa having left him one year previously, without an explanation. Ultimately, Rick comes to the realisation that supporting the Nazi resistance movement is more important than his own personal grievances. He assists László and Ilsa in their escape and shoots dead the Nazi villain of the piece, Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt).

When the film was first shown in the German Federal Republic in 1952, all scenes featuring Conrad Veidt had been deleted. In addition, Victor László was not an anti-Nazi resistance leader, but rather a nuclear physicist who had made a ground-breaking discovery. Casablanca, which received three Academy Awards and five additional Academy nominations, was first shown in Germany, in its original form, in 1977.