The author Hans Sahl suffered from a lack of money and also a lack of professional prospects in exile in America. He was therefore very glad to receive the offer to collaborate on the screenplay of a Swiss film production. He went back to his home continent for the first time in 1949. The collaboration with screenwriter Richard Schweizer ended however in an argument about politics: the film Four in a Jeep (1950) is light entertainment with a political façade. The film takes place in post-war Vienna, which was divided and jointly administered by the four occupying powers. The relationship of the three western allies to their eastern “partner” is depicted using the example of soldiers patrolling the city centre. The American, British and the French soldiers want to protect the wife of a fugitive Russian POW camp prisoner from the Soviet secret service. Only at the last moment does the Soviet colleague decide to be humane and help the couple, who have finally been reunited, to escape.

Since his experience in Paris in 1937 with colleagues in the “Protective Association of German Writers” who were loyal to Moscow, the Soviet Union was a touchy subject for Hans Sahl. For political reasons, he asked for a different ending. He was excluded from the work on the final version and in the credits he is only mentioned as one of several scriptwriters.