The title, a little wordplay of the novel "Brideshead Revisited" (Evelyn Waugh, 1941), refers to the "Totenkopf" or Death's Head symbol used by the SS during World War II depicting a skull and crossbones. It is distinguished from similar traditions of the skull and crossbones and the Jolly Roger by the positioning of the bones directly behind the skull.
Oscar Beregi Jr. and Joseph Schildkraut both hailed from distinguished Yiddish stage families and had lost most of their European relatives in the Holocaust.
Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp.
The silver Totenkopf (deaths-head) insignia represented the branch of the SS that dealt strictly with concentration and extermination camps. It was a sign of elitism, and had been inherited from the 19th-century German and Prussian cavalry as a symbol of bravery, and a totem to inflict fear in the enemy.
One character states the Nazis killed 10 million people during their tyranny. This is inaccurate, because the SS murdered 6 million Jews and many non-Jews, such as political prisoners, Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others who did not meet the Nazi criteria for "Aryan supermen", such as the mentally ill and physically and mentally handicapped. The best estimate of total deaths the Nazis were responsible for was approximately 13 million.