siegfried kracauer comments that lang's comment "smacks of hindsight," but his own analysis of the film indicates that it "foreshadows nazi practices," and retroactively reveals "dr. mabuse the gambler", lang's first mabuse film, to be "one of those deep-rooted premonitions which spread over the german post[-world war i] screen." still, despite the nazi ban of the film, kracauer is dubious that the average german film-goer would have seen the analogy between baum/mabuse's elaborate criminal organization and the nazis.