Prompted by producer Seymour Nebenzahl to do a sequel to his highly successful pair of Mabuse films of 1922, Lang took the opportunity to make what he would later call "an allegory to show Hitler's processes of terrorism". The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was quickly banned by Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda under the newly formed Nazi government. This thriller-melodrama exploring themes of paranoia, nihilism, and hidden menace was Lang's last German film until after the war, and his last collaboration with his scenarist (and wife) Thea von Harbou, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner, and lead actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge.