everything in his own hands and never appointed any deputy. It goes bankrupt and becomes a ghost town. Bruckmann and his friend, Dr. Sarrasin's son, take it over. Schultze would remain forevermore in his self-made tomb, on display as he had planned to do to his foes, while the good Frenchmen take over direction of Stahlstadt in order to let it "serve a good cause from now on.", its arms production being used to defend Ville-France. Influence, commentary, and appraisals The book was seen as an early premonition of the rise of Nazi Germany, with its main villain being described by critics as "a proto-Hitler". It reflects the mindset prevailing in France following its defeat in the Franco-German War of 1870–1871, displaying a bitter anti-German bias completely absent from pre-1871 Verne works such as Journey to the Center of the Earth where all protagonists (save one Icelander) are Germans and quite sympathetic ones. In his extensive review of Verne's works, Walter A. McDougall commented with the regard to The Begum's Millions: "After the Franco-Prussian War, Verne began to invent mad scientists and evil geniuses". Throughout the book, Verne repeatedly ridicules Schultze's racist ideas and their author (the word "Vaterland" in German continually occurs within the French rendering of Schultze's diatribes). As reviewer Paul Kincaid points out, Verne's ridiculing of the German's ethnic stereotyping can be regarded as itself part of an ethnic stereotyping in the opposite direction. At the time of writing, public opinion in France was moved by the liberal subscriptions made by the citizens of San Francisco to a relief fund for the sick and wounded soldiers of France during the Franco-Prussian war. In acknowledgement, the French government donated to the newly established San Francisco Art Association a collection of copies from original marbles in the Louvre, including twenty-five pieces of the Parthenon frieze. Researcher George Klein noted that "The Begum's Fortune shares its main theme with Verne's Facing the Flag (Original French title: Face au drapeau), published in 1896: French patriotism faced with the threat of futuristic super-weapons (what would now be called weapons of mass destruction) and emerging victorious". Film adaptations Tajemství Ocelového města (The Secret of Steel City), a 1979 movie made in former Czechoslovakia, directed by Ludvík Ráža. See also Memories (1995 film), the third part Cannon Fodder contains some similarities "Sultana's Dream", a 1905 utopian feminist Bengali science fiction short story by Begum