Watch on the Rhine is a 1941 American play by Lillian Hellman. In an essay on World War II, a contributor to The Companion to Southern Literature (2002) wrote that the play's "peculiar combination of drawing-room comedy in a genteel southern home with sinister corruption of the Nazi regime in Europe made for a unique and powerful drama, one strong enough to win the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award."

Herman Shumlin was a prolific Broadway theatrical director and theatrical producer, beginning in 1927 with the play Celebrity and continuing through 1974 with a short run of As You Like It, notably with an all-male cast. He also directed two movies, including Watch on the Rhine (1943), which he had first directed and produced on Broadway in 1941.