This painting was done in California at the end of year 1940; the horrible face of war, its eyes filled with infinite death, was much more a reminiscence of the Spanish Civil War than of the Second World War, which, at the time, had not yet provided a cortege of frightful images capable of impressing Dali. The horror of this painting is further increased by the brown tonalities which dominate its atmosphere.

On the anecdotal side, Dali has stressed that it was the only work where one could see the true imprint of his hand on the canvas (at the lower right).

In his diary, Dali Wrote:"The two most energetic motors that make the artistic and superfine brain of Salvador Dali function are, first, libido, or the sexual instinct, and, second, the anguish of death,...not a single minute of my life passes without the sublime Catholic, apostolic, and Roman specter of death accompanying me even in the least important of my most subtle and capricious fantasies."