From its earliest productions, critics praised the power and complexity of Mother Courage and Her Children, especially its main character. Though Mother Courage was written in the late-1930s, it was not produced until April 19, 1941. The play debuted in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, a major theater, and was immediately successful—despite the fact that the country was surrounded by Nazis and invasion was always a possibility. (Brecht was regarded as a leftist and his plays were banned by the Nazis in German.) One critic, for the major Swiss newspaper, compared Mother Courage to a Shakespearean character. Another critic, Victor Wittner, writing in Theatre Arts, found powerful commentary on World War II in Brecht's story of the Thirty Years' War: "With all its cynicism, Mutter Courage is a compelling portrait, often with subtle humor, often with diabolical undercurrents of meaning, often with a certain fatalism...