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Bondage was originally released in Germany as Rutschbahn. Advertised as "an epic of Russia," the story is set in the 1850s, during a pitched battle between disgruntled peasants and well-armed Cossacks. This seems to have been sparked by the romance between a young Count (Heinrich George) and a serf girl (Mona Maris), a union opposed not only by the Count's family but also by the Royal Army, which hands the hero a dishonorable discharge. About to be sent to Siberia, the boy and the girl are swept up in a peasant uprising, leading to a spectacularly bloody finale. Ironically, leading man Heinrich George would ultimately die in a Soviet concentration camp, having been arrested for his unregenerate pro-Nazi sentiments.