First thing to note is that the date of the game is 1907. Those were still the years of Nimzovich's first experimentations -- long before The Blocade, My System, Praxis; in fact, long before his 1911 polemics with Tarrasch, Alapin, and others.

The second thing to note is Black's second move -- <2...Nc6>. It (i) blocks in his own pawn on c7, but (ii) it prepares the immediate 3...e5. The former of the two implies that the d-pawn will be quite safe and cosy on d4; the latter of the two implies that the 3.d3-d4 will have strong prophilactic qualities as it discourages the said 3...e7-e5.

Third thing to note is that Nimzo now simply plays the defense side of the Richter-Veresov Attack (or Sarasota Game or whatever the name it realy is) with reversed colors. Now, Richter-Veresov is not an opening readily striking fear into defense's heart, at least not as much as the other 1.d4 openings do; see Opening Explorer.

The fourth thing to note is that the opening explorer's statistics indicates that the best reply was the 3...e7-e5, afterall.

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And, as am writing this, it finally dawned on me to look if this game by any chance made it into 'Praxis'. In fact, it did; it is the game #3. Nimzo comments:

<<3.d4!> Because now is the enemy pawn c blocaded by the knight.>

<<3...e6> Nf6 was better.>

I hope this helps some.

Black players often think White is a patzer with very nice psycho effects later on, when they realize too late , that this is not the case.