At the beginning of September 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered that two stenographers record every one of his military briefings, in part because he distrusted his generals, and in part, he said, so that there would be a clear historical record of his decisions. By the end of the war, the transcripts of these conferences ran to more than 103,000 pages.

Unfortunately for history—and contrary to Hitler's clear wishes—at the end of the war the transcripts and notes were burned. Only a fraction survived, and these form the basis for this work. This is not really a new publication; Helmut Heiber's original German version came out in 1962, and only a few additional fragments have turned up since then. This is, however, the first time that these records have been easily available to English speakers.

The book is more than the collection of transcripts. There is an introduction by Gerhard Weinberg and a preface by Heiber, which together give the story of the creation, discovery, preservation, and significance of the records. There are maps of the major campaigns and battles. Between the entries, brief summaries of the major developments in the war provide continuity, and more than 360 pages of notes expand on the participants' remarks. There is also a list of the participants, with their ranks and positions, as well as a bibliography of relevant works printed before 1958, and a name index.

These additional features make the book much more useful than it would be otherwise, for without them, the transcripts' fragmentary nature would leave little sense of the context within which Hitler and his subordinates operated at any given moment.