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This book attempts to use a specific place as an entry point to give the most thorough explanation of the most serious crime in human history, which is Auschwitz. History is not a script, there is always more than one truth. Auschwitz is not an extermination camp specifically used to kill Jews, nor is it only related to the "Final Solution" - Auschwitz is the history of the struggle of concentration camp commander Hoss and other Nazi officials; it is the emotional purgatory of Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, and Jehovah's Witnesses; it is the story of an eight-year-old German girl who got up one day and suddenly It is the story of a survivor who returned to his hometown after the war, only to find that the outside world is worse than Auschwitz... There is no isolated evidence in this book. Every word spoken comes from more than two historical records, including declassified files after the collapse of the Soviet Union and interviews with eyewitnesses.

Lawrence Rees spent twenty-five years interviewing survivors and perpetrators of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and organically integrated eyewitness testimonies with recent academic research into this far-reaching history, revealing how this most notorious crime in human history was carried out. Rees believes that hatred of Jews was undoubtedly at the core of Nazi ideology, but we cannot fully understand the nature of the Holocaust without taking into account that the Nazis also planned to kill millions of non-Jews. Rees pointed out that there was no master plan for the massacre, but rather an escalation of a series of horrific crimes. There is no doubt that Hitler bears primary responsibility for what happened, but Rees also reminds us that the universality of guilt and the persistence of its consequences are "at the heart of the disturbing and evasive question."