This book contains testimony where Eichmann speaks of his life, from childhood to his years in hiding, though the focus is on his role in organizing the mass executions of civilians, particularly Jews, by the Nazi regime.

He also claims that other, previously tried German war criminals, deliberately implicated him to mitigate their personal responsibility.

Eichmann also denies any feelings of antisemitism; indeed, he claims to have attempted to create a homeland for Jews, once in Madagascar and later in Eastern Europe.

These claims are challenged by his interrogator, Avner W. Less, a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel.

(All ellipses are in the original) Reading from a memo from Rudolf Höss, another high-ranking German war criminal, who had been captured in 1946 and tried and executed in Poland in 1947: