According to Kunkel, his intention with the novel was to "penetrate the private" and "use pornography as a poetic metaphor to fully grasp the phenomenon of the Third Reich".

[1] The novel immediately became controversial in Germany, when the publisher Rowohlt Verlag cancelled its contract with Kunkel two months before the scheduled release.

Der Spiegel also criticised Kunkel for the fact that the novel is not about the Holocaust and noted that the title, Endstufe, also is the name of a far-right German rock band.

[3] He also argued that his critics did not understand his black humour, and that the book would have been uncontroversial in Britain or the United States, describing himself as an "Anglophile German".

[2] An additional controversy surrounded Kunkel's claim that the novel was based on intense research about actual German pornography from the NS era.