Megargee's work on the German High Command (the OKW) won the 2001 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History.
Reviewing the book, historian Stephen G. Fritz of East Tennessee State University notes that Megargee's intention was to remediate a "curious disconnect in the historical literature on the German-Soviet war between the campaign's military and criminal aspects".
Fritz commends the author on this intention and that he has written "an excellent synthesis of the first six months of the Nazi-Soviet war that manages to be both concise and yet surprisingly substantive".
According to Fritz, the book also focuses on the "recurring characteristic of the German war effort: considerable operational aptitude combined with strategic confusion".
Reviewing the work for Foreign Affairs magazine, the political scientist Eliot A. Cohen describes the book as a "well-executed history that demolishes self-exculpatory accounts" by Wehrmacht generals who subscribe to the " 'if the Führer had only listened to me' school of historiography".