The book covers the criminal case against the defendants, all high-ranking officers of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, as well as the wider societal and historical implications of the trial.

The first, a didactic goal, which attempted to use the trials as a learning experience for the German nation regarding the depth of the complicity of their armed forces, the Wehrmacht, in the criminality of the Nazi regime.

[3] Using primary and secondary materials, Hébert discusses the proceedings themselves, the evolution of the American judicial policy towards war crimes, the preceding trials, and the post-conviction developments.

She also details the cases against two key members of the OKW, German military's supreme command: Walter Warlimont, who composed the Barbarossa Jurisdiction Order, and Hermann Reinecke, in charge of the prisoner of war regulations, which led to the deaths of millions of Soviet POWs.

[4] "While it is true that the trial helped to develop and apply criminal law to political atrocities, and insofar served justice, the failure adequately to punish those convicted undermined the whole project."

[9] According to Segasser, if Hébert had provided more information on the German military organization and function, she could have presented a clearer picture the Wehrmacht's inexorable ties to the Nazi regime's goals of conquest and annihilation.

The review agrees with Hébert in that Americans did not fully achieve the objectives they had set out before the start of the case:[9] ...but it must be remembered that the trials of German military figures between 1945 and 1949 brought to light many documents of inestimable value to historians (as in the Wehrmacht exhibition of the 1990s).

[2] Historian Alaric Searle notes the book's "success, with only 208 pages of text, [in] providing a readable, accessible, and tightly structured overview of an extremely complex case".