The book presents readable and often humorous descriptions of the Krupp family and its businesses from the Thirty Years' War to the Kaisers, the Weimar Republic, the Nazis, the American occupation, and finally the Bonn government.

The book describes how the family and its business received generally favorable treatment from the government, culminating in a special law Lex Krupp.

The Nazi war effort created a huge demand for workers in the armament industry; a mobilization of women into the labor force was ruled out due to ideological reasons.

The surviving former slaves were not compensated adequately after the war for their sufferings; after the war Alfried Krupp was convicted of crimes against humanity Time Magazine gave the book a mixed review stating: The result is an often flawed, some times naive but largely fascinating chronicle whose inflated pretensions as a work of real scholarship are punctured by swarms of errors.

Manchester is not fond of the Germans, and he caricatures them either as superefficient and slavishly obedient or as a folk barely removed from dwarfs and dragons, blood feuds and bags of tainted gold.