Taylor provocatively suggests that the Nazi regime was an inevitable outcome of German history, rather than an aberration.

The book was written during the later stages of World War II and reflects the author's attempt to understand and explain the rise of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist movement within the broader context of German history.

[1] Taylor believed that by 1942 it was clear that it was not the case and that "the new generation of historians has now the obligation to make a new analysis of the underlying forces in Europe which will be closer to reality and so prepare a British policy which will suffer from fewer illusions and make fewer mistakes".

In the introduction, Taylor wrote the book was a pièce d'occasion and claimed that it was serious history but that but for the war it would not have been written.

[4] Taylor also noted the repeated failure of the German left to choose a democratic Germany when the choice was between democracy and unity.

Taylor views that the Centre Party was so used to exacting concessions from the government to protect the Catholic Church that they had no power to oppose.

[6] He also attacked the Weimar statesman Gustav Stresemann, who had a reputation in the West for being a "good German": "Even at the moment of the signing of the Treaty of Locarno, which recognised the Franco-German frontier, he declared... that his main purpose in signing was to secure revision of Germany's frontiers to the east.

Namier approved of Taylor's thesis but criticised his style: "His combination of ruggedness and impressionable vivacity renders him also impatient of the careful labour of perfecting and polishing - he discovers precious stones by the handful, and puts them half-cut into circulation....