Kempowski was known for his series of novels called German Chronicle ("Deutsche Chronik") and the monumental Echolot ("Sonar"), a collage of autobiographical reports, letters and other documents by contemporary witnesses of the Second World War.

As a teenager, Kempowski, who was unathletic and had acquired a taste for American jazz and swing music through his older brother, chafed under compulsory service in the Hitler Youth, and was transferred into a penalty unit (Strafeinheit) of the organization.

[8]Kempowski's first success as an author was the autobiographic novel Tadellöser und Wolff, in which he described his youth in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a well-off middle-class family.

The ten-volume work consists of thousands of personal documents, letters, newspaper reports, and autobiographical accounts that he began collecting in the 1980s and which he referred to as a "small library of the nameless".

[9] The last volume of Das Echolot was translated into English by Shaun Whiteside under the title Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary from Hitler's Birthday to VE Day (Granta, 2014).