What did Germans know and what could they have known? The editors of this book described the Nazi crimes about three years before the beginning of the War. The annex contains the printed camp rules of Esterwegen concentration camp, and a foldable map showing the concentration camps and prisons that existed in Germany at that point in time was enclosed. The book reports in great detail about Nazi repression and violence, imprisonments and murders.

The Parisian Edition du Carrefour published the book anonymously in German in 1936 and in French in 1938. The journalist and writer Maximilian Scheer wrote the texts, and the material was presumably compiled in collaboration with Erich Birkenhauer and Bruno Meisel. The stamp in the book shows that the edition shown here is from the Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek inventory (German Freedom Library) which was likely destroyed by German troops when they occupied France. Alfred Kantorowicz had set up the library in Paris on 10 May 1934 on the first anniversary of the 1933 book burnings. As such, the book is testimony to the attempt to make the literature that was banned and had been burned in Germany available in exile, giving it significance that goes beyond its content alone.