A mid-level official in a provincial German town, Kellner kept a secret diary from 1939 to 1945, risking his life to record Nazi crimes and the population's support for a brutal dictatorship. His entries, with hundreds of newspaper clippings, unflinchingly chart the country's path to totalitarianism and genocide and demonstrate how ordinary Germans knew about the actions of the Nazi regime: the "extermination of Jews," the murder of prisoners of war, the killing of German mental patients, and the death sentences for Germans caught listening to foreign radio broadcasts or reading enemy leaflets. He excoriates the democracies for turning a blind eye to Germany's massive buildup of weapons before the war, and for appeasing Hitler instead of taking preemptive action against him.