The edelweiss (on the hat and sleeves of the uniform) – a symbol to this day of "excellent German military virtue in both peacetime and wartime" – was the insignia of the 1st Mountain Division of the Wehrmacht, an elite unit that was reestablished with the exact same name in the ranks of the Bundeswehr, the German federal army, by former senior officers of the Wehrmacht eleven years after the end of the war.

However, in cultivating this tradition, as well as an entire myth, the war crimes committed during World War II are overlooked. How could these events occur? Who gave the criminal orders, who complied, how inhumanly were they executed, and with what outrageous justifications were all preliminary investigations interrupted, so that the perpetrators were never punished?

H. F. Mayer, after fifteen years of research in archives and dozens of interviews with eyewitnesses, and through approximately 200 photographs and documents, follows the path of the division in Poland, France, the Soviet Union, but primarily in the Balkans. In Yugoslavia against Tito's partisans, in Albania, Epirus, western Macedonia, Thessaly, and Aetolia-Acarnania – where in retaliation for attacks by insurgents hundreds of civilians were killed, among them many women and children, and over 300 villages were completely destroyed – as well as in Cephalonia and Corfu, where more than 2,000 Italian prisoners of war were executed.

Particular mention is made of the deportations of Jews from the area of responsibility of the 1st Mountain Division, while new evidence is presented regarding the controversial "gentlemen's agreement" between the Germans and Zervas, which led to a moratorium between the Wehrmacht and EDES.