The first edition of Rolf Wagenführ's work published by the DIW appeared in 1954. It was based on a manuscript containing data that the author had collected during the war years and provided the public with the opportunity to interpret and explain the German catastrophe of 1945 through the facts of the development of German economic potential. The great interest is evident from the critique published in SPIEGEL on October 12, 1955: "A book whose sober chapters and tables convey more about the course of the war than all the personal accounts and biographies." Just a few years after the first edition was released, a second edition was published in 1963 due to the high demand for this book, which had by then become a standard work. This edition had been out of print since the beginning of the new millennium.