Raamatus vaadeldakse lähemalt genotsiidijuhtumeid Euroopas.

Norman M. Naimark, distinguished historian of Europe and Russia, provides an insightful and heartbreaking history of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to genocide and population transfer. Focusing on five specific cases, he exposes the myths about ethnic cleansing, in particular the commonly held belief that the practice stems from ancient hatreds. Naimark traces its roots to European nationalism of the late nineteenth century, but he points out that its most virulent expression is found in the twentieth century, as modern states and societies began to organize themselves by ethnic criteria. The most obvious example is the Nazi attack on the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Naimark also discusses the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the expulsion of Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22; the Soviet forced deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars in 1944; the Polish and Czechoslovak expulsion of the Germans in 1944-47; and the wars of Yugoslav succession in Bosnia and Kosovo.
In this harrowing history, Naimark reveals how over and over, as racism and religious hatreds picked up an ethnic name tag, war provided a cover for violence and mayhem, an evil tapestry behind which nations acted with impunity.