Astrid Eckert undertook a daunting task when she began to research and write Kampf um die Akten. The field of post-war German history has become increasingly crowded in recent years with many excellent books on politics, diplomacy, economics, culture, and memory. One might have wondered how well an exhaustive study on the fate of captured German documents would fare in such an environment. Yet precisely for this reason, Eckert's achievement with this book is all the more impressive. This is a study of profound importance to the historiography on twentieth-century Germany.