In the book under review Mária Ormos sums up much of her previous findings on Hungarian history from 1914 to 1945. Her focus is on politics and ideology: in other words, she shows how Hungarian foreign and domestic policy developed over the period, along with the doctrinal issues behind some of the major steps. She also discusses the most important economic, social and intellectual developments of these years, though admittedly in less detail.
The story is told in strict chronological order. Thus, her presentation of Hungary's role in the First World War is followed by the two revolutions of 1918–19, and those in turn by the 1919 counter-revolution.

The next chapter is devoted to István Bethlen, prime minister from 1921 to 1931, ten years which Ormos, like many other historians, considers to be a period of stabilisation and consolidation. That spell of relative tranquillity came to an end with the Great Depression of 1929–1933. There followed a period, stretching over roughly the whole of the 1930s, to which Ormos gives the chapter heading "Perilous Experiments". Next comes the part that Hungary played in the Second World War: three chapters, indicating both the importance of the subject matter and the focus of Ormos's own interest.

Mária Ormos does not take sides in the old dispute about whether the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was inevitable or not, and to what extent internal and external factors played a part in it. She does suggest that "Empires [...] are bound after a longer or shorter phase of splendor to vanish without trace" (p. 4), but she chooses not to be more specific, merely noting that she considers defeat in war to be one fundamental reason for such demise. She also considers this to be a major factor in the break-up of historical Hungary:

All things considered, the Hungarians had a role in producing what has come to be known as the Peace Treaty of Trianon mainly through their past and their distant past. The events of 1914–1919 influenced their destiny only by presenting them with a challenge. Hungary was tried and condemned for geopolitical reasons to do with national communities and power politics. The military defeat provided the chance to impose the sentence. (p. 58)

Another classical point of dispute is how to characterize Hungary's interwar political system. Hungarian historians writing in the fifties, sixties and indeed, most of the seventies—for reasons not unrelated to the political expectations of the times—labelled the Horthy regime as fascist, or at least fascistoid, and almost invariably juxtaposed the adjectives "counter-revolutionary" and "dictatorial". Ormos takes strong exception to this old practice. As she points out, in a country where Parliament was sitting without interruption, where regular elections were held, and in which all political groupings, the Communist Party excepted, were allowed to run for office, none of these terms are justified. She is more lenient when it comes to the term "authoritarian", which certain Hungarian historians started using in the 1980s:

...if it is taken to be a system that seeks to have its subjects behave with respect for their superiors and the state, and consistently restricts the opposition's conduct, the concept appears useful in every regard in social terms, and well worth considering in terms of the state as well. (pp. 111–112)

In connection with Hungary's 1941 entry as an active combatant into the Second World War, Mária Ormos sticks to the "traditional" position. The aircraft which, on 26 June of that year, carried out an aerial bombardment of the town of Kassa (Košice, Slovakia), which had been

re-annexed to Hungary under the First Vienna Award in late 1938, were never, either at that time or subsequently, convincingly identified; but, proceeding on the principle of cui bono, the attack is generally put down to a provocation by the Hungarian and German military rather than to a decision on Moscow's part, as was claimed at the time. As Romsics sees it, "The likeliest explanation is that certain local and German personages were involved" (p. 383). As for the subsequent fateful decision to enter the war, she concurs, in line with what is known about the facts, in attributing a key role to General Henrik Werth, Chief of the General Staff, in persuading Prime Minister László Bárdossy and the Regent, Miklós Horthy, to declare war on the Soviet Union. By the terms of the Constitution, Horthy had the last word, but his decision was confirmed by the cabinet and also by Parliament. There was no infraction of the law by any member of Hungary's political élite in June 1941, but unquestionably, several individuals played a part in making this flawed decision.
The situation was much the same after the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944. Alhough an SS Sonderkommando led by Adolf Eichmann was responsible, at the highest level, for starting the deportation of Hungary's Jews, it was Hungary's administrative machinery, under the command of Hungarian government authorities, that carried it out. The non-Jewish population was generally passive in its attitude, and the Regent himself viewed the unfolding tragedy for very nearly three months without lifting a finger. Only at the end of June did he stir from his passivity and take steps to order a halt to the deportations. When he did, his intervention had a decisive role in saving a large proportion of the Jewry of Budapest from being sent to the Nazi death camps.
The title of the book's final chapter, "Two Occupiers, Two Governments", shows that Mária Ormos sees no substantial difference, from the point of view of Hungarian sovereignty, between the German occupation that began in March 1944 and the Soviet "liberation" that occurred over the late autumn of 1944 and the winter and early spring of 1945. In both cases, it was a question of military action by a foreign power that restricted the country's freedom of action to the minimum, the only difference being that whereas the German occupation lasted no more than a year, the Soviet one persisted for very nearly half a century.