Paul's War tells about the experiences of a fifteen-year-old who joined a partizan unit in September 1944, to derail German trains on a strategic railroad in Slovakia. Military actions and survival in the mountains during a brutal winter are described as often tragic events. Paul stayed with the partizans until the end of war when he joined the Czechoslovak army.

The text includes recollections about the influences that formed Paul's attitudes that enabled him to choose combat as a way of escaping the Germans. The section about Family offers portrayals of the personalities of his relatives, with special attention devoted to his Father, a former military officer.

Slovakia describes how the Slovak government methodically organized the impoverishment and then the annihilation of Slovak Jews in a process that Paul describes as the “bureaucratization of genocide.” A chapter is devoted to a military assessment of the bungled Slovak army uprising in 1944.

Paul Strassmann arrived in the United States in 1948. His career includes 42 years as chief computer executive for Xerox, the US Department of Defense and NASA. He received academic appointments at the US Military Academy, West Point as well as at the George Mason University, and authored five books and over three hundred technical articles. He holds the Defense Department's Distinguished Public Service Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Service.