The scrapbooks cover the period from December 1943 to August 1945. They consist of 36 notebooks in which Roth has written short notes on the progress of the war, illustrated with press cuttings he had collected.

Although it is not clear why Roth began to keep a daily record of events occurring during the war, he had an interest in military history, and keeping a record of the war on a daily basis helped to develop his knowledge of geography.