 Comprehensive researches, condensed in 2010 into a three-hour radio feature by radio journalist Arthur Dittlmann for the Bayerischer Rundfunk, left apparently fatal doubts about the authenticity of the events told in Rost's original story.For example, no prisoner of war camp existed at Cape Dezhnev in the Far East of Siberia at the time claimed in the book; Rost was not a Wehrmacht officer as depicted in the story;
the German Red Cross, with headquarters in Munich, never received any inquiry about his whereabouts, which is unusual for a ten-year imprisonment; and Rost had been released from a Soviet prisoner of war camp on 28 October 1947, about two years before his alleged escape in 1949–1952, which he therefore could not have accomplished.As a result of this research, within Germany the book is now dismissed as a fraud.