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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

William L. Shirer

4.15 · Rating details · 114,734 ratings · 3,162 reviews

Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.

No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy thei

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Mass Market Paperback, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1614 pages

Published November 15th 1990 by Simon & Schuster (first published October 17th 1960)

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May 15, 2011 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2012, war-conflict, classic, history-non-fiction, best-of-2012

Three years ago I implemented a personal tradition: to read a "Monster Classic" each year. This is my term, referring to a piece of writing that is great in reputation and girth. The how and when of it is to begin the Monster mid-summer and read it in fits and starts over the course of several months, with a goal of finishing before the end of the year. The why of it isn't so simple. Most avid readers I know have daunting lists of books they want to or feel they should read. I'm no different, bu ...more

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Nov 06, 2007 Wyatt Nordstrom rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone. It should be required reading.

Well, I did it. After two years, I have finally finished this beast. The first 600 or so pages are pretty slow, but it flies after that...

We all know the story- a misanthropic, racist, vegetarian, megalomaniac failed artist writes a book that taps into age-old German prejudices, seizes power, and embarks on a quest for European domination. In the process he starts the biggest war in history leading to the deaths of tens of millions of people, subjugates about a dozen other countries, and systema Well, I did it. After two years, I have finally finished this beast. The first 600 or so pages are pretty slow, but it flies after that...

We all know the story- a misanthropic, racist, vegetarian, megalomaniac failed artist writes a book that taps into age-old German prejudices, seizes power, and embarks on a quest for European domination. In the process he starts the biggest war in history leading to the deaths of tens of millions of people, subjugates about a dozen other countries, and systematically exterminates the majority of European Jewry. The "Thousand Year Reich" only lasted a total of 12 years, 4 months, and 8 days, but during that brief span it wrought havoc and destruction on scale never witnessed before or since.

William Shirer was a journalist, *not* a historian, but his narrative style coupled with the fact that he lived in Germany during the majority of the time Hitler was in power lends this book both readability and a level of believability that no historian could possibly achieve. Several parts are indeed personal narrative in which Shirer lends his own perspective on what he saw happening, though he is careful to point out which sections are taken from historical records and which are colored by his own experience. The book is thoroughly footnoted (to the tune of about a footnote per page- it takes almost as long to read the notes as it does the main text), indexed, and overflowing with "I didn't know that" moments. It doesn't dwell on minutiae, nor does it give a blow-by-blow account of the war, but nevertheless it attempts to tell a huge story, and the result is a huge (1300+ pages in the printing I own) book.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was published in 1957, a bare 12 years after the "Fall" that occurs at the end of the story. However, it is very easy to see why it remains today- 50 years after its release- the definitive work on the Nazi regime. I highly recommend it to anyone who shares a passion for history or who is fascinated by the factors that lead to societies devolving into statist forms of government. I also recommend it to anyone who believes that appeasement and "negotiation" is an acceptable means for handling such regimes (that means you, Barack Obama...). Sections of it (if not the entire book) should be required reading for all high school students. Only by understanding the past may we secure our future. ...more

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Oct 31, 2013 Lyn rated it really liked it

Darkness.

You boil this book down, strip it to the foundations, and what the reader finds is darkness of the human soul. Bred in the alleyways and gutters of Vienna before the first World War, this was the angry and hateful opposite of God’s shining light, the ancient shadows that live in the basement of our souls, given life and expression on the palette of a failed artist.

Shirer’s scholarly, exhaustive masterpiece paints the portrait of the Third Reich from its beginnings in the back rooms an Darkness.

You boil this book down, strip it to the foundations, and what the reader finds is darkness of the human soul. Bred in the alleyways and gutters of Vienna before the first World War, this was the angry and hateful opposite of God’s shining light, the ancient shadows that live in the basement of our souls, given life and expression on the palette of a failed artist.

Shirer’s scholarly, exhaustive masterpiece paints the portrait of the Third Reich from its beginnings in the back rooms and beer halls of Munich to the terrible, gruesome end in all its grisly, dark detail. The author, a journalist in Germany before and during the early years of the Nazi regime, describes how this political movement began and how it came to power on the backs and in the bloodied fists of brown shirted ruffians.

To draw a modern parallel, it would be as if our country was taken over by a street gang, as if the Bloods and Crips gained political power and ascended the White House and took over. From the September 1938 Sudetenland grab and the failings of Neville Chamberlain, to the horrid crimes that went on behind the lines, to the final days that saw a once proud Europe reduced to rubble, Shirer also details World War II from the Nazi perspective.

Like Milton’s Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s Richard III, the central figure in this epic tragedy, the most intriguing character, is a villain. But unlike Satan and the House of York English King, Hitler rose from the depths of poverty and mediocrity. Shirer reveals Hitler as intelligent and deterministic, but pathologically, sociopathically twisted to evil. The author also shows the German leader to be hopelessly, and in the end, pathetically, delusional.

Perhaps Shirer’s most compelling observation, though, is his uncompromising portrait of the German people who allowed the monstrosity of National Socialism to come to power and to become accomplices with the Nazis in horrors on a scale previously unimagined.

Finally, Shirer begs the question of whether we owe a higher duty than to our country, and his answer is an affirmative and decisive “yes”.

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Jul 15, 2008 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it liked it

Shelves: historical, 20th-century, united-states, literature, non-fiction, biography, german, war

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by William L. Shirer chronicling the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in 1945. It was first published in 1960, by Simon & Schuster in the United States, where it won a National Book Award.

The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award f The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by William L. Shirer chronicling the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in 1945. It was first published in 1960, by Simon & Schuster in the United States, where it won a National Book Award.

The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award for non-fiction.

But the reception from academic historians was mixed.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «ظهور و سقوط آدولف هیتلر»؛ «جهان پرفراز و نشیب آدولف هیتلر»؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز نهم از ماه فوریه سال 1994میلادی

عنوان: گردونه تاریخ جلد سی و نه: ظهور و سقوط آدولف هیتلر؛ نویسنده: ویلیام شایرر؛ مترجم: کاوه دهگان؛ تهران، فرانکلین، 1341؛ در 182ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، علمی فرهنگی، 1372؛ در 231ص؛ موضوع: ادبیات نوجوانان - داستان آدولف هیتلر از سال 1889 تا سال 1945 میلادی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان: جهان پرفراز و نشیب آدولف هیتلر؛ مترجم: هرمز همایون پور؛ تهران، کتاب روشن، 1389، در 248ص؛ شابک: 9789649681290؛

کتاب در چهار بخش است: «ظهور آدولف هیتلر»؛ «هیتلر آلمان را فتح میکند»؛ «هیتلر اروپا فتح میکند»؛ «سقوط آدولف هیتلر»؛

عنوان کتاب اصلی «طلوع و غروب رایش سوم، تاریخ آلمان نازی» است، «آدولف هیتلر»، در روز بیستم از ماه آوریل سال 1889میلادی، در شهر «برانائو - آن - ده این، اتریش» واقع در مرز «اتریش» با «آلمان»، زاده شدند؛ «آدولف» نخست میخواستند، به سلک هنرمندان درآیند، اما پدرشان سرش داد کشیده، و گفته بود: «هنرمند!»؛ «نه! نه! تا وقتی من زنده ام هرگز!»؛ او هرگز نقاش نشد؛ گرچه «هیتلر» تا آخر عمر، هماره خویش را از جرگه ی هنرمندان میدانستند؛ همین سرسختی پسر در برابر پدر، هنگامی که او هنوز پسرکی کلاس ششمی بود، نشانگر اراده ی استوار ایشان، تا پایان عمرش نیز، با او همراه بود؛ سپس رخدادهایی همانند «وارد سیاست شدن»؛ «توطئه آبجو فروشی»؛ «کتابی که نوشت»؛ «عشق و عاشقی»، «حرکت به سوی قدرت سیاسی»، «پیشوا و دیکتاتور»؛ «پیروزیهای بی خونریزی»؛ «راه اندازی جنگ جهانگیر دوم»، «پیروزیهای شگفت انگیز نخست»، «نقطه عطف»؛ «نظم جدید هیتلر»، «توطئه برای کشتننش»؛ «فروپاشی آلمان»، «مرگ آدولف»؛ اینها هر چند عنوانهای واقعی بخشهایی از این کتاب نیستند، اما برای جستجوگران شاید راهنمایی باشند، از اینکه چه رخدادهایی را در این کتاب خواهد خواند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 29/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Jun 17, 2017 Nandakishore Mridula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Whew! After six months of exhilarating yet exhausting reading, I have finally managed to finish this massive tome - William L. Shirer's definitive account of the rise and fall of the Third Reich under the evil and mad genius, the warlord Hitler. Hitler expected that the Reich will last for a thousand years - in reality, it lasted just over 12 years. In those twelve, the Fuehrer managed to create hell on earth for the people whom he ruled over as well as in those areas which he conquered; the war Whew! After six months of exhilarating yet exhausting reading, I have finally managed to finish this massive tome - William L. Shirer's definitive account of the rise and fall of the Third Reich under the evil and mad genius, the warlord Hitler. Hitler expected that the Reich will last for a thousand years - in reality, it lasted just over 12 years. In those twelve, the Fuehrer managed to create hell on earth for the people whom he ruled over as well as in those areas which he conquered; the war he initiated managed to destroy 50 to 80 million people all over the world.

I am not going to summarise the book here- the story is well known to most, and anyway to do that would mean writing a small book itself! Rather, let me lay down what I took away from the book: the pluses as well as the minuses.

The book is incredibly detailed. Shirer, being privy to most of the secret correspondence in the Reich archives, the majority of which survived destruction at the hands of the Nazis by a quirk of fate, puts his journalistic skills to excellent use as he tells the story of the meteoric rise and even faster demise of Hitler with consummate storytelling skill. The pace never flags and the story never fails to grip - and hardly a facet of this distressing yet fascinating era is ignored. This is the first book you should read if you want a front seat at the Hitler drama.

I found two major drawbacks to the book. One - a lack of maps, in the absence of which following the war spatially was impossible (unless you have an eidetic memory of European geography, that is). Two - the long list of dramatis personnae among whom I got lost more than once.

Shirer's book does not have any historical analysis - it's history from a journalistic point of view. However, for a layman such as me, it does not matter, because what matters is the story after all. How Hitler moved in from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream of German politics: how he used all dirty tricks in the political book to backstab his colleagues and steam roll his opponents: how the great colonial powers played hopscotch across the world stage, protecting their interests and cheerfully sacrificing those of others: and how man can be so unbelievably cruel to his fellow human being - these are some of the takeaways I have. And I believe that these are important in today's world, when once again the fringe is becoming the new normal. As Shirer says

In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.

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Jun 09, 2013 Mark Lawrence rated it really liked it

This is quite a dry book full of technical detail about the state of Germany, of its politics, and, as promised, the rise of the Nazis.

Buried deep inside is a brief section (copied below) that looks up from the statistics of the holocaust to give this harrowing eye-witness account, which has stayed with me for the 30-odd years since I read it. Particularly, the part where the girl points to herself and says her age - probably because I was around that age when I read it.

It is difficult to believ This is quite a dry book full of technical detail about the state of Germany, of its politics, and, as promised, the rise of the Nazis.

Buried deep inside is a brief section (copied below) that looks up from the statistics of the holocaust to give this harrowing eye-witness account, which has stayed with me for the 30-odd years since I read it. Particularly, the part where the girl points to herself and says her age - probably because I was around that age when I read it.

It is difficult to believe these things happened. But they did. Even more difficult to understand that on a smaller scale things like this still happen time and again.

“Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited for a sign from another S.S. man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the fifteen minutes that I stood near the pit I heard no complaint or plea for mercy… An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him. At that moment the S.S. man at the pit shouted something to his comrade. The latter counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound…

I well remember a girl, slim and with black hair, who, as she passed close to me, pointed to herself and said: “twenty-three years old.” I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds full. I estimated that it contained about a thousand people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an S.S. man, who sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.

The people, completely naked, went down some steps and clambered over the heads of the people lying there to the place to which the S.S. man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or wounded people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or the heads lying already motionless on top of the bodies that lay beneath them. Blood was running from their necks. The next batch was approaching already. They went down into the pit, lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot. And so it went, batch after batch. The next morning the German engineer returned to the site. I saw about thirty naked people lying near the pit. Some of them were still alive…

Later the Jews still alive were ordered to throw the corpses into the pit. Then they themselves had to lie down in this to be shot in the neck… I swear before God that this is the absolute truth.”

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Mar 21, 2008 Erik Graff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: Synnove Stousland

Shelves: history

This was the first, really serious grownup book I ever read.

My sole brother being almost eight years younger and no cousins being in the States, I was virtually an only child, condemned to the weekly dinner parties of my parents and paternal grandparents and their friends, most of them held elsewhere than our own home. At one particularly excruciatingly boring party held at Great Aunt Synnove's I was scanning the magazines and bookshelves for something to occupy the time. Being ten, the great sw ...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Esdaile rated it it was ok

Shelves: history, national-socialism, politically-committed

I have a very strong feeling of enthusiasm and at the same time of aversion for this book, which I read when I was 16. William Shirer wrote a no-holds barred account of the rise of Adolf Hitler from the perspective of a fanatical (in the full sense of the word) opponent of everything Hitler stood for. Shirer was also a journalist writing as though he were a historian, so his writing reads easily and persuasively but is not necessarily a font of historical accuracy. Whatever one's own position, t I have a very strong feeling of enthusiasm and at the same time of aversion for this book, which I read when I was 16. William Shirer wrote a no-holds barred account of the rise of Adolf Hitler from the perspective of a fanatical (in the full sense of the word) opponent of everything Hitler stood for. Shirer was also a journalist writing as though he were a historian, so his writing reads easily and persuasively but is not necessarily a font of historical accuracy. Whatever one's own position, this is far and away a more honest book than many of the cold cynical assessments made after the events by historians who also have a private agenda but who unlike Shirer do not make it obvious or claim to be objective when they are no such thing. Shirer is however in my opinion,right to stress more than is often stressed, the novelty of the Nuremburg Laws, which essentially disenfranchised a large section of the population on the basis of a postulated alien ethnicity. These laws undermined the fundamental principles of citizenship as understood in Europe since the American and French revolutions and were profound and potentially murderous in their implications. Shirer also laid stress on medical experimentation on human subjects, which in my humble opinion is as close to Hell as human beings are likely to get on earth. I do not think there are any medical experiment "deniers" : of course, medical experimentation on human beings is in no way something unique to the Hitler dictatorship, but Shirer is right to highlight it as a particularly pernicious abuse of power by politicians and doctors, one which should serve as a reminder to us, if we really need a reminder, of the arrogance and ever lethal potential of the notions of so many representatives of both. It is all very well talking about controlling decadence, crime or whatever, but who controls the controllers, is a question that should never be for a moment forgotten.

I give this two stars but the two stars award is misleading in the sense that I would give his work 4 or 5 stars for readability as a breathtaking introduction to the history of the Third Reich, and 4 or 5 stars for highlighting certain aspects of that history so full of suffering and desolation, but 1 star for reliability, balanced view, veracity, objectivity. Shirer will have no track with the notion that Polish fears of Russia could have been justified, that Churchill wanted war, that in a sense whatever one thinks of him, Hitler was right in claiming that the war was between a Jewish and anti-Jewish world view, that Roosevelt was deeply anti-German and pro-Jewish, that the Soviet Union was planning a preemptive strike on Germany, that the Poles had been put up to provoking Germany and did provoke Germany and that Hitler in this case as later, with the British bombing of civilian targets, fell into a trap and allowed himself to be provoked just in the way his enemies planned he should be provoked; Shirer says nothing as I recall, about the appalling condiitons which induced many to vote for the NSDAP, and there are plenty more imbalances in this work, and half-truths and untruths besides, for there is plenty of history that Shirer does not mention, but I do not have the book any more and I read it 40 years ago. Shirer's is a book to be read by anyone interested in the time, but to be read with rather more than the proverbial pinch of salt. I was going to award this book three stars but I'll put that down to 2 to counter-balance the wave of quasi psychophantic enthusiasm with which so many Goodreads readers have greeted it. It is a deeply flawed book after all, for readibility it is up there in the top rank, for historical balance, down far below. ...more

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Jun 18, 2019 Michael Ferro rated it it was amazing

Shirer's masterpiece has long sat untouched on my shelves—it's ominous block swastika unsettling all guest who entered my home (not always fun to explain to people that you're not a Nazi...).

That said, I decided to read this book in tiny increments alongside other books for the past few months, and at over 1,000 pages, it took a bit to finally knock this one out, but wow... what a book. I truly find it surprising that authors and journalists would bother to continue to write about the Third Rei ...more

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Nov 18, 2016 BAM Endlessly Booked rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, five-stars, own

I went into this believing I had a well-grounded understanding of Prussian history and a basis of the Hitler regime. Ummm this book is everything I don't know.
I feel way over my head. There are so many layers to peel like some history-containing onion. Shirer wrote an entire college course worth of information. I regret that I will not retain it all. An impressive collection of memories and experience, we should feel so privileged to have this thorough documentation of one of the most horrific e ...more

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Jun 19, 2021 Brett C rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ww2

This was a superb account of Nazi Germany! William Shirer was a journalist/foreign correspondent during his time in Germany from 1934 to 1940. He wrote the book based on his first-hand reporting, extensive document research, and multiple and reliable third-party evidence. The writing was clear and very thorough but not oversaturated with details to become boring. Shirer did a fine job on the narrative because it was linear and logical as to eliminate confusion.

The First Reich was the medieval Ho

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Nov 05, 2012 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: germany, world-war-ii

I had read this book about thirty-five years ago. Since then I have gone through several books on World War II – Churchill’s great memoirs volumes, Toland and Fest biographies of Hitler, books on the Nuremberg trials…

So I thought that Shirer’s book would be a simple re-hash – it wasn’t.

If I were to be asked to recommend only one book on Nazi Germany this would be it. I was also very moved by the elegance of Shirer’s writing. His prose is stirring and makes these cataclysmic events of the twentie I had read this book about thirty-five years ago. Since then I have gone through several books on World War II – Churchill’s great memoirs volumes, Toland and Fest biographies of Hitler, books on the Nuremberg trials…

So I thought that Shirer’s book would be a simple re-hash – it wasn’t.

If I were to be asked to recommend only one book on Nazi Germany this would be it. I was also very moved by the elegance of Shirer’s writing. His prose is stirring and makes these cataclysmic events of the twentieth century very vivid.

It is all here – Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920’s, the appeasement of the European powers during the 1930’s, the sordidness of the Hitler-Stalin pact and then the war itself with, for a time Britain and Churchill standing alone. Enveloping all this is the hatreds of Hitler and the Nazi party; above their hatred of the Jews and then the Slavic and Russian peoples, their hatred of democratic values (what we would now call human rights), their hatred of the Versailles Treaty.

Shirer makes no excuses for these and puts the blame squarely on Hitler and the German people. Versailles was never the humiliation it was made out to be. As Shirer points out this ‘stab in the back’ myth was also propagated by Weimar as well. Hitler knew how to rally the nationalistic fervor and pagan impulses of the bulk of his people.

All the personalities are in here – and they are a powerful and colourful lot – but sad, as both German and non-German acquiesce to the force of the German leader. Chamberlain’s fruitless efforts to achieve peace are overlooked today as he is framed with the word appeasement; but what politician today would be as honest as he was. Shirer quotes Chamberlain’s honest and touching ‘declaration of war’ speech when Poland is brutally invaded by Germany –quite possibly one of the most poignant passages in the book as the world is now stepping over the precipice into war.

Shirer uses many of Hitler’s speeches to illustrate how the German people adored their beloved leader. One is struck by how a people could swallow these words so whole-heartedly – words that are so diametrically opposed to the best values of the Western World. The speeches are filled with hatred for Jews and ridicule for the leaders of the Western World. Hitler’s reply to Roosevelt in 1939 before the war – though so successfully manipulative – is haunting in retrospect.

There are perhaps a few things left out. One is the destruction of the Polish resistance uprising in Warsaw that Stalin left to the Germans to ruthlessly suppress – with the Russian army just outside Warsaw watching as the Germans slaughtered the Polish resistance movement.
And there is maybe too much, I feel, on the Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler. But again Shirer is correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of these ‘anti-Nazi’ conspirators who waited too long (Germany was obviously losing the war at this stage and its cities were decimated). Were they not morally inept – were they doing this to seize political power only? Were they really morally repulsed by the Nazi regime – or just mere opportunists?

As mentioned if one reads only one book on Nazi Germany this has it all. But as a warning – reading over 1,100 pages on Nazism can wear one down – it becomes very depressing. However you are left with a greater understanding of this tumultuous era.
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May 07, 2010 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

The detail with which this book deals with the Third Reich and the unspeakable evil that was Hitler's Germany is almost too much to take. Some of the discriptions, particularly towards the end of 'medical' experimentation, are simply too shocking and too challenging to read in one sitting. If you need to be reminded of just how evil the bastards in charge of Germany in the 30s and 40s really were then this is the book you need to read.

Like I said, the detail is mind-blowing - the story of this ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 Coffee&Quasars added it

DNF at 25%.

This would’ve been my first deep dive into Nazi history, but after half a dozen counts of listing homosexuality in the same breath as murder, and even going as far as attributing Naziism in part to many early Nazis being prone to “sexual perversion”, I started to wonder if this was going to be a reliable history at all.

It’s my fault for not properly researching the book beforehand. It appears the consensus is that it was outdated even upon its release, and in some cases espouses opin ...more

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Mar 17, 2018 Roy Lotz rated it really liked it

Shelves: one-damn-thing-after-another, germanophilia, supermassive, politics-by-other-means, eurotrip

Reading this book is an ordeal. It is very long and very depressing. Charting the Third Reich from the birth of Hitler to the collapse of Germany, Shirer tells the whole story with the sweep of a novelist and the detail of an accountant. He wrote the book after having access to huge stores of documents captured by the Allies after the war. Diaries, schedules, testimonies from the Nuremberg trials, the minutes of meetings, and much more were the raw material marshalled to create this tome.

As is o Reading this book is an ordeal. It is very long and very depressing. Charting the Third Reich from the birth of Hitler to the collapse of Germany, Shirer tells the whole story with the sweep of a novelist and the detail of an accountant. He wrote the book after having access to huge stores of documents captured by the Allies after the war. Diaries, schedules, testimonies from the Nuremberg trials, the minutes of meetings, and much more were the raw material marshalled to create this tome.

As is often noted, Shirer was a journalist, not a historian, a fact that helps to explain much about this book. He lived in Berlin as a foreign correspondent from 1933 to the end of 1940, reporting on the rise of Hitler and the beginnings of the war, until the threat of the Gestapo forced him to return home. This firsthand experience lent color to his narrative, but also focused his attention on readily observable events. Rather than talk of larger trends—social shifts, economic pressures, cultural developments—Shirer focuses almost exclusively on the doings of individuals in power, such as he had been reporting on.

This focus makes the narrative vivid and pleasingly concrete, but also results in a superficial analysis. A historian would naturally spend more time on the rampant inflation of the times, the institutional weakness of the Weimar Republic, the wider political trends in Europe, the mechanics of a totalitarian state, and so on. Further, Shirer’s explanation of why Germany embarked on such a destructive enterprise boils down to: because it is peopled by Germans. That is, he locates a kind of cultural essence in the German people, an essence stemming from the Reformation and especially Martin Luther, added to by Hegel and then by Nietzsche, which came to full fruition in National Socialism. But this sort of cultural essentialism is, for me, just intellectual laziness. It can be used to explain anything or everything, since these posited cultural qualities are vague and unobservable.

In any case wider historical analysis plays a very small part in this book, which is mainly a record of the decisions and actions of the leading men of the Nazi regime. That is to say that this book is a political and not a military history. The Second World War is discussed, of course, but only insofar as its developments affected or were caused by the Nazi leaders. Shirer is mainly concerned with charting the rise to power of these ruthless men: how they outsmarted the Weimar Republic leaders, fooled the international community, bullied and threatened their way to conquests, and finally instigated a war that resulted in their own ruin.

The balance of the book is tilted heavily towards the rise of the Third Reich. This can make for some dreary reading. In retrospect it is stupefying to witness how blind, inept, and spineless were Hitler’s opponents, first within Germany and then beyond its borders, until the final crisis spurred the world into action against him. Though Shirer's sturdy prose is normally quite plain and unadorned, he has a steady instinct for the dramatic and writes several unforgettable scenes. Nevertheless the scale of detail Shirer saw fit to include sometimes weighs down the narrative into benumbing dullness. The endless, petty diplomatic maneuvers that preceded the beginning of the War—negotiations, ambassadors, threats, ultimatums, calculations, second thoughts, and so on—made it a relief when the soldiers finally started shooting.

These political dealings of the Nazis constitute the vast bulk of this book. It is a masterclass in how far a little cunning, shameless lying, and absolute ruthlessness can get you. It is also a lesson in the need to cooperate to take decisive action against common threats. In the years since Vietnam, many have concluded that the main lesson to be drawn from America’s foreign policy is the folly of interventionist wars. After the First World War, the Western powers were understantly ever more chary of violence. And yet, at least in Shirer’s telling of the history, a timely show of force could have nipped Hitler’s rise in the bud. If England and France had upheld their treaties and defended their territories and their allies, Hitler could not have amassed so much power at a time when the German military was still small. (Though it must be said that Shirer’s intellectual weakness appears here, too, since he attributes this inaction to pure cowardice.)

In any case, this does bring out an interesting dilemma in foreign policy concerning the benefits and risks of violent intervention. In the case of Hitler, timely action could have prevented a disastrous conflict. And yet in many other historical cases, such as with Saddam Hussein, the threat of non-intervention was vastly overestimated, while the cost of intervention vastly underestimated. The word “estimate” is key here, since these decisions must necessarily be based on guesses of future threats and costs—guesses which may easily be wrong. Since it is impossible to know with certainty the scale of a threat that a situation may pose if left unchecked, there is no surefire way out of this dilemma. This, of course, is just a part of a wider dilemma in life, since so many of our everyday decisions must necessarily be made based on guesses of what the future holds.

You can see that this book, though a popular account, is not lightweight in its details or its implications. Yet it does show its age. Published in 1960, it was written before many valuable sources of information became available, such as the French archives. It also shows its age in its occasional references to homosexuality, which Shirer treats as a perverted vice. This is, of course, morbidly ironic, considering the Nazi persecution of homosexuals (something that Shirer fails to mention). But all in all The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich remains a gripping popular overview of this nightmarish time. ...more

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Apr 12, 2018 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, non-fiction, north-america, 4-star

A New Introduction, by Ron Rosenbaum
Foreword

--The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Afterword
Notes
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

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Dec 08, 2013 Michael rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: WWII buffs, Military history fans, History Channel fans

Recommended to Michael by: Serendipity

Shelves: fascism, popular-history

I actually do hate this book, which would earn it 1 star according to goodreads' rating system, but my personal ethics prevent me from going quite so far. The reason I hate it, really, is because it remains wildly popular (you can find it in pretty much any bookstore that has any non-fiction in English at all), in spite of the fact that literally mountains of far better works on the subject have been written.

When I come back and look at it objectively, however, I have to admit that it’s not rea I actually do hate this book, which would earn it 1 star according to goodreads' rating system, but my personal ethics prevent me from going quite so far. The reason I hate it, really, is because it remains wildly popular (you can find it in pretty much any bookstore that has any non-fiction in English at all), in spite of the fact that literally mountains of far better works on the subject have been written.

When I come back and look at it objectively, however, I have to admit that it’s not really as terrible as I imagine it to be, it’s just outdated and flawed. As an introduction to the lay-reader about National Socialism, it’s probably a decent enough starting-point. It gives a reasonable chronology and narrative of events which, if you know nothing at all about Germany or World War Two (and I didn’t when I read it, really), gives you a pretty good handle on the basics. Beginners have to start at the beginning, and this is pretty much it, so far as most people are concerned.

Shirer was working primarily off the masses of documents collected for the Nuremberg trials, which contained much important material, but had not been properly indexed or sorted, so to a large degree he looked for things he was already familiar with, “where the light was better,” as it were and missed anything that would have problematized his account. In fairness, he avoids giving credence to some of the wilder ideas that were current in the fifties and sixties, referring to the death of Geli Raubal as a “suicide” for example and does not completely buy into the theory that the SS planted a bomb at the Bürgerbräukeller that nearly killed Hitler. He states that there is “ample evidence” that the Nazis were responsible for the burning of the Reichstag, but even here he is more cautious than some writers of the period.

The reason that this book continues to appeal to Americans, however, is bound up in its flawed nature. It is written from an extremely biased pro-American perspective that verifies the myth of the “greatest generation” and the heroism of the Allies, and unquestioningly demonizes the other side. Ironically, it manages to do this without really delving into the actual horrors of the Holocaust, presenting a rather more cartoonish version of the evil of Nazism: the bad guys are Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers, while the good guys are Indiana Jones and GI Joe. It’s easy enough to see how that would appeal to people looking to be “entertained” by history, but it doesn’t constitute actual historical study.

Shirer was an American journalist, who lived in Germany until he had to leave as an “enemy alien” after Germany declared war following Pearl Harbor. He has a certain perspective on events, for that reason, but not necessarily an un-biased one. He often can’t help slipping invectives and personal feelings into the text. Ribbentrop, we are repeatedly told, was “stupid”, while Röhm is consistently described as a “homosexual pervert.” Other redundant tropes include the use of “much-vaunted” to describe the Luftwaffe and, of course “fanatical” to describe the loyalty of Hitler’s closest followers. These adjectives add little to our understanding of the time, are not justified by historical analysis, and serve to tell us more about Shirer and his audience than about the Third Reich and its leadership. On the whole I would recommend reading other, less partial accounts, but must admit that this is not the worst one available. ...more

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Jul 23, 2019 Michael Perkins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In “The Free World,” Louis Menand paraphrased Hannah Arendt to describe the early 20th-century proponents of totalitarianism as “the refuse of every class: disempowered aristocrats, disillusioned intellectuals, gangsters, denizens of the underworld. They were people who believed that the respectable world was a conspiracy to deny them what they were owed; they were the embodiments of the politics of resentment.”

===============

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but human nature remains the same.”

― K ...more

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Feb 28, 2017 Nick Borrelli rated it it was amazing

Three historical periods always have fascinated me and I usually will read anything published with regard to them. The first is The American Revolution, the second is The Civil War and the third is Nazi Germany/WWII. William Shirer has penned the definitive account of this horrendous time in world history and I believe it is the most comprehensive and compelling telling ever published. I did read Richard Evans' trilogy but I still view Shirer's book as better. I thought that Evans speculated too Three historical periods always have fascinated me and I usually will read anything published with regard to them. The first is The American Revolution, the second is The Civil War and the third is Nazi Germany/WWII. William Shirer has penned the definitive account of this horrendous time in world history and I believe it is the most comprehensive and compelling telling ever published. I did read Richard Evans' trilogy but I still view Shirer's book as better. I thought that Evans speculated too much and also focused more on Germany itself rather than giving a more expanded view of the entire world stage during this time. Shirer does this while also having the benefit of proximity - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was published a mere 15 years after the fall of Germany. Shirer was also a foreign correspondent working inside Germany when the Nazis took power. That's the thing that really grabs you when you read this book. The fact that Shirer actually witnessed the gradual oppression and brutality as it was taking place gives a certain sense of realism to a time that seems so unreal looking back on it now. This book begins at the end of WWI when Germany was embarrassed and sanctioned mercilessly by the allied powers. Shirer uses this example to define what initially motivated Hitler to restore Germany to greatness - intense love of country and a desire to see that Germany exacted its retribution on the "criminals" of Versailles. Hitler simply could not tolerate the fact that Germany was militarily and diplomatically emasculated after the Treaty of Versailles. He set a course to use any means necessary and to point the finger at any scapegoat he could to begin a campaign of ethnic nationalism. Also contained in this gut-wrenching history book is a thorough description of how piece by piece and country by country, Hitler used his demented vision to take over the entirety of Europe and North Africa. The book ends with Germany's ultimate defeat and The Nuremberg Trials where many of the top Nazi leadership were tried and sentenced for war crimes. Simply a stunning book that is a can't miss for anyone who wants to know how this period of time came about. I read it with mouth agape for large portions as I could not believe that this evil was allowed to grow and thrive for as long as it did. It's not an easy read, but a necessary one I believe. ...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Max rated it it was amazing

Shelves: european-history

Was the Third Reich an extension of the national character and value system or was it an episodic totalitarianism derived from concentration of power and fueled by modern technology. Shirer’s narrative supports the former but the latter view has many proponents. One relevant piece of history I have not seen mentioned in the context of this argument is the German colonization of South-West Africa, now Namibia. I first stumbled on this awful history in Thomas Pynchon’s excellent novel “V.”, which Was the Third Reich an extension of the national character and value system or was it an episodic totalitarianism derived from concentration of power and fueled by modern technology. Shirer’s narrative supports the former but the latter view has many proponents. One relevant piece of history I have not seen mentioned in the context of this argument is the German colonization of South-West Africa, now Namibia. I first stumbled on this awful history in Thomas Pynchon’s excellent novel “V.”, which led me to look into it a little deeper.

Between 1904 and 1907, well before the Nazi party, Germany set out to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples in its colony of South-West Africa resulting in over 60,000 killed. The UN designated this tragedy the first genocide of the 20th century. The colonists took the natives cattle and property, and when they rebelled with their spears, the Germans went about killing every man, woman and child they could find. This only stopped when the civilian administration objected because there would not be enough natives left to tend the colonizers stolen cattle and perform manual labor.

The horrific acts of the Third Reich were conducted in Southwest-Africa 30 years earlier: Concentration camps were set up where there was mass starvation and extreme cruelty, woman and children were kept in pens to serve as sex slaves, and even the sinister medical experiments of Third Reich were conducted first here on innocent natives. The leader of these experiments, Eugen Fischer, became the chancellor of the University of Berlin where he trained prominent Nazi physicians in the 1930’s including the infamous Josef Mengele.

Clearly the evil of the Third Reich was more than an episode. Still, I find it hard to believe that this devolution into the abyss can be explained by the traits of a single nationality. With continued advances in technology and increased ability to concentrate power, understanding how and why a society can become this evil becomes an imperative.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_a... .
...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Jan-Maat added it

Shelves: 20th-century, germany, modern-history

The great strength of this book is that it was written by a journalist. There is a simple narrative and clear prose. Best of all in a couple of places at least he draws upon his own experiences (for example a conversation with a German General during the re-militarisation of the Rhineland and seeing German troops and English prisoners of war during the invasion of France in 1940 (Shirer had been a journalist based in France from 1925 and in Germany from 1934).

Equally the great weakness of this b ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 WarpDrive rated it really liked it

Shelves: history_modern

This is a classic. A very detailed, almost day-by-day account of this momentous period of World history. Relevant primary sources, including documents used in Nuremberg, are persuasively referenced throughout the account.
The book is an important reference to whoever is interested in the period; however there are a few issues with it:
- you can see that the author was a journalist writing as though he were a historian. On the positive side, this makes for a fresh, vivid and compelling narrative, ...more

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Feb 22, 2010 Jill Hutchinson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-classics, military-history

Believe it or not, I have read this massive book twice. Shirer, who spent much of the years leading up to WWII in Germany, fills in all the blanks and tells a tale of a country spiraling into madness and the ultimate failure of the "1,000 Year Reich". Suffice it to say, this is probably the finest book ever written on the history of Nazi Germany and is a "must read" for all history lovers. "Berlin Diary" also by Shirer is a good preface to this book. Magnificent!!!! ...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Todd N rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle

This book was a Christmas present from a friend, though I also bought a copy on the Kindle so that I could read it outside of my house without having to lug around a brick-like book with swastikas on it. The Kindle version is especially handy if you are not quite at the bring-Nazi-related-stuff-to-the-office stage at your job yet. (The down side of the Kindle version is that the it is horrible at handling footnotes, and this book has many that are important to the story.)

This is a strange and un ...more

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Jul 07, 2021 Tim rated it it was amazing

William Shirer was an American journalist who lived and worked in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1940 as a correspondent. His reporting of this period is incredible – he not only has great insights in what daily life was like, but he also attended many of the meetings with Hitler and other German leaders. He was there during the Nuremberg rallies as Hitler increased his grip on the country. He was there when Hitler invaded/occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He was there when Hitler made hi William Shirer was an American journalist who lived and worked in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1940 as a correspondent. His reporting of this period is incredible – he not only has great insights in what daily life was like, but he also attended many of the meetings with Hitler and other German leaders. He was there during the Nuremberg rallies as Hitler increased his grip on the country. He was there when Hitler invaded/occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He was there when Hitler made his invasions on the Western front in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. He even traveled to France with the German army as Paris fell.

I’d love to learn more about the “story behind the story” here – I’m not sure how much personal danger he was in, and what it was like to try to fly under the radar of German authorities. Shirer doesn’t address that in this book. Though, this approach has its advantages in keeping the focus on the history and not Shirer himself.

The most memorable parts of the book for me was this period of time where he was living there and could describe first-hand what daily life was like as totalitarianism took hold and dissenters and minorities were crushed. I think it’s natural to read this book hoping for some sort of explanation to “how did this all happen”. I think I am just as confused as I was before I read the book, but there is certainly a lot to ponder.

Shirer is very blunt in describing the German population as accepting the Nazi party (sometimes quite rapturously, as shown in his description of some of the rallies), with resistance movements being small until they started losing the war. There were many who were receptive to Hitler’s message of how the country was betrayed at the end of WW1 by the “November criminals”, and there were many who were receptive to the scapegoating of foreigners and Jews. But while the Nazis gained a plurality in the vote total, they never gained a majority. Why weren’t the non-Nazis more impactful?

Part of the answer is Hitler benefited from timing. He began the Chancellorship on a low economic tide, and as fortunes improved so did the popularity of the Nazis. There were a lot of people who, while they had a job and their families were safe, weren’t really paying a lot of attention to the goon squads if they weren’t coming for them. And of course, a lot of people were just afraid.

Since it is a study of Nazi Germany and not just Hitler, you learn a lot about Hitler’s various enablers and henchmen that helped him to power. There is a lot of complexity here. There were the German politicians who were the enablers. Even though they were supposed to be the “opposition”, they made short-sighted deals with Hitler, either out of gullibility or an attempt to preserve some amount of power for themselves. As for the henchmen, each has a different story for how they got there – what their motivation was and how/if they changed over time. It’s tempting to think of them as simple cartoonish villains, but a fuller understanding of them can help understand how the power structure was built and maintained for so many years. Not that it is unfair to condemn them in the strongest terms, or even to think of them as “evil”, but just that they weren’t all the same, and were more complex than you might think.

One pattern was the continual lust for power of the various henchmen, and how Hitler was able to play this off for his own benefit. But there were also some key differences in the henchmen. Some were less submissive than others. Some had different opinions from Hitler on war strategy – for instance many of his advisors felt that Germany was not yet ready for a larger scale World War – and when Hitler wouldn’t listen, that began a period of disenchantment (but they were fine with pillaging countries that were easy to conquer). Some had more squeamishness than others about certain of Hitler’s actions, such as the crackdown in freedoms of German citizens (but they didn’t have objections to the subjection of foreigners). And - some plotted against him and tried to assassinate him.

Shirer describes the assassination attempts in some detail. I was surprised to see how many different conspiracies there were against him, and how a significant number of high-level officials were involved. But it was disorganized, and many of the recruits to the plot were not trusted to be fully committed (for good reason, as it turns out) – which in turn made the leaders reluctant to take action. The select few times where they summoned the courage to act, it never worked.

I’ll wrap this up, even though I’ve barely scratched the surface of this great book. I’ve pretty much just taken one sliver of this book and tried to flesh out a few thoughts. One thing that immediately came to mind as I finished this book is that I’ll have to read it again. It seems like the kind of book you learn a lot more each time you read it. ...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Matt rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook

Shirer's key piece of historical literature on Nazi Germany draws not only on a plethora of sources, but also on key documents from within the Third Reich. He uses this vast collection of material to give the reader a better understanding of the Reich during its creation, sustenance, and eventual downfall. While its length may be daunting for many readers, Shirer's analysis of the Reich argues that there are three entities that were duped at various points, leading to the success and eventual co Shirer's key piece of historical literature on Nazi Germany draws not only on a plethora of sources, but also on key documents from within the Third Reich. He uses this vast collection of material to give the reader a better understanding of the Reich during its creation, sustenance, and eventual downfall. While its length may be daunting for many readers, Shirer's analysis of the Reich argues that there are three entities that were duped at various points, leading to the success and eventual collapse of the Reich: the German people, the other sovereign states, and the Nazi Party. This analysis gives this book, oft quoted by subsequent works, its pre-eminent status and offers a helpful foundation for anyone wishing to have a greater and more intense knowledge of Hitler, the Nazi Party, and Germany's greatest gamble.

Shirer argues that the Third Reich and Nazi Party's rise to power came not from an iron-fisted power grab by a dictatorial leader, but through the democratic processes of the German legislature. Early chapters of the book discuss Hitler's soured nature surrounding German's place within the Treaty of Versailles and the subsequent creation of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which morphed into the Nazi Party. Hitler used the democratic process to elect deputies and play a strong role in the coalition governments that ruled over Germany. Hitler used the discontent with the Treaty to fuel change and promote his party to the masses. At the polls, Germans chose the Nazis and Shirer documents their climb in popularity. When, in a position of power, the Nazis passed legislation to suspend the powers of the legislature, it was a open vote by the representatives of the German people that chose to concentrate power with the Nazis. Shirer provides numerous accounts of this, including his own journalistic filings from when he lived and worked inside Germany, to back up this sentiment.

While it is fairly evident that the world stood by and watched while the Third Reich enacted its dubious agenda, Shirer addresses some of the lesser known (to amateur history buffs) facts and events during this time. While his marches into Austria and Czechoslovakia are well-documented, the lead-up to the latter's take-over is discussed more thoroughly within Shirer's tome. Chamberlain remains the passive British prime minister therein, but the likes of the French are also implicated more readily. The same can be said of the build-up to Poland's invasion; including a strong negotiation role played by Italy's Mussolini, strong ally of Germany. Shirer posits that it may have been more out of a sense of war readiness (or lack thereof) than an utter desire for peace, but still, the narrative provides a wonderful insight and yet strong game of international 'chicken' played by Europe's powers. Even Roosevelt, sitting in Washington, offered nothing more than a tepid, chastising letter. Once war had been declared in Europe, the world powers were on the defensive, allowing the Reich to sustain itself while the European powers offer shock that such a strong Germany could have emerged from under their noses.

The downfall of the Reich began with two military gambles whose outcomes were anythin but successful: turning on the USSR and encouraging Japan to precipitate the US entry into the war. While Shirer documents at length the decision-making process Hitler undertook about the latter, hindsight shows how poor this decision was and the failed gamble not only offered another player in the Allied camp, but also forced Hitler to fight on two fronts with a decimated army. Yet, military officials did not interfere or voice concerns about this. By fuelling the fire to get the Americans into the War (through negotiations with Japan and goading Roosevelt), the Reich was sure to suffer by setting another place setting for his enemies to join the War and eventually chip away at the power he shared. Shirer presents that Hitler and Reich officials likely posited that America would focus its attention on the strong Japanese in the Pacific, which would allow the European campaign to run smoothly through to its completion. That said, the Reich did not, apparently, consider that Roosevelt would send sufficient troops to enter the European and African theatres, thereby offered the pushback needed to defeat Hitler and his Nazi armies. In the latter portion of the book, Shirer also addresses the Nazi stubbornness to accept defeat, including its leader, who would not admit that a war with so many enemies (and weak allies) could spell nothing but disaster. Shirer shows that, to the last, Hitler would not concede complete defeat, even as his military limped across the European battlefield. This stubbornness and lack of sufficient forethought cemented the Reich's place in the history books, while decimating any hope of future success for Hitler, the Nazis, or the Third Reich.

Shirer readily admits that his journalistic background and posting during part of the Third Reich's life makes his accounts highly historical in nature. He uses this knowledge and expertise to weave a personal as well as historical tale in this massive tome. He relies on a broad spectrum of documents to fully illustrate life inside Germany and the reactions to those around Europe and eventually from all parts of the world. Early portions of the book pull heavily on the biographies of some key actors within the Third Reich. These backgrounds offer a more personalised image of those who held a great deal of power within the Reich. Shirer capitalises on this ability to lay an early foundation of those who played key roles, setting the scene for latter parts of the book, in which he can keep the pace of the story moving, without requiring extensive asides. After the Nazi Party took over complete control of Germany, Shirer explores the inner workings of the newly created Third Reich primarily through the eyes of the Hitler and his party associates, examining meeting minutes, internal documents, and secret memos, all of which tell a history which is severely lacking in the Western World's scholastic and academic works, discussed below. As the book progresses, the internal discussions of the Nazis' lead-up to war is chronicled extensively, in such a way that the story is not only thorough, but told in a great narrative to keep the reader's attention at the most entertaining parts of the war and the battles that shaped the direction of history. A multi-faceted approach to the negotiated handover of Czechoslovakia in 1938 is of particular interest, in that it serves as the green light that Hitler needed to begin his march into Poland. It also illustrated Chamberlain's complete naiveté when it came to the Fuhrer, but also includes how the French were duped and Mussolini paved the way for complete success.

What makes Shirer's book stand out, aside from being a foundational document on the topic, is that much of the content has come from internal German documents that were kept secret until after the fall of the Reich, as mentioned above. These documents not only provide the inner thoughts and activities of those working in the upper echelon of the Nazi Party, but also sheds light on the Reich-centred thinking that took place from the party's inception in the early 1920s, through to its utter downfall in 1945. The reader can enlighten themselves in this behind-the-curtain look into Nazi Germany, seen through the eyes of its creators in a primarily historical view, rather than through strongly interpretive filters in which history is regularly told. This is not only highly beneficial, but offers insight where many history tomes have been lacking for those who have studied the Second World War and its build-up. One must posit how recent texts, which could have drawn heavily on Shirer's work and the documents he utilised, could be so flat and one-sided in its approach. The old adage holds true, the victors write the history, but in doing so, they completely steamroll over some of the most powerful pieces of history possible, keeping many from having to guess what was on the minds of the Nazis as they plotted Germany's expansion and how they could and would use the arguments to justify this approach.

While there are some disturbing sections to be found, no complete history of the Reich would suffice by only dusting the text with mention of the concentration and extermination camps. Shirer does not lament their presence too much, but does illustrate the historical progression of their existence and how the Reich sought to use them for their own means. Additionally, Shirer discusses some of the most odious experiments conducted on prisoners to aid in the technological advancements for soldiers. These experiments, vile in their description and undertaking, sought to help the Nazis prepare for potential disasters in the Far North and in the vast frozen tundra of Russia (after the stupid attempted invasion, of course). While gruesome, it is somewhat interesting to see how the Nazis thought and what they wanted to replicate in order to prepare themselves. Neither Shirer nor I condone what was done, but I feel that his inclusion of these tests in the tome goes to illuminate how thorough the army might have been for possible scenarios it was likely to face.

A thoroughly entertaining, informative, and educational undertaking, this massive book has been. Its size was daunting and its information an ocean through which the reader must wade. That said, it is told in such a way that all is easily digestible in portions. Well worth the investment, even if it takes a long time to synergise all that is on offer.

Kudos, Mr. Shirer for this wonderful piece of work. I am thoroughly pleased to have read it, and hope its information sticks with me for years to come. ...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Zack rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, history

Excellent.

The book is really long and goes into a lot of details, but that shouldn't be held against it. It seems like general knowledge about this subject is kept to the antisemitic atrocities, and stories tend to focus on concentration camps, military conflict, or underground movements and hiding. This leaves the Nazis as just some mystical thing that happened once upon a time. If there is any contextual knowledge known it is probably just remembered from highschool that the German people were ...more

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Mar 06, 2020 Morgan Blackledge rated it it was amazing

We all know about the awful deeds of the Nazi’s.

Hitler is literally the archetypal evil bastard of all history.

That being said.

It defies the imagination exactly how bad the Nazi’s were and how tragic that chapter in history was.

It takes hard work to simply inventory the industrial scale torture, terror and murder.

All told, 70 million people died in WWII.

Many of them died in the worst ways imaginable.

We simply can’t imagine that kind of suffering from the vantage point of 70 years of relative ...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Bettie rated it really liked it

Shelves: nazi-related, true-grime, dip-in-now-and-again, history, epic-proportions, wwii, nonfiction, germany, classic, autumn-2011

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No matter how many times I encounter Hitler's ascendency, I still cannot help but ask - 'how could it have happened'. These events, regardless of which author you prefer to tell them, are the scariest of Hallowe'en fodder. Taking a break now for some fun, the first of 7 x 8 hour audio tracks is enough for one go.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

Taken a year of dipping in and out but now I'm done. Epic! ...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Kate rated it really liked it

Shelves: cannonball-read

Everyone has that holy grail of a book. Some people work like dogs to finish books by the great Russian literary masters; others tough it out through the oeuvre of Steinbeck. They may not enjoy it, but, by G-d, you are not a real reader until you slam that back cover onto that tome of pain and frustration.

I finally finished my grail: the 1500+ page The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I labored for two months, reading mostly at home to avoid the embarrassment of busting out Everyone has that holy grail of a book. Some people work like dogs to finish books by the great Russian literary masters; others tough it out through the oeuvre of Steinbeck. They may not enjoy it, but, by G-d, you are not a real reader until you slam that back cover onto that tome of pain and frustration.

I finally finished my grail: the 1500+ page The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I labored for two months, reading mostly at home to avoid the embarrassment of busting out a book with a giant honking swastika on the front. I dropped it in the middle to blow through a cheap historical novel, only to pick it up again. I laughed, I cried, I did a victory dance when I turned the last page.

Rise and Fall, despite the paragraph above, was worth the pain. Years of Holocaust classes give you the suffering of millions, but they rarely share the gallows humor that should accompany the tales of the Nazi elite, a motley band of misfits. There were times during my reading that the leadership of the Third Reich reminded me of nothing more than one of those coming of age sports films where a strong, yet flawed leader tries to mold a championship-winning team out of a bunch of sad sack losers. Shirer does nothing to dissuade the reader from this conclusion. Indeed, he goes out of his way to show the gluttonousness, pride and absolute stupidity within those smart uniforms. The rest of the cast doesn’t fair very well either. Shirer heaps a fair amount of scorn on the rest of Europe’s leadership, portraying them as teams (if we are to continue the sports movie line of comparison) who alternately wrung their hands as the visiting German team charged down the court or flung the ball into Nazi hands before running in the opposite direction, shrieking like a school girl. Few people manage to make it out of the book with their reputations unscathed—mostly the desperate leaders of doomed Eastern European countries and Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg (it’s hard not to come out with a little respect for the guy—he lost an eye, an arm, and several fingers on his surviving hand and still tried to blow up Hitler).

The sheer amount of information the Nazi regime left behind after their defeat is astounding. Journals, letters, and secret missives give us a glimpse behind the propaganda, behind the war machine that decimated much of Europe. Couple that with Shirer’s uncanny ability to actually be present at many of Hitler’s most important public moments and the reader is presented with the human interaction along with the solid facts. Accounts of Hitler’s raging tantrums sit comfortably beside the fact that the man was quite fond of sweets; the Fuhrer’s cold-blooded executions of his own staff rest near his ability to forgive a dithering Mussolini nearly anything. Shirer brings the Third Reich that we know and adds the gut-wrenchingly human side, making forgiveness all the more impossible to give.

Verdict: Library this one.

(Author’s note: As a Jew, I’ve been dealing with Holocaust for years and that occasionally does things to you, so I must ask that you understand my black humor is an attempt to mentally encompass this devastating era in both European and Jewish history. There’s only so many times you can read about death camp prisoners having their skins made into lampshades before you have to switch off.) ...more

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About William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer

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William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist and historian. He became known for his broadcasts on CBS from the German capital of Berlin through the first year of World War II.

Shirer first became famous through his account of those years in his Berlin Diary (published in 1941), but his greatest achievement was his 1960 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, originally published by Simon ...more

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Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

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“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.” — 46 likes

“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.” — 31 likes

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