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

by William L. Shirer

Adolf Hitler, balked by a shifty Franco, by the ineptitude of Mussolini and even by the senility of Marshal Pétain, had really missed the bus in the Mediterranean. Disaster had struck the Italian ally in the Egyptian desert and now in December confronted it in the snowy mountains of Albania. These untoward happenings were also turning points in the war and in the course of history of the Third Reich. They had come about not only because of the weaknesses of Germany’s friends and allies, but, in part, because of the Nazi warlord’s incapacity to grasp the larger, intercontinental strategy that was called for and that Raeder and even Goering had urged upon him.