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

by William L. Shirer

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.

They were to follow him blindly, as if he possessed a divine judgment, for the next twelve tempestuous years.

“invisible foes”—the Jews and the Marxists. Had he not learned in Vienna that they were the source of all evil?

They had, to find scapegoats for the defeat and for their humiliation and misery.

acts of violence and terror, which if successful, would attract adherents (were not most Germans drawn to the strong?) and give them a sense of power over the weak.

thrived on lurid tales of Jewish sexual crimes and Jewish “ritual murders”; its obscenity was nauseating, even to many Nazis.