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.

“We would see from his face whether he had succeeded or not,”

The Third Reich which was born on January 30, 1933, Hitler boasted, would endure for a thousand years,9 and in Nazi parlance it was often referred to as the “Thousand-Year Reich.” It lasted twelve years and four months,

Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf, to continue his education in accordance with his father’s wishes—“in other words,” as he puts it, “to have me study for the civil servant’s career.” But though the young widow was indulgent to her son,

Although Hitler was determined to become an artist, preferably a painter or at least an architect, he was already obsessed with politics at the age of sixteen.

developed a violent hatred for the Hapsburg monarchy

Social Democrats.

Democracy was forcing out the ancient autocracy of the Hapsburgs, education and culture were opening up to the masses so that by the time Hitler came to Vienna in 1909 there was opportunity for a penniless young man either to get a higher education or to earn a fairly decent living and, as one of a million wage earners, to live under the civilizing spell which the capital cast over its inhabitants. Was not his only friend, Kubizek, as poor and as obscure

in Mein Kampf, he had the petty bourgeoisie’s gnawing fear of sliding back into the ranks of the proletariat,

That Adolf Hitler was never a house painter, as his political opponents taunted him with having been, is fairly certain.

there is no evidence that he ever followed such a trade.

Probably hundreds of these pitiful pieces were sold by Hitler to the petty traders to ornament a wall,

At home he began to read the Social Democratic press, examine the speeches of its leaders,

He came to three conclusions which explained to him the success of the Social Democrats: They knew how to create a mass movement, without which any political party was useless; they had learned the art of propaganda among the masses; and, finally, they knew the value of using what he calls “spiritual and physical terror.”

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…

“Regardless of how much room for criticism there was in any religious denomination,”

Nazi movement, alone among the nationalist and conservative parties, gained a great mass following and, having achieved this, won over” the support of the Army, the President of the Republic and the associations of big business—three