Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

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Summary: How much more important can a book be?
Review: I can't give a long review to this book. It would take a book to review this book. It's simply a must read for every human being on earth. The book doesn't begin in 1939 or even 1933. This book starts where it should, with the birth of Hitler's grandparents. Shirer takes you through generations then the life of the young man noting key points of Hitler's life that shape his personal evolution into becoming one of the most evil men ever to walk the earth. Shirer's first hand accounts are important as is the meticulous research he did. We owe an enormous debt to Shirer. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Kevin Hogan, ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition

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Summary: mindboggling
Review: This book was torture to read. It started off very exciting and interesting, Hitler's background and Vienna days and the formative years of the party were fascinating, but starting with the party's rise to power and with it EVERY twist and turn about how they intrigued and bullied their way to the top and then the occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia it became excruciating and suffocating to wade through. Characters appear and vanish with breathtaking rapidity never to be heard from again, or else hang around for hundreds of pages (especially Schleicher and Dahlerus) and won't go away. This book's pious and mindboggling coverage of basically only the political events comes at the expense of details about other aspects of the Third Reich (like the Ss, Gestapo, Hitler Youth, Heydrich, Speer, exactly how Germany rearmed, etc.). For example, did we really need a blow-by-blow account of every single turn and setback and last minute comeback and every trivial detail (complete with date, time and even weather descriptions!) regarding how these gangsters came to power? So often I threw up my hands and tore at my hair and screamed as I kept reading about how so and so telephoned so and so at 2 a.m. in the morning then waited all day for a reply... or how many times Hitler flew into the absolutely worst rage in his life... it was sickening enough reading about how dirty and slimy Nazi politics had been but to have every minor character unearthed and every trivial detail thrown a spotlight on through virtually all of 1500 pages including huge footnotes--the footnotes may as well have been a separate book!--it was all just too much. And Ribbentrop, whom Shirer sneered endlessly at is on practically every page in the last two thirds. If he was so pompous and intolerable, did every item in his daily itinerary really needed scrutiny? I'm not exaggerating. Except for Hitler, Ribbentrop is the leading character in the narrative; as a result, more fascinating people like Heydrich and Rommel were given short shrift. Even a little more on Himmler--heck, Streicher--may not have hurt and may have tendered the endless monotony of diplomacy and backstabbing and squabbling. I guess what I am trying to say is that if this book had been a little more well-rounded, it might have been better. I realize one could read other books for more information about other characters and events, but I really wanted it all from this book. After all it has the all-encompassing title of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and everyone claims it the definitive history of those days. Also, Shirer has an annoying tendency for Monday morning quarterbacking, and his personal phobias mars the seriousness of this book somewhat. Also, his prose style is distracting and ebbs as much as it flows. The acute sections on the Holocaust and the July plot however were very worthwhile. Overall, three stars. Perhaps this book was not meant to be read from cover to cover; you have been warned.

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Summary: Engaging in style
Review: I found Shirer's book very entertaining to read as i did his Berlin Diaries, but not too useful as a historical source. After all, Shirer was a journalist by trade rather than a historian. It tells a pretty good story (with some exaggerations here and there) and is a great who-is-who book of the Nazi era too. If you are interested in the history of this period it is a good introduction, but do consider looking at other sources before you make up your mind about some of the topics.

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Summary: A Detailed, Well Written and Concise Book
Review: I am in the process of reading the book at the present time and as a fan of history (particularly the World Wars and the Civil War)I devour all the facts and information that the author provides. Be cautioned that if you are not interested in the why and the details of how the Nazi party was able to control Germany, this book can be a ponderous read. But, if you want to delve into the mind and the politics of history's most notorious dictator and his cronies, then this book will provide you with much detailed information.

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Summary: Overrated
Review: This book is journalistically interesting, and that describes both its strengths and its weaknesses. This is not history - it is journalism. There's a difference. Shirer was a journalist and this book is a compendium of his impressions while working in Berlin during the 1930s. Like much journalism, it manages to be entertaining, but is essentially shallow. For depth, I would suggest Hitler's 30 Days to Power by Henry Ashby Turner, or Hubris, by Ian Kershaw. For the casual reader, this may be sufficient, but it is a light read.

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Summary: A Must Read? Try thirty years ago
Review: It is a very sad thing to see that this ancient, very shalow and badly researched book of Shirer is still considered by many as a source of reliable information about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. It tells mainly about the level of knowledge about the subject at hand of the people who think that. Shirer's book has but one thing to its credit: it's very well written. A long, charming, feather-weight journalistic report. As a boy, I have read it with fascination. It's a marvelous thing to read when you're 11 years old. It's like the light classical music records you hear when you make your first steps into hearing classical music. But things change and people grow up and just like listening to Peter and the Wolf or the Toy Symphony so with the Rise and Fall. Past a certain age and level of knowledge it is pathetic to consider it a worthy reading material. The book is simply childish.

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Summary: Forty Years on the Top of the Heap.
Review: It says a lot about any book to remain in print for forty years, especially historical non-fiction. Historians never rest. New information is always being uncovered. And, unfortunately, facts tend to change with the political winds. Nevertheless, Shirer's work is so comprehensive, fact-based, and readable that no other book has come along to displace it as the best volume on the complete history of Hitler's Germany. There are certainly other great books on the subject, but most deal with only specific aspects, not the full story.

Shirer was fated to write this book. He had location, access to the German documents, and training as a journalist. The world benefits from his five-year effort to leave a definitive record of the origins, machinations, and demise of the Third Reich, possibly the scariest and best organized evil empire mankind has ever seen. This complete and accurate record can play an important role in helping prevent future generations from making the same mistakes.

Though the 1500-page book is of daunting size, the topic is so amazing, and the text so readable, you hardly notice. What struck me after reading it was that, despite now knowing and understanding the individual parts, I still could not comprehend the whole. How was Hitler able to get such a large number people to behave so badly? It could be 15,000 words, and I still wouldn't know. Therein lies part of Hitler's mystique. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

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Summary: A Definite and Thorough Work of the Third Reich
Review: William L. Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is the most comprehensive and thorough work ever compiled as respect to the Third Reich. Not only is his work enjoyable to read, but it covers every aspect of "The Thousand-Year Reich."

First of all, I'd like to say that this book IS HUGE! Once you're done staring at this gigantic book and wondering, "Why would I read this monster of a book?!", you'll immediately realize why in the first 100 pages or so. This book is written so even people who don't much about the Nazis can dive in and learn greatly about these infamous people.

Another great thing about this book is the author's background. Shirer was a US reporter stationed in Nazi Germany when WWII was going on. His knowledge seems unlimitless and he crams every nook-and-cranny about the Nazis in this book.

Lastly, the information is spanned though this book very nicely. He puts every event on paper, and does so brilliantly. Unlike Alan Bullock's "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny," Shirer gives a more detailed and extensive last year and last months of Adolf Hitler's and the Nazi's life.

This book does take some time to read, but it's a superbly written book.

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Summary: Society is Controlled Violence
Review: Nazi Germany fell so swiftly in the spring of 1945, the Third Reich had to surrender the minutely detailed records of the regime before those documents could be destroyed. This capture involved most of the archives of the German government and all its branches including Heinrich Himmler's secret police. Never before has such a vast treasure fallen into the hands of historians. Particularly interesting were the records of the "Fuehrer Conferences" on the daily military situation, the Nazi warlord's table talk with his party cronies, and his deliberate deceptions (international, national, and personal), all of which prove that he and his followers were criminals. How these criminals got to power and how they stayed there was no accident. It involved the social psychology of our species, the tendency of all of us to follow the herd even when the herd is going over a cliff. The lessons are clear and the truth of George Washington's advice is even clearer: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Yes, society is controlled violence. The reason we sleep well at night, one of the reasons anyway, is that the cops have guns. This book proves that what counts is who does the controlling. Who do you want? George Washington or George III? FDR or Joe Stalin? Harry Truman or Hitler? As for me, give me our bumbling politicians every time. They mean well and they won't foul up the universe. So please make it your new year's resolution to read Shirer's definitive work on Nazi Germany, a book that tells one of the most spectacular stories ever, a masterful vivid account of depressing and grim political, social, economic, and military violence. Once you start its 1500+ pages you will have trouble putting it down. And when you do put it down, you will pick it up again just as soon as you can.

Rating:
Summary: Almost 1500 pages!!
Review: Almost 1500 pages. If you start on this book, it is so compelling and well written that you will read it to the end. William Shirer writes with authority having been a Berlin correspondent through much of the events set forth in the book. He personally knew many of the people set forth in the narrative (example when Shirer was on the reviewing stand with several high-ranking Nazi officials) and based on his personal knowledge does not cut any of them any slack. (Ribbentrop especially seems to draw Shirer's ire). If you have any interest at all in the Third Reich, this is the book to read. I think the biggest compliment is that, at 1500 pages, you will read all of it!