Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

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Summary: The Ultimate Book on the Third Reich
Review: Shirer's book on the Third Reich is the ultimate textbook on Hitler's Germany. It follows in detail Hitler's extraordinary rise from the gutters to the most feared, revered and hated man in modern history. It is all embracing - from the Versailles indignities, the war itself, the blitzkrieg of Western Europe, the Battle of the Atlantic, the initial triumphs on the Eastern Front to the total war that that front eventually became, to the horror of the Holocaust. Don't miss this magnificently researched book by an author who lived in Nazi Germany through its early formative and powerful 1930 era. With Hitler's suicide now exactly 55 years ago it remains a timeless study on an era that reshaped the world we now live in. We all said it should never happen again - but it did in Yugoslavia some fifty years later, proving that the human race has a tendency to repeat its history; irrespective of past "lessons".

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Summary: A riveting, spellbounding investigation of unmitigated Evil.
Review: This very readable history is indispensable in understanding the political psychosis which propelled a self-styled Fuehrer to fashion, with horrifying consequences, a Third Reich which came close to achieving total domination of Europe (and perhaps even the world itself.)

Shirer witnessed first hand Hitler's consolidation of political power in the dying days of the Weimar Republic and likewise the grim aftermath of postwar ravaged Europe.

Shirer's impassioned recognition and denunciation of pure, unmitigated Evil may be out of fashion in our ironical, postmodern age, but his first hand experience with Nazi Germany lends a moral authority to his critique and, along with his meticulous documentation of Nazi archives, is the book's main strength.

Sadly, in the fifty some odd years since Hitler's defeat, the capacity for evil and the appetite for mass destruction still burns within human hearts. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH should be essential reading for a new century and a new millennium. As Shirer writes in the foreword:

"In our 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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Summary: A Reich compendium
Review: William Shirer admits in his Foreword to "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," that he would not have started such a project merely on the basis of having been an on-the-spot observer of the Reich's development. Being stationed as a reporter in Berlin from the mid-thirties until just before America entered the war, certainly helped when the time came to take a deep breath and begin this work. However, what really spurred him on was the enormous, much too voluminous amount in fact, of material left behind by the German general staff and almost all government ministries, presumably in their panic to escape the Russians. In fact, Russian units entering the centre of the city found a few desultory piles of classified material burning behind the Reichstag and were even able to save much of that.

This is a work that falls between two categories. It is hardly light enough reading to be easily packaged as an ordinary paperback (although paperback editions abound); nor is it a scholarly work trying to be complete in every detail, with all the antics of the vast assemblage of characters carefully foot-noted, cross-referenced and indexed. It is a solid book, but fortunately, immensely readable and I wonder how you could really get around an understanding of the Third Reich without it (or why you would want to). In addition, its writer is an American and for some reason, that seems to make it more dependable. Shirer is no fool; he treats the subject with openness and honesty, giving us what I feel is a better, more reliable view than certain European sources might do. This is in spite of a certain tendency he has to view the main protagonists with a jaundiced eye. But who could really view the von Ribbentrops and Goerings of this world with extreme fairness, much after 1940?

There is nothing like having been there, and Shirer has recorded his experiences in diary form in "Berlin Diary," which is also well worth reading. But if you are going to read just one main book about the history of the Third Reich, you won't go far wrong with this one. It's a major accomplishment.

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Summary: A classic of historical journalism
Review: You are there, even if you don't want to be. The terrible story of how a group of madmen brought sorrow to the planet is brought vividly to life in this classic history. It is a titanic work on a titanic subject.

The author, Bill Shirer, took some risks. He interposed his own judgements and feelings with the facts which he sets down. Seeing as how Shirer saw the Nazi regime with his own eyes, and his revulsion is based on his own experience, and almost all of his readers will share that revulsion, the risk pays off. Few historians could take a risk like this, or should. Because of what Shirer (and the world) saw and suffered, he did right.

Do not rely solely upon this book to learn about the Holocaust. The section of this book which retells the story of this ultimate crime is based on German documents and testimony gathered immediately after the war (and before almost all of the surviving perpetrators decided to collectively shut up). As a result, the section uniformly treats the Jewish and other prey of the killing system as passive victims. A balanced view is required, to say the least, and I am sure that most readers with a strong enough stomach to tackle this book will go on to read the testimonies of survivors and get closer to a real view of this almost unbelieveable story. However, the German sources quoted here at great length are useful should there be anyone reading this book who is so unfortunate as to believe that the Holocaust never happened. It did, and you can read about it here, in the words and documents of the men with blood on their hands.

Once again, this is a true, scary, unforgettable classic of the art of historical journalism.

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Summary: Masterfully Written!
Review: I have wanted to read this historical account of WWII for years but was always daunted by its length. I'm glad to have gotten over that psychological hurdle because the book is a quick read, it is engrossing and therefore interesting to read for hours at a time. Shirer did a tremendous amount of research for this project. Moreover, his ability to organize vast amounts of information it truly impressive.

The text covers everything from the political, to the military, to the nationalistic, to the anti- Semitic aspects of the Third Reich. While Shirer does not shy from stating his points of view, I thought his incites only added to this work. Shirer was a journalist in Europe during the war and therefore has compelling view and perspectives about the events surrounding the Third Reich. I would highly recommend this book; although, it was written forty years ago very little of the historical information is outdated.

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Summary: Important but flawed
Review: It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this book. It was the first comprehensive popular history of Nazi Germany to appear in English, and it is probably more responsible than any other single source for shaping the way that Americans think about Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust. More than that, this is an estimable work of history. Shirer has done an admirable job of combing through the mountains of primary source material that the Nazis left behind and assembling a coherent and comprehensible narrative from it.

Of course, it would be a mistake to view this book as simply or even primarily a work of history. It is intended as an indictment of the evil and barbarity that the Nazis perpetrated in Germany and across Europe for more than twelve years and as an indictment of the men and women in Germany, in France, in Great Britain, and elsewhere who allowed that evil and barbarity to occur. Shirer is not content to point out that Hitler and Himmler and Goering and Frank were monsters; he also is intent on showing how complicit the German Army and the German people were in what happened and how the ignorance, stupidity, and cowardice of the politicians of the West and the Soviet Union actively assisted Hitler's monstosities in coming to pass.

The reader can almost visualize Shirer shaking in outrage when he considers the evil Hitler wrought with the help of the rest of Europe. This outrage is, in many ways, both the book's greatest asset and its greatest shortcoming. While Shirer's indignation makes this a great moral work, it also causes him to be more than a little unfair to some of his subjects and to present the history as being more one-dimensional than it in fact was. Shirer never tells, for example, that one of the principal reasons that Chamberlain and Daladier were willing to appease Hitler was that the Depression had bankrupted both Britain and France. They believed that they could not afford to rearm so that they could stop Hitler militarily, and so they sought to get the best deals they could at the bargaining table. Their policy was, of course, dangerously short-sighted, but it is unfair to both men to suggest that their policy was almost solely the result of cowardice.

Then, too, is the fact that Shirer almost invariably describes Rosenberg as a befuddled dolt, Goering as fat, and Ribbentrop as vacuous. It is readily apparent to the reader that he does so because he feels he must constantly reiterate their lack of praiseworthiness, but it is disconcerting to the reader. I am at a loss to explain what Goering's girth has to do with anything, or what it was about Rosenberg's writing that made him any stupider that most Nazis. While I believe that Ribbentrop deserves almost all of the calumny that can be heaped on him, Shirer never makes a real case for his vacuity.

Finally, it must be said that Shirer appears to run out of steam towards the end of the book. All of World War II is covered in the last 25% of the book, and many important topics, including the Holocaust, get short shrift as a result.

These criticisms should not be taken to mean that I believe that this book is not meritorious or that it should not be read. On the contrary: one would be hard-pressed to find a better, more comprehensible, more accessible one volume book about Nazi Germany. It ought to be the starting point (but not the ending point) for anyone interested in World War II or Nazi Germany.

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Summary: History at its Best
Review: Anyone interested in WWII and Nazi Germany should read this book. I have read few accounts of how the Nazis rose to power in Germany better than the account in this book. The book is long, but reads like a novel. If you want to learn about Nazi Germany, this is the book to read. Don't be afraid of its size. It is worth it.

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Summary: A monumental piece of Literature
Review: This book, is truly one of the finest of its genre following the origins of one of the most opressive regimes in modern history to its bitter end whilst maintaining a distinctly unbiased stance throughout.

Clearly, Mr.Shirer spent many hours,days,months etc on this book as he leaves no stone unturned in his presentation of the rise and the fall of Nazism.

If there is one criticism, it has to be that it reads in a manner that allows perhaps 30mins to 60mins at the most per session as it has so much sheer information to digest.

Apart from that, a Tour de Force.

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Summary: Mr. Shirer was obviously not immune to propaganda.
Review: A definitively balanced account of WWII in Europe has not yet been written. Are we to believe that all Germans of this era were sociopaths, or that 6,000 Jews were gassed daily at Auschwitz, requiring over 340 tons of human remains to be cremated and disposed of per day? As you read this book keep in mind that the evidence and motivations on all sides are just beginning to crystalize in the historical record. Many aspects of this epic history were not ready to be accurately told at its 1959 publishing, as Mr. Shirer appears to have been content to let the propagandists fill-in many of the blanks.

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Summary: A must for anyone who wants to know this monstrous evil
Review: This is clearly the finest one-volume "briography" if you will of the Third Reich. But it is not without its problems. The book badly needs maps. When the author discusses troop movements, the reader is left in the dark unless he has an atlas by his side. Too much time is spent on the plot to assassinate Hitler, which, after all, was a minor event. He doesn't even mention the sinking of the battleship Bismark and what a devastating effect that had on Hitler's ability to conduct a sea war. Allied generals are mentioned, but given short shrift. Nevertheless, Shirer has managed to compress tons of documents into an understandable and often fascinating narrative. This book reads like a novel and was, for me, impossible to put down. A great achievement despute the reservations noted above.