Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 [Hardcover]

William L. Shirer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

A precurser to the author's best-selling The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich describes the harrowing Nazi rise to power in Germany during the second half of the 1930s and profiles Hitler's complex personality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

''The most complete news report yet to come out of war-time Germany.'' --Time --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From the Publisher

"There is absolutely no better book by an American about the rise of the Third Reich. A gripping—and harrowing—view from inside Hitler's Germany." —Lamar Graham --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 626 pages
• Publisher: Bbs Pub Corp (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0883659220
• ISBN-13: 978-0883659229
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,433,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 24, 2005

By 

Douglas R. Wieringa "dwieringa" (Normandy Park, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 (Paperback)

If you are interested in this period in history, you should read this book. Shirer offers a day-by-day history of life in Germany during the rise of Nazism and beginning of the war. That alone would be enough for a great book, but there is much more. Shirer covers many aspects of the war; he writes eloquently and accurately about the naivety of pre-war British diplomacy, strategy on both sides, and the Nazi clique. He provides an early glimpse at horrors of Nazi genocide. And his personal story is fascinating, as he travels across Europe, worries about his family, and matches wits with his censors to get as much of the story out as he can. Berlin Diary is very well written and hard to put down. Gems of description abound; for example, he describes a visit to a Lisbon casino: "Tonight, Ed [Murrow] and I did the casino. The gaming rooms were full of a weird assortment of human beings, German and British spies, male and female, wealthy refuges who had mysteriously managed to get a lot of money out and were throwing it about freely, other refugees who were broke and were trying to win their passage money with a few desperate gambles with the fickle roulette wheel..." Highly recommended.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nazi Germany from the Inside, December 20, 2004

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 (Paperback)

"Berlin Diary" is a classic in reportage. Shirer was a journalist stationed in Berlin from 1934 to 1940 and thus an eyewitness to the growth of Facism in Europe, especially the Nazi regime in Germany. He observes and reports on the events leading up to World War II and the stunning German victories during the first year of the war. Shirer seems to have been about everywhere that anything happened and his eye-witness accounts are priceless as background to the "gathering storm" in Europe.

This is a diary which Shirer admits in his introduction was written with the thought of publication. Thus, like others I was irritated by the ethnic slurs he directs at Germans and by his obvious political partisanship. For example, he bemoans the defeat of the Republic in Spain with the statement, "our side has lost." I can only interpret that remark to mean that he personally identified with the Spanish Republic. His remark about "our side" certainly would make me suspicious about the objectivity of any of his reporting on Spain. Clearly, however, Shirer saw his diary (published before the US entered World War II) less as a balanced piece of reportage than as an anti-Facist manifesto backed up most impressively by his personal experiences. Read in that context, "Berlin Dairy" can be appreciated as one of the essential books on the origins of World War II.

Politics aside, Shirer paints an interesting picture of the life of young Americans in Europe during the 1930s with capsule descriptions of who he met, what he ate and drank, and his day to day life. Throughout the book is the atmosphere of impending doom. Shirer sensed it early and is thus one of the prophetic voices coming out of the 1930s.

Smallchief

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid eye-witness account, November 27, 1999

By 

K. Goldberg (Chicago (Shirer's native city)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book's sense of "being there," and its quiet outrage against Nazi brutalities. Shirer's diary has lost none of its power since 1941, when as the world's best-selling non-fiction work it aided interventionist sentiment in the U.S. It's companion published in 1947, End of A Berlin Diary, adds illumination but isn't as moving. Although raised Presbyterian, Shirer's sympathies led some to believe him Jewish. Still, the last line of introduction sets the chilling tenor of that era; "The Gestapo will find no clues."