Customer Reviews

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

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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.

"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

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."

Shirer is better known, of course, for having written "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," which is an excellent first book to read on Nazi history. After reading "The Rise and Fall," though, I stumbled on "Berlin Diary" and I was riveted. Shirer's life as an American correspondent in pre-war Nazi Berlin gave him a unique position from which to observe and chronicle life under the 20th century's most bloodthirsty regime.

Shirer's day-to-day observations are both precise and chilling. I was especially fascinated with how he sparred with--and often outwitted--the Nazi censors. He walked a fine line with many of the stories he filed; he was committed to giving his American readers an accurate depiction of life in Nazi Germany but knew that his characterizations were being closely monitored. I came to really admire his courage and determination, and found the book a pleasure to read.

If you haven't yet read Herr Schirer's all time classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", or if you just completed it, this is the greatest companion book. Heck - even if you don't intend to read "The Rise and Fall" - read it anyway. It gives such great insight into the mind of one of the greatest correspondents of the modern era and the great historians of the Third Reich. It also helps you to see the war from the side of the German people - after all, they did have to deal with Hitler - and his legacy the longest. As you will see, this is Shirer's personal diary, in which he speaks lovingly about his wife and newborn and worries about their safety in Switzerland. He deals with his trips to the front and contacts in the foreign ministry. Extremely well written - and a great reference during the long haul of "The Rise and Fall" (Personally, I'm still pushing through "The Rise and Fall" after a year and a half - and yet it's one of the greatest books I've read) Come on! Buy it! You'll thank me! It's an investment you won't regret.

There was a previous reader review of "Berlin Diary" on this site. It gave it a 3 on a scale of 10. I could not disagree more strongly. This is probably the most fasinating book I've ever read. I was sad when it ended. The previous reviewer criticized William Shirer as hardly being objective in the manner required of a journalist. Keep in mind you are reading a diary. A personal account of the beginning of our century's most horrific period. It was written by a man who was the right person in the right place at the right time. Berlin, Munich, Paris and Compiegne. It is the observations of someone witnessing peace slipping away because of driving tyranny (German) and bungling diplomacy (The Allies - where was the U.S.?) If I were teaching a class on WWII, "Berlin Diary" would be the text. Not only does it give us insights into a wide array of subplots to the war but it is the most readable bit of history ever written. I stand by that statement. Read the book.

The author makes a large number of observations about what is happening and how it is done. This is along with the historical recording of events. These observations have stood the test of time. They explain the German's rapid success in the early years.

Although I have read many books on Nazism and the Second World War, very few have included contemporary eyewitness accounts. The authors have known what happened, and often why, and have (sometimes) simply described historical events. Shirer's diary gives us a day by day look at Europe and Nazi Germany during the crucial years of the thirties and after. The reader may be chilled as the book progresses, knowing the horror in store for so many.

And again and again it appears Shirer knows what will happen in advance. He is rarely wrong in his predictions. For instance,he predicts the German attack on Holland in May of '40 and British survival later that year. He finds the German Jews in 1935 to be 'too optimistic' and says that Hitler will turn on Russia before the USA. At times I was inclined to believe Shirer had backdated his diary after the fact.

It would have been nice if the diary could have been continued to the war's end, even if the author no longer had access to sources so close to the action. I suppose this would have made for too long a book, though.

A well-written contemporaneous account of a correspondent's life in Nazi Germany up to 1940. Shirer is almost prescient in his assessment of Hitler's actions and their consequences. It is unfortunate that he could not continue his reporting after 1940, because an account of this caliber of the years when Germany was at war with America, made from inside Germany, would have been a valuable historical record. Shirer is a true journalist; while he offers opinions, they are clearly labeled as such, and do not get in the way of dispassionate reporting of the events he witnesses.

"Berlin Diary" is one of the more unusual documents to come out of World War II. First published in 1941, not long after America's entry into the war, it acted as a crucial means of informing the American public of the state of affairs in Germany up until the start of the war. Shirer spent the years from 1934 to 1940 in Europe as a foreign correspondent, and was mostly posted in Berlin during that time. As such, he witnessed the rise of Nazi fanaticism from a privileged position, often being given access to Nazi functions that the public could not attend. Shirer's better known work, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," is more exhaustive and examines the subject from a slightly more detached point of view. "Berlin Diary" is the pithy, day-by-day account of what it was really like on the ground in Berlin, including all the personal difficulties and aggravations that occurred as the end of 1940 approached. It's a fascinating book which will add vital colour to anyone's attempt to understand the period.