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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich : A History of Nazi Germany

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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.

William L. Shirer's classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is the most complete single volume account of the history of Nazi Germany ever written. Shirer was a journalist, not a historian and the advantages of this show in his very readable prose and his vivid descriptions (for example, often referring to Herman Goering as "the fat Field Marshall"). The book starts with the birth of the Nazi party and how it found a spokesman early on in an ex-serviceman named Adolf Hitler. The narrative continues through until the end of the war, Hitler's suicide and the final few days under Admiral Doenitz. The only warning to the casual reader is that the book's length exceeds 1100 pages and it is crammed to the brim with facts. Also, it should be noted that the book was published over forty years ago and does not include more recent information that has come to light from, for example, the former East German archives. Nevertheless, this is still a classic work of jornalistic history.

This book is essential to mankind. Along with several other books that cover the holocaust, this book will be read by future generations to remind them of how some of the worst criminals in history came to rule a continent.

Why you should read this book:

Like I mentioned in the title of this review, it is essential to mankind. This is the foremost history of the Third Reich from a perspective inside the Third reich. The perspective of the events is at times cold, but its was written with the greatest attempts at objectivity. The reader is not automatically forced to make moral judgements by the author; Shirer gives the reader the cold facts and the reader can feel the sorrow of Germany and the world at the evil that thrived on the ignorance and naivete of pre-war policy makers. At times it can be dry and long-winded, but for the most part this book was hard to put down (I read the unabridged version in under 2 weeks). The reader will not be disappointed in this book. Shirer painstakingly studied thousands of captured Nazi documents, memorandums, orders and news releases to come up with this detailed history.

What you should expect to see in this book:

This book chronicles the life of Hitler from his ancestors to his final hours in the Berlin Chancellory bunker. The main players throughout the Nazi party are given detailed historys alongside Hitler's. Most importantly this book shows the failures of the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations and the Weimar Republic and shows how an Austrian tramp rose to the Dictator of Europe. Mussolini and Italy's dealings with the Third Reich is also given a lot of attention. The details of the diplomatic dealings with the Allies in Munich and the events that led up to the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 are thoroughly described (I counted approixmately 100 pages on the events that led up to that invasion). The accounts of the holocaust are well detailed, but are not definitive. Shirer describes the holocaust some, but the reader might desire more.

What you should not expect to see in this book:

There are no maps to speak of in this book. I would suggest that you have a few historical maps on WWII when you read this because the action can become fast paced and it might be a little hard to understand without a thorough knowledge of the geography of Europe. This book is not a military history, so don't expect it to go into detail about the weapons or other aspects of the military. I think only about 20 pages talked about Hitler's invasion of Poland, and that was mostly about his dealings with Stalin in carving Poland up. If you are looking for a military history of WWII, I would suggest Chester Wilmot's _The Struggle for Europe_ (which starts during the Battle of Britain), or Liddel Hart's _History of the Second World War_. In addition, this is not a history of the holocaust. Shirer gives an account of it, but it is by no means comprehensive of definitive. Lastly, this book was written before 1960, and a lot of new information, especially from the former Soviet Union has been uncovered which will be able to shed more light on the Eastern front.

It would be nearly impossible to overstate the importance of this book. It is, I believe, more pivotal in shaping the American popular understanding of Nazi Germany than any other book ever published. As such, it has helped shape everything from representations of Nazis and their victims in motion pictures to media protrayals of accused war criminals living in the United States.

As a work history, this book is also extremely impressive. Shirer makes extensive and critical use of a plethora of primary sources, including captured German documents and testimony from the Nuremburg trials, and this gives his account considerable credibility. His writing style is engrossing, making the length of the book seem less gargantuan than it is. I doubt that I would be able to identify a more comprehensive or readable single-volume history of Nazi Germany.

It should be understood, however, that Shirer does not really intend for this book to be merely a history of Nazi Germany. It is a morality tale. Shirer is aghast at the destruction and barbarity that Nazi Germany wrought in the world, and this book reads like an indictment of everybody everwhere who had a hand in allowing the barbarity to occur. Nobody can escape responsibility, not common Germans who brought Hitler to power, not the German generals who were unwilling or unable to control Hitler, not the German businessmen who profited through Hitler's various barbarities, not the Anglo-French architects of appeasement, and most of all not the Nazis themselves.

Of course, Shirer's sense of moral outrage sometimes causes some unfortunate lapses. It is rare that Shirer does not call Goering fat when Goering pops up in the narrative. Similarly, he invariably uses "fatuous" to describe Ribbentrop and reminds us on numerous occasions that Rosenberg was a "dolt." I have no idea what Goering's girth has to do with anything, and Shirer never really gives us a real idea of why he thinks that Ribbentrop was fatuous or Rosenberg was any stupider than any other member of the Nazi elite. Gratuitous pejoratives are distracting and unfair.

And then there's the matter of Ernst Roehm, Hitler's chief of the SA. Roehm and the rest of the members of the SA were a bunch of terrorist thugs who got votes for the Nazis by intimidating the opposition, but to Shirer, this thuggery is eclipsed by the fact that Roehm and some other of the SA leaders were or were thought to be gay (which Shirer consistently refers to as a "perversion"). To say the least, the credibility of Shirer's moral outrage at the racist and anti-semitic doctrine of the Nazi party is undermined by his bald homophobia.

More than that, Shirer makes no real attempt to understand why the British and the French behaved as they did in appeasing Hitler. He ascribes it to some sort of moral failing, and while this may be the case, it is only part of the story. France and Great Britain were bankrupted by the Depression. They couldn't really afford to rearm, and they were desparate to avoid a war at least partly out of a misplaced fiscal restraint. This fact does not obscure the reality that the appeasement policy was short-sighted and stupid, but at least it makes the whole thing more comprehensible. Likewise, Shirer doesn't really understand that Germany's rearmament was paid for with checks that the Reich couldn't cash without plunder. By 1939, the German economy was a house of cards that was about to collapse without a capital infusion. Unfortunately, one wouldn't know that from reading Shirer.

Finally, the emphasis that Shirer puts on different periods of the Third Reich is disproportionate. The war years, especially from 1943 to 1945, are sped through with very little detail about anything except the various plots against Hitler. It's almost as if Shirer ran out of gas after 800 pages or so. It is admirable that Shirer does not get bogged down the military details of the war, but at the same time, I would think that the war years deserve more than 25 or 30% of the book.

By all means, read this book, especially if you have only cursory familiarity with Nazi Germany. It is generally well-written, accessible, and reasonably comprehensive. Just beware of the problems with it as you are reading.

My parents bought this book when it first came out, about 1960, and I struggled to read it cover to cover and eventually finished it. I was eight years old. This may seem amazing to some of the high school students who have reviewed this book as "boring", but it amazed and frightened me. What kept me reading was the vividly portrayed methodical and unfolding horror in Europe that I had known nothing about (what eight year old does?) I'm sure that I missed a lot on my first reading, but I remember that first reading vividly even today. The reason this book is a "must read" is that today's tyrants, today's wars and today's massacres follow much the same script. I believe that most tyrants are often also fanatic students of history for "how to" guides to achieving their aims. Those they would enslave should be equally diligent. The book is sometimes disparaged for its long quotes of previously secret Nazi letters, memoranda and cables, but it is precisely that detail that stays with you for life. You will never read a bland government white paper again without scanning it for the incredible couched in passive, obfuscatory language.

I have read a great deal more history since then, and have read many books on military tactics and strategy from ancient times to the present, but I have never read a better portrait of a world gone crazy. Military strategists can only tell you how. This book tells you why by someone who was there when it happened.

Obviously there have been further revelations since this book was published in 1960 based on declassified and more recently translated documents, but this book stands the test of time in that such revelations supplement but do not undermine its veracity.

Without a doubt, this has to be one of the most important history books ever written! Let's look at why...

1)The author: His credentials to write this book are unbeatable. He lived among the Nazis as a correspondent from their birth till half way through the war. Because of this he got to see and hear all the key players and personally meet many of them. This gave him great insight into Germany and germans during the growth of the Nazi virus. Couple this with the fact that he was an action journalist, and was therefore an extremely gifted writer, and his credentials are truly unbeatable.

2)Subject: Although this subject is well covered, it has not been covered before or since this writing as thoroughly as in this book. Shirer had access to ALL of the Nazi papers, including diariers, memos and minutes, and you therefore get an insiders view on what was going on inside the top secret meetings of the Nazi leaders. Here, exposed for all to see, are the diablolical reasonings for everything they did or tried to do. Here spelled out step by step is the entire history from the youth of Hitler to the death by strangalation by the russian and allied armies. It has sections on the history of Germany back to Martin Luther, when the mindset of the german people was developed that would allow for a tyrant like Hitler. Sections of the book also give an insider's view into the combat decisions, Concentration camps, basic principles of Nazism, and the normal German's pied piper attitude. It cover's EVERYTHING!

3)Lessons: It is possible to draw lessons from this well of historical knowledge that will blow you away. It has been said that when we stop learning from history we are bound to repeat it and this book clearly portrays the evil that has already occurred and is possible if we don't watch world affairs closely. The U.S. may get derided for meddling in others' affairs, but this book shows the danger that is possible if we don't! We also need to learn not to nourish the seeds of racism as Hitler did in his youth that led to the eventualy death of 40 million people. So many great things can be learned from this book...

Overall: It is simply a great book. One of the best I have ever read! It never bogs down...I finished it in a month, all 1500 pages.

In conclusion: If you havn't read this book you absolutely must!!! You will not regret it!!!

This colosus of a book will tell you most of what you need to know about the 3rd Reich's inner workings. I say most in that this book focuses on the top dogs in Nazi Germany - for example Eichmann is only mentioned a couple of time, as is Mengele. In addition, not all the facts had come to light when the book was written, a fact that Shirer readily admits. However, the advantage of having this book written so soon after the facts means that many of the participants (those that weren't executed after the Nurnberg trials) were still alive and knew the author personally (or at least by reputation) due to his coverage of German affairs for the US media. He used this contact on several occasions to flesh out the official documents.

Because of the fact that the author was a correspondent, the "Rise" part of the Nazi party is a far more personal and interesting read. It is liberally sprinkled with personal observations and commentary. After the American journalists were expelled from Germany, the book is not quite as interesting, but still a page turner.

The highlights for me were the comparative critisisms, e.g. comparing Guderian's claims (in his autobiography) with the information taken from OKW or other people's diaries. A lot of the Axis leaders tried to downplay their roles in books after the war (another prime example is Speer); the book points out the lies and half-truths.

In addition to the value of the book for giving a full and coherent picture of the workings of the Third Reich, I've found it to be an invaluable reference tool. I come back to this book again and again to look up information when reading other history books, when something pertaining to the era is mentioned in the media, etc. It is well indexed and sources are explicitly defined. Essential for the armchair historian as well as those more professional ones.

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.

This massive tome is still a solid treatment of WWII and the events leading up to it. While its history isn't perfect, it is Nazi Germany as the author saw it--he remained there until late 1940, which took special courage. Shirer did not know all that we know now, but a lot of what he says has held up.

It would be a much more wearying book were it not for Shirer's unique and pungent commentary on Nazi figures he found lacking in merit, particularly Ribbentrop. (How can anyone resist a characterization like 'insufferable ignoramus'?) He delves into some of the more interesting rogues in the Nazi gallery, such as Alfred Naujocks, giving information not commonly known. Strongly recommended, with the caveat that one should also read other books to get a more complete historical perspective.

William Shirer was an American journalist in Germany from 1934 until presumably 1941 (when Germany declared war on the USA after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour). Shirer occasionally mentions his participation in reporting history from Berlin or the front lines and admits to having been influenced by the endless barrage of Nazi propaganda. Occasionally his sharp post-war opinions on the characters of the various leaders depicted breaks through. The book is based on the huge amounts of documentary and verbal evidence that became available after the war and the Nuremberg trials. The book represents a huge work of research - one wonders, however, whether the author's motivation is an atonement to his blindness (along with many millions of others) to the monstrosity of the Third Reich as it actually happened.

On reading the book (a rich 1200 pages!) one wonders whether it should not have been called "The Rise and the Fall of Adolf Hitler" for it centers around Hitler and his generals and seems to almost forget Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and other Nazi leaders after their initial appearances. A central conclusion from the book is, no doubt, that the Third Reich and World War2 would not have come about were it not for this one man - Adolf Hitler. All the other players in Shirer's story pale into insignificance beside the genius, charisma, madness, vision, evil, manipulativeness, leadership and single-mindedness of the one man. The only other "heros" of the book, although not covered in great detail, are Stalin and, rather more so, Churchill whose vision, inspiration and leadership changed the course of history.

[Reviewer's personal note: WW2 and the Holocaust are themes of enormous importance to me personally. Both my parents were born in Germany and, had it not been for Hitler I would have been born a German. Once the Third Reich existed I might not have been born at all were it not for Churchill, and I almost certainly wouldn't have been living in Israel if weren't for WW2 and the Holocaust. The realization (sharpened after reading this book) that my life ,and that of so many millions of others, would have been so different were it not for two men is quite shattering.]

Besides Hitler, Churchill and Stalin most other players in the drama of the Third Reich appear in Shirer's book as sycophants, ditherers, brutes or nonentities. The weakness and blindness of pre-war England and France are difficult to imagine. The blind neutrality and unpreparedness of the governments of Belgium, Holland and Norway is also noted. The world's blindness is all the more noteworthy considering, as Shirer carefully points out, that Hitler laid out his philosophy and intentions very clearly in Mein Kampf which he wrote in the mid 1920's.

In hindsight, one is open-mouthed at the success of Hitler's bullying which allowed him to annex Austria and dismantle Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. Hitler also intimidated his generals who dared not disobey him even if it cost the lives of thousands of their troops and endangered their own. As the war progressed more and more of them either resigned or were fired in Hitler's increasing rage and frustration at ever increasing failures. It is quite amazing to read about the chain of events which led the ex-Austrian corporal to take over direct command of the German armed forces in the first place. There is no doubt that, during the early stages of the war, Hitler's ideas of where and how to attack and invade were smarter than those of his generals, as was his assessment of the procrastination and unpreparedness of the countries to the north and west.

However Hitler had a number of critical blind spots that were to cost him the war. He underestimated the will of the Russians to fight for their homeland as he misjudged the tenacity of the British and readiness to fight of the Americans. Hitler was more paranoid about the dangers close to home to his regime and his person. He made sure to eliminate (literally) any real or supposed opposition including the many members of the July 1944 plot. Shirer documents the various attempts within Germany during the war years to overthrow the Fuehrer which all failed from combinations of bad luck, ambivalence, mutual distrust and lack of resolve of the plotters.

The book's main themes are the rise of the Nazi Party, the build up to and then the conduct of the war until its demolition of the Third Reich. From a history of the Third Reich, I would have expected something more on the instruments of government and power under the Nazi regime. There is also little on the Nazis' innovative, systematic and extremely successful uses of deception and propaganda to further their aims. Shirer, however, chooses the more exciting stories and gives us a tantalizing insider's view of the Reich. The detail furnished by some of Hitler's loyal subordinates of meetings give us the feeling of having been there in the Chancellery or in Berchtesgaden as it happened. For those of us who grew up on the Allied story of the war, this glimpse into the enemy camp is a memorable one. I will not forget this book for a long time.