The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is an amazing book. Really amazing.
It is a book by the journo William L. Shirer (back when journalists were worth something). It closely follows the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Hitler (1889) to the end of World War 2 in Europe in 1945 when the Soviets ran over the final bunker.
It’s based on captured Nazi documents such as Joseph Goebbels diaries, General Franz Halder’s memoirs, Ciano’s notes, the Nuremberg trial documentation, Nazi newspapers, British office reports, and even the authors memory as he lived in Germany from 1934 to 1940.
It won numerous awards including the national book award for non-fiction.
It also gets an advantage because of how well it stood the test of time. Notable academics of the time disliked it because he was not an academic. But secretly they disliked it because he just recorded history much better than the scholarly works did. That’s why this book has survived 60 years and their worthless essays are long forgotten.
It’s a readable, easy to understand history of everything National Socialist. From why Hitler grew up the way he did to how he organized specific field battles on the Eastern front: it covers everything.
Be forewarned: this is not a weekend read. It took me months. It’s nearly 1300 pages. And if you want to actually study it, you have to read much slower than a general political fiction like Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
But it is well worth the long read. For a history buff like myself it was phenomenal to see all of the moving components brought together so well in a single text.
I personally treasured the parts with Ciano and Mussolini. Their interactions with Hitler during the course of their time as totalitarians was insanely interesting. Even moreso after Italy fell.
Don’t just take my word for it. Do a DuckDuckGo search. This book has tens of thousands of reviews with nearly all of them favorable. It has thousands of 5 stars reviews alone on most book sites.
“One of the most important works of history of our time.” – Orville Prescott
“A monumental work, a grisly and thrilling story.” – Theodore H. White
“One of the most spectacular stories ever told.” – John Gunther
“The New York Times Book Review” A splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions. – Hugh Trevor-Roper
“One of the most important works of history of our time.” – Orville Prescott
“A monumental work, a grisly and thrilling story.” – Theodore H. White
“”The New York Times Book Review” A splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions.” – Hugh Trevor-Roper
“One of the most spectacular stories ever told.” – John Gunther
If that caught your interest, read the official description:
On The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer.
The fiftieth anniversary edition of the National Book Award–winning bestseller that is the definitive study of Adolf Hitler, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II. This special edition now features a new introduction by Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and How the End Begins.
The fiftieth anniversary edition of the National Book Award–winning bestseller that is the definitive study of Adolf Hitler, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II. This special edition now features a new introduction by Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and How the End Begins.
No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler’s drive to conquer the world.
The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.
Here is the complete story of Hitler’s empire, one of the most important stories ever told, written by one of the men best equipped to write it.
This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
Just like the Gulag Archipelago, you will learn. You will learn a lot and be amazed at what you learned.
So much information is not told to us through traditional education. Important historical texts like these fill the gaps.
Add it to your reading stack! You won’t regret this one.
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