Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer is a classic book written in 1959 by an American journalist who had been stationed in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. Using first-person recollection, state documents, diaries and personal correspondences between key figures leading up to and through World War II, Rise and Fall delivers a horrifying yet fascinating view of how Hitler’s warped vision tragically affected Europe. As we approach the 60th anniversary of its publishing, parallels between our modern world and Hitler’s Germany make the book a fascinating read!
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I first attempted Rise and Fall for a book report in a high school history class. After 450 pages, I realized there was no way for me to finish before my paper was due, so I just wrote about what I had read and hoped for the best. During a summer home from college, I thought I would try again. Sadly, I couldn’t get to page 500. This year, I was determined to finish!
This is not a light read and while it is extremely interesting, it is not fun. Reading about people filled with hate, radically stupid ideas, and delusions of grandeur weighs upon the soul. However, for those who care about history and for those who don’t want this particular history to repeat itself this book delivers insight into the many chances the world had to avoid the misery of WWII.
My parent’s 1960 hard cover edition weighs in at a meaty 1,143 pages of writing (1,245 pages including indexes and footnotes). Simon and Schuster’s 2011 reissue expands to 1,280 pages for the paperback edition and is also available for the Kindle.
The author, William L. Shirer, possessed a knack for being at the right spot at the right time. As covered in Steve Wick’s biography of Shirer: The Long Night: William Shirer and the rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer was present for the Paris landing of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing in 1927. In the same year, Shirer was the only member of the world press present for the coronation of Mohammed Nadir Khan as the shah of Afghanistan. After an aborted attempt to write novels after meeting Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, Shirer returned to the press and was stationed in Berlin in 1933.
Shirer’s position in Berlin provided a front row seat for Hitler’s unlikely ascent from an ostracized and ridiculed outsider (he was Austrian) to the leader of a conquering Germany. Shirer personally met with members of the government and the military of Germany throughout World War II and was frequently present in person for many key events.
Despite the hefty page count, Shirer’s journalist writing style makes his writing easy to follow. He also enhances the credibility of his statements with the quality of his sources. As noted above, Shirer personally attended many events and his personal eye-witness accounts add depth and perspective to a equally rich selection of official government records from the German government.
Shirer also uses testimony from the Nuremberg trials, diaries written by key generals and political figures, meeting minutes, correspondences between major players such as Hitler and Mussolini, and documents released by other governments (UK, Russia, etc.). All together, these rock-solid sources paint a vivid and clear picture of life in a rising and crashing Third Reich.
For example, Shirer observed that the armed forces commander-in-chief, General Werner von Blomberg, appeared pale during the announcement of the occupation of the Rhineland. By itself, this is simply adding color to the scene; however, Shire then cites orders given to the German army. Hitler forbid the German troops to engage French troops in the Rhineland (then part of France) if the French forcibly resisted German occupation of the Rhineland! The Germans knew they could not survive a war with France and yet were marching troops into French territory. No wonder von Blomberg was pale!
This instance is just one of several opportunities that the international community missed to stop Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. It’s a pity no one called the German Bluff! Of course, the sheer horror and destruction of the first world war created an environment where the citizens of most countries would allow terrible things to happen elsewhere in the world – so long as they did not have to send their own soldiers. It is also clear that pride and greed played a strong role as well. The British and French governments took pride in preserving the peace and were desperately holding onto political power back home. The Italians and Russians wanted to pursue glory and conquest and thus they enabled Hitler’s ambitions so that they had opportunities to pursue their own.
One of the most ridiculous and tragic stories was that of Poland. Poland was ruled by a pro-fascist military dictatorship that was quite pro-German. They failed to recognize that Hitler lacked any empathy or respect for the Poles and fully intended to destroy them. The Poles supported the German annexation of Austria and later supported the occupation of Czechoslovakia so they could take part of the northern part of the country for themselves! Yet in a matter of months, Hitler was using the same formula he had used to invade the Czechs upon the Poles: bullying, propaganda, false claims and military aggression.
Shirer was later present for the French surrender and witnessed many abuses of Jews, communists, priests, and other persecuted people by the Nazi regime. However, Shirer could not sense the extent of the slaughter within the concentration camps until after the war. He does not disguise his disgust in detailing the authorization, implementation, construction and use of the death camps throughout the book. The Nazi ability to lie to people and create docile prisoners that marched in an orderly fashion to their death is unparalleled in scope. The policy of extermination was applied equally to the Jews, the communists, the Russian prisoners of war and to the political enemies within Germany. Ultimately, the sheer number of deaths cataloged within The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is the aspect that makes the reading of the book the most difficult.
Ultimately, Germany’s luck at remaining unopposed fueled Hitler’s delusions and those delusions became the key cause of Germany’s downfall. Hitler began to believe his fake news and could no longer recognize the true dangers to his paranoid and corrupt regime.
There are distinct parallels between the rise of Nazi Germany and the rise of right-wing nationalism in our modern world, but hopefully enough people study history so that we can eradicate any possibility of repeating the wholesale slaughter and world-engulfing war. The intimate view of this dark chapter in history provided by The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is disturbing, but I fully recommend this book to everyone.