The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Paperback – October 11, 2011

A friend suggested that I read this, because of the similarities to what is currently going on in our political system today. I found the similarities frightening. But regardless of your views, I think that it is an important part of history that everyone should be reminded of. One thing that struck me was mention of the author's take on the subject. That of a historian, who is reporting on events. While there are times where the author interject his viewpoints, he clearly indicates such in those passages.I highly recommend having a dictionary handy. Often, there are words that I am unfamiliar with that I had to look up. Words that, for literary people might understand; but not for the average person.In the beginning the author provides full names and descriptions of who people are and why they are important to the events. However, once introduced, only names are provided. After reading Part 1, I found that, at times, the author would mention a name, and I couldn't remember who they were and why they were important to the events. This led me to lose understanding, and interest, and I debated moving forward.What I ended up doing was creating a file that contained pictures of the person and a description of who they are and what importance they had. Once I created the picture/description file, I ended up going back and starting from the beginning. I found it very helpful and made things much easier to understand and made the reading much easier.All-in-all, while lengthy, an important read!

I've read through most of the negative reviews on this book, and i seems that most of them that are reviewing the writing have one of two things in common. Many of those reviews were written before the current world political climate developed, and in that context, it is nearly impossible to believe what actually transpired.Most of the rest of those negative reviews lack understanding of what this book is supposed to be.Much of it is a first-person account, which makes it a primary source in its own right. The writers views and thoughts during his time in Germany are a very relevant study in and of themselves, and that's precisely the reason why I purchased this book.All primary historical accounts have bias just as all secondary historical do. It's just from a different place, and in order to truly understand the rise of Nazi Germany, one must be able to find works from people who were there and witnessed it happening. In retrospect, this book is essentially one man's memoirs of his time in Nazi Germany that has been bolstered by an immense amount of complementary primary documentation. Meanwhile, contrary to what many of the other reviews have stated, it is an accurate portrayal of the German society that enabled Hitler to come to power.We shouldn't be ashamed of our past. We should be proud of our ability to do better. The Germans understand that better than anyone.

A truly informative and detailed account of the horrifying rise and fall of Hitler and the Third Reich. A must read even in our current time with the parallels to yet another rise of fascism and the threats to democracy that are very real. Extremely well written and well documented from primary sources. The amount of footnotes and reference material in each chapter is incredible. This is not a quick read, but it's worth the effort and the time.

Almost since its initial publication in 1959, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has been regarded as a classic text in the canon of historical narratives documenting Germany under Nazi rule. I've never been an aficionado of this material, but I became interested in the history of mid 20th century Germany following a trip to Berlin and reading Richard Bessel's "Germany 1945: From War to Peace" and Erik Larson's "In the Garden of Beasts." Shirer's enormous tome was something that I had wanted to attempt since then but I found its length a bit daunting. While it certainly does require dedicated reading time (and lots of it), it is undeniably a complete, thorough and highly readable history, worthy of the critical praise it has garnered over the decades.Shirer offers a unique perspective among historians of this era since he witnessed many of the events surrounding the rise of the Nazis while serving as a foreign correspondent for CBS radio. The eyewitness aspect of his account, coupled with the fact that it was written relatively soon after the events of World War II lend it a powerful sense of reality in that many histories, often written long after the events being chronicled, may feel "diluted" or slightly fictionalized. Shirer's effort feels very "of the moment," when the horrors of World War II and its aftermath were still fresh in the global consciousness.I've often been baffled over how an advanced western culture like that of 20th century Germany could have ever descended into fascism and totalitarian rule. Shirer's narrative suggests several primary factors: (1) the extremely punitive reparations imposed on Germany by the allies following World War I; (2) the economic deprivations of the 1920s and 30s (often tied to those reparations); (3) the fact that Germans had never known true democracy made them somewhat predisposed to leadership from the top, down; (4) the inherent weakness and ineffectiveness of the Weimar Republic; and (5) the political craftiness of Adolph Hitler who, despite being the embodiment of human evil and megalomania, was a gifted politician who knew precisely how to outmaneuver his opponents at every turn. Momentous points in history often turn on such confluences of unique conditions.Shirer covers all of these conditions in detail such that the reader has a very clear sense of the atmosphere of Germany and the mind of the German people during Hitler's rise from obscurity, to prominence and ultimately, to complete dominance. Hitler's political maneuverings during the 1920s and early 1930s make for fascinating reading as Shirer documents all the points at which history could have easily taken a different path but did not.Of course, most will be familiar with the major events of World War II but Shirer devotes many pages to the politics leading up to Hitler's initial conquests. He relies on reams of documents made available through capture at the War's conclusion to trace the discussions, negotiations and demands made between the German state and its weaker neighbors, all of whom would eventually come to be controlled by the Nazi party. These communications offer a true insight not only into the minds of the Nazis but also of their enablers like Neville Chamberlain and his feckless administration. Fresh from the horrors of the first World War, Europe's leaders were prepared to do almost anything to avoid a second massive conflict. They never imagined that their efforts to avoid it would actually set its stage.There were times when I felt that Shirer provided almost too many direct quotations from official governmental communiques and diplomatic documents, to the point where they became somewhat repetitive. It's my only real criticism of the book and the only reason that I deducted one star from my rating.So much of the book is dedicated to the politics of Nazi germany and its interactions with other governments that it almost seemed like a straight-ahead military and political history. I wondered: where is the coverage of Nazi atrocities? I needn't have wondered. They're covered in full detail towards the end of the book. Every time one is tempted to think that they cannot be further shocked by the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, there's always more. The capacity to be shocked where these men were concerned seems to know no limits. Shirer does his duty to remind anyone who reads his book of precisely how evil human beings can be when under the thrall of a immoral leadership.At the end, I was thankful to reach the conclusion of "Rise and Fall." Not because it's not a well-written history, but because the horrors and national insanity that it documents become difficult to bear after a while. I felt relieved that I had the freedom to simply walk away from this history without ever having had to live through any part of it.