Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

This 1200 page history of Nazi Germany in my opinion is a must read for anyone interested in the Third Reich. It is very detailed and is generally unbiased.

It was written by William L. Shirer in 1959.

 

Isn't it strange that all works written in the 1950s (when memories must still have been rather fresh) give a fair, balanced and unbiased account of the war while today some works are close to impossible?

Or did the impossible works of the 50s simply not survive to this day?

Come to think of it, some of the better war movies were also made in the late 40s and early 50s...

 

I FULLY agree with you there......

 

Perhaps it is because Shirer spent much time in Nazi Germany, as well as had lunch with the feuhrer himself.

 

I hate that too! All the good books and films were made in the 1950s and are now very difficult to get. I have two treasures from the 1950s: "Kampf und Untergang der Kriegsmarine", C.D. Bekker, Düsseldorf, 1953. And "La Bataille du France", Alistair Horne, Ashingley (spell?), UK, 1968 (well that's not from the 1950s but still a piece of jewellery!).

 

AndyW made a post about this yesterday & I added to it - both of which are now lost in cyberspace !
So here goes again . . . .

Shirer's book is very good in parts but has been overtaken by later discoveries of sources and material which make some of his conclusions outdated. ( See especially Michael Burleigh's 'Third Reich: A History' ).
I always have a 'soft spot' for 'Rise and Fall' as it was one of the first works on the subject that I read.

Quite right, though... Shirer was 'there' and for a vivid picture of his experiences I highly recommend his two books 'Berlin Diary'(1941) and 'End Of A Berlin Diary' (1947).

 

This book is a supperb work and it is simply EXCELLENT by all means. And about Shirer being out of date I do not consider that utterly important. Shirer gives a very clear warning about this in the preface. Maybe he should have waited for new documents and facts to come out. But he didn't want to lose the important things, which were the memoirs of himself and the people who LIVED it. I think that's the most favourable aspect about the book. "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is a masterpiece because it takes you into the Third Reich as people lived it, not as an Historian says. Besides, every major Third Reich or Hitler works are based on this book. To the contrary, it IS NOT out of date. It's UNIVERSAL.

 

Hate to disagree, but if you tried to put that book on a scholarly biliography, you would fail.

Dont get me wrong, this is an excellent and very interesting book, but it is inaccurate frequently and consistently on some issues. Like many books, you have to understand what it is, and what it is trying to be.

This is a top-notch memoir of someone who lived on the front lines inside nazi Germany, a journalist who experienced many things first hand. It is an excellent memoir and gives a rare and valuable insight into the Reich.

However, Shirer has a tendency to speculate about things he has no knowledge of. While he can relate what is happening on the ground, his guesswork as to the reasons and motivations of the Nazi officials is often spurious. It is an excellent memoir, and gives a good feel for the time, but it is filled with inaccuracies and errors. Shirer himself admitted, faced with acacdemic criticism of his book, that this did not attempt to be an academic text presenting the history of the reich, but rather one-man's view from the street.

Being a journalist, he often was not aware of events, only being aware of the version made public, which he then went back and tries to justify with post-war knowledge.

I love the book, well written and great feel, and I too would recommend it, but certainly not as an accurate history, it is litterally filled with misrepresentations and errors, though they are innocent ones...