The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

My favorite book is a book I re-read, having first read it in the 1970s.

Telling the complicated story of Hitler and the Nazi Party in one, if large, volume is an amazing achievement. I wondered if it might be dated, but even though it was published in 1960 it remains the single best history of that period.

I was fascinated with the quote of Hans Frank, Nazi Governor General of Poland, before he was hanged at Nuremberg in 1946: “A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.” I found Shirer’s riveting and exciting… show more.

The first half of the book is like watching a slow-motion car wreck. There were so many missed opportunities to stop Hitler before he did his worst, I wanted to shout ‘Stop this guy before it’s too late!’ Alas… Shirer was our man in Vienna and Berlin from the late 1920s-early 1940s, which adds an intimacy to his words that I find lacking in other similar accounts.

No historian or student of history can ignore the monumental effort of William L. Shirer and his twelve-hundred-page opus on National Socialism. This work starts with the birth of the Third Reich and ends with its last days. In these pages, the reader will find every major and minor personage who populated World War II. Although the Holocaust isn’t mentioned by name in the Index, many of the concentration and extermination camps, and other Nazi atrocities, are examined. This outstanding book is a must for anyone who wants to understand how the Nazis came to power, and how they wielded… show more.

I read this extraordinary book as a young man. It is a captivating account of how and why Germany came to be ruled by the man whose deeds were the most reprehensible in modern history. There are moments in the book, like Hitler’s famous meeting with Hindenburg in January 1933, which make you shiver when you read Shirer’s account.

The book which first stimulated my personal interest in Germany's defeat after World War Two, and which made the most impression on me, is the highly respected The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by American author William L. Shirer.

This is the classic work of events and Nazi leaders' guilt, which he personally witnessed while living in Germany at the end of the Second World War. It shows the two swings of the pendulum from Germany's ascent on the world stage to the country's near-total destruction and shocking after-effects on the defeated German people. This book is a… show more.