A review of William L. Shirer’s stunning and comprehensive account of power, corruption and lies.
Review Number: 2
Review Date: 17 August 2014
Title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Author: William L. Shirer
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1960
Genres: History / Non-Fiction
This astonishing work recounts how the birth of one man in a small Austrian town in 1889 would eventually take the world into an ‘Age of Darkness’ – the likes of which will probably never be seen again.
In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Shirer describes how Adolf Hitler – former vagrant and failed artist – took a small political party founded in 1920 into the upper echelons of power.
Once installed as the German government in 1933, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (aka Nazi Party) changed the rules to keep themselves in control.
From that lofty vantage point it was Hitler’s twisted vision and demonic drive that led a once great European civilisation on a doomed conquest for world domination.
The Second World War raged for six brutal years and involved more than 100 million people from more than 30 different countries. It is estimated there were 50 million to 85 million fatalities. The most global and deadliest war in human history.
“The confused locksmith Drexler provided the kernel, the drunken poet Eckart some of the ‘spiritual’ foundation, the economic crank Feder what passed as an ideology, the homosexual Roehm the support of the Army and the war veterans, but it was now the former tramp, Adolf Hitler, not quite thirty-one and utterly unknown, who took the lead in building up what had been no more than a back-room debating society into what would soon become a formidable political party.”
Hitler didn’t found the Nazi Party – that was Anton Drexler’s gift to the world – but it was his iron will and charisma that ensured he became leader of a bizarre collection of gangsters and misfits. Shirer, an American journalist, brilliantly brings to life the many sinister characters that made up the Nazi Party – Goebbels, Göring, Himmler, Ribbentrop.
Despite the book’s length of 1,200 pages, not a word feels wasted. This is a compelling historical analysis and the right mixture of sources, quotes and occasional opinions. Shirer used captured Third Reich documents, the diaries of propaganda minister Goebbels, General Franz Halder, and of the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano. And he used evidence and testimony from the Nuremberg trials, and British Foreign Office reports.
But something special separates Shirer from the usual historians – he worked as a foreign correspondent in Germany from 1934 to 1940. He was there as the events unfolded and witnessed first hand the changing face of society. That is the book’s greatest strength and appeal.
The only criticism is that the Final Solution is not covered in great depth. This ‘solution’ was the systematic murder of six million Jews and other ‘undesirables’. The creation of concentration camps – such as Auschwitz and Dachau – were deliberate and cynical attempts to wipe out an entire race. It seems unusual to give these events such scant time and attention.
That said, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is the definitive account of the darkest years in the 20th century. It has received disapproval from some academic historians, who perhaps felt annoyed by its success. But many recognise Shirer’s journalistic skill in making history readable and relevant. It is a book that will be read again and again.
As Hitler’s empire and dreams lay in ruins, he committed suicide on 30 April 1945. With the magician’s spell broken the remnants of the Nazi Party had lost their guiding force. A week later, the war in Europe was over.
“Not every German who bought a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ necessarily read it. I have heard many a Nazi stalwart complain that it was hard going and not a few admit – in private – that they were never able to get through to the end of its 782 turgid pages. But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there still was time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.”
