No doubt that Shirer is dated. His language is loaded, and it continues right through the end of the book. How many times do we have to hear about the fat and corrupt Goerring or megalomaniacal Hitler or the sycophantic Ribbentrop or misguided Chamberlain? It really does get to be a bit much.
And, even at 1150 pages, the book if far, far too short to do justice to the material. It felt like Shirer raced through the events, especially after the Germans overran the Maginot line and damn near captured the British at Dunkirk. Also, a lot of background knowledge is assumed as the story is told as much as possible from within the viewpoint of the Third Reich, as much as this is possible for an outsider who is not very objective. The Japanese, for instance, appear very quickly on the scene with the signing of the Tripartite Agreement and then drags Germany into war with the US with a last minute treaty coming the same day after the first major German defeat at Moscow. And where was any mention of the Yalta pact?
But Shirer has given me a firmer grasp on the order and cause of events that lead to the rise of Hitler and National Socialism. And, especially in retrospect, it all seems so nuts. How did Hitler rise from not even having a majority of seats in the Reichstag in 1933 to having full dictatorial powers just a few short months later? It was such a cynical manipulation of events and people for the Nazis to gain power and to keep it--especially with the claptrap about lebensraum and jewish conspiracies and Hitler's personal destiny to lead Germany to greatness--but the German people bought into it. They were willing to trade civil and individual liberties away for prosperity.
Shirer makes it clear that the Germany professional army corps shoulders a lot of tehe blame. While political institutions borke down under the stress of economic conditions in post WWI Germany, the army was still able to maintain control, especially over the politics of the time, as needed. (Can't help but see parallels with the riots in Egypt right now) But the army seemed to blithely and willingly concede to Hitler's initiatives until it was too late to control his rise to power. Finally, the officers' corp was unwilling to break the oaths of personal loyalty that they took to Hitler, rather than the state, shortly after he declare martial law. None of them had to the balls to stand up for what they thought was right at the time that it mattered. And the assassination attempts that were made read more like comedies of errors than like real events.
Hitler damn near came close to pulling it off--his domination of Europe and eventually the world--losing in the end to a couple of his own misguided decisions--to break off the Battle of Britain prematurely when the Germans had the RAF on the ropes, and the decision to delay Operation Barbarossa for six weeks to exact revenge on the Yugoslavs.
In all, it really is such a sad tale of human nature and human history gone wrong, and that's the way that Shirer tells the tale. His book may not be the most straightforward or objective account of the Third Reich, but it did a good job of pulling it all together for me in a single narrative line and giving me a better grasp on the events.
Author: Shirer, William
Date Published: 1960
Length: 1147 pp & 57 hr 14 min
print & audio
Narrator: Gardner, Grover
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