The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

This was the choice of our Bancroft 2.0 history book club and this was my fourth (maybe even fifth) and definitely last reading of this classic. It is a great, but not perfect book. Shire could have saved a hundred or more pages by editing his treatment of the political intrigues that preceded Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 and the attempted coups in the last year of the war. But the writing is truly incredible, long, lucid, passionate sentences that almost demand being read out lead. And his historical judgments, although made very soon after the fact, are sound. It is impossible not to see the parallels to our recent politics and today Russia has invaded Ukraine. One cannot help but feel that here we go again. show more The long chapter, The New Order, is in my opinion the best (and most nightmarish) indictment I have ever read and I wish it were on a universal required reading list. It is hard to get one’s head around the cruelty and inhumanity of the leaders of the Third Reich, but I have not the slightest doubt that it could all happen again and it could happen here. show less

You know the story ... or, like me, you *think* you do. And then you get around to taking on this cube of a book. To call it "compulsively readable" is cheap but fairly accurate. Shirer isn't exactly a prose stylist, but he doesn't need to be to tell this story.

As others have pointed out, there are some ... attitudes that, had Shirer been a member of a different generation, he might have edited out. Homosexuality is the most obvious of these. But I'm old enough and have read enough to take the book as it is, and value what it provides.

You get ... well, how it all happened, in stunning detail. It is not boring.

This book is causing me to have a lot of thoughts. Thoughts about
- Effectiveness
- Deception - how easily people are deceived
- How the wicked sew confusion and misunderstanding
- How a person can be an evil genius

“Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave;”
(Joseph Smith History, endnote)

Parallels between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump
1. Bully, demean, throw temper tantrums
2. Instill a hatred in the people as a means of rising to and gaining more power
3. In negotiations change your stand without any compunction - show more be wildly inconsistent
4. Lie repeatedly, regardless of how blatant it is — Sycophants repeat the blatant lies
5. Obfuscate — to encourage their followers and deceive others
6. Throw friends under the bus when the sycophants are no longer useful

I see some historical similarities. In chronological order:
Hitler: I will make Germany great again.
Trump: I will make America great again
Putin: I will make Russia great again.

And from the Afterword:
“This book had a surprising reception. No one—not my publisher, my editor, my agent, my friends—believed that the public would buy a book so long,”
“And though the academic historians, on the whole, were cool to the book and to me (as if I were a usurper with no right to invade their field—to write good history, they said, you had to teach it), there were notable exceptions.”
“In Germany, to put it mildly, the book did not fare very well with the reviewers. The Germans simply could not face up to their past.”
“Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present.” show less

Clocking out at more than 1,200 pages this book is everything but for the faint-hearted! Yet, recounting first the birth of the Nazi party and its rise under the Republic of Weimar, before then launching into a retelling of WWII and the collapse of a regime that aimed to last at least a millennium, the sheer scope of its approaches makes it a absolute must-read for anyone wanting to try and comprehend what the hell happened to Germany at that time. The fact that the author was there all along makes it even more insightful, or, at least, fascinatingly gripping.

It has often been reproached to Shirer that he was not an historian but a journalist, and so that his work could lack in certain academic standard. His adherence to the Sonderweg show more theory, for instance, has especially been hurled at him more than once for supposedly reflecting a poor understanding of German history, besides being, or so you could claim, 'prejudiced' somehow against German people overall. This last point, I must say, may have been true to a point. After all, comparing the trajectory and fate of fascism in Italy to that of Nazism in Germany, Shirer had no qualm referring to the Italians as being a more 'civilized' and sensible people than the Germans, hence why fascistic ideals were never quite fully embraced by the population at large in one country as opposed to the other. His scathing judgement, here, surely was terribly unfair to the Germans considering, not only that Hitler never managed to obtain a clear majority even during chaotic elections in a society on the brink of collapse, but, also, that despite the brutality of his terroristic regime which had silenced any opposition, right up to the end of the war pockets of resistance could still nevertheless be found to be active. And yet...

And yet, despite its personal views and flaws perhaps, the issue remains that to be a professional historian is certainly no guarantee of being immune to misinterpretations and/ or subjective judgements and opinions either, anymore than not being an historian makes one, de facto, less of an expert on a given topic. When it comes to Shirer, then, what should matter is not his professional background but his method, relying as much upon his personal experience as a reporter as upon a waste arrays of official sources, from captured Nazi documents to reports and directives, and from diaries of the people concerned to transcripts and testimonies from their trials. What emerged from all of that?

Hitler was not merely the product of WWI and, later, of the Wall Street crash. He also had been born in Austria-Hungary at a time when it went through massive crises and changes (at least for the German speaking population) and so Shirer shows how such cultural background can also help to understand him a bit better.

The Nazis, at least in the popular narrative, are often understood as being ultra-Conservatives and motivated only by anti-Semitism and war-mongering. It certainly turned out to be true over the years. Yet, as Shirer also clearly demonstrates, such trajectory was taken only because of Hitler's ultimate monopoly upon what started as a 'Workers Party' that is, a party concerned as much about nationalism and racism than it was about socialist measures. Many since have put the question forth: was the NSDAP rooted in the Right, or was it a product of the Left? The debate has often turned into a caricature, with both sides of the political spectrum refusing to reckon with their responsibilities. Nevertheless, if there is no denying that Nazism benefited 'the bourgeois' and the financiers, leaving the working classes to be exploited (e.g. trade unions had been mercilessly eradicated; and if employment rates were high, incomes were everything but...) there is no denying either that among their original '25 Points' many were strikingly Communist in intent. And indeed, the likes of Strasser, Goebbels, and Rohm could not only be called 'leftists' in many respect (no matter how counter-intuitive), but they made no qualm about having wanted to push for a 'second revolution' too once power had been gained. This, here, are very important ideological acknowledging; for, if anything, they point to the complexities (and so anomalies) of what Nazism truly entailed, a ragtag of people as much as it was a ragtag of ideas, and which made it not only a bizarre bastard offshoot of even fascism itself but contributed to its widespread success as well.

The chapters dedicated to the war are, or so I personally found, less challenging. It has become a trope that Germany lost the war mostly because Hitler ultimately side lined his own commanding officers to, incompetently, take charge. The disaster of the Russian campaign, and his utter failure in seeing the crucial importance of the Middle East and of the North African fronts, surely justify such views; and so Shirer walks such perspective too. Nevertheless, these are points made only insofar as one assesses the ending years of the war. As the author also rightly points, Hitler might have been an incompetent military commander, but in the late 1930s he had been a formidable gambler and here was a tactic that would have consequences. When it comes to the army and its leadership indeed, the then apathy, complacency, let alone sheer naivety of the Allies (France and Britain especially) had made it not only possible for him to put his militaristic plans in action, but contributed to further give him credibility at the top levels of an institution where, here again, opponents would end up discarded with not much complaint otherwise (e.g. the fates of Blomberg and Fritsch).

What about the Sonderweg theory? I confess: I haven't read Fichte, I haven't read Hegel, I haven't read Treitschke, and my understanding of Nietzsche is very limited. I for one, then, cannot comment upon his interpreting of their works to serve the argument that Germany's history and zeitgeist then was geared towards allowing such monstrosity as Nazism to take root. My ignorance, though, didn't prevent me to appreciate the arguments put forth by the author. No matter the bureaucratic chaos that was the Nazi regime (a monstrous centralised State yet preyed upon by constant, intestine political intrigues, completely confused and disorganized overlapping institutions, and that could have sustained itself only through terroristic violence) Germany did end up as a strongly militaristic State, where martial virtues were celebrated, the belief in a master race more widely accepted than one would like to admit (although propaganda and the brainwashing of a whole generation had a lot to do with it, something that the author seems to downplay at time), and were totalitarianism had been, indeed, more successful (and brutal) than elsewhere. Relevant or not, the mere fact that Nazism was, in fact, a anomaly even when assessed as per fascistic standards, render the period extremely complicated to fully understand anyway!

All in all, then, this is a massive, massive opus that will challenge many a preconception. It is, however, a must-read. Ideologies which are self-contradictory, downright absurd, and peddled by ignorant people having more charisma than intellect abound, and they surely are easy to ridicule, dismiss, and/ or ignore. What Nazism can teach us, though, is what no matter how marginal many toxic trends can be, it can take only a few sparks for them to emblaze a whole society... and become dangerously mainstream. Far more concerning is how such demagogueries and crass populisms can be fully served by otherwise complacent politicians. The chaos of the German elections in the early 1930s, for example, and the incompetence of self-interested political leaders far more concerned about their petty careers than the common good (at a time when the Republic was in dire crisis) should be a warning: public office come with responsibilities, it also demands accountability. Nazism, surely, imposed and sustained itself through relentless propaganda and violence. Nevertheless, if divisive ideologies are mere ideas floating in the air, what makes them potent (and dangerous) is how we, all of us, ultimately face them. It might be long gone the time of the brown shirts parading in the streets, wearing Swastika armbands and indulging in thuggish violence (although, the attacking of democratic institutions, while wearing regalia and following the call of populist, has recently been seen elsewhere...). What will never go away, though, is ignorance, hatred, bigotry, intolerance, even, pseudo-science to back it all up, served by 'saviours' who know just the right scapegoats to target. Be warned. show less

I began reading this tome last year as many began to compare then-candidate Donald Trump to Hitler and referred to him as a Facist. My goal was to understand the parallels and contrasts between the two men.

First, regarding the book itself: it's a terrific detailed account from someone who lived in Nazi Germany and referenced an enormous amount of historical records to produce this work. It was long, and yes occasionally it was a grind, and it was well worth the time to read. Some of it even feels a bit rushed, like there's more to dig into, but then how do you tell the tale of one of the most important events in the history of the Western world from Hitler's youth to the Reich's end in a form that at least approaches a digestible show more length?

And now, a few words about the comparisons to Donald Trump. The Nazi war machine and its successes at world domination, as well as the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the party and the German people are well out of the reach for comparisons (for now anyway). The sheer level of brutality and devastation leveled by Hitler's Reich stand out as something we need to remember is part of the reason (or maybe the entire reason) why Nazi Germany is so reviled by the World's population. There is no comparison to that in America at this time; we're not at that level.

However, there are several concerning and fair comparisons that can be made between the Nazi leader and the man who is now America's president. One is their intense level of egomania. When Hitler was about to attack Russia and attempted to drive into Moscow, Shirer writes, "... the one-time Vienna waif regarded himself the greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. Egomania, that fatal disease of all conquerors, was taking hold." Trump's outlandish self-centered narcissism boils to a level of egomania unseen at the top of American politics perhaps ever, especially when he tells crowds, "I alone can fix this" and spews his self-aggrandizing midnight tweets.

Shirer also references Hitler's "violent nature following its momentary impulses," and we are all now watching a man driven perhaps entirely by impulse of a violent nature wield the highest power in our republic. Also, both men thrived and came to power by harnessing nationalist and racist emotions in a population that felt it had once been great and was now bitter about the way the rest of the world was treating it.

And lastly, I'm particularly concerned by the stark parallels between Goebbels' propaganda ministry and the Trump team's disregard for truth and facts, preferring instead to spread "Alternative Facts" as Kellyanne Conway put it a few weeks back. In this book, Shirer writes about the headline of a daily paper he bought on a train during the run-up to Hitler's invasion of Poland: "'WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG - UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCHMADNESS!' You ask: But the German people can't possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do." The countless lies of Trump the candidate and now Trump the president, and the parroting of these lies by not only his surrogates but average American people, is quite frankly terrifying when compared to the Nazi aptitude for twisting or utterly replacing the truth with what one might call "Alternative Facts."

I hear sales of George Orwell's 1984 are on the rise. For those with the time and patience at this moment in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich should also be on their list. show less

I've read several books about certain aspects of WWII, but this is the first complete history of Nazi Germany I've ever read. I found it immensely helpful to just have the whole sordid plot laid out in one place from beginning to end. This book delves into the details of the politics, philosophy, and odd turns of fate that resulted in Hitler rising to power.

It is written by a journalist who was actually there in Germany for many of the key events. The author has also done a massive survey of the primary resources created by the Nazi government itself. The narrative is peppered with direct quotes, telegrams, excerpts from secret directives, and even diary entries from some of the key players. The is an absolute wealth of firsthand show more accounts that make the disturbing events so much more personal and urgent.

One truly gets the sense of the nightmare world that descends on the German people. Of course many of them supported Hitler, but many were lied to or simply terrorized into inaction. One of the things that came home to me was how much EVERYONE didn't want a war. WWI was still fresh in the minds of all people. Hitler himself didn't want a war, he just thought he could bluff his way through conquest without really fighting. Everyone was so desperate to avoid war and so self-deluded about the nature of the Nazi schemes.

This was a brutal account that was difficult to read at times as it recounted the senseless loss of life and the complete futility of the entire war. A great crime and a horrific tragedy. A very good place to start with an understanding of the conflict as a whole - as told with a German focus. show less

The thousand year reich. More like the 10,000 book reich. One of the best single volume histories of the nightmare that was Nazi Germany.

One of the amazing things about this book and most good books about the Third Reich is that if it hadn't actually happened people would consider this a ludicrous piece of fiction. Modern people could not be so goofy, suckered, hateful, self-centered, evil. No real society would let this sort of thing happen. The writer would be laughed off the face of the earth. The fact that it did happen makes so many more possible and actual horrors tangibly real and not just silly fancy. That is the fascination: that the horror can actually happen, so much scarier than all horror writing. Just another sunny summer show more day in Upper Silesia wandering off to the delousing showers... show less