![]() Cover of the first edition | |
Author | William L. Shirer |
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Language | English |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | October 17, 1960 [1] |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
Pages | 1,249 |
Awards | National Book Award for Non-Fiction |
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It was first published in 1960 by Simon & Schuster in the United States. It was a bestseller in both the United States and Europe, and a critical success outside Germany; in Germany, criticism of the book stimulated sales. The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award for non-fiction, [2] but the reception from academic historians was mixed.
The book is based upon captured Nazi documents, the available diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, of General Franz Halder, and of the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, evidence and testimony from the Nuremberg trials, British Foreign Office reports, and the author's recollection of his six years in Germany (from 1934 to 1940) as a journalist, reporting on Nazi Germany for newspapers, the United Press International (UPI), and CBS Radio. The work was written and initially published in four parts, but a larger one-volume edition has become more common.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is Shirer's comprehensive historical interpretation of the Nazi era, positing that German history logically proceeded from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler; [3] [lower-alpha 1] [ page needed ] and that Hitler's accession to power was an expression of German national character, not of totalitarianism as an ideology that was internationally fashionable in the 1930s. [4] [5] [6] The author summarised his perspective: "[T]he course of German history ... made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man, and put a premium on servility." [7] This Sonderweg (special path or unique course) interpretation of German history, was then common in American scholarship. Yet, despite extensive references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism to be flawed. [8] The book also includes (identified) speculation, such as the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller afterward joined the NKVD of the USSR.
The editor for the book was Joseph Barnes, a foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune , a former editor of PM , another New York newspaper, and a former speechwriter for Wendell Willkie. Barnes was an old friend of Shirer. The manuscript was very late and Simon & Schuster threatened to cancel the contract several times; each time Barnes would win a reprieve for Shirer. The book took more than five years to write, and Shirer ran out of money long before it was completed. Frank Altschul's family project, the Overbrook Foundation, came to the rescue in the summer of 1958, when Shirer was "flat broke" and desperate. At the recommendation of Hamilton Fish Armstrong the Overbrook Foundation advanced immediately to Shirer $5,000 ($52,500 in 2024 dollars) and promised another $5,000 six months later, enabling Shirer to finish his monumental book. In the third volume of his autobiography, Shirer wrote: "This saved my life and my book . . . and I settled back to fourteen hours a day of writing." [9]
The original title of the book was Hitler's Nightmare Empire with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as the sub-title. The title and cover had already been sent out in catalogs when Robert Gottlieb decided that both title and cover had to be changed. He also chose to publish the book as a single volume rather than two as originally planned. [10] : 81–82 Nina Bourne decided that they should use the sub-title as the title and art director Frank Metz designed the black jacket bearing the swastika. Initially bookstores across the country protested displaying the swastika and threatened not to stock the book. The controversy soon blew over and the cover shipped with the symbol. [11] [ page needed ]
In the U.S., where it was published on October 17, 1960, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich sold more than one million hardcover copies, two-thirds via the Book of the Month Club, and more than one million paperback copies. In 1961, Simon & Schuster sold the paperback rights to Fawcett Publications for $400,000 (equivalent to $4.08 million in 2023). [10] : 82 It won the 1961 National Book Award for Nonfiction [2] and the Carey–Thomas Award for non-fiction. [12] In 1962, the Reader's Digest magazine serialization reached some 12 million additional readers. [13] [14] In a New York Times Book Review , Hugh Trevor-Roper praised it as "a splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions." [15] The book sold well in Britain, France, Italy, [16] and in West Germany, because of its international recognition, bolstered by German editorial attacks. [17]
Both its recognition by journalists as a great history book and its popular success surprised Shirer, [18] as the publisher had commissioned a first printing of merely 12,500 copies. More than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, neither Shirer nor the publisher had anticipated much popular interest in Adolf Hitler or in Nazi Germany.
Nearly all journalists praised the book. Many scholars acknowledged Shirer's achievement but some condemned it. [12] The harshest criticism came from those who disagreed with the Sonderweg or "Luther to Hitler" thesis. In West Germany, the Sonderweg interpretation was almost universally rejected in favor of the view that Nazism was simply one instance of totalitarianism that arose in various countries. Gavriel Rosenfeld asserted in 1994 that Rise and Fall was unanimously condemned by German historians in the 1960s, and considered dangerous to relations between America and West Germany, as it might inflame anti-German sentiments in the United States. [19]
Klaus Epstein listed what he contended were "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period. [18]
Elizabeth Wiskemann concluded in a review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual... which will certainly prove useful." [20]
Nearly 36 years after the book's publication, LGBT activist Peter Tatchell criticized the book's treatment of the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. [21] In the philosopher Jon Stewart's anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (1996), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is listed as a work that has propagated "myths" about the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. [22]
In 2004, the historian Richard J. Evans, author of The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008), said that Rise and Fall is a "readable general history of Nazi Germany" and that "there are good reasons for [its] success." [23] However, he contended that Shirer worked outside the academic mainstream and that Shirer's account was not informed by the historical scholarship of the time. [23]
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | |
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Directed by | Jack Kaufman |
Narrated by | Richard Basehart |
Theme music composer | Lalo Schifrin |
No. of episodes | 3 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Mel Stuart |
Editors | William T. Cartwright, Nicholas Clapp, and John Soh [24] |
Production companies | David L. Wolper Productions MGM Television |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | 1968 |
A television adaptation was broadcast in the United States on the ABC television network in 1968, consisting of a one-hour episode aired each night over three nights.
The book has been reprinted many times since it was published in 1960. The 1990 edition contained an afterword whereby Shirer gave a brief discourse on how his book was received when it was initially published and the future for Germany during German reunification in the atomic age. The 2011 edition contains a new introduction by Ron Rosenbaum. Current[ when? ] in-print editions are:
There is also an audiobook version, released in 2010 by Blackstone Audio and read by Grover Gardner.
Anton Drexler was a German far-right political agitator for the Völkisch movement in the 1920s. He founded the German Workers' Party (DAP), the pan-German and anti-Semitic antecedent of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Drexler mentored his successor in the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, during his early years in politics.
The German Workers' Party was a short-lived far-right political party established in Weimar Germany after World War I. It only lasted from 5 January 1919 until 24 February 1920. The DAP was the precursor of the Nazi Party, which was officially known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
The German Labour Front was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification.
Leopold Poetsch was an Austrian history teacher. He was a high school teacher of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann. He influenced the future leader's later views, specifically German nationalism.
Karl Harrer was a German journalist and politician, one of the founding members of the German Workers' Party (DAP) in January 1919, the predecessor to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, more commonly known as the Nazi Party.
Louis Leo Snyder was an American scholar, who witnessed first hand the Nazi mass rallies held from 1923 on in Germany; and wrote about them from New York in his Hitlerism: The Iron Fist in Germany published in 1932 under the pseudonym Nordicus. Snyder predicted Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Nazi alliance with Benito Mussolini, and possibly the war upon the French and the Jews. His book was the first publication of the complete NSDAP National Socialist Program in the English language.
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian. His The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 60 years; its fiftieth anniversary was marked by a new edition of the book.
Hans Heinrich Lammers was a German jurist and prominent Nazi Party politician. From 1933 until 1945 he served as Chief of the Reich Chancellery under Adolf Hitler. In 1937, he additionally was given the post of Reichsminister in the cabinet. During the 1948–1949 Ministries Trial, Lammers was found guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in a criminal organization. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in April 1949 but this was later reduced to 10 years and he was released early.
The Fourth Reich is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas, as well as pejoratively by political opponents.
Caesar von Hofacker was a German Luftwaffe Lieutenant Colonel and member of the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler.
This bibliography of Adolf Hitler is a list of some non-fiction texts in English written about and by him. Thousands of books and other texts have been written about him, so this is far from an all-inclusive list. It has been arranged into groups to make it more manageable.
Sonderweg refers to the theory in German historiography that considers the German-speaking lands or the country of Germany itself to have followed a course from aristocracy to democracy unlike any other in Europe.
The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political career, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards traditional Christian ideals, but later abandoned them. Most historians describe his later posture as adversarial to organized Christianity and established Christian denominations. He also criticized atheism.
Karl Ernst was an SA-Gruppenführer who, from March 1933, was the SA Commander in Berlin. Prior to joining the Nazi Party, he had been a hotel bellhop and a bouncer at gay nightclubs. He was one of the chief participants in the extrajudicial execution of Albrecht Höhler. Ernst was himself extrajudicially executed in the Night of the Long Knives.
The Night of the Long Knives was a purge in which Adolf Hitler and the regime of Nazi Germany targeted members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, as well as past opponents of the party. At least 85 people were murdered in the purge, which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.
Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
The Secret Cabinet Council in Nazi Germany, also sometimes referred to as the Privy Cabinet Council, was a nine-member governmental body created on 4 February 1938. The Council was established by decree of Adolf Hitler with the purpose of advising him in the conduct of foreign policy. It was established ostensibly to be a sort of “super cabinet” of close foreign policy advisors. In reality, the Council was a paper organization without any real power and never actually met.
The Law on the Trustees of Labour was a measure enacted by the government of Nazi Germany on 19 May 1933 that established the office of Trustee of Labour to regulate labour relations in Germany. The law was repealed by the Allied Control Council Law No. 40 of 30 November 1946, effective 1 January 1947.
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