The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer

The 1976 Pan paperback edition (the 11th edition since its first release in 1959) was one of my mother's books. Coming in at a whopping 1432 pages, it is a monumental work and normally regarded as the most authoritative work on the Third Reich. I got about 1/3 of the way through it years ago, but bit the bullet and have just finished it as of late November 1917. 

To summarise:

Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.

No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading.

Some bits dragged. The week leading up to the outbreak of war seemed to last forever. The botched attempts to assassinate Hitler are also drawn out. But that being said, Shirer has produced a generally rivetting account of the Reich. It is no wonder the book was never popular in post-war Germany - it cuts to the truth of the story. Who can understand why such a cultured people as the Germans could have gone along with the awful extremes of this evil regime. People like Shirer can document it but can we really ever understand the Why.

If your aim is to read one huge classic each year, then this is a good one to start with. What next - perhaps War and Piece!