The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Shirer, William L. by Shirer, William L.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Shirer, William L. by Shirer, William L.
In Slipcase
Softcover
ISBN 9780330700016 / 0330700014
Publisher: Pan Books , 1973 Ninth Printing
Condition:
Book- Good-This book is in very good condition. The wraps have some very slight/limited signs of wear and a slight curl to the corners and the book block is slightly dusty. The book’s pages have very slight tanning on the first page edges but are overall clean, intact and the spine remains in perfect undamaged condition. This book has been well maintained and looked after thus far.
Slipcase -Poor-Corner and edge related wear.
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.
Content and themes
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a comprehensive historical synthesis of the Nazi era, positing that German history logically proceeded from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler that Hitler’s ascension to power was an expression of German national character, not an expression of the totalitarianism in ideologic vogue during the 1930s. Author William L. Shirer summarised his perspective thus: “. . . the course of German history . . . made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man, and put a premium on servility.” This reportorial perspective, the Sonderweg (Special path) thesis of German history, was then common to American scholarship, yet, despite extensive footnotes and references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism flawed. Moreover, the history also includes (identified) speculation, such as a the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller, afterwards joined the NKVD of the USSR.
