The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Cover of the first edition
Author	William L. Shirer
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Nazi Germany
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1960
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	1,245
ISBN	(1990 paperback)
OCLC	22888118

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by William L. Shirer chronicling the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in 1945. It was first published in 1960, by Simon & Schuster in the United States, where it won a National Book Award. 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. But the reception from academic historians was mixed, perhaps because Shirer was a journalist rather than an historian and recounted the history of The Third Reich in a journalistic style.

Rise and Fall is based upon captured Nazi documents, the available diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, 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 six years reporting on Nazi Germany for newspapers, the United Press International (UPI), and CBS Radio —terminated by Nazi Party censorship in 1940.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a comprehensive historical interpretation 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 of totalitarianism as an ideology that was internationally fashionable in the 1930s. Author William L. Shirer 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." This reportorial perspective, the Sonderweg interpretation of German history (special path or unique course), was then common in American scholarship. Yet, despite extensive footnotes and references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism to be flawed. The book also includes (identified) speculation, such as the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller afterward joined the NKVD of the USSR.