Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200326 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 640 pages

Synopsis
A precurser to the author's best-selling The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich describes the harrowing Nazi rise to power in Germany during the second half of the 1930s and profiles Hitler's complex personality.

Customer Reviews

Incredibly prescient
As an example of you-are-there journalism, Shirer's work is as good as it gets, and that's why Columbia University ranked it as one of the century's top 100 works of reportage recently. But Shirer, writing before the U.S. even entered the war, shows himself to be an incredibly prescient analyst of why Hitler decided against invading Britain, for example, as well as how the German-Russian alliance would end and how the U.S. would get involved in the war. All around, this is an excellent book. After finishing it this past weekend, I wanted to drop Shirer a note to say how much I enjoyed it; unfortunately, he died in 1993. All journalists should read this book.

book worth reading
I liked this book. The conflicting reviews caused me to read it. I wanted to judge the work for myself. I am sure that Mr. Shirer has embellished his deeds in the reworking, and some of it comes off like allied propaganda of the day. I think you can learn a great deal from actual accounts of what people thought and felt at the time. He makes some unflattering generalizations about the German people as a whole but he lived the frustration the time. I think that holding this book up as a book to be taught in history class is a mistake. Everyone has a window on the World and Mr. Shirer is letting us know what he saw from his. He does point out some British newscast that did not jive with what he saw. I enjoyed the book and would recommend this book.

A Great Companion Piece to "THE RISE AND FALL ..."
Mr Shirer can truly make you feel like you're in Europe in the 30's. He has a knack for balancing his emotions and his objectivity (more so in "The Rise and Fall...") without detracting from the excitement of the events at hand. It's certainly not cliche to say that his books are hard to put down.