The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany - Paperback

The Third Reich documented itself, and William L. Shirer spent five years reading the wreckage of that paper trail to write this history.

He had been in Berlin as a correspondent since the twenties. The book is what happens when a witness gets handed the files afterwards.

Why it still matters

Unconditional surrender meant the regime never got to burn its files. What survived is enormous: sworn testimony, private diaries, minutes from closed meetings, orders sent down the chain, letters home. Shirer went through it.

Good to know

This is the fiftieth anniversary paperback with an introduction by Ron Rosenbaum. It is long, and readers say so cheerfully, one describing it as a two year project they were glad to finish.

From the publisher

"One of the most important works of history of our time." --The New York Times The fiftieth anniversary edition of the National Book Award-winning bestseller that is the definitive study of Adolf Hitler, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II.

This special edition features a new introduction by Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and How the End Begins. 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.

Here is the complete story of Hitler's empire, one of the most important stories ever told, written by one of the men best equipped to write it. This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.