The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is Shirer's comprehensive historical interpretation of the Nazi era, positing that German history logically proceeded from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler;[3][lower-alpha 1] and 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.[4][5][6] The author 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."[7] This reportorial perspective, the Sonderweg (special path or unique course) interpretation of German history, was then common in American scholarship. Yet, despite extensive footnotes and references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism to be flawed.[8] The book also includes (identified) speculation, such as the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller afterward joined the NKVD of the USSR.

The editor for the book was Joseph Barnes, a foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune, a former editor of PM, another New York newspaper, and a former speechwriter for Wendell Willkie. Barnes was an old friend of Shirer. The manuscript was very late and Simon & Schuster threatened to cancel the contract several times; each time Barnes would win a reprieve for Shirer. The original title of the book was Hitler's Nightmare Empire with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as the sub-title. The title and cover had already been sent out in catalogs when Robert Gottlieb decided that both title and cover had to go. Nina Bourne decided that they should use the sub-title as the title and art director Frank Metz designed the black jacket bearing the swastika. Initially bookstores across the country protested displaying the swastika and threatened not to stock the book. The controversy soon blew over and the cover shipped with the symbol.[9]

In the U.S., where it was published on October 17, 1960, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich sold more than one million hardcover copies, two-thirds via the Book of the Month Club, and more than one million paperback copies. It won the 1961 National Book Award for Nonfiction[2] and the Carey–Thomas Award for non-fiction.[10] In 1962, the Reader's Digest magazine serialization reached some 12 million additional readers.[11][12] In a New York Times Book Review, Hugh Trevor-Roper praised it as "a splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions."[13] The book sold well in Britain, France, Italy,[14] and in West Germany, because of its international recognition, bolstered by German editorial attacks.[15]

Both its recognition by journalists as a great history book and its popular success surprised Shirer[16] as the publisher commissioned a first printing of merely 12,500 copies. More than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, neither Shirer nor the publisher anticipated much popular interest in Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) or Nazi Germany (1933–45).

Whereas nearly all American journalists praised the book, scholars were split. Some acknowledged Shirer's achievement but some condemned it.[10] The harshest criticism came from those who disagreed with the Sonderweg or "Luther to Hitler" thesis. In West Germany, the Sonderweg interpretation was almost universally rejected in favor of the view that Nazism was simply one instance of totalitarianism that arose in various countries. Gavriel Rosenfeld asserted in 1994 that Rise and Fall was unanimously condemned by German historians in the 1960s, and considered dangerous to relations between America and West Germany, as it might inflame anti-German sentiments in the United States.[17]

Klaus Epstein listed what he contended were "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period.[16]

Elizabeth Wiskemann concluded in a review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual... which will certainly prove useful."[18]

35 years after the book's publication, LGBT activist Peter Tatchell criticized Shirer's attitude toward homosexuality, which he repeatedly describes as a perversion, and called for revisions to be made to the book's language and for mention to be made of the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.[19] In the philosopher Jon Stewart's anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (1996), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is listed as a work that has propagated "myths" about the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.[20]

In 2004 the historian Richard J. Evans, author of The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008), conceded that Rise and Fall is a "readable general history of Nazi Germany" and that "there are good reasons for [its] success." Evans contended that Shirer worked outside the academic mainstream and that Shirer's account was not informed by the historical scholarship of the time.[21]

A television adaptation was broadcast in the United States on the ABC television network in 1968, consisting of a one-hour episode aired each night over three nights.

The book has been reprinted many times (but not updated) since it was published in 1960. The 1990 edition contained an afterword whereby Shirer gave a brief discourse on how his book was received when it was initially published and the future for Germany during German reunification in the atomic age. Current in-print editions are:

• ISBN 0-671-72868-7 (Simon & Schuster, US, 1990 paperback)
• ISBN 0-09-942176-3 (Arrow Books, UK, 1990 paperback)
• Folio Society edition (2004 hardback)
• ISBN 84-7069-368-9 (Grupo Océano, 1987 SP, hardcover)

There is also an audiobook version, released in 2010 by Blackstone Audio and read by Grover Gardner.

• Berlin Diary
• List of books by or about Adolf Hitler
• The Collapse of the Third Republic, also by Shirer
• List of Holocaust films

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Epstein, Klaus. The Review of Politics, Vol. 23, No. 2 (April 1961). "Shirer's History of Nazi Germany."
• Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich (2004) Penguin Press HC. ISBN 1-59420-004-1
• Johnson, Lonnie Rf. Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors and Friends (2001) Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-514826-6
• Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. (1995). "The Reception of William L. Shirer's the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in the United States and West Germany, 1960–62" (PDF). Journal of Contemporary History. 29 (1): 95–128. doi:10.1177/002200949402900104.
• Shanahan, William O. ([https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEEDB1730F932A25751C1A966958260 Obituary) The American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 1. (October 1962).
• Siemon Netto, Uwe. The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and Other Modern Myths (2007) Concordia Publishing House. ISBN 0-7586-0855-1
• Wiskemann, Elizabeth. International Affairs, Vol. 37, No. 2. (April 1961)

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