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Jan-Maat's Reviews > The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
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The great strength of this book is that it was written by a journalist. There is a simple narrative and clear prose. Best of all in a couple of places at least he draws upon his own experiences (for example a conversation with a German General during the re-militarisation of the Rhineland and seeing German troops and English prisoners of war during the invasion of France in 1940 (Shirer had been a journalist based in France from 1925 and in Germany from 1934).
Equally the great weakness of this book is that it was written by a journalist. There's no subtly, while its clarity and certainty mask the fact that it is dated now (view spoiler)- research has moved much further on. To pick up on a few points the book is from memory relatively weak on the Holocaust, you don't get any sense of the polycentralism and factionalism of the fascist government. Shirer traces a long view or perhaps more aptly a Sonderweg from roughly Luther to the Third Reich, when, on the whole, taking a broader view of Northern and Central Europe much of what is exceptional in the German political context seems to come from the conduct of political life during the Second Empire from 1871. Shirer though, having found his story, sticks to it in the process creating a mirror image of the kind of history that political extremists on the far right themselves liked to create. In other words for Shirer Nazism in Germany was an accident always waiting to happen, this is a very comforting and simple argument which has the huge advantage of absolving everyone else, the problem with it, is that it makes explaining both the post war and pre-Nazi periods much more complicated.
Read it for enjoyment as a one volume, pacy narrative, but don't regard it as the definitive word on the subject.
Equally the great weakness of this book is that it was written by a journalist. There's no subtly, while its clarity and certainty mask the fact that it is dated now (view spoiler)- research has moved much further on. To pick up on a few points the book is from memory relatively weak on the Holocaust, you don't get any sense of the polycentralism and factionalism of the fascist government. Shirer traces a long view or perhaps more aptly a Sonderweg from roughly Luther to the Third Reich, when, on the whole, taking a broader view of Northern and Central Europe much of what is exceptional in the German political context seems to come from the conduct of political life during the Second Empire from 1871. Shirer though, having found his story, sticks to it in the process creating a mirror image of the kind of history that political extremists on the far right themselves liked to create. In other words for Shirer Nazism in Germany was an accident always waiting to happen, this is a very comforting and simple argument which has the huge advantage of absolving everyone else, the problem with it, is that it makes explaining both the post war and pre-Nazi periods much more complicated.
Read it for enjoyment as a one volume, pacy narrative, but don't regard it as the definitive word on the subject.
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Finished Reading
June 13, 2011
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Lyn
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rated it 5 stars
Jul 16, 2019 01:07AM
I read this in the 60s, so long ago now that I couldn’t possibly write about it, but I do recall it as part of my early learning about European history. Your comment about the second Empire is interesting, reminds me I still need to read in that period.
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Lyn wrote: "I read this in the 60s, so long ago now that I couldn’t possibly write about it, but I do recall it as part of my early learning about European history. Your comment about the second Empire is inte..."I think the 2nd empire was key a period of official discrimination towards minority groups, coupled with an ideology of inferiority and resentment towards other countries, popular mobilisation for nationalists causes - the use of popular mobilisation to shift national politics towards seizing colonies and building a war fleet, idealisation of major political figures, marriage between finance, industry and politics, ideologies of militarism and aristocracy...
