Aaron's Reviews > The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Comprehensively researched and exhaustively cited for its time, The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich by William L Shirer creates an engaging narrative of the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. The story follows the personal actions by Hitler and his elite clique of party members from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles to the burnt out bunker beneath the Chancellory. The principal weakness of this book are two-fold. The most glaring is the contempt Shirer seems to hold for the German people for going along with the Nazi Party. He often describes them as easily manipulated and predisposed for bloodshed on the European continent. He does not take into account the devastating affect WW1 had on the German people or that fascism and bolshevism sprang up from the political/economic disenfranchisement after the war. Second is Shirer projecting his world-view on the narrative. He describes the rise of the Nazis beginning with degenerates such as criminals, pedophiles, homosexuals and pornographers. Shirer further projects his 1950 protestant nuclear-family world view in describing various victims of the Nazi regime in differing terms of injustice. For these reasons, I give Shirer comprehensive work on the Third Reich for its incredibly depth and weaving of narrative only slightly marred by the encroachment of his personal views on right & wrong.