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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
Still the definitive story of 1933-1945 in Europe, based on original sources (private and official documents from German citizens and Nazi and Italian leaders) and the author's own eyewitness account as a journalist and war correspondent.
Thorough and well-written, Shirer keeps a readable pace with enough nuance to allow complicated events and gruesome details to sink in.
If there is a weakness, it is Shirer's propagation of the caricature of the German people as a proud, militaristic, nationalistic group who were low-hanging fruit for a megalomaniacal Hitler. This is a persistent feature in so much interpretation of the time period, but it glosses over the global tendency to place our hope in human leadership to give us power and secure our wealth and peace. Weimar Germany provided a perfect incubator for this, it is true, but at least one enduring lesson of the Third Reich is the danger of placing such unalloyed trust in a man or his government. The führerprinzip is a temptation such as is common to man, and we would be fools to think it died with Hitler in 1945.
Thorough and well-written, Shirer keeps a readable pace with enough nuance to allow complicated events and gruesome details to sink in.
If there is a weakness, it is Shirer's propagation of the caricature of the German people as a proud, militaristic, nationalistic group who were low-hanging fruit for a megalomaniacal Hitler. This is a persistent feature in so much interpretation of the time period, but it glosses over the global tendency to place our hope in human leadership to give us power and secure our wealth and peace. Weimar Germany provided a perfect incubator for this, it is true, but at least one enduring lesson of the Third Reich is the danger of placing such unalloyed trust in a man or his government. The führerprinzip is a temptation such as is common to man, and we would be fools to think it died with Hitler in 1945.
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Cheating a bit, since I didn't actually finish this. But I read over half of it and wanted to graduate up to more recent scholarship on Nazism, so I'll leave it there. Shirer can be frustrating in his focus on high politics and some deeply out-dated views, but I still find good absorbing and informative.
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
As it was written in 1960 it does have some offensive words but other than that very informative just took forever to finish lol
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Classism
I read this in 9th grade A.P. English because it was like exactly the number of pages (over 1000) needed for the term to fulfill my reading requirements. Don't ask me to tell you much what was in it though.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced