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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
Throwing in the towel for now. I started reading this for the first time since college before a personal hardship, and with the world as it is I can no longer pretend that I can pay any close attention to this subject right now.
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Antisemitism, Mass/school shootings, Suicide attempt, Murder, War, Deportation
Moderate: Ableism, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Homophobia
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I learned A LOT, but this was not an easy read. It's incredibly long, footnote heavy, and since it was written for an audience 60+ years ago is missing a lot of context. I had trouble keeping people straight and often didn't know who they were when they were first introduced. Sometimes this was cleared up and sometimes it wasn't. Expect to do some extra work if you're reading it today.
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
tense
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
slow-paced
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
This is the first history of WWII book that I've read so I can't really compare it to anything. One of the first things about this book, as the title suggests it only focuses on the Third Reich. Other countries are introduced only as the pertain to Nazi Germany (so for example stuff like the bombing of Hiroshima are completely absent), so I'll have to get a more complete WWII book after this. At 1200 pages though, I'm not sure it would be worthwhile to expand the scope of this book.
The book itself it is excellent. Shirer is a journalist and not a historian, I've seen some complaints from historians about some of his conclusions, but he was a journalist living in Germany during the Third Reich so you gain some personal insight and he also writes very well and is entertaining (something you might not get with a true historian). Shirer covers from Hitler's birth (born Adolf Schicklgruber), childhood, to his rise to power. One thing which was surprising to me is just how much aggression Hitler got away with before the Allies finally declared war.
As I read this, I sort of had mixed feelings about Hitler. On one hand he was a great orator, was able to unite a nation and have them follow his plans. Germany seemed powerful easily conquering nation after nation. Part of me kind of respected them and their might, although Hitler got a little overconfident which finally lead to his and his nation's downfall. On the other hand, one looks and sees Hitler as a maniacal dictator, the Nazi terrorized anyone who stood in their way, but those things were nothing compared to his final solution. Millions of innocent people were systematically murdered and in the end The Third Reich goes down as having preformed some of the worst atrocities mankind has known. When I think for a second on those facts, any respect I barely started to have for Hitler is quickly lost and in the end, Hitler is mostly remembered as one of the most vile people to have ever lived.
The book itself it is excellent. Shirer is a journalist and not a historian, I've seen some complaints from historians about some of his conclusions, but he was a journalist living in Germany during the Third Reich so you gain some personal insight and he also writes very well and is entertaining (something you might not get with a true historian). Shirer covers from Hitler's birth (born Adolf Schicklgruber), childhood, to his rise to power. One thing which was surprising to me is just how much aggression Hitler got away with before the Allies finally declared war.
As I read this, I sort of had mixed feelings about Hitler. On one hand he was a great orator, was able to unite a nation and have them follow his plans. Germany seemed powerful easily conquering nation after nation. Part of me kind of respected them and their might, although Hitler got a little overconfident which finally lead to his and his nation's downfall. On the other hand, one looks and sees Hitler as a maniacal dictator, the Nazi terrorized anyone who stood in their way, but those things were nothing compared to his final solution. Millions of innocent people were systematically murdered and in the end The Third Reich goes down as having preformed some of the worst atrocities mankind has known. When I think for a second on those facts, any respect I barely started to have for Hitler is quickly lost and in the end, Hitler is mostly remembered as one of the most vile people to have ever lived.