Take a photo of a barcode or cover
actually_juliette 's review for:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
by William L. Shirer
I read this book because I wanted to learn more about the Second World War. A friend mentioned that he’d read it, and, like me, he was not impressed.
I decided to try to read it and judge for myself.
The problem is Shirer.
He is himself a bigot. In the early quarter of the book, Shirer is obsessed with the sex lives of the Nazis. He writes phrases like “notorious homosexual perverts” (page 176) — he does not write with such venom when he writes of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is only discussed in Chapter 27. Shirer writes sympathetically about Paulus at Stalingrad and even Hitler’s suicide. However, his tone when he described the victims of the Holocaust was callous, as if he considered them objects. I began to hate the book when Shirer quoted the (I’m not even sure what the correct word is here) the conclusions of the sadistic tests that the Nazis subjected people to. Doing so served no purpose but to further exploit the victims.
Shirer’s writing style is clunky and burdened with clauses. I found myself re-reading sentences to strike out the clauses to learn what he meant to say.
I did not read the majority of the footnotes, and I skimmed the self-congratulatory afterward.
I decided to try to read it and judge for myself.
The problem is Shirer.
He is himself a bigot. In the early quarter of the book, Shirer is obsessed with the sex lives of the Nazis. He writes phrases like “notorious homosexual perverts” (page 176) — he does not write with such venom when he writes of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is only discussed in Chapter 27. Shirer writes sympathetically about Paulus at Stalingrad and even Hitler’s suicide. However, his tone when he described the victims of the Holocaust was callous, as if he considered them objects. I began to hate the book when Shirer quoted the (I’m not even sure what the correct word is here) the conclusions of the sadistic tests that the Nazis subjected people to. Doing so served no purpose but to further exploit the victims.
Shirer’s writing style is clunky and burdened with clauses. I found myself re-reading sentences to strike out the clauses to learn what he meant to say.
I did not read the majority of the footnotes, and I skimmed the self-congratulatory afterward.