The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  Professor Oron J. Hale, of the University of Virginia, chairman of the American Committee for the Study of War Documents, American Historical Association, led me to much useful material, including the results of some of his own research, and one hot summer day in 1956 did me a signal service by yanking me out of the manuscript room of the Library of Congress and sternly advising me to get back to the writing of this book lest I spend the rest of my life peering into the German papers, which one easily could do. Dr. G. Bernard Noble, chief of the Historical Division of the State Department, and Paul R. Sweet, a Foreign Service officer in the Department, who was one of the American editors of the Documents on German Foreign Policy, also helped me through the maze of Nazi papers. At the Hoover Library at Stanford University, Mrs. Hildegard R. Boeninger, by mail, and Mrs. Agnes F. Peterson, in person, were generous of their aid. At the Department of the Army, Colonel W. Hoover, acting Chief of Military History, and Detmar Finke, of his staff, put me on the track of German military records, of which this office has a unique collection.

  Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, took a personal interest in seeing me through this book, as did Walter H. Mallory, then executive director of the Council on Foreign Relations. To the Council, to Frank Altschul and to the Overbrook Foundation I am grateful for a generous grant which enabled me to devote all of my time to this book during its final year of preparation. I must also thank the staff of the Council’s excellent library, on whose members I made many wearisome demands. The staff of the New York Society Library also experienced this and, despite it, proved most patient and understanding.

  Lewis Galantière and Herbert Kriedman were good enough to read most of the manuscript and to offer much valuable criticism. Colonel Truman Smith, who was a U.S. military attaché in Berlin when Adolf Hitler first began his political career in the early Twenties and later after he came to power, put at my disposal some of his notebooks and reports, which shed light on the beginnings of National Socialism and on certain aspects of it later. Sam Harris, a member of the U.S. prosecution staff at Nuremberg and now an attorney in New York, made available the TMWC Nuremberg volumes and much additional unpublished material. General Franz Halder, Chief of the German Army General Staff during the first three years of the war, was most generous in answering my inquiries and in pointing the way to German sources. I have mentioned elsewhere the value to me of his unpublished diary, a copy of which I kept at my side during the writing of a large part of this book. George Kennan, who was serving in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin at the beginning of the war, has refreshed my memory on certain points of historical interest. Several old friends and colleagues from my days in Europe, John Gunther, M. W. Fodor, Kay Boyle, Sigrid Schultz, Dorothy Thompson, Whit Burnett and Newell Rogers, discussed various aspects of this work with me—to my profit. And Paul R. Reynolds, my literary agent, provided encouragement when it was most needed.

  Finally I owe a great debt to my wife, whose knowledge of foreign languages, background in Europe and experience in Germany and Austria were of great help in my research, writing and checking. Our two daughters, Inga and Linda, on vacation from college, aided in a dozen necessary chores.

  To all these and to others who have helped in one way or another, I express my gratitude. The responsibility for the book’s shortcomings and errors is, of course, exclusively my own.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  This book is based principally on the captured German documents, the interrogations and testimony of German military officers and civilian officials, the diaries and memoirs which some of them have left, and on my own experience in the Third Reich.

  Millions of words from the German archives have been published in various series of volumes, and millions more have been collected or microfilmed and deposited in libraries—in this country chiefly the Library of Congress and the Hoover Library at Stanford University—and in the National Archives at Washington. In addition, the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, at Washington is in possession of a vast collection of German military records.

  Of the published volumes of documents the most useful for my purposes have been three series. The first is Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, comprising a large selection in English translation of the papers of the German Foreign Office from 1937 to the summer of 1940. Through the courtesy of the State Department I have been given access to a number of additional German Foreign Office papers, not yet translated or published, which deal primarily with Germany’s declaration of war on the United States.

  Two series of published documents dealing with the main Nuremberg trial have been invaluable in taking one behind the scenes in the Third Reich. The first is the forty-two-volume Trial of the Major War Criminals, of which the first twenty-three volumes contain the text of the testimony at the trial and the remainder the text of the documents accepted in evidence, which are published in their original language, mostly German. Additional documents, interrogations and affidavits collected for that trial and translated rather hurriedly into English are published in the ten-volume series Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Unfortunately, the extremely valuable testimony given before the commissioners of the International Military Tribunal is mostly omitted from the latter series and is available only in mimeographed form on deposit with a few leading libraries.

  There were twelve subsequent trials at Nuremberg, conducted by United States military tribunals, but the fifteen bulky published volumes of testimony and documents presented at these trials, titled Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, contain less than one tenth of the material. However, the rest may be found in mimeograph or photostats in some libraries. Summaries of other trials which shed much light on the Third Reich may be found in Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office in London, 1947–49.

  Of the unpublished German documents other than the rich collections in the Hoover Library, the Library of Congress and the National Archives—which contain, among other things, the Himmler files and a number of Hitler’s private papers—one of the most valuable finds has been that of the so-called “Alexandria Papers,” a good proportion of which have now been microfilmed and deposited at the National Archives. Information about a number of other captured papers will be found in the notes. Among the unpublished German material, incidentally, is General Halder’s diary—seven volumes of typescript with annotations added by the General after the war to clarify certain passages—which I found to be one of the most valuable records of the Third Reich.

  Some of the books which have been helpful to me are listed below. They are of three types: first, the memoirs and diaries of some of the leading figures in this narrative; second, books based on the new documentary material, such as those of John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Alan Bullock, H. R. Trevor-Roper and Gerald Reitlinger in England, of Telford Taylor in America, and of Eberhard Zeller, Gerhard Ritter, Rudolf Pechel and Walter Goerlitz in Germany; and third, books which provide background.

  A comprehensive bibliography of works on the Third Reich has been published in Munich as a special number of the Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte under the auspices of the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. The catalogues of the Wiener Library in London also contain excellent bibliographies.

  PUBLISHED DOCUMENTARY MATERIAL

  Der Hitler Prozess. Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1924. (The record of the court proceedings of Hitler’s trial in Munich.)

  Documents and Materials relating to the Eve of the Second World War, 1937–39. 2 vols. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1948.

  Documents concerning German–Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939. (The British Blue Book.)

  Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1947-. (Referred to in the notes as DBrFP.)

  Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45. Series D, 1937–45. 10 vols
, (as of 1957). Washington: U.S. Department of State. (Referred to as DGFP.)

  Dokumente der deutschen Politik, 1933–40. Berlin, 1935–43.

  Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs (mimeographed). London: British Admiralty, 1947. (Referred to as FCNA.)

  Hitler e Mussolini—Lettere e documenti. Milan: Rizzoli, 1946. I Documenti diplomatica italiani. Ottavo series, 1935–39. Rome: Libreria della Stato, 1952–53. (Referred to as DDI.)

  Le Livre Jaune Français. Documents diplomatiques, 1938–39. Paris: Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. (The French Yellow Book.)

  Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. 10 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946. (Referred to as NCA.)

  Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–41. Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office. Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1948. (Referred to as NSR.)

  Official Documents concerning Polish–German and Polish—Soviet Relations, 1933–39. London, 1939. (The Polish White Book.)

  Pearl Harbor Attack. Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. 39 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.

  Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy. 3 vols. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951–53.

  Spanish Government and the Axis, The. Washington: U.S. State Department, 1946. (From the German Foreign Office papers.)

  Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. 42 vols. Published at Nuremberg. (Referred to as TMWC.)

  Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. 15 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951–52. (Referred to as TWC.)

  HITLER’S SPEECHES

  Adolf Hitlers Reden. Munich, 1934.

  BAYNES, NORMAN H., ed.: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939. 2 vols. New York, 1942.

  PRANGE, GORDON W., ed.: Hitler’s Words. Washington, 1944.

  ROUSSY DE SALES, COUNT RAOUL DE, ed.: My New Order. New York, 1941. (The speeches of Hitler, 1922–41.)

  GENERAL WORKS

  ABSHAGEN, K. H.: Canaris. Stuttgart, 1949.

  AMBRUSTER, HOWARD WATSON: Treason’s Peace. New York, 1947.

  ANDERS, WLADYSLAW: Hitler’s Defeat in Russia. Chicago, 1953.

  ANONYMOUS: De Weimar au Chaos—Journal politique d’un Général de la Reichswehr. Paris, 1934.

  ARMSTRONG, HAMILTON FISH: Hitler’s Reich. New York, 1933.

  ASSMANN, KURT: Deutsche Schicksalsjahre. Wiesbaden, 1950.

  BADOGLIO, MARSHAL PIETRO: Italy in the Second World War. London, 1948.

  BARRACLOUGH, S.: The Origins of Modern Germany. Oxford, 1946.

  BARTZ, KARL: Als der Himmel brannte. Hanover, 1955.

  BAUMONT, FRIED AND VERMEIL, eds.: The Third Reich. New York, 1955.

  BAYLE, FRANÇOIS: Croix gammée ou caducée. Freiburg, 1950. (A documented account of the Nazi medical experiments.)

  BELGIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Belgium: The Official Account of What Happened, 1939–1940. New York, 1941.

  BENEŠ, EDUARD: Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneŝ. From Munich to New War and New Victory. London, 1954.

  BÉNOIST-MÉCHIN, JACQUES: Histoire de l’Armée allemande depuis l’Armistice. Paris, 1936–38.

  BERNADOTTE, FOLKE: The Curtain Falls. New York, 1945.

  BEST, CAPTAIN S. PAYNE: The Venlo Incident. London, 1950.

  Bewegung, Staat und Volk in ihren Organisationen. Berlin, 1934,

  BLUMENTRITT. GUENTHER: Von Rundstedt. London, 1952.

  BOLDT, GERHARD: In the Shelter with Hitler. London, 1948.

  BONNET, GEORGES: Fin d’une Europe. Geneva, 1948.

  BOOTHBY, ROBERT: I Fight to Live. London, 1947.

  BORMANN, MARTIN: The Bormann Letters: the Private Correspondence between Martin Bormann and his Wife, from Jan. 1943 to April 1945. London, 1954.

  BRADLEY, GENERAL OMAR N.: A Soldier’s Story. New York, 1951.

  BRADY, ROBERT K.: The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism. London, 1937.

  BRYANS, J. LONSDALE: Blind Victory. London, 1951.

  BRYANT, SIR ARTHUR: The Turn of the Tide—A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. New York, 1957.

  BULLOCK, ALAN: Hitler—A Study in Tyranny. New York, 1952.

  BUTCHER, HARRY C: My Three Years with Eisenhower. New York, 1946.

  CARR, EDWARD HALLETT: German–Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939. Baltimore, 1951.

  —, The Soviet Impact on the Western World. New York, 1947.

  CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON S.: The Second World War. 6 vols. New York, 1948–1953.

  CIANO, COUNT GALEAZZO: Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, edited by Malcolm Muggeridge. London, 1948.

  —, Ciano’s Hidden Diary, 1937–1938, New York, 1953.

  —, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, edited by Hugh Wilson. New York, 1946.

  CLAUSEWITZ, KARL VON: On War. New York, 1943.

  COOLE, W. W., AND POTTER, M. F.: Thus Speaks Germany. New York, 1941.

  CRAIG, GORDON A.: The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1940–1945. New York, 1955.

  CROCE, BENEDETTO: Germany and Europe. New York, 1944.

  Czechoslovakia Fights Back. Washington: American Council on Public Affairs, 1943.

  DAHLERUS, BIRGER: The Last Attempt. London, 1947.

  DALLIN, ALEXANDER: German Rule in Russia, 1941–1944. New York, 1957.

  DALUCES, JEAN: Le Troisième Reich. Paris, 1950.

  DAVIES, JOSEPH E.: Mission to Moscow. New York, 1941.

  DERRY, T. K.: The Campaign in Norway. London, 1952.

  DEUEL, WALLACE: People under Hitler. New York, 1943.

  DEWEY, JOHN: German Philosophy and Politics. New York, 1952.

  DIELS, RUDOLF: Lucifer ante Portas. Stuttgart, 1950.

  DIETRICH, OTTO: Mit Hitler in die Macht. Munich, 1934.

  DOLLMANN, EUGEN: Roma Nazista. Milan, 1951.

  DRAPER, THEODORE: The Six Weeks’ War. New York, 1944.

  DUBOIS, JOSIAH E., JR.: The Devil’s Chemists. Boston, 1952.

  DULLES, ALLEN: Germany’s Underground. New York, 1947.

  EBENSTEIN, WILLIAM: The Nazi State. New York, 1943.

  EISENHOWER, DWIGHT D.: Crusade in Europe. New York, 1948.

  ELLIS, MAJOR L. F.: The War in France and Flanders, 1939–1950. London, 1953.

  EYCK, E.: Bismarck and the German Empire. London, 1950.

  FEILING, KEITH: The Life of Neville Chamberlain. London, 1946.

  FEUCHTER, GEORG W.: Geschichte des Luftkriegs. Bonn, 1954.

  FISHER, H. A. L.: A History of Europe. London, 1936.

  FISHMAN, JACK: The Seven Men of Spandau. New York, 1954.

  FITZGIBBON. CONSTANTINE: 20 July. New York, 1956.

  FLEMING, PETER: Operation Sea Lion. New York, 1957.

  FLENLEY, RALPH: Modern German History. New York, 1953.

  FOERSTER, WOLFGANG: Ein General kaempft gegen den Krieg. Munich, 1949. (The papers of General Beck.)

  FRANÇOIS-PONCET, ANDRÉ: The Fateful Years. New York, 1949.

  FREIDIN, SEYMOUR, AND RICHARDSON, WILLIAM, eds.: The Fatal Decisions. New York, 1956.

  FRIEDMAN, FILIP: This Was Oswiecim [Auschwitz]. London, 1946.

  FRISCHAUER, WILLY: The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. Boston, 1951.

  FULLER, MAJOR-GENERAL J. F. C: The Second World War. New York, 1949.

  GALLAND, ADOLF: The First and the Last. The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe Fighter Forces, 1938–45. New York, 1954.

  GAMELIN, GENERAL MAURICE GUSTAVE: Servir. 3 vols. Paris, 1949.

  GAY, JEAN: Carnets Secrets de Jean Gay. Paris, 1940.

  Germany: A Self-Portrait. Harland R. Crippen, ed. New York, 1944.

  GILBERT, FELIX: Hitler Directs His War. New York, 1950. (The partial text of Hitler’s daily military conferences.)

  GILBERT, G. M.: Nuremberg Diary. New York, 1947.

  GISEVIUS, BERND: To the Bitter End. Boston, 1947.

&nb
sp; Glaubenskrise im Dritten Reich. Stuttgart, 1953.