'This is Berlin: Reporting from Nazi Germany, 1938-40' - Softcover

William L. Shirer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099405172 ISBN 13: 9780099405177

Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

William Shirer, the acclaimed journalist whose The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich quickly became, and still remains, the standard work on Nazi Germany, was a masterful chronicler of the events in Europe that led up to World War II. "This is Berlin" gathers together two-and-a-half years worth of his daily CBS radio broadcasts that described the menacing steps Germany took toward World War II, just as America and the world heard them. Here is a vivid, compelling, and urgent narrative, one of the great first-hand documents of the Second World War.

An introduction by noted historian John Keegan and a preface by Shirer's daughter, Inga Shirer Dean, put Shirer's life and work into context.

"It would be almost impossible to overstate the importance of William L. Shirer's broadcasts from Germany . . . Mr. Shirer's descriptions . . . read as well as they were heard 60 years ago." (Dallas Morning News)

"Shirer's broadcasts . . . are models of eloquence and subterfuge . . . any reader will find it hard to put down." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

"His broadcasts . . . have an enduring freshness." (Sunday Times)

About this title

Review:

In the mid-1920s, Iowa farm boy and sometime reporter William L. Shirer came to Paris, intending, like so many of his contemporaries, to become a great expatriate novelist. He found that his talent lay in the realm of fact, however, and for the next decade and a half he covered wars, revolutions, famines, and plagues in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East for a succession of newspapers. His reporting skills landed him a post in Berlin in the mid-1930s, where he was able to see firsthand Adolf Hitler's ascent to power, an experience that illuminated the pages of Shirer's classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

"This Is Berlin", a collection of Shirer's radio scripts, crackles with even greater immediacy. It describes, as they were occurring, the great events on which Shirer would reflect in his later book, among them the Nazi annexation of Austria and northwestern Czechoslovakia, the Munich Pact, the German invasion of Poland, and subsequent conquest of much of the rest of Europe. Acting as eyes and ears for his American audience, Shirer provides details that are often absent from standard histories of World War II, among them the viewpoints of the German media and ordinary citizens in the face of crisis. He also delivers revealing tidbits of information in passing, such as his list of the bestselling books in Germany at the start of World War II--at the top of which is Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, followed by the expected anti-British and anti-Soviet screeds. Shirer's reportage makes for fascinating reading, and it provides an important new primary source for historians, as well. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

William L. Shirer (1904-1994) was a newspaper correspondent and radio journalist in the years before and during World War II. He is the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as well as Berlin Diary: The Nightmare Years and many other works.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099405172
• ISBN 13: 9780099405177
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 478