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Dated History / The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

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Given that William L. Shirer was a journalist and, to an extent, a product of his time, it's not surprising that a lot of the book's claims have been debunked since it was published. To his credit, Shirer anticipated this, and warns the reader that not everything he says should be taken as the Gospel truth.


  • Hitler's military record was a lot more shabby than Shirer believed: he did not need to receive permission from the King of Bavaria to join the German Army; he wasn't a corporal—his rank was more akin to a Private First Class; and, he was actually a regimental runner, a job much less dangerous (though not completely safe) than a dispatch runner. The rest of his unit regarded him as a lazy, stupid, cowardly sycophant (he got those two Iron Crosses through shameless butt-kissing rather than bravery), but anytime they tried to dispute the claims he made in Mein Kampf, the Nazis would sue them for slander.
  • The book repeats the myth that Polish cavalry armed with sabers and lances charged a Nazi tank column on horseback during the opening days of the war. This is a garbled account of the Battle of Krojanty, where a Polish cavalry patrol attacked a German motorized infantry unit, then retreated when German tanks arrived and opened fire on them. The garbled version was reported earnestly by some observers (including Shirer, who saw the aftermath of the battle as a war correspondent) and less than earnestly by German and Soviet propagandists, to emphasize the frightening strength of the German Army in the former and the foolishness of the Polish military by the latter.
  • Hitler's decision to halt his ground forces from attacking Dunkirk was actually the right call: the tanks were low on fuel, the men driving them were exhausted, and he was (not unjustly) afraid that recklessly continuing the advance would leave his flanks exposed. Once these problems were dealt with, Hitler ordered the ground forces to resume their advance, and French soldiers held them off so the evacuation could continue.
  • Shirer, despite admitting that Hitler's surviving generals were neither unbiased nor completely reliable in their post-war memoirs, still buys into Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's claim that he tried to convince Hitler to let the encircled 6th Army retreat from Stalingrad, only to be shut down. Later research showed that Hitler was almost persuaded by his other generals to give the 6th Army his blessing to retreat, only to be dissuaded by Manstein after the field marshal pompously declared he could get them out. To be fair, Manstein changed his mind and advocated a breakout and withdrawal from Stalingrad once he saw that relieving the 6th Army was well and truly impossible, but by then, Hitler was too obsessed with taking the city to listen. However, even that was a case of Hitler being Right for the Wrong Reasons, as the 6th Army didn't have the strength to break out of the pocket to begin with.
    • Speaking of German generals, Heinz Guderian is depicted as a Commander Contrarian, an image the general went out of his way to cultivate after the war. In truth, Guderian was a sniveling butt-kisser and Glory Houndnote  who frequently sided with Hitler whenever his other generals didn't. It was only after Hitler had dismissed (or executed) the actual naysayers that Guderian slowly became one himself, but even then, he was never as argumentative as he later claimed to be.
  • When Hitler decides to postpone the assault on Moscow in favor of conquering the rich oil fields of the Caucasus (his argument being that the German Army is running low on fuel), to the protest off his generals, Shirer sides with the generals. Historians now agree that Hitler was right and his generals were wrong: taking Moscow, while certainly a huge propaganda victory, would not have magically made the Soviets give in, and Germany really needed that oil.
    • In addition, historians nowadays have concluded that Barbarossa was doomed to fail from the start, whereas Shirer goes along with the, admittedly popular at the time, opinion that it had a chance to succeed were it not for Hitler's meddling. To his credit, Shirer does acknowledge the tenacity and bravery of the Soviets as being a key factor in the failure of the invasion.
  • Shirer falls for Albert Speer's Anti-Villain act hook, line, and sinker, even believing Speer's nonsensical claim that he'd tried to assassinate Hitler and his other top cronies when, in reality, he never did this.
    • He gives the same treatment to Major Otto Remer, who was, in real life, a fervent Nazi and became a Holocaust denier after the war.
  • Hitler did not shoot himself through the mouth; he bit into a cyanide capsule, then shot himself in the right temple.
  • Shirer vehemently condemns the Polish for not allowing Soviet troops to enter its country in order to protect it from a Nazi invasion in 1939. This was actually the right decision, as the Poles knew that Stalin was just as treacherous as Hitler, and would not have withdrawn his troops once they had entered the country.
  • SS Colonel Jochen Peiper is depicted as a Karma Houdini. While he did escape the gallows after the war, he was ultimately murdered in 1976 when vengeful French veterans burned his house down with him still inside it.
  • The Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last-ditch offensive in the west, but not its last-ditch offensive overall. That title belongs to Operation: Spring Awakening, which was launched against the Soviets in early-to-mid March 1945, even utilising some of the units from the failed Ardennes offensive.
  • The German surrender on 8 May 1945 is treated as the endgame. In reality, Stalin wasn't satisfied with it and demanded that the Germans sign another treaty of unconditional surrender the following day, which they did in the ruins of Berlin.
  • Shirer, like many at the time, came to the conclusion that the Third Reich could have won the war if certain errors weren't made. Modern historians have concluded that Germany was screwed from the get-go: it didn't have the resources to take on the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union all at once; its habit of grabbing the Villain Ball ensured that its enemies would fight tooth-and-nail to destroy it; its allies were pretty much useless; and the leadership was not only brutally corrupt, but laughably inept: many of its politicians and generals kept squabbling with one another to curry Hitler's favor, which he encouraged to ensure none of them could build a power base against him. The early victories served as little more than illusions in the long run that gave the Germans in general, and Hitler in particular, a huge case of Suicidal Overconfidence.
  • Shirer claims that Erich Ludendorff ceased all contact with Hitler following the latter's cowardly behavior during the Beer Hall Putsch. In truth, they did maintain contact, though Ludendorff did develop a growing contempt for Hitler, going as far as to warn Hindenberg not to appoint Hitler to the chancellorship; and later throwing Hitler out of his house when the dictator tried to get his support by bribing him with a field marshal's baton. In Shirer's defense, this information was not discovered until the 1990s.

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