Subtitle: A History of Nazi Germany

National Book Award 
Carey-Thomas Award for Nonfiction

     Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century’s blackest hours.
     Benefiting from his many years as a reporter, and thus a personal observer of the rise of Nazi Germany, and availing himself of some of the 485 tons of documents from the German Foreign Office, as well as countless other diaries, phone transcriptions, and other written records, meticulously kept at every level by the Germans, Shirer put together a brutally objective account of how Hitler wrested political control of Germany, and planned and executed his six-year quest to dominate the world, only to see Germany go down in flames.
     Now, years after the end of World War II, it may seem incredible that our most valued institutions, and way of life, were threatened by the menace that Hitler and the Third Reich represented.
     Shirer’s description of events and the cast of characters who played such pivotal roles in defining the course Europe was to take is unforgettable.
     Although 1600 pages long, this is such a richly rewarding experience for anyone who wants to come to grips with the mysterious question as to how this menace to civilization ever came into being, much less was sustained for as long as it was.
     The answer, unfortunately, is that most of Germany, for a whole host of reasons, embraced Nazism and the fanaticism that Hitler engendered.

     New York Times: "One of the most important works of history of our time."
     New York Times Book Review: "A splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions."

Index of contents:
Foreword Book One: The Rise of Adolf Hitler
1. Birth of the Third Reich
2. Birth of the Nazi Party
3. Versailles, Weimar and the Beer Hall Putsch
4. The Mind of Hitler and the Roots of the Third Reich

Book Two: Triumph and Consolidation
5. The Road to Power: 1925-31
6. The Last Days of the Republic: 1931-33
7. The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34
8. Life in the Third Reich: 1933-37

Book Three: The Road to War
9. The First Steps: 1934-37
10. Strange, Fateful Interlude: The Fall of Blomberg, Fritsch, Neurath and Schacht
11. Anschluss: The Rape of Austria
12. The Road to Munich
13. Czechoslavakia Ceases to Exist
14. The Turn of Poland
15. The Nazi-Soviet Pact
16. The Last Days of Peace
17. The Launching of World War II

Book Four: War: Early Victories and the Turning Point
18. The Fall of Poland
19. Sitzkrieg in the West
20. The Conquest of Denmark and Norway
21. Victory in the West
22. Operation Sea Lion: The Thwarted Invasion of Britain
23. Barbarossa: The Turn of Russia
24. A Turn of the Tide
25. The Turn of the United States
26. The Great Turning Point: 1942—Stalingrad and El Alamein

Book Five: Beginning of the End
27. The New Order
28. The Fall of Mussolini
29. The Allied Invasion of Western Europe and the Attempt to Kill Hitler

Book Six: The Fall of the Third Reich
30. The Conquest of Germany
31. Goetterdaemmerung: The Last Days of the Third Reich Afterword

     He has had a distinguished career as Foreign Correspondent, News Commentator, and Historian of the contemporary world.
     He was a War Correspondent reporting from Berlin on the rise of the Nazis for the Universal News Service and for CBS.
     Out of these reports grew his best-sellers, Berlin Diary and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which has sold more copies for the Book-of-the-Month Club than any other book in the club’s history.

     Also known as Tom Parker.
     He is Director of Blackstone’s Audio Studios, an Award-winning Narrator with more than 650 titles to his credit.
     Named one of the Best Voices of the Century and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly and has earned more than 20 Earphones Awards.
     Narrator’s Comments: "It’s terrible to say that the Nazi era is fascinating, but it is. Yet, more importantly, we learn how short a slope it is to the sort of brutality and mindless belief in authority that took hold of people at that time."