Berlin Diary
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| Berlin Diary, Penguin Books edition 1979 | |
| Author | William Shirer |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | History |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Released | 1941 |
| ISBN | N/A for first edition |
Berlin Diary (1934-1941) is a first-hand account of the rise of the Third Reich and its road to war, as witnessed by the American journalist William L. Shirer. Shirer, a radio reporter for CBS, covered Germany until the Nazi press censors made it impossible for him to report objectively to his listeners in the United States. Many of Shirer's German sources are disguised to protect them from retaliation by the Gestapo when the book was published. The contents of this book provided much of the material for his next book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—a definitive guide to Nazi Germany.
Shirer wrote a sequel to the diary in 1947, End of a Berlin Diary (ISBN 1-56849-428-9), which is generally considered to be a lesser work. Certainly the coverage of Germany in the aftermath of the Third Reich and the war's destruction is less spellbinding than the original Berlin Diary's coverage of the political events during the early years of the Third Reich and the German military triumphs during the war's first year.
In the sequel, Shirer returns to a shattered Berlin and, among other interesting events, has a chance meeting with a Russian soldier who'd read the author's translated diary in the trenches near Stalingrad. The book includes many captured Nazi documents relating to the war and Nazi atrocities, many of which were uncovered for the prosecution of the Nuremberg Trial, which Shirer also covers in the sequel.
In 2001 a compilation of Shirer's CBS broadcasts from Europe, called This Is Berlin: Reporting from Nazi Germany, 1938-40 (ISBN 1-58567-279-3) was published.
