Berlin Diary: A Firsthand Account of a Foreign Correspondent's Experiences in Nazi Germany 1934-1941

Katherine Porter: Rereading this book after many years, and am struck by how relevant it is today. A fascinating and ultimately human look behind what led up to WW2.

United States on Sep 14, 2023

F. Moyer: This book is a diary that an American radio news reporter (William Shirer) kept while he was stationed in Germany. The diary covers from Jan 1934 to Dec 1940. Most of the first third of the book covers Hitler’s rise to power and pre-war Germany’s territorial gains (mostly through the threat of military force rather than the actual act of military conflict). The final two thirds of the book then covers the first 16 months of the WW II – definitely the most interesting part of the book to me.

Per the copyright, the book was originally published in 1941. So the book was the author’s very fresh and timely impressions of a country with which America was not yet at war. Many books on WW II have been written given the benefit of known history and hindsight. What makes this book interesting is to see what the author was thinking about the world situation without his having any sure knowledge of how subsequent historical events would unfold.

The problem with his diary was that the author could only write about what he saw, what he heard or what he surmised. But once the war started, his ability to travel was controlled by the Germans, so he saw only what the...

United States on Apr 11, 2023

John Hopper: William L Shirer was an American journalist who played a major role, alongside Ed Murrow, in waking his fellow countrymen up to the dangers of Nazism and the impossibility of US neutrality in the face of the existential threat to the liberal democratic world posed by Hitler. His most famous work is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, in my view one of the best works of narrative history/journalism ever written. This book contains his diaries from when he was correspondent in Berlin, initially for two of Randolph Hearst's wire services, then for CBS. He arrives in the German capital at a time when "Hitler and the Nazis have lasted out a whole year in Germany and our friends in Vienna write that fascism, both of a local clerical brand and of the Berlin type, is rapidly gaining ground in Austria". World war is still of course, well over five years away, but Shirer is more prescient than many.
He chronicles the rise of fascism and collapse of social democracy in Austria, then the familiar litany of Hitler's advances, the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, the rest of Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland before Britain and France wake up to the threat and finally abandon...

United Kingdom on Sep 05, 2016

robert: This is just fantastic. Shirer was a war correspondent based in Germany before and during the war. After the war he wrote the first classic history "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". But this diary is almost better. It is his day by day notes of living and surviving in Europe as Hitler came to power. In his broadcasts he may be a carefully censored war correspondent, but in these private notes he rages against the Nazi's and Hitler and the arrogant power of Germanism. He cannot believe the stupidity of the allies failing to see the coming threat. He bemoans the hollow-chested bespectacled insurance clerks from Liverpool, captured by the physically superior blonde Aryan youth. He despairs. He sees defeat. He bitterly complains about Churchill's lack of courage in not coming to the aid of the Norwegians. The balanced broadcaster is left behind. Here we have the coruscating criticism of a very angry man who has to report on the war and survive in Berlin with his wife and baby.
It is so readable. Read it!

United Kingdom on Dec 11, 2013

Memo: Read this in a very few sittings - its full of incidental details of life in Berlin and occasionally elsewhere in Western Europe in the run-up and early stages of WW2 (a running battle with the Nazi censors, dodging shrapnel, just who bombed the library...). It is a diary rather than a historical study and so is a personal view from a personal standpoint and you have to read it as an appendix to any study of the time. It is also written by a journalist/radio reporter and so it would be interesting to know exactly how much was added with hindsight: I'm not convinced he'd know of the Nazi death camps in 1941 when the diary ends yet makes a reference to them. Sadly his almost prescient judgements are somewhat suspicious but if he had only half the insights at the time then a most remarkable observer.

United Kingdom on Oct 11, 2013

Nicola Taunt: I found this a fascinating read. William Shirer was in the heart of Europe during the rise of Nazism and the first two years of the Second World War.

Despite knowing the history, knowing what happened, I was still caught up by the events he described in his diary. Day after day, week after week, month after month, Shirer catalogued the unstoppable Nazi war machine as Hitler turned his attention to one European country after another. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France and so on, Shirer criss-crossed the continent to report on events for American radio.

It was fascinating too to see the Second World War in Europe through the eyes of an American. I'm British, so reading Shirer's thoughts on the people, strategies and characters of my country was very interesting. So too was his description of the Germans and the German populations reactions to Hitler, the Nazis, the war and their views of other countries. Some of the blatant lies the Nazis peddled as propaganda are simple staggering.

Shirer's diary showed me a view of the war that I've never seen before. I found it to be quite the page turner despite knowing what was coming....

United Kingdom on Feb 01, 2013

Dr John the Day Tripper: Shirer's diaries of his time as a foreign correspondent in Germany are a fascinating insight into not only the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and the early part of the Second World War, but also into the way that journalists work and governments manipulate the way that news is disseminated. Shirer's diaries show his perceptions of the Nazis as dissembling thugs and bullies, and how they manipulated the presentation of circumstances to support their occupations of the Sudetenland, Austria, and subsequently to justify the invasions of Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France (all presented by the German press, under Nazi control, as defensive actions, either to support ethnic German populations in those countries, or to prevent the dastardly forces of the Allies from launching counter-attacks against the Germans). However, it's also clear that the continuous flow of Nazi propaganda tended to colour the way he reported from Berlin (because his access to information was controlled by the German government and his reports were subject to censorship even before it was a military necessity) and it's interesting to read his perceptions of what is happening, given the information he has...

United Kingdom on Jan 15, 2013

J.Edgar Sis: I downloaded this for Kindle, when considering whether to buy the Churchill Trilogy for Christmas. As a refresher for WWII and considering the current media reporting of the Far East (not much) I thought it might be a interesting look at war from the correspondents point of view. It is more than that, for history lovers and concerned current event followers, as it reads like a novel but gives much insider information that is gathered by a reporter, that either doesn't get printed and written up in later history books and then current large newspapers and publications, even from inside a highly difficult and censored German and Europe preparing, than entering WWII.

The author, reporter wrote his book from his journal, kept while living and traveling inside Germany before and during WWII. It amazed me what was known and actually published, after heavy censureship by the nazi regime, but also highlighted the difficulties getting both written and voice information through to American and English communications and publishers.

One of the most revealing aspects to a me, as a child of the 40's and grown child of a WWII Vet, and knowing how little many Americans knew of...

United States on Dec 13, 2012