Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany [Anglais] [Broché]

Don't be intimidated by the 1100+ pages of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." It reads more like a novel than a dry historical narrative and -- trust me on this -- this book is awesome.

As a reporter for CBS, William Shirer lived and worked in Germany during much of the Nazi movement. Until he left in 1940, he saw firsthand Hitler's rise to power, the consolidation of that power, and the use of that power. As a fallible human being, his prejudices may show through at times, but this is not necessarily a weakness. In today's climate of political correctness, works by historical revisionists -- that purport to show that Hitler and the Nazis weren't so bad -- are not only published, but they're even taken seriously. Perhaps our modern view of Hitler has been distorted by allied propaganda and Hitler and Goerring were fun loving and lovable guys, they say. At the extreme, some revisionists even claim that the Auschwitz death camp didn't even have gas chambers - they were added later as a tourist attraction! Yeah right.

In that sense, Shirer's book, published in 1959 is refreshing. He doesn't hold back one bit with his opinions.

Hence, Quisling is "pig-eyed", Rohm is a "pervert", Goebles is "dwarfish", Goering is "corpulent", Ribbentrop is "vain as a peacock", Brauchitsch is "unintelligent", Eva Braun has the "brain of a bird", and so forth. Such epithets may offend the sensibilities of some modern day readers, but they certainly spice up the telling of what could otherwise be a boring tale. (If you don't know who these people are, buy the book. Believe me, if you read it all the way through, you will become a formidable expert in Nazi trivia).

Because "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" was finished a mere 14 years after the fall of Nazi Germany, some facts that have come to light after its publication are necessarily missing. The premier example of this would be the breaking of the secret Nazi military codes by the British. But writing this book in 1959 also had its advantages. Many of the participants were still alive when William Shirer was doing his research. Hence, when encountering a slight inconsistency in General Franz Halder's war diary [The Chief of Staff of the High Command (the OKH)], William Shirer wrote to the old General and received "a prompt and courteous reply."

Perhaps Shirer's most vivid firsthand account of all is the several page description of the French surrender in the rail car at the forest at Compiegne:

"I look for the expression in Hitler's face. I am but fifty yards from him and see him though my glasses as though he were directly in front of me... He glances slowly around the clearing, and now, as his eyes meet ours, you grasp the depth of his hatred."

Amazing stuff.

But these personal accounts only take up a very small portion of this absolutely fantastic book. Particularly well covered was Hitler's rise to power -- a story that is not often told. The Hitler that Shirer paints during these early years is a very astute political observer who shrewdly plays the German people like a violin. He promises the people what they want, plays on their fears, and is extremely ruthless to anyone who dares to oppose him.

In later years, Shirer's Hitler's political savvy falls apart. At one point Shirer calls his inner circle a "lunatic asylum". Except for very occasional bursts of brilliance, Hitler has no idea what the heck he is doing politically much less militarily and yet his fanatical followers still go along with him. Hitler's megalomania goes on overdrive until, like a Viking in a Wagner opera his body is burned in a last stand against the Russian army just blocks away from his bunker.

While making my way through "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", I can't tell you how many times I would read about a pivotal event and wonder "WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING THROUGH THESE GUYS MINDS?" I always knew the Nazi's were nuts as well as scary. This book provided all of the details I needed.

This review is not of the excellent scholarly work of William Shirer but of the Kindle version of this book. Clearly the book was converted electronically without even cursory proofreading. Problems that I encountered include, but are not limited to:
* Readability is impaired by the incorrect placement of commas instead of periods and apparent random insertion of periods in the middle sentences, usually due to incorrect interpretation of a comma but in some cases this appears to be random insertion.
* There are many instances of random incorrect capitalization of words within a sentence.
* Many words are not correctly recognized. For example "Uve" is printed in the Kindle conversion when the correct word would have been "Live" or the conversion interpreted "attack" to be "a tack" with the apparent two spaces between the two incorrect words.
* Since this was a conversion from the original printed book most, if not all, of the hyphenation that was used for word wrapping now appears in the middle of a line instead of being combined into the correct single word.
* Footnote hyperlinks are often misplaced and in one chapter the footnote links were not even present. The hyperlinks for footnotes often overflow in the text and in the worst extreme an entire paragraph is converted to hyperlink meaning that a user would not be able to select individual words, lines, etc. This version also attempts to hyperlink certain key names, locations and events to the Index, however the hyperlinked text far too often is only for part of the word or phrase which is extremely annoying when part of the word and/or phrase is in blue and the rest is in normal font color.
* Many letters are incorrectly translated - most of these are the confusion between "1," "I" and lower case "L" but as noted above this occurs with other words or letters.
* Despite the updates to the Kindle for Android software, page numbering was not available, just the not formally defined position.

Overall the book as originally written and published deserves 5 stars, or more, but the Kindle conversion is what I am rating at 2 stars. It would have been a single star but having previously read the 30th anniversary printed version I am better able to make the corrections within my mind although it sometimes takes several re-readings of a sentence or paragraph to determine what was really written. Correction - after previewing my review changed the rating to a single star.

What is needed is to have each and every conversion of a book from print professionally proof-read before releasing this. To date I have only read two Kindle books and both share the same poor quality of conversion to Kindle format.

What is Amazon's policy if a Kindle book is eventually corrected and replaced with a more readable version? Do previous purchasers receive the correct version via sync and are they informed of this in the event that they were unable to finish the poorly converted version?

Another problem is that the dates published for virtually all titles are only the date of release in Kindle version and do not reflect the actual date of release of the actual text being read or the edition. Others previously noted that this poor quality conversion was not either the 50th anniversary edition as indicated in the product description or the updated 30th anniversary edition but an apparent conversion of an earlier edition. While this sometimes can be gleaned if one carefully reads each and every word of the description but a more honest presentation of this information would be to make that a separate line item in the product details, not buried in the product description or in reviews.

Correction - I have read three Kindle books and all share the same problems although one was to a much lesser degree.

UPDATE: I copied and pasted this review into a support email to Amazon using their webform. They responded asking that I provide citation to the problems and their locations but I am not willing to be an unpaid volunteer proofreader. My reply was limited to a single example of most of the problems that I reported but the problems are spread throughout the entire Kindle version fo this book as well as another that I wrote a review of. I am reading these books on a 10-inch tablet using Kindle for Android.

UPDATE: April 26, 2012 - Amazon still hasn't taken any action except to find or manufacture over 350 additional reviews to dilute the negative reviews of the extremely poor kindle conversion. Somehow the number of reviews went from 31 to 385 in just 3 days. What a coincidence!

UPDATE: May 2, 2012 - received a response from Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations. It stated that there was an update in progress by the publisher with a subsequent conversion to Kindle format by Amazon which should hopefully correct many of the errors that so many of us have reported, a time frame for replacement was not offered which is probably best as unforeseen delays would artificially create ill feelings.. They also responded favorably to a suggestion to clearly indicate the edition or date of publication as this is very important for historical books. Finally, the addition of so many extra reviews is being attributed by Amazon to merging reviews of other versions. While I may not agree with the last as the reviews of various editions were previously mixed before the Big Bang occurred it is also possible that the complaints and poor reviews may have triggered some of this as well as correction of existing errors. Again, Thank You to everyone that chose to post accurate feedback of the problems with the Kindle edition.

UPDATE: August 8, 2012 - I could not get the version to update including many instances of deleting the title and finally Amazon forced a send. It took three more tries but I now have a version with page numbering. Having so recently labored through the defective version I am unable to re-read this new version to determine if most of the errors have been corrected or new ones added. Getting this updated required significant complaining finally resulting in addressing an email to Jeff Bezos and associated reassignment to higher level customer service representatives as the lower level representives declined to initiate investigative action.

FINAL UPDATE (April 10, 2013): I managed to reread the entire Kindle edition and the majority of the incorrect words and character mistranslation (or scanning) has been corrected. The problems with footnotes and text hyperlinks was not addressed at all such as partial words being highlighted (and therefore in a different color, etc.) remain, selection and assignment of hyperlinks to such vital single characters such as a "c" and "h," incorrect hyphenation because the words had been hyphenated in the print editions for word wrapping, random insertion of periods (although reduced), incorrect translation of the number one v. the lower case "l" v. uppercase letter "I" remain, etc. Words that are only partially hyperlinked therefore have a tendency to take the reader to a completely unrelated place in the index. Of course no one can forget the 114 Uves lost as a result of the torpedoing of the Athenia. I will not change my rating but when on sale this volume is acceptable with the understanding that this is the 30th Anniversary Edition, not the 50th which would be more updated. Amazon somehow fails to indicate the actual edition despite a commitment from Amazon management that the edition and actual date published would be added to the product details for historical books since that would be extremely important. The product description states "This first ever e-book edition is published on the 50th anniversary of this iconic work" but that is misleading, at best, as the book clearly identifies this as being the 30th Anniversary Edition (see the Afterward which is dated May 1990). It is extremely sad and disheartening to see that such a great and important work has been so poorly and carelessly formatted into e-book format eveen after so many complaints and communications with Amazon staff. I can only hope that the heirs of William Shirer will somehow run across this information and perhaps apply appropriate pressure to force this great historical work to be corrected, updated to the 50th Anniversary Edition and the false or misleading advertising be corrected.

This is a great book for not only its detail, but also the unique perspective that the author provides. Every stage in the history of Germany during the mid twentieth century is explored in fantastic depth. The Kindle edition however appears to have never been edited. Typographical errors occur frequently enough to distract from the text. There are also numerous footnotes that are not active, or lniked to other citations making them inaccessible. It is a shame that this was offered in such a condition, it has made me far less likely to purchase Kindle editions of older works.