I know a WWII survivor who has a large collection of the magazines "Das 111 Reich" and they are in perfect condition. They go from NR. 6 to NR.23, then 39-42, and 53-57. Please let me know if you are interested in these historical documents/ artifacts or if you know who would be interested in purchasing them. Ann Kelly for Signalman Second Class Robert Gleich

Sarah Vickery affirms that another person's: "...juxtaposition of Auschwitz and Hiroshima is beyond bizarre. Auschwits was indeed the epitome of all that is evil. In stark contrast, the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used in the hope of ending the bloodshed of World War II." I, too, would not want to equate the Nazis' attempted genocide with the bombs dropped on Japan. However, this once fairly widespread view of a stark contrast because the bombs were paradoxically the only means to peace, or even the most expeditious route to it, fell into considerable disrepute some time ago. Several historians have shown quite convincingly that peace efforts were already underway with the Japanese, and that they were no longer reluctant to grant an unconditional surrender -- the purported stumbling block to peace, and thereby the indirect raison d'etre for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While peace on such terms was no longer an obstacle, this was deliberately cited after the event as the reason for having dropped the bombs. So let's not muddy the picture further, when attempting to draw distinctions, by treating one horror as a sign of evil and the other as well-intentioned. It has been argued -- again, plausibly in my view -- that the real intention was to set Stalin's Soviet tyranny straight about who had come out ahead at the end of WW2, and to warn them about their expansionist aims. Others confine this apportioning of blame to a need to soften for the US public the horror that their nation had committed. One or both of these seem far likelier than the claim of the best of intentions via (non-genocidal) mass incineration. But about this we might want to reserve final judgement. Either way, let's not perpetuate a claim that has now been debunked to underscore that other evils are the worst ever (yet) perpetrated in our technological age. Bert Bailey, in Ottawa

"...B.H. Liddell-Hart, the British strategic thinker who has been credited with developing the concept of lightning offensive warfare (which the Germans adopted and called “blitzkrieg”)." This has been debunked. Even Wikipedia has mention of his subterfuge in connection with this notion. Bert Bailey, in Ottawa

I have read several books concerning Hitler and the events leading up to the 2nd World War in an effort to understand how such horrible events could have happened. It seems to me that Shirer paints the clearest picture of how this came about. He has done exhaustive research and that added to his firsthand knowledge makes it a very credible history. Although it was essentially an extension of WWI aggravated by the dire circumstances of the German people, there remains the desire for more power and territory. I am still searching-how could such hatred for other human beings exist?

"but also in consequences, if one considered Auschwitz and Hiroshima" I hope the author is not making a moral equivalence between the Nazi execution camps and our use of the atomic bomb to hasten the end of the war.

I view Shirer's Germany works as a kind of trilogy, beginning with "Berlin Diary", followed by "Return to Berlin Diary", and only then summed up with "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". "Berlin Diary" has an immediacy of pre-war and early war events being documented as they happened (and were witnessed firsthand my Mr. Shirer), with a huge sense of foreboding, and a somewhat clear concept of where things were headed, even before the U.S. was directly involved in World War II. The concern about people reporting to work camps and then "disappearing", late in the work, is absolutely chilling, now that we know so much more about what was happening at the time. "Return...", written after the war, has the sense of fatigue and waste, tinged with a want for explanation and retribution, that was no doubt a significant element of worldwide feeling at the time. It is a melancholy and profoundly sad work, documenting the post war agonies of the German people and the establishment of the war crimes trials. "The Rise and Fall.." is the more scholarly and carefully researched volume, which seeks to pull together the larger picture of German Naziism in comprehensive fashion, as opposed to the "you are there" witness of the first two books. All three are important works, and form a sort of continuum when read in order.

One of two books about war that I retain (the other is "War Through The Ages"). Shirer writes a personal account of what he heard and saw; this isn't something that was translated by the news media to him. This book is an intimate look within the Third Reich. Nazi propaganda was/is very effective. Previous comments mention that the reparations from WWI were a cause for WWII but this is just Nazi propaganda! Anti-semitism didn't begin with the Nazi's (even Martin Luther believed that the Jews should be annihilated because they murdered Jesus) and it remains strong today as evidenced by the ravings against Israel by Iran's president. Attempts at ethnic cleansing (even mentioned in the Old Testament) continues today and we Americans (along with Europeans before us) aren't completely innocent as can be seen in our treatment of American natives. Normal Germans lost everything twice in 25 years when the government allowed the country to go bankrupt so that it could get out of paying war reparations and again to become dept free to prepare for WWII. This book shows how Hitler and the Nazi Party were able to use these and other events to brainwash the German public. The 'Sitzkrieg' shows they also were effective in brainwashing people in other countries and cultures. Governments and others continue to manipulate people for various reason but especially to prepare for war or other aggressive actions. Evil didn't begin or end with Hitler or the Third Reich but it seems to have culminated there! Each of us must purge racist thoughts from our minds, be aware of manipulation by individuals, governments, religous groups, or other organizations and ultimately we must speak-out when abuses occur. We know that people are 'herd animals' and sometimes we can join the comfort of the 'herd' but there are times when we must as individuals go against the flow. *Note: I am married to a German; live in Germany; work in a German hospital; and Major USAF Retired.

I am profoundly grateful to Mr. Rosenbaum for solving one of the mysteries of my childhood. As an eleven year old at summer camp in 1972, I read the book, "The Rise and Fall of Adolph Hitler", desperate to understand how human beings could have committed such atrocities. I couldn't stop wondering, if my great grandparents had not emigrated from Germany, would they and my parents have believed or done these horrible things? The book gave me a place to begin and I have never forgotten it. However, so many people have told me over the years that no such book existed, that I started to doubt a very clear memory. Now I understand that it was a book that Shirer wrote specifically for young adults and can look forward to its more famous and complete parent.

Shirer's book is a great read from a great journalist; yet as history it has it's shortcomings. It fails to see WWII as an extension of WWI. It doesn't take into consideration the effects of Prussian militarism, the treaty of Versailles, the great depression. Lastly it doesn't come to grips with the fact that Hilter failed to get 66% of the voters ballot in the last free election of the German republic; attributing a specific evil to the German people which would exist in any society where opposition results in imprisonment or death. Hitler and his minority captured the German state- they weren't a creation of the German people.

The review of the book needed a critical analysis of what the book was missing. Hitler rose to power in the context of what happened in Germany post World War I. One main purpose of The Treaty of Versailles was to humiliate and punish Germany. Germany was given the choice to the either to sign the treaty or be invaded. As we see with individuals, so we see with countries – a country or a person that is shamed and humiliated with no hope of being accepted or reintegrated will never become a better person or a better country. In fact the situation will be worse. In this interconnected world, then and now, all nations can either allow something like the Holocaust to happen or nations can work to prevent it from happening. Why don’t other nations look at their role in allowing the Holocaust to happen in the first place? The US was more about punishing Germany after WWI than about creating a place that is safe for everyone.

On page 94 of the February 2012 issue, in the article about the Third Reich you assert that the knowledge of the Enigma machine, the British code-breaking apparatus gave the Allies the advantage of anticipating the movements of German forces. This is incorrect. The Enigma machine was developed by the German military as an adaptation of a commercial encryption machine invented by Arthur Scherbius. Different versions were used by the army, the navy, and the air forces. Several Polish mathematicians deconstructed the Enigma machine and constructed a rudimentary mechanical device to “break” the Enigma code. (See “Enigma - How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code” by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk and Jerzy Straszak). The Poles and their code-breaking machines were evacuated from Poland just days before the German invasion, and eventually made their way to England, via France. Once at Bletchley Park, the British Code Breaking School, Alan Turing and his team developed an electro-mechanical machine which they called the “bombe” to speed up the de-coding process. A later development was “Colossus,” a completely electronic version that was the first programmable digital computer. The Enigma was the German code-making system. The Colossus was the British code-breaking machine. The Germans were never aware that the Enigma encryption had been compromised.

Regarding Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," in my sentiment is a 'short and condensed good read' which only touches the surface of the issues and problems that plagued the German people and nation before and after WWI. Your readers should aim to delve into Richard J. Evans' three volume compendium; "The Coming of the Third Reich," "The Third Reich in Power" and "The Third Reich at War." A masterpiece of astonishing in depth and detailed understanding of the cultural milieu in Germany at the time. A 'Sine Qua Non,' for history lovers of Nazism.

Carl C. Zellie, Jr.

I wish to point out a factual error in the otherwise flawless article. The Enigma machine was not "the British code-breaking apparatus" that allowed the British to read the Nazi's coded messages. It was the machine that the Nazis used to create those encoded messages in the first place. Luckily, the British had gotten their hands on an early model of the machine before the start of the war, courtesy of the Polish underground, and used it to create their own code-breaking machines. The Enigma underwent improvements as the war progressed, and the British were forced to guess how these might work. The extent to which they were successful is detailed in a number of books on the subject. The initial work on the code-breaking was done by a group of Polish mathematicians, who gave their work to the British -- and received no credit for it after the war.

Re:Ron Rosenbaum's article "Explaining Evil"
After reading Ron Rosenbaum's superb review of Wm Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", I'm wondering if it's necessary to read the book. To quote Mr Rosenbaum "It ("The Rise and Fall") remains an awe- inspiring achievement that he (Shirer) could capture the terrain of horror in a mere 1250 pages." Mr. Rosenbaum appears to have done it in SIX pages! Every single paragraph of the review is informative and even profound in explaining, or trying to explain the national psychosis that was Germany. The one concept that most impacts on me is that it wasn't Hitler's Germany- It was Germany. As Rosenbaum said, the " little men of Germany" This concept is almost never addressed,except,perhaps in Daniel Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing excecutioners", namely, that many, many Germans knew! I've observed that on most TV military channels, reference is frequently made to NAZI Germany, not Germany. This is like calling the US -Republican US or Democrat US. Nazi Germany is redundant!Germany without the prefix "NAZI" was collectively guilty, and that fact should forever be remembered!

"or do humans possess some ever-present receptivity to the appeal of primal, herd-like hatred?"

In my opinion Shirer misses the reason completely. Nazi: National Socialism grew for the same reason that socialism has grown in Europe, and now even the U.S today, because of class warfare. Also remember that hindsight is 20/20 (or blind in Shirer's case, when you have a preconceived idea of what you want to prove happened). When the 3rd Reich rose, the so-called hate didn't exist, that only happened when the leaders corrupted the power they were given and turned it into something bad. One more reason to avoid large government in favor of small and limited government.

In "Explaining Evil" Ron Rosenbaum's juxtaposittion of Auschwitz and Hiroshima is beyond bizarre. Auschwits was indeed the epitome of all that is evil. In stark contrast, the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used in the hope of ending the bloodshed of World War II.

The results of the atomic bombs were horrific, but the day after the second bomb was dropped, the war was over.

A little perspective please. The paths to Auschwitz and Hiroshima could not be more different.

This was such a great book. I took it from my father’s library just recently where I remember how it effected him greatly when he read it in the 1960’s. But before I read it, I looked it up on the internet to get a heads up, and there, got the impression that Shirer was only a journalist, not a historian. The work was written too recently after the war to have a real perspective, it said.
I took that with me as I read the book and in the end, felt lucky I didn’t see it as just another history book. I was more of a living journal. Much more powerful.
I remember that era of the 1950’ very well. I remember the denial. My relatives and neighbors who experienced the war were obviously distressed by it, but seldom, if ever, talked about it. There was a sort of collective numbness, a faint state of confusion and quiet anger. It was a horror beyond description, and there was no name for it back then. Naming it to remembered it can run the risk of taming it, but Shirer never falls into this trap. He explains it, coldly, in a way that never loses horror or its humanity.

Timely and necessary reminders, when all around us are those who would willingly forsake liberty for security or a government handout. The only flaw I perceive in Rosenbaum's essay is his failure to equate the German state socialism with the COMINTERN variety, both of which are rivals to claim the honor of most evil.

"He captured it in a way that made amnesia no longer an option." And who will do that for the torture, warrantless domestic wiretapping and assassination of U.S. citizens without charge or trial of the current era? Jane Mayer? Sy Hersh? Someone yet to leave government? Whoever it is, and, dear God, I hope it's *somebody*, would do well to use Shirer's work as a guide.

I had to read this book in high school in1976 and it contained so much I was overwhelled with info.

Thank you for sharing this illuminating, detailed book review of a classic tome that I have only dipped into and found overwhelmingly depressingly. Reading this article on Holocaust Remembrance Day adds to the poignancy of the insightful review.

One paragraph, in particular, seems crucial in our current cultural environment. "Shirer does not condemn Germans as Germans. He’s faithful to the idea that all men are created equal, but he won’t accede to the relativistic notion that all ideas are equal as well, and in bringing Fichte and Poetsch to the fore, he forces our attention on how stupid and evil ideas played a crucial role in Hitler’s development."

Let's remember that stupid and evil ideas both exist, and need to be clearly identified as stupid and evil.

In his peaen to William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", Ron Rosenbaum notes accurately that Shirer could shift between the "telescope" and "microscope-even, one might say, stethoscope." What is missing from his justified admiration for Shirer is a focus on the "psychoscope" in his examination of the mass mind.

Shame and pride are referenced in Shirer's description of Hitler's "... mania for ordering distant troops to stand fast no matter what their peril" and in the object lesson of the glorification of suicidal martyrdom (Explaining Evil. Smithsonian Feb 2012). What is missing is an examination of the role played by the national shame of an erstwhile proud culture. The work of Donald L. Nathanson, M.D. on the psychology of shame and violence will cast much light on what was going on in Weimar Germany at that time: it will suggest why the rest of Europe was seen as an enemy and why the Jews were used as scapegoats.

I've read, re-read, and recommended this book many times over the years. While it is a masterly personal account of these times--Shirer knew these Nazis personally and tells what Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and their compatriots were like as individuals; something I've never found anywhere else--it is more important as a universal lesson on how to lose freedom. Goering says that gaining power over a democracy is simple: just make people scared. Since I first read this book, I've seen budding Third Reichs everywhere. Radio talk show hosts are all potential Hitlers, for example, whether they know it or not. All it takes is an audience which is scared enough. We have dodged the evil flower which bloomed in Nazi Germany many times in our history, I think. The ground wasn't quite fertile enough, or, hopefully, people of all levels--paupers to politicians--decided it wasn't a growth that was healthy and plucked it up. Reading this book will keep you eyeing the shoots of modern elections with a cautious glance. That, to me, is its finest quality: "there but for the grace of God" can go us all.

"Later historians had access—as Shirer did not—to knowledge of the Enigma machine, the British code-breaking apparatus that gave the Allies the advantage of anticipating the movements of German forces—an advantage that changed the course of the war."

The Enigma was a german machine used to encode transcriptions. Not a british code-breaking apparatus.

2ndly for those saying that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki were justified because it made the japanese surrender: a. the Japanese tried to surrender conditionally months earlier. b. they didn't actually surrender until the 15th of August, 6 days after Nagasaki, and 9 after Hiroshima, and it very well could have been Russia entering the war against Japan on the 8th of August that finally convinced them there was no hope.
How do you justify the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden and Tokyo?

I'm glad to hear of the reissuing of Shirer's book, as definitive as any about that horrible period. The depth and breadth of his research is impressive to this day (especially since written in the pre-googling era). His book included the murder of my mother's first husband, Dr. Willi Schmid, on the Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934), relatively early in Hitler's regime. That night, when at least 90 people were killed, signified the end of the rule of law in Germany and tragically was an indication of atrocities to come. Having just published my own book, "Steps of Courage: My Parents' Journey from Nazi Germany to America," Shirer's book makes me appreciate his magnum opus even more. And it serves as a reminder (among more obvious horrors) of how quickly and disastrously civil rights can be eroded, thuggery can take over and basic decency abandoned.

A good review. I have just a small issue: When Shirer writes about "the little men of Germany", a German speaker would interpret this as a translation of "die kleinen Leute" or even "die Kleinbuerger", which would be a sociological describption - it refers to the lower middle class. The review treats it as an emotional statement, but that might not be entirely the case. Shirer was well aware that the prototypical Nazis were frustrated lower middle class people (incidentally the class most prone to follow fanatical ideologies in most societies). The review talks about character and culture only, and this might miss the point to some extent.

There is an unfortunate failure among many younger Americans to read or study history, including the reasonings and motivations of past leaders and followers. As a former resident of Los Alamos, NM, where the atom bomb was developed by an extraordinary community of talented and hardworking people, I learned to hold my temper when visitors mourned Hiroshima. Mr. Rosenbaum has written an excellent review of Shirer's book; I wish there were a comparable study of the Japanese imperial aggression. There seems to be no one speaking for the victims of the Japanese, comparable to Holocaust survivors speaking up to challenge the revisionists. First, this review has inspired me to read The Third Reich and to seek ways to support more and better teaching of history in the U.S.

Parts of this--"We are strong and getting stronger"...and the part about shedding individual souls & minds--with personal responsibilities and doubts and problems....
Sounds eerliy like the latest State of the Union Address.

Benjamin Lorch is obviously not familiar with the Hebrew scriptures - which are written in Hebrew. The commandment to which he refers does not say "Thou shalt not kill." It says "Thou shalt not murder." The word for murder is used ("tirtzach"), not the word for kill (from the root "hrg"). This is not a distinction without a difference. There is a huge difference between killing and murdering, which relates to the comments regretting the confluence of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Jews were murdered en masse at Auschwitz (and Treblinka, etc., etc.), while Japanese were killed at Hiroshima - in fact fewer died in Hiroshima than in the firebombing of Tokyo and many other cities in Japan and Germany. Whether civilians who live in an aggressive terror-State like Nazi Germany or Islamist Revolutionary Iran ought to be targeted by their victims defending themselves is a question worthy of debate. But no decent comparison can be made between Nazi concentration camps of industrial assembly line murder and cities full of people who worshipped their Emperor-God and provided soldiers for the regime's aggressive war.

Anyone familiar with WW2, can easily distinguish between the German and Nazi planned and executed genocide of 6,000,000 Jews and Hiroshima/Nagaski. The latter was the only means of inducing a surrendur of Japan, which had shown during the battles for the Phillipnes, Iwo Jima, and Okinowa, that it was willing to send its remaining ships, and pilots on suicide missions, and inflict huge casualties on American soldiers, marines and sailors. Pentagon estimates placed huge estimates on the number of fatalities and wounded soldiers, sailors and marines that would be necessary to conquer Japan. Americans should never feel guilty that Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb was the means that finally induced Japan to surrender.

We can do better than to resort to obscure formulas like "a quintessence brewed from the darkest elements of German history" when it comes to trying to grasp the "Why?" of the atrocity that was the so called Third Reich. No potential key to that puzzle is more essential, it seems to me, than what Hitler told the journalist Joseph Hell during an interview in 1922, in an uncharacteristic moment of candor saved for posterity in Hell's notes. I paraphrase the historian Gerald Fleming's account in order to avoid copyright issues: Hell had asked Hitler what he intended to do with the Jews once he obtained discretionary powers, upon which Hitler launched into a tirade about rounding them up and hanging them from lamp-posts all over Munich, where they would hang for as long as hygiene would permit, and then the same in every German city, till Germany was cleansed of Jews. But it was Hell's follow-up question concerning what motivated his wish to destroy this undeniably intelligent people to whom the world owes so much that suddenly made Hitler deliver himself of an unexpectedly dispassionate explanation. Hitler told Hell that he had studied the revolutions of the past and concluded that any struggle for ideals or improvements of any kind of necessity must include a struggle against some social class or caste, and cannot succeed without it. He gave historical examples (nobility, clergy, etc.). And since he intended to foment first-class revolutionary upheavals, he had to find "the right kind of victim", assuring Hell that he had scrutinized history for every conceivable alternative, and none had more in its favor than a campaign against the Jews. He then gave an acount of these various advantages, the final one being that they were totally defenseless, and no one would stand up to protect them. The interested reader is referred to the full details in Fleming's "Hitler and the final solution" (1984), pp. 17-18 & 28.

Just a comment: Hiroshima cannot be compared to Auschwitz. No way. Innocent people were murdered in the latter, Jews and others, as we know. Can you tell me who were the people killed in Hiroshima? Innocent people? Is your definition somehow different from mine? I guess so. Have a quick look at your history book: Japan during the 1930s and 1940s. I am aware of just one fact: Japan was the counterpart of Nazi Germany, in terms of violent invasions of neighboring lands and even distant lands. The Japanese committed atrocities everywhere in the Far East. They can be easily compared to Nazi atrocities. The goal of Japan was obviously to conquer the whole of Asia and even farther and this not really with peace but with the most brutal and inhuman tactics. As I regard the German people (meaning civilians) during and after WWII of being guilty of assisting directly or indirectly the murdering of millions of people, I regard the Japanese people guilty! Hiroshima was not indeed "clean" but did the Japanese ever worried about the people they helped to kill? To this day the Japanese government never apologized for the atrocities committed in many countries (China, Korea...)that makes me wonder about people who are comparing Auschwitz and Hirohima. They dare!

Ron Rosenbaum is a better book reviewer- and author on Hitler- than he was a PJ Media columnist.

I read this book when it first appeared in 1960 as part of my private and personal continuing education efforts as an adult. To understand that which has happened in the past is to be prepared to help build a better future, be it with your family, your neighborhood, your community, or as part of a wider canvas. If you are 25 or older and have not read this book do so.

In response to Mark Derkin's comment about equating Auschwitz and Hiroshima. I live in Hiroshima. At Mitaki Temple, Hiroshima there is an incredibly, stupid and offensive inscription on a memorial stone. In English is reads.

"Here lie the souls of the sacrificed at Auschwitz Poland caused by the Nazism policy against the Jewish People during World War II. Together with that of Hiroshima, this utterly inhumane tragedy shall never again be repeated. We should ponder over ourselves of the avarice, rage and stupidity that are deeply infiltrated in the hearts of each and all and cultivate the integrity that human shares."

Picture here:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx0e5hird61r8yqtso1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1327372907&Signature=Sf38sgmx7Y%2FAe42WO%2Fq5pE%2FLAvg%3D

Thank you Mark Derkin for saving me the trouble. Ditto

A study of History is vital to avoid repeating the past. Evidently not many do. At this juncture, I would also recommend the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Lord Gibbon and "The Other side of the hill", by B.F. Lidell Hart.

In response to Mark Derkin, the sentence does not equate Hiroshima and Auschwitz; it lists these two as events of major consequence. Nothing outrageous or inflammatory about that; excepting opinions of the rare Hiroshima apologist, this would be uncontroversial.

Bravo Mark Derkin re: the baleful comparison of Hiroshima and Auschwitz . . . I have written a letter on this topic to Canada's Globe and Mail, when a woefully under-educated (in both history and ethics likely) reporter casually made a similar comparison. The rest of the review of Shirer's work is good, but the beginning was unforgiveable. Thanks to Mr Derkin for catching this.

Mark,

When you write, "Your casual mention of them [Auschwitz and Hiroshima] in the same sentence, as though there were even some infinitesimal measure of moral equivalence, is outrageous as well as historically inflammatory." you make some blazingly large and likely inaccurate assumptions about the author and his intentions. This is not an issue of moral equivalence and you should get over seeing two words in one sentence which lead you to jump to such conclusions.

I recommend you DO keep reading. It will help your understanding of well-argued and, yes, perhaps subtle, arguments wherein some difficult concepts and events -- you guessed it! -- appear side-by-side. The contradictions inherent to the Holocaust and WWII are some of the most vexing mankind has ever faced.

My interpretation of of the message here is, as the author states, the death toll and geographic reach of these horrors. He makes no relative moral claim. In fact it would seem you are making moral claims here over the value of the insidious acts of WWII and the lives they took. Careful. These were acts of murder en masse but nonetheless murder, each and every one, of an individual human being.

See the Ten Commandments, specifically number six: Thou shalt not kill. For me the argument begins and ends here.

Benjamin Lorch
Berlin

Shirer also went into great detail the 11 million who died in those camps. This in my opinion is vital to grasping the full scope of Hitler's plan - professors, newspaper editors and writers, artists, and, after von Roehm's usefulness had expired, gays. Not to mention catholics, gypsies, poles, et al. In short, Shire sought to show as complete a picture as possible of the regime. Just mho

Unfortunately history shows Hitler's reign is not an aberration but rather the norm - a story continuously retold from the dawn of civilization. The Jews alone have suffered similar annihilations at the hands of Assyrian Kings, Egyptians, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, the Inquisition, Iraqis, etc, etc.

Mongols massacre Arabs and Europeans, Arabs massacre Jews, Europeans massacre the original Americans, the new Americans massacre Indians, Turks massacre Armenians... and on and on and on.

The distinction between the Auschwitz and Hiroshima is lost on me. Its all murder. Its all war. Its all one kingdom dominating another. The only difference is that the Reich would not accept a surrender from the Jews whereas the Americans would accept one from the Japanese.

But in history it goes both ways with the usual standard being to threaten with annihilation and, if the other side does not capitulate, to go ahead with it and torture, rape and kill until their "seed is no more".

We are entering an interesting time when both sides in a potential struggle have the weaponry to annihilate the other. Will there be peace? The stain of the record does not encourage.

Surely the most important lesson of Nazism is how the German tribes were unified around the idea that "outsiders" were the cause of all their problems; lost battles, even lost wars. Because they were disarmed after WW1, squaring off against a real enemy was impossible so they invented one in their own midst.
By focussing hatred, Hitler and Nazism united the tribe. The extremes of Nazism - The Arian "myth" and the destruction of "undermenschen" were the inevitable outcome of hyper-tribalism.
May we never witness it again.

To the first poster: He's not ...nevermind. Really? Hiroshima, along with Babi Yar, Treblinka, the bombing of Dresden, Holocaust, extermination of Slavs, Rom; the Yugoslav reversal of Nazi victory.....all great events, amazing events. It's juvenile to think he was saying that Hiroshima, as bad is it was, is equal to the Holocaust. It's not. Nobody says this, save hippys. Rons no flower child.Read the darn thing, get his "Explaining Hitler", too. Mighty fine reading.

"You do not seriously mean to equate the bombing of Hiroshima with the total evil of the gas chambers at Auschwitz do you."

"Your casual mention of them in the same sentence, as though there were even some infinitesimal measure of moral equivalence, is outrageous as well as historically inflammatory."

Anyone with any basic humanity and functioning moral compass, who has done the basic research into the atomic bombings, will come to the same conclusion as the author. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mass murder, nothing more.

Ever thought of this, that if the US had not intervened in WWI, neither communism nor Nazism could ever have come to power?
Russia had left the war and without its place being taken by the US, Germany would surely have won. That country would by no means have allowed communism in Russia to continue, and Hitler could never have risen to leadership in a victorious Germany.
On this reading, the liberal Wilson slew just about 100,000,000 folks.

Dear Mr. Rosenbaum, WWII and its horrors were not quite so obliterated in American memory, especially not in popular culture. There was the enormous literary success of the Diary of Anne Frank which led to the Broadway play and the popular film, also with its being adopted by many school libraries (late 1950s); then there was Leon Uris' runaway bestseller Exodus and that became a popular film in 1960.
It might be an interesting historical enterprise to review the pages of the popular photo mags, Life, Look, etc., and quantify references to and images of WWII between war's end and Shirer's publication.
Regards, Patricia

I think this book, along with "The Black Book of Communism" should be required reading in all high schools. Both creeds produced tens of millions of deaths, and it is critical that any citizen empowered to help direct our future through personal and public behavior--notably voting--do so with an understanding of what "history"--which is to say the reification of countless individual decisions manifested in large scale visible realities--is capable of.

We can do far better than to resort to obscure formulas like "a quintessence brewed from the darkest elements of German history" when it comes to trying to grasp the "Why?" of the atrocity that was the so called Third Reich. No potential key to that puzzle is more essential, it seems to me, than what Hitler told the journalist Joseph Hell during an interview in 1922, in an uncharacteristic moment of candor saved for posterity in Hell's notes. I paraphrase the historian Gerald Fleming's account in order to avoid copyright issues: Hell had asked Hitler what he intended to do with the Jews once he obtained discretionary powers, upon which Hitler launched into a tirade about rounding them up and hanging them from lamp-posts all over Munich, where they would hang for as long as hygiene would permit, and then the same in every German city, till Germany was cleansed of Jews. But it was Hell's follow-up question concerning what motivated his wish to destroy this undeniably intelligent people to whom the world owes so much that suddenly made Hitler deliver himself of an unexpectedly dispassionate explanation. Hitler told Hell that he had studied the revolutions of the past and concluded that any struggle for ideals or improvements of any kind of necessity must include a struggle against some social class or caste, and cannot succeed without it. He gave historical examples (nobility, clergy, etc.). And since he intended to foment first-class revolutionary upheavals, he had to find "the right kind of victim", assuring Hell that he had scrutinized history for every conceivable alternative, and none had more in its favor than a campaign against the Jews. He then gave an acount of these various advantages, the final one being that they were totally defenseless, and no one would stand up to defend them. The interested reader is referred to the full details in Fleming's "Hitler and the final solution" (1984), pp. 17-18 & 28.

We've had quite a lot of American and British authors documenting and speculating on the nature of Germany, Germans and the Third Reich. All of which, I'm sure, is useful in its own way. What do German scholars have to say?

There is self righteousness in the question "Why did Germany . . .turn Europe into a charnel house"

After all Eugenics was big in the US before the Nazis made it Reich policy; and the British invented the concentration camp. Social Darwinism was not discredited by the pure logic of it, or by scientific evidence, for it is a plain corollary of Darwinism itself-it fell into ill repute for the Nazis did in concentration camps what the British allowed in its slums to its own poor.

To understand the evil of man, which is all the Third Reich is an expression of, one need only look into the mirror. For we are not the innocent victims of evil ideas. We adopt evil ideas by evil choice then have the effrontery to be shocked when a little Austrian tramp merely applies with consistency what we ourselves have dabbled with

"...but also in consequences, if one considered Auschwitz and Hiroshima."

I found it impossible to read your review beyond the above partial quote.

You do not seriously mean to equate the bombing of Hiroshima with the total evil of the gas chambers at Auschwitz do you.

Your casual mention of them in the same sentence, as though there were even some infinitesimal measure of moral equivalence, is outrageous as well as historically inflammatory.

"Indeed, the foremost object lesson from rereading Shirer’s remarkable work 50 years on might be that the glorification of suicidal martyrdom, its inseparability from delusion and defeat, blinds its adherents to anything but murderous faith—and leads to little more than the slaughter of innocents."

Words for our times

Rosenbaum credits Schirer for extolling the value of "selfhood" and the necessity to avoid the loss of this value by submission to a supposedly higher nationalistic cause while lambasting Fichte (and German Idealism) as soapbox spinners of Nazi ideology when, in fact, Fichte espoused the same, identical belief in the self as the true arbiter of the moral world. Rosenbaum, Schirer and Hitler are all equally guilty of misrepresenting the philosophy of Fichte. What Schirer and Rosenbaum have done is blame Fichte for this misinterpretation in an attempt to strengthen an argument of German guilt. This is the same misinterpretation that befell Nietzsche and which Walter Kaufman so credibly exposed seventy-odd years ago.

What Rosenbaum sees, in his last paragraph, as a corollary to Shirer's object lesson for us, today, seems to me the object lesson itself. Post-Jasmine Revolution, sparked by the self-immolation of an individual Tunisian, we may need to rethink "suicidal martyrdom" in a little more nuanced a manner than implicit allusions of 9/11 can provide.