Уильям Лоуренс Ширер: Американ журналисі және соғыс тілшісі

American journalist, war correspondent, and author (1904–1993)

William Lawrence Shirer (/'//S//aI//r//@r/; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service, Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what became a CBS radio team of journalists known as "Murrow's Boys". He became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1939–1940). Along with Murrow, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts. Shirer wrote more than a dozen books besides The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, including Berlin Diary (published in 1941); The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), which drew on his experience living and working in France from 1925 to 1933; and a three volume autobiography, 20th Century Journey (1976 to 1990).

Shirer's father was a Chicago lawyer, when he was born in 1904. When he was a child, his father died and the family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Shirer attended Washington High School and Coe College in Cedar Rapids. He graduated from Coe in 1925. He had to deliver newspapers and sell eggs to help the family finances. After leaving school he worked on the local newspaper, but ultimately was determined to leave Iowa. Working his way to Europe on a cattle boat to spend the summer there, he remained in Europe for 15 years. He was a European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune from 1925 to 1932, covering Europe, the Near East and India. In India he formed a friendship with Mohandas Gandhi. Shirer lived and worked in France for several years starting in 1925. He left in the early 1930s but returned frequently to Paris throughout the decade. He lived and worked as a correspondent in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1940. In 1931, Shirer married Theresa ("Tess") Stiberitz, an Austrian photographer. The couple had two daughters, Eileen ("Inga") and Linda. Shirer and his wife divorced in 1970. In 1972 he married Martha Pelton, whom he divorced in 1975. His third (and final) marriage was to Irina Lugovskaya, a long time teacher of Russian at Simon's Rock College. Shirer and Irina had no children. Shirer was residing in Lenox, Massachusetts at the time of his death.

As a print journalist and later as a radio reporter for CBS, Shirer covered the strengthening one party rule in Nazi Germany beginning in 1933. Shirer reported on Adolf Hitler's peacetime triumphs like the return of the Saarland to Germany and the remilitarization of the Rhineland. Shirer was hired in 1934 for the Berlin bureau of Universal Service, one of William Randolph Hearst's two wire services. In Berlin Diary, Shirer described this move, in a self proclaimed bad pun, as going from "bad to Hearst". When Universal Service folded in August 1937, Shirer was first taken on as second man by Hearst's other wire service, International News Service, then laid off a few weeks later. On the day when Shirer received two weeks' notice from INS, he received a wire from Edward R. Murrow, European manager of Columbia Broadcasting System, suggesting that the two meet. At their meeting a few days later in Berlin, Murrow said that he could not cover all of Europe from London and that he was seeking an experienced correspondent to open a CBS office on the Continent. He offered Shirer a job subject to an audition—a "trial broadcast"—to let CBS directors and vice presidents in New York judge Shirer's voice. Shirer feared that his reedy voice was unsuitable for radio, but he was hired. As European bureau chief, he set up headquarters in Vienna, a more central and more neutral spot than Berlin. His job was to arrange broadcasts, and early in his career he expressed disappointment at having to hire newspaper correspondents to do the broadcasting; at the time, CBS correspondents were prohibited from speaking on the radio. Shirer was the first of "Murrow's Boys", broadcast journalists who provided news coverage during World War II and afterward. CBS's prohibition of correspondents talking on the radio, viewed by Murrow and Shirer as "absurd", ended in March 1938. Shirer was in Vienna on March 11, 1938, when the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) took place after weeks of mounting pressure by Nazi Germany on the Austrian government. As the only American broadcaster in Vienna (NBC rival Max Jordan was not in town), Shirer had a scoop but lacked the facilities to report it to his audience. Occupying German troops controlling the Austrian state radio studio would not let him broadcast. At Murrow's suggestion, Shirer flew to London via Berlin; he recalled in Berlin Diary that the direct flight to London was filled with Jews trying to escape from German occupied Austria. Once in London, Shirer broadcast the first uncensored eyewitness account of the annexation. Meanwhile, Murrow flew from London to Vienna to cover for Shirer. The next day, CBS's New York headquarters asked Shirer and Murrow to produce a European roundup, a 30 minute broadcast featuring live reporting from five European capitals: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Rome, and London. The broadcast, arranged in eight hours using the telephone and broadcasting facilities of the day, was a major feat. This first news roundup established a formula still used in broadcast journalism. It was also the genesis of what became CBS World News Roundup, still on the network each morning and evening, network broadcasting's oldest news series. Shirer reported on the Munich Agreement and Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia before reporting on the growing tensions between Germany and Poland in 1939 and the German invasion of Poland that launched World War II on September 1, 1939. During much of the pre war period, Shirer was based in Berlin and attended Hitler's speeches and several party rallies in Nuremberg.

When war broke out on the Western Front in 1940, Shirer moved forward with the German troops, reporting firsthand on the German "Blitzkrieg". Shirer reported on the invasion of Denmark and Norway in April from Berlin and then on the invasion of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France in May. As German armies closed in on Paris, he traveled to France with the German forces. Shirer reported the signing of the German armistice with France on June 22, 1940, to the American people before it had been announced by the Germans. His commentary from Compiègne was hailed as a masterpiece. On the day before the armistice was to be signed, Hitler ordered all foreign correspondents covering the German Army from Paris to move back to Berlin. It was Hitler's intention that the Armistice should be reported to the world by Nazi sources. Shirer avoided being returned to Berlin by leaving the press hotel early in the morning and hitching a ride to Compiègne with a German officer who despised Hitler. Once on site, Shirer was able to give an eye witness account of that historical moment, "I am but fifty yards from [Hitler]. [ ] I have seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph." In peacetime, Shirer's reporting was subject only to self censorship. He and other reporters in Germany knew that if Nazi officials in Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry objected to their reporting, they could withdraw access to state owned broadcasting facilities or expel them from Germany. Shirer was granted more freedom than German reporters writing or broadcasting for domestic audiences. At the beginning of the war, German officials established censorship; Shirer recalled that the restrictions were similar to wartime censorship elsewhere, restricting information that could be used to Germany's military disadvantage. However, as the war continued and as Britain began to bomb German cities, including Berlin, Nazi censorship became more onerous to Shirer and his colleagues. In contrast to Murrow's live broadcasts of German bombing of London in the Blitz, foreign correspondents in Germany were not allowed to report British air raids on German cities. They were not permitted to cast doubt on statements by the Propaganda Ministry and Military High Command. Reporters were discouraged by the Propaganda Ministry from reporting news or from using terms like Nazi that might "create an unfavorable impression". Shirer resorted to subtler ways until the censors caught on. As the summer of 1940 progressed, the Nazi government pressed Shirer to broadcast official accounts that he knew were incomplete or false. As his frustration grew, he wrote to bosses in New York that tightening censorship was undermining his ability to report objectively and mused that he had outlived his usefulness in Berlin. Shirer was subsequently tipped off that the Gestapo was building an espionage case against him, which carried the death penalty. Shirer began making arrangements to leave Germany, which he did in December 1940. Shirer smuggled his diaries and notes out of Germany and used them for his Berlin Diary, a firsthand, day by day account of events in Nazi Germany during five years of peace and one year of war. It was published in 1941. Historians comparing the original manuscript diary with the published text discovered that Shirer made many changes. Like many others his early impressions of Hitler had been favourable, and revised later. Much of the text about the pre 1934 to 1938 period was first written long after the war began. He returned to Europe to report on the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

During the war Shirer became a director of the Society for the Prevention of World War III, which lobbied after the war for a harsh peace with Germany. Shirer received a 1946 Peabody Award for Outstanding Reporting and Interpretation of News for his work at CBS. The friendship between Shirer and Murrow ended in 1947, culminating in Shirer's leaving CBS in one of the great confrontations of American broadcast journalism (below). Shirer briefly provided analysis for the Mutual Broadcasting System and then found himself unable to find regular radio work. He was named in Red Channels (1950), which practically barred him from broadcasting and print journalism, and he was forced into lecturing for income. Times remained tough for Shirer, his wife Tess, and daughters Inga and Linda until Simon & Schuster published The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960. The hardback was reprinted 20 times in the first year and sold more than 600,000 copies through Book of the Month Club alone and 1 million copies overall. Serialization of a condensed version in Reader's Digest and critical acclaim ensured its success in the US. Fawcett Crest gained paperback rights for $400,000 – a record for the time – and a further 1 million copies were sold at $1.65 (1.65 in 1961 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years). It won the 1961 National Book Award for Nonfiction and Carey–Thomas Award for non fiction.