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1960 book by William L. Shirer
the book

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It was first published in 1960 by Simon & Schuster in the United States. It was a bestseller in both the United States and Europe, and a critical success outside Germany; in Germany, criticism of the book stimulated sales. The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award for non fiction, and that Hitler's accession to power was an expression of German national character, not of totalitarianism as an ideology that was internationally fashionable in the 1930s. The author summarised his perspective: "[T]he course of German history made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man, and put a premium on servility." This Sonderweg (special path or unique course) interpretation of German history, was then common in American scholarship. Yet, despite extensive references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism to be flawed. The book also includes (identified) speculation, such as the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller afterward joined the NKVD of the USSR.

The editor for the book was Joseph Barnes, a foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune, a former editor of PM, another New York newspaper, and a former speechwriter for Wendell Willkie. Barnes was an old friend of Shirer. The manuscript was very late and Simon & Schuster threatened to cancel the contract several times; each time Barnes would win a reprieve for Shirer. The original title of the book was Hitler's Nightmare Empire with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as the sub title. The title and cover had already been sent out in catalogs when Robert Gottlieb decided that both title and cover had to be changed. He also chose to publish the book as a single volume rather than two as originally planned. Nina Bourne decided that they should use the sub title as the title and art director Frank Metz designed the black jacket bearing the swastika. Initially bookstores across the country protested displaying the swastika and threatened not to stock the book. The controversy soon blew over and the cover shipped with the symbol.

In the U. S., where it was published on October 17, 1960, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich sold more than one million hardcover copies, two thirds via the Book of the Month Club, and more than one million paperback copies. In 1961, Simon & Schuster sold the paperback rights to Fawcett Publications for $400,000 (equivalent to $0.4 in 1961 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years million in ). and the Carey–Thomas Award for non fiction. In 1962, the Reader's Digest magazine serialization reached some 12 million additional readers. In a New York Times Book Review, Hugh Trevor Roper praised it as "a splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions." The book sold well in Britain, France, Italy, and in West Germany, because of its international recognition, bolstered by German editorial attacks. Both its recognition by journalists as a great history book and its popular success surprised Shirer, as the publisher had commissioned a first printing of merely 12,500 copies. More than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, neither Shirer nor the publisher had anticipated much popular interest in Adolf Hitler or in Nazi Germany.

Nearly all journalists praised the book. Many scholars acknowledged Shirer's achievement but some condemned it. Klaus Epstein listed what he contended were "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period. Nearly 36 years after the book's publication, LGBT activist Peter Tatchell criticized the book's treatment of the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. In the philosopher Jon Stewart's anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (1996), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is listed as a work that has propagated "myths" about the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In 2004, the historian Richard J. Evans, author of The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008), said that Rise and Fall is a "readable general history of Nazi Germany" and that "there are good reasons for [its] success."