American journalist and author William L. Shirer was a correspondent for six years in Nazi Germany—and had a front-row seat for Hitler's rise to power. His most definitive work on the subject, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is a riveting account defined by first-person experience interviewing Hitler, watching his impassioned speeches, and living in a country transformed by war and dictatorship.

William Shirer was originally commissioned to write The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler for a young adult audience. This account loses none of the immediacy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—capturing Hitler's rise from obscurity, the horror of Nazi Germany's mass killings, and the paranoia and insanity that marked Hitler's downfall. This book is by no means simplified—and is sure to appeal to adults as well as young people with an interest in World War II history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Lawrence Shirer (1904-1993) was an American war correspondent, historian, and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—a definitive account of Nazi Germany that has stood the test of time as a scholarly resource for over five decades. Shirer was the first journalist hired for Edward R. Murrow's CBS radio team of journalists covering World War II events worldwide, and later became famous for his radio broadcasts from Berlin.

Shirer's work is gripping for its first-hand immediacy, informed by personal observation, storytelling, and interviews with prominent leaders including Hitler himself. As a member of CBS's news team, he produced a 30-minute broadcast of live reporting from Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London, and Rome. This was later adopted as the CBS World News Roundup, one of the longest-running programs in news broadcasting today.