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The Traitor
Pocket-sized with red/black/white cover showing line of goose-stepping German soldiers. Cover emphasizes that this is a novel and identifies Shirer as the author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Cover price 50 cents.
374 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1950
38 people want to read
About the author
William L. Shirer
93 books1,274 followersWilliam Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist and historian. He became known for his broadcasts on CBS from the German capital of Berlin through the first year of World War II.
Shirer first became famous through his account of those years in his Berlin Diary (published in 1941), but his greatest achievement was his 1960 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, originally published by Simon & Schuster. This book of well over 1000 pages is still in print, and is a detailed examination of the Third Reich filled with historical information from German archives captured at the end of the war, along with impressions Shirer gained during his days as a correspondent in Berlin. Later, in 1969, his work The Collapse of the Third Republic drew on his experience spent living and working in France from 1925 to 1933. This work is filled with historical information about the Battle of France from the secret orders and reports of the French High Command and of the commanding generals of the field. Shirer also used the memoirs, journals, and diaries of the prominent British, Italian, Spanish, and French figures in government, Parliament, the Army, and diplomacy.
Shirer first became famous through his account of those years in his Berlin Diary (published in 1941), but his greatest achievement was his 1960 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, originally published by Simon & Schuster. This book of well over 1000 pages is still in print, and is a detailed examination of the Third Reich filled with historical information from German archives captured at the end of the war, along with impressions Shirer gained during his days as a correspondent in Berlin. Later, in 1969, his work The Collapse of the Third Republic drew on his experience spent living and working in France from 1925 to 1933. This work is filled with historical information about the Battle of France from the secret orders and reports of the French High Command and of the commanding generals of the field. Shirer also used the memoirs, journals, and diaries of the prominent British, Italian, Spanish, and French figures in government, Parliament, the Army, and diplomacy.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 3, 2022
Shirer is world-famous for writing ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’, the incredibly detailed story of the Nazi’s rise to power, their bungled attempts to manage a nation, and their eventual collapse. Do you want to know how Goering complained about losses to German insurance companies after the Goebbels’ induced rioting of Kristallnacht? It’s in there. Every meeting, every memo, every record, and the Nazis kept a LOT of records. ‘The Rise and Fall’ is source material for every scholar researching the Nazis. Readers looking for a readable telling of the Nazi era should look elsewhere.
Shirer, riding high from his triumph, switched to fiction. Logical, since he’d said everything that could be said about the Nazis. ‘The Traitor’ is Oliver, an American Journalist in Berlin. He and his fellow journalists are divided in 1939: are the Nazis the future of civilization, or just racist thugs? Oliver, a fan of Germany and all things German, slides closer to the Nazi line, and when war breaks out with America, he stays in Berlin, supported by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. He who makes a bargain with the Devil . . .
The book spans the ten years, from the early Nazi takeover until the final surrender in May, 1945. It’s written in a style that fits its time, but it’s not a style that appeals today. Shirer carefully avoids suspense or tension. The characters talk about politics, sometimes with heat, but when world events happen, the reader is shoved to the aftermath. Oliver, for example, is sent to Stalingrad in November 1942 to cover the pending German victory. Does he huddle in a freezing cellar, eating cold horsemeat, while Soviet artillery smashes the buildings around him? We don’t know, because the next scene begins in 1943 when Oliver is back and has made a narrow escape. The book is psychological, and I could see this being used as literature, where we study Oliver’s slow descent into obsession, while those around him use and abuse him. In the end, I didn’t care about Oliver (and maybe that’s the point of skipping the scenes where something exciting happens: he’d be the hero when he survived, and Shirer was constrained, at the time, to show Oliver as a pathetic traitor.) Shirer did a meticulous job of showing Oliver’s slow transformation to a Nazi lackey. This probably played well in 1948, but it’s not enough today.
Shirer, riding high from his triumph, switched to fiction. Logical, since he’d said everything that could be said about the Nazis. ‘The Traitor’ is Oliver, an American Journalist in Berlin. He and his fellow journalists are divided in 1939: are the Nazis the future of civilization, or just racist thugs? Oliver, a fan of Germany and all things German, slides closer to the Nazi line, and when war breaks out with America, he stays in Berlin, supported by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. He who makes a bargain with the Devil . . .
The book spans the ten years, from the early Nazi takeover until the final surrender in May, 1945. It’s written in a style that fits its time, but it’s not a style that appeals today. Shirer carefully avoids suspense or tension. The characters talk about politics, sometimes with heat, but when world events happen, the reader is shoved to the aftermath. Oliver, for example, is sent to Stalingrad in November 1942 to cover the pending German victory. Does he huddle in a freezing cellar, eating cold horsemeat, while Soviet artillery smashes the buildings around him? We don’t know, because the next scene begins in 1943 when Oliver is back and has made a narrow escape. The book is psychological, and I could see this being used as literature, where we study Oliver’s slow descent into obsession, while those around him use and abuse him. In the end, I didn’t care about Oliver (and maybe that’s the point of skipping the scenes where something exciting happens: he’d be the hero when he survived, and Shirer was constrained, at the time, to show Oliver as a pathetic traitor.) Shirer did a meticulous job of showing Oliver’s slow transformation to a Nazi lackey. This probably played well in 1948, but it’s not enough today.
November 2, 2018
Well, what a stinker! Shirer should have stayed with memoirs and history! This soapy so-caller thriller from 1950 is a mash-up of Shirer's observations in Berlin before WW II with a quick dose of immediate post-war leftish second-guessing (note the ex-Nazi hired by the Americans within weeks of the surrender) and a labored fictionalized (slightly -- some of the names changed to protect . . . who?) version of the July 20, 1944, attempt to kill Hitler. A plethora of unlikely action all wrapped up in really bad dialogue and poor writing or editing -- one minute Oliver has a tommy gun, a few pages later it's a long rifle that he can't use to commit suicide. Ah, who cares?
Avoid. Call it 1.5 stars. The only reason I didn't give it plain old one star is that I think Bill O'Reilly's books should stand alone in a lone-star state.
I owned this book -- will foist it off on someone else presently.
Avoid. Call it 1.5 stars. The only reason I didn't give it plain old one star is that I think Bill O'Reilly's books should stand alone in a lone-star state.
I owned this book -- will foist it off on someone else presently.
September 2, 2015
Shirer’s only novel is loosely based on the life of Fred W. Kaltenbach, an American who broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda aimed at Americans from Germany during World War II, fictionalized here as Oliver Knight, reporter and radio broadcaster.
The novel has the faults of Shirer’s closeness to his subject matter, but few of its benefits. The author’s loathing of the Nazi regime comes through on every page and makes it impossible for him to give a convincing portrayal of Oliver Knight’s decision to stay in Nazi Germany doing radio broadcasts rather than being interred and deported with other American reporters and diplomats. Though the portrayal of politics and personalities benefits from Shirer’s long experience reporting from inside Nazi Germany, the scene setting is strangely flat, lacking sensory details which would put the reader in the scene with the participants, rather than a detached observer of the scene. Much of the novel reads like a very long play, with most of the action carried in dialogue and reminiscences among a limited cast of characters within extended scenes in a single setting. In fact most of the key scenes take place in one particular setting, a cafe where foreign correspondents meet and are observed by and interact with the Nazi officials charged with keeping tabs on them. In this cafe the action opens on August 31, 1939, the night before the world war begins; here it reaches its climax on December 10, 1941, when Americans are taken into custody before Hitler’s declaration of war on the US, and when Knight makes his decision to stay; and here it closes on July 4, 1945 when US troops take control of their sector of Berlin, where the café is located. So strong is the sense of the café being a stage set that, during a scene in the café when British bombs are being dropped on Berlin, rather than feeling that the characters are threatened by actual aerial bombardment, I had a mental image of sound effects men playing recordings of explosions and stagehands striking the walls of the set from behind to knock bottles and rigged pieces of plaster to the floor.
The few scenes which “open up” the otherwise interior-heavy atmosphere are not totally successful. A section set during the German invasion of Poland reads like a press dispatch, with none of the sounds, smells, or visual details that would bring the scenes to life. A trip Knight makes to Stalingrad is portrayed with a few vivid images, but is far too brief compared with other extended scenes with much less emotional punch or narrative purpose. However, there is one such section which worked very well: a lengthy flashback where Knight is a young reporter in Weimar Berlin. After reading Isherwood, Kästner, and now Shirer, I am becoming convinced that it is impossible for anyone who experienced Berlin in the late 1920s to write uninterestingly about it.
Shirer puts himself into the novel in the person of reporter Jack Goodman, whose John Bunyanesque name is all too apropos. Goodman is a foil to Knight, being a reporter who sees all too clearly the monstrousness of the National Socialists and who acts as a kind of anti-Mephistopheles to Knight’s Faust, urging him to the path of virtue as he is tempted into treason by the offers of the Nazi propagandists. The biographies of Shirer and Goodman diverge later in the novel as the fictional character engages in undertakings too heroic to be creditable in a middle-aged American reporter, married with children.
The last third of the novel is largely taken up with an espionage plot centered around the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. The plot itself and its details rather detract from the story, but the fallout for the various characters after the plot’s failure helps to bring into focus the themes of the novel and, in the end, makes for a fairly satisfying climax.
We are never shown any of the effects that Knight’s propaganda broadcasts have on their intended audience, but Shirer does make one unintentional demonstration of the power of propaganda to affect perceptions of reality. He has Goodman as an eyewitness to Hitler’s dancing a “jig” after the surrender of France; in actuality the dance never happened: it was later revealed to be the work of an Allied film editor.
The novel has the faults of Shirer’s closeness to his subject matter, but few of its benefits. The author’s loathing of the Nazi regime comes through on every page and makes it impossible for him to give a convincing portrayal of Oliver Knight’s decision to stay in Nazi Germany doing radio broadcasts rather than being interred and deported with other American reporters and diplomats. Though the portrayal of politics and personalities benefits from Shirer’s long experience reporting from inside Nazi Germany, the scene setting is strangely flat, lacking sensory details which would put the reader in the scene with the participants, rather than a detached observer of the scene. Much of the novel reads like a very long play, with most of the action carried in dialogue and reminiscences among a limited cast of characters within extended scenes in a single setting. In fact most of the key scenes take place in one particular setting, a cafe where foreign correspondents meet and are observed by and interact with the Nazi officials charged with keeping tabs on them. In this cafe the action opens on August 31, 1939, the night before the world war begins; here it reaches its climax on December 10, 1941, when Americans are taken into custody before Hitler’s declaration of war on the US, and when Knight makes his decision to stay; and here it closes on July 4, 1945 when US troops take control of their sector of Berlin, where the café is located. So strong is the sense of the café being a stage set that, during a scene in the café when British bombs are being dropped on Berlin, rather than feeling that the characters are threatened by actual aerial bombardment, I had a mental image of sound effects men playing recordings of explosions and stagehands striking the walls of the set from behind to knock bottles and rigged pieces of plaster to the floor.
The few scenes which “open up” the otherwise interior-heavy atmosphere are not totally successful. A section set during the German invasion of Poland reads like a press dispatch, with none of the sounds, smells, or visual details that would bring the scenes to life. A trip Knight makes to Stalingrad is portrayed with a few vivid images, but is far too brief compared with other extended scenes with much less emotional punch or narrative purpose. However, there is one such section which worked very well: a lengthy flashback where Knight is a young reporter in Weimar Berlin. After reading Isherwood, Kästner, and now Shirer, I am becoming convinced that it is impossible for anyone who experienced Berlin in the late 1920s to write uninterestingly about it.
Shirer puts himself into the novel in the person of reporter Jack Goodman, whose John Bunyanesque name is all too apropos. Goodman is a foil to Knight, being a reporter who sees all too clearly the monstrousness of the National Socialists and who acts as a kind of anti-Mephistopheles to Knight’s Faust, urging him to the path of virtue as he is tempted into treason by the offers of the Nazi propagandists. The biographies of Shirer and Goodman diverge later in the novel as the fictional character engages in undertakings too heroic to be creditable in a middle-aged American reporter, married with children.
The last third of the novel is largely taken up with an espionage plot centered around the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. The plot itself and its details rather detract from the story, but the fallout for the various characters after the plot’s failure helps to bring into focus the themes of the novel and, in the end, makes for a fairly satisfying climax.
We are never shown any of the effects that Knight’s propaganda broadcasts have on their intended audience, but Shirer does make one unintentional demonstration of the power of propaganda to affect perceptions of reality. He has Goodman as an eyewitness to Hitler’s dancing a “jig” after the surrender of France; in actuality the dance never happened: it was later revealed to be the work of an Allied film editor.
September 15, 2018
Not a great book, but my love of William Shirer, the historian of the horrors of Nazi Germany, caused me to read this novel by him. The theme is interesting -- the Americans and Brits who took to the radio waves on behalf of Germany during World War II -- but the execution isn't quite there.
April 3, 2014
Shirer gave the old 'college try' for his first novel.
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April 30, 2017i want to read the traitor
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews