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Berlin Diary #2
End of a Berlin Diary
"A vivid and unforgettable word picture of the destruction of Nazi Germany" (The New York Times).
A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. It was in 1940, when he was still virtually unknown, that Shirer wondered whether his eyewitness account of the collapse of the world around Nazi Germany could be of any interest or value as a book.
Shirer's Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, appeared in 1941. The book was an instant success--and would not be the last of his expert observations on Europe.
Shirer returned to the European front in 1944 to cover the end of the war. As the smoke cleared, Shirer--who watched the birth of a monster that threatened to engulf the world--now stood witness to the death of the Third Reich. End of a Berlin Diary chronicles this year-long study of Germany after Hitler. Through a combination of Shirer's lucid, honest reporting, along with passages on the Nuremberg trials, copies of captured Nazi documents, and an eyewitness account of Hitler's last days, Shirer provides insight into the unrest, the weariness, and the tentative steps world leaders took towards peace.
A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. It was in 1940, when he was still virtually unknown, that Shirer wondered whether his eyewitness account of the collapse of the world around Nazi Germany could be of any interest or value as a book.
Shirer's Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, appeared in 1941. The book was an instant success--and would not be the last of his expert observations on Europe.
Shirer returned to the European front in 1944 to cover the end of the war. As the smoke cleared, Shirer--who watched the birth of a monster that threatened to engulf the world--now stood witness to the death of the Third Reich. End of a Berlin Diary chronicles this year-long study of Germany after Hitler. Through a combination of Shirer's lucid, honest reporting, along with passages on the Nuremberg trials, copies of captured Nazi documents, and an eyewitness account of Hitler's last days, Shirer provides insight into the unrest, the weariness, and the tentative steps world leaders took towards peace.
351 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
330 people are currently reading
1072 people want to read
About the author
William L. Shirer
89 books1,231 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 - 30 of 44 reviews
April 22, 2023
Peace on earth. Goodwill toward men. When? How? Ever?
End of a Berlin Diary covers Shirer’s return to a defeated Germany, the last days of Hitler, his death, the end of the war and the Nuremberg trials, including a number of speeches and confiscated documents.
End of a Berlin Diary covers Shirer’s return to a defeated Germany, the last days of Hitler, his death, the end of the war and the Nuremberg trials, including a number of speeches and confiscated documents.
July 11, 2009
This is the MUST read conclusion to A Berlin Diary 1934 - 1941.
William Shirer with his return to Berlin after its fall and occupation, in his absence of a mere few years, is to witness the reaping of the whirlwind.
A total transformation awaited him in the total destruction of a familiar city, a society and a political system that brought exactly that to most of its neighbours.Now he will witness the survivors at the Nuremberg Trials,the ruins of a proud city and its people's attempts to survive a bitter and murderous defeat.It is an anti-climatic climax of the most sobering kind and filtered through the keen intelligence of someone who was so perceptive about the Whole Situation in 1934, an eyewitness and one whose finger was on the pulse even then,
this is the sort of first-hand account that is a rarity.
I read an old copy on an inter-library loan, which made me wonder whether it is even in print anymore...which would be a shame.
William Shirer with his return to Berlin after its fall and occupation, in his absence of a mere few years, is to witness the reaping of the whirlwind.
A total transformation awaited him in the total destruction of a familiar city, a society and a political system that brought exactly that to most of its neighbours.Now he will witness the survivors at the Nuremberg Trials,the ruins of a proud city and its people's attempts to survive a bitter and murderous defeat.It is an anti-climatic climax of the most sobering kind and filtered through the keen intelligence of someone who was so perceptive about the Whole Situation in 1934, an eyewitness and one whose finger was on the pulse even then,
this is the sort of first-hand account that is a rarity.
I read an old copy on an inter-library loan, which made me wonder whether it is even in print anymore...which would be a shame.
March 20, 2017
William Shirer's definitive Rise And Fall of Third Reich was so very well known, so unquestionably acknowledged to be THE book to read on the topic if one were to read just one, that one sort of postponed it when reading other stuff on the topic - after all, the horrors of the second world war, especially the genocide related ones, are precisely what a young person aware of the general history would not go into, for fear of drowning in the then recent past, who knows with what result! So instead one read other books of his, such as Nightmare Years, with unexpected benefits of discovery.
This book, one that a reader picks up naturally after reading his Berlin Diary, is unexpected in a different direction - where one expects him to pick up where he left off his Berlin sojourn in the previous book, and relate the horrors of devastation Germany in general and Berlin in particular went through, which was not trivial at all, he gives that in short too, but much, much more. This too being a diary, one goes with him on his travels as a journalist and reporter while he attend to the important, the very significant events of that year. And that was a lot.
What's more he gives much of the various speeches and documents of importance, from those related to events such as early and unexpected demise of Roosevelt, to the birth of UN and its charter set forth amidst struggles by allies with their conflicting agenda - and these conflicts, as one knows, grew only worse as far as the two powerful nations across the north pole, US and USSR, went.
Shirer, the seasoned and by then cosmopolitan albeit very American, gives an unexpected view in that he sees the various bumbling US personnel as a bit crude, less aware and more impatient to get home, than the patient, suave, knowledgeable counterparts in Europe, particularly USSR. Perhaps this is what earned him the subsequent wrath of his nations' authorities in the McCarthy era, from which he rose with his stupendous definitive work he is known for.
One should count oneself fortunate if one reads this, although it does include some documents horrific - he gives a very small selection of what documents were discovered when allies found the fourteen hundred tons of meticulously documented details of everything nazis had done, decided, and so forth, penned with typical Teutonic thoroughness as Shirer points out.
But even more fortunate one feels is about reading this book not only for its documents quoted but for the comments by its author, the sensitive and intelligent person whose awareness of the world went far beyond his limits of selfish interests - he and a few others such as he (FDR, Upton Sinclair come to mind, among those known generally) guided humanity into the illuminated path of thinking that has been generally acknowledged as the high road since, despite the not quite gone totalitarians including nazis who were not only able to take refuge in various countries around the world but actively sought out by likes of Peron of Argentina and Stroessner of Paraguay, for their preferences lay with the racist and fascist ideology.
Shirer writes about the allies marching in, battling their way into Germany, about death of Roosevelt and the reaction of the then still battling Germans who rejoiced with the impression that they had been granted a reprieve, about the birth of UN and about US insisting - despite USSR opposition - on inclusion of a very fascist Argentina that was an ally of Germany, about Berlin destroyed (and its residents, like other Germans too, upset with their leaders then only about the losing the war, not about having started it or having caused destruction and havoc and genocides that affected others), and about the Nuremberg Trials that - again - the residents of the city and others across Germany then took as theater by victors punishing the losers. About the horrendous facts that came out with documents that showed intention and plans by the nazis, and more.
If only these works by Shirer were prescribed reading for schools, students would graduate and arrive at colleges far better educated than they have for the better part of century past.
This book, one that a reader picks up naturally after reading his Berlin Diary, is unexpected in a different direction - where one expects him to pick up where he left off his Berlin sojourn in the previous book, and relate the horrors of devastation Germany in general and Berlin in particular went through, which was not trivial at all, he gives that in short too, but much, much more. This too being a diary, one goes with him on his travels as a journalist and reporter while he attend to the important, the very significant events of that year. And that was a lot.
What's more he gives much of the various speeches and documents of importance, from those related to events such as early and unexpected demise of Roosevelt, to the birth of UN and its charter set forth amidst struggles by allies with their conflicting agenda - and these conflicts, as one knows, grew only worse as far as the two powerful nations across the north pole, US and USSR, went.
Shirer, the seasoned and by then cosmopolitan albeit very American, gives an unexpected view in that he sees the various bumbling US personnel as a bit crude, less aware and more impatient to get home, than the patient, suave, knowledgeable counterparts in Europe, particularly USSR. Perhaps this is what earned him the subsequent wrath of his nations' authorities in the McCarthy era, from which he rose with his stupendous definitive work he is known for.
One should count oneself fortunate if one reads this, although it does include some documents horrific - he gives a very small selection of what documents were discovered when allies found the fourteen hundred tons of meticulously documented details of everything nazis had done, decided, and so forth, penned with typical Teutonic thoroughness as Shirer points out.
But even more fortunate one feels is about reading this book not only for its documents quoted but for the comments by its author, the sensitive and intelligent person whose awareness of the world went far beyond his limits of selfish interests - he and a few others such as he (FDR, Upton Sinclair come to mind, among those known generally) guided humanity into the illuminated path of thinking that has been generally acknowledged as the high road since, despite the not quite gone totalitarians including nazis who were not only able to take refuge in various countries around the world but actively sought out by likes of Peron of Argentina and Stroessner of Paraguay, for their preferences lay with the racist and fascist ideology.
Shirer writes about the allies marching in, battling their way into Germany, about death of Roosevelt and the reaction of the then still battling Germans who rejoiced with the impression that they had been granted a reprieve, about the birth of UN and about US insisting - despite USSR opposition - on inclusion of a very fascist Argentina that was an ally of Germany, about Berlin destroyed (and its residents, like other Germans too, upset with their leaders then only about the losing the war, not about having started it or having caused destruction and havoc and genocides that affected others), and about the Nuremberg Trials that - again - the residents of the city and others across Germany then took as theater by victors punishing the losers. About the horrendous facts that came out with documents that showed intention and plans by the nazis, and more.
If only these works by Shirer were prescribed reading for schools, students would graduate and arrive at colleges far better educated than they have for the better part of century past.
February 5, 2023
After reading “Berlin Diary,” I discovered that there is also a continuation of this book, “End of a Berlin Diary,” written in the last months of WW2 and immediately after WW2. Naturally, I stopped reading what I already read at the moment and found this book.
Well, it’s definitely not the same thing as “Berlin Diary,” both in terms of mood/dynamics and in its contents. While “Berlin Diary” was very vigorous, dynamic, ironic, even slightly cynical, “End of a Berlin Diary” is very slow, melancholic, depressing, lacks any structure whatsoever, and apparently has no clear purpose. “Berlin Diary” was highly interesting because it showed how a journalist day after day discovers new facts about Germany’s aggression against the whole world and interprets/analyses these facts very cleverly. “End of a Berlin Diary” is mostly just a reprinting of well-known facts about the progress of the war and its ending without any analytics. Besides this, it contains some very strange and irrelevant to us today reflections, but all this is very far from what we can find in “Berlin Diary.”
In the first half of the book, Shirer mostly just recorded his day-to-day reactions to various events during the last year of the war and reprinted the most important (from his point of view) news regarding the war. This part is just awful, in my opinion, and I seriously considered ditching the book here. It’s just very empty, uninformative, uninteresting.
The second half of the book was somewhat redeeming, although I wasn’t happy about it either. Here, Shirer returned to Europe in 1944 for the first time after leaving it in 1940. He was sent there as an American journalist to cover the end of the war when it was clear to the whole world that the war is close to ending. After the war, he stayed in Germany for a while and reported also on the Nuremberg Trials.
I expected some valuable observations about the changes he could have seen in Germany and German society at the time, and he indeed made some interesting remarks about this, but there are very few of them. Instead, he is looking at lots of documents — apparently those that gradually were becoming available to the occupying forces and shown to journalists. It looks like Shirer still does not know what he could think/say about all this, so he just reprints these documents for his “diary” (in full or abbreviated, or sometimes as a shortened “retelling” of their contents). I don’t think that this reprinting has anything with “a diary” and felt very skeptical about an objective of such a book, but I appreciated that I had an opportunity to read some of these documents. They are still not very well-known to us, or are known mostly in very general form, as part of Nazi’s ideas and activities. For example, when I watched the movie “Der Untergang” (“Бункер”) (2004), I wondered how historically true everything shown there was and from which sources we learned about all this. Well, among other things, Shirer reprints memoirs of Hanna Reitsch (a famous German woman aviator, Hitler’s admirer and close collaborator) about the last days of Hitler’s life in his bunker, and it looks like almost everything shown in the movie is based on this Hanna Reitsch’s account (she was represented in the movie as well). It was very interesting indeed. There were also many other documents about various Nazi politics, Hitler’s decisions, the Holocaust, etc., that I read with interest. However, the whole reading of these reprints after reprints, many, many pages of them, looked somewhat ridiculous — it’s definitely not “a diary” and not something that I expected from Shirer after “Berlin Diary.”
It should be said that William Shirer was writing “End of a Berlin Diary” after his first book, “Berlin Diary,” had been already published and become an incredibly popular bestseller. Alas, “End of a Berlin Diary” looks like an awkward attempt to repeat this success without any real understanding of what exactly made the original “Berlin Diary” such a cool book. Yes, it feels like these two books were written by two different people, and one of them has no idea what to do but he tries his best to do something using the materials available.
So it was not a completely useless reading but I would happily live without about 80% of this large book, and I regret the time I spent on it.
What was the most interesting (and true to the meaning of the diary) for me was Shirer’s observations about German people after the war. I found them amazingly relevant for today and believe that we should keep these words in mind when we try to imagine what would happen with Russian society after our current war. And no, it’s not a matter of “denazification.” It’s something much deeper and more serious.
“Berlin, Saturday, November 3
So this is the end of Hitler’s thousand-year Reich! The end of the awful tyranny, the bloody war, the whole long nightmare of a storm that some of us American correspondents began covering a decade ago from this once proud capital.
It is something to see — here where it ended. And it is indescribable.
How can you find words to convey truthfully and accurately the picture of a great capital destroyed almost beyond recognition; of a once mighty nation that has ceased to exist; of a conquering people who were so brutally arrogant and so blindly sure of their mission as the master race when I departed from here five years ago, and whom you now see poking about their ruins, broken, dazed, shivering, hungry human beings without will or purpose or direction, reduced like animals to foraging for food and seeking shelter in order to cling to life for another day?
Ah, you say, this is not a pretty thing to observe, but at least these people have learned one thing — that war does not pay. Surely they are now sorry they started this one and are determined never to do it again. Alas, one cannot report for certain that this is so.
What the German people regret, you soon find, is not that they made this war, but that they lost it. If only Hitler had listened to his generals during the Russian campaign; if only he hadn’t declared war on the United States; if only the whole world hadn’t ganged up on poor Germany, they whimper, Germany would have won and been spared the present sufferings. There is no sense of guilt or even remorse. Most Germans you talk to merely think they have been unlucky.”
*
“And yet how many Germans realized why this misery had come? Didn’t they blame the foreign enemy for it? Wasn’t the only blame they had for Hitler merely that he had lost, not won, the war? Walter and Howard, who have been here some time, saying that it was. The German people they had talked to, they said, blamed the Nazis not for starting this incredibly destructive war, but merely for having lost it. As a German woman, with hungry eyes, I fell to talking to at the Press Club last night kept saying: “If only Hitler had let the generals run the war; if only we hadn’t attacked Russia, or, if after we had, you Americans had not come in to help them, we might have won and been spared this.”
The German people, I fear, have not — by a hell of a long way — learned the lessons of this terrible war. They have no sense of guilt and are sorry only that they were beaten and must now suffer the consequences. They are sorry only for themselves; not at all for those they murdered and tortured and tried to wipe off this earth.”
*
“The picture is so black. Are there no shadings? Could I not find some? Are there no “good Germans,” for instance, on which to build one’s hopes ? Ah, surely! Was there not the poet Adam Kuckhoff, who did not give in? Who was convicted of “high treason”? Who was hanged on the gallows at Plötzensee on the morning of August 5, 1943? Who, before he was led away, wrote his wife, Greta, one of the most moving poems and one of the most courageous letters ever penned by man? Yes, there was Kuckhoff and the poet Bonhoeffer and others in this sad land who gave their lives in the name of human decency.
But amidst these ruins I do not hear their names. Was the sacrifice of these few of no account? Is it not rather the spirit of Hitler and Himmler that is rising again from the debris? Is it not their deaths and their deeds that count among these tragic people? And are the Germans not already waiting to follow another diabolical Führer to still another destruction? Alas, so it seems to me.”
*
“Last night I stumbled into a German newspaperman, an old acquaintance from the prewar days, a good anti-Nazi.
“How are the German people taking this trial of the Nazi war criminals?” I asked.
“They think it’s propaganda,” he said.”
*
“Nuremberg, Saturday, December 8
Bitterly cold today, and snow covering the earth. The youngsters, I noticed, were skating on the canal. But for the people living in the unheated cellars under the ruins the cold was cruel. I talked to some of them today, and to some whose houses, in the outskirts, are still intact.
The trial? Ja — propaganda! You’ll hang them anyway. So you make a trial for propaganda. Why should we pay any attention? We’re cold. We’re hungry.”
*
“There was so much that was true that did not make sense: the monumental apathy of the German people and their deep regret, not that they had started the war, but merely that they had lost it; their whining complaints at the lack of food and fuel and their total lack of sympathy or even interest in the worse plight of the occupied peoples, for which they bore so much responsibility; their boredom at the very mention of the Nuremberg trial, which they were convinced was only an Allied propaganda stunt; their striking unreadiness for, or interest in, democracy, which we, with typical Anglo-Saxon fervor and blindness, were trying to shove down their throats.
Can you forget the things Germans said: Paul Lobe, the aging Social-Democrat and former President of the Reichstag, warning — yes, warning! — the Allies that they must not hold the German people responsible for Germany’s crimes, but only the Nazis?
The poet Johannes R. Becher having the guts to go to the microphone in Berlin and tell his fellow Germans that they all bore a share of guilt for Hitler’s crimes and begging them to wake up and face the fact that “the greater part of our people have fallen into an inferno of immorality…. In the immensity of our guilt and the depth of our disgrace our defeat has no parallel in world history…. Let us face the bitter fact that we are despised and hated in the whole world.”
Brave words, and Becher meant them, but did they not fall on barren ground.”
Well, it’s definitely not the same thing as “Berlin Diary,” both in terms of mood/dynamics and in its contents. While “Berlin Diary” was very vigorous, dynamic, ironic, even slightly cynical, “End of a Berlin Diary” is very slow, melancholic, depressing, lacks any structure whatsoever, and apparently has no clear purpose. “Berlin Diary” was highly interesting because it showed how a journalist day after day discovers new facts about Germany’s aggression against the whole world and interprets/analyses these facts very cleverly. “End of a Berlin Diary” is mostly just a reprinting of well-known facts about the progress of the war and its ending without any analytics. Besides this, it contains some very strange and irrelevant to us today reflections, but all this is very far from what we can find in “Berlin Diary.”
In the first half of the book, Shirer mostly just recorded his day-to-day reactions to various events during the last year of the war and reprinted the most important (from his point of view) news regarding the war. This part is just awful, in my opinion, and I seriously considered ditching the book here. It’s just very empty, uninformative, uninteresting.
The second half of the book was somewhat redeeming, although I wasn’t happy about it either. Here, Shirer returned to Europe in 1944 for the first time after leaving it in 1940. He was sent there as an American journalist to cover the end of the war when it was clear to the whole world that the war is close to ending. After the war, he stayed in Germany for a while and reported also on the Nuremberg Trials.
I expected some valuable observations about the changes he could have seen in Germany and German society at the time, and he indeed made some interesting remarks about this, but there are very few of them. Instead, he is looking at lots of documents — apparently those that gradually were becoming available to the occupying forces and shown to journalists. It looks like Shirer still does not know what he could think/say about all this, so he just reprints these documents for his “diary” (in full or abbreviated, or sometimes as a shortened “retelling” of their contents). I don’t think that this reprinting has anything with “a diary” and felt very skeptical about an objective of such a book, but I appreciated that I had an opportunity to read some of these documents. They are still not very well-known to us, or are known mostly in very general form, as part of Nazi’s ideas and activities. For example, when I watched the movie “Der Untergang” (“Бункер”) (2004), I wondered how historically true everything shown there was and from which sources we learned about all this. Well, among other things, Shirer reprints memoirs of Hanna Reitsch (a famous German woman aviator, Hitler’s admirer and close collaborator) about the last days of Hitler’s life in his bunker, and it looks like almost everything shown in the movie is based on this Hanna Reitsch’s account (she was represented in the movie as well). It was very interesting indeed. There were also many other documents about various Nazi politics, Hitler’s decisions, the Holocaust, etc., that I read with interest. However, the whole reading of these reprints after reprints, many, many pages of them, looked somewhat ridiculous — it’s definitely not “a diary” and not something that I expected from Shirer after “Berlin Diary.”
It should be said that William Shirer was writing “End of a Berlin Diary” after his first book, “Berlin Diary,” had been already published and become an incredibly popular bestseller. Alas, “End of a Berlin Diary” looks like an awkward attempt to repeat this success without any real understanding of what exactly made the original “Berlin Diary” such a cool book. Yes, it feels like these two books were written by two different people, and one of them has no idea what to do but he tries his best to do something using the materials available.
So it was not a completely useless reading but I would happily live without about 80% of this large book, and I regret the time I spent on it.
What was the most interesting (and true to the meaning of the diary) for me was Shirer’s observations about German people after the war. I found them amazingly relevant for today and believe that we should keep these words in mind when we try to imagine what would happen with Russian society after our current war. And no, it’s not a matter of “denazification.” It’s something much deeper and more serious.
“Berlin, Saturday, November 3
So this is the end of Hitler’s thousand-year Reich! The end of the awful tyranny, the bloody war, the whole long nightmare of a storm that some of us American correspondents began covering a decade ago from this once proud capital.
It is something to see — here where it ended. And it is indescribable.
How can you find words to convey truthfully and accurately the picture of a great capital destroyed almost beyond recognition; of a once mighty nation that has ceased to exist; of a conquering people who were so brutally arrogant and so blindly sure of their mission as the master race when I departed from here five years ago, and whom you now see poking about their ruins, broken, dazed, shivering, hungry human beings without will or purpose or direction, reduced like animals to foraging for food and seeking shelter in order to cling to life for another day?
Ah, you say, this is not a pretty thing to observe, but at least these people have learned one thing — that war does not pay. Surely they are now sorry they started this one and are determined never to do it again. Alas, one cannot report for certain that this is so.
What the German people regret, you soon find, is not that they made this war, but that they lost it. If only Hitler had listened to his generals during the Russian campaign; if only he hadn’t declared war on the United States; if only the whole world hadn’t ganged up on poor Germany, they whimper, Germany would have won and been spared the present sufferings. There is no sense of guilt or even remorse. Most Germans you talk to merely think they have been unlucky.”
*
“And yet how many Germans realized why this misery had come? Didn’t they blame the foreign enemy for it? Wasn’t the only blame they had for Hitler merely that he had lost, not won, the war? Walter and Howard, who have been here some time, saying that it was. The German people they had talked to, they said, blamed the Nazis not for starting this incredibly destructive war, but merely for having lost it. As a German woman, with hungry eyes, I fell to talking to at the Press Club last night kept saying: “If only Hitler had let the generals run the war; if only we hadn’t attacked Russia, or, if after we had, you Americans had not come in to help them, we might have won and been spared this.”
The German people, I fear, have not — by a hell of a long way — learned the lessons of this terrible war. They have no sense of guilt and are sorry only that they were beaten and must now suffer the consequences. They are sorry only for themselves; not at all for those they murdered and tortured and tried to wipe off this earth.”
*
“The picture is so black. Are there no shadings? Could I not find some? Are there no “good Germans,” for instance, on which to build one’s hopes ? Ah, surely! Was there not the poet Adam Kuckhoff, who did not give in? Who was convicted of “high treason”? Who was hanged on the gallows at Plötzensee on the morning of August 5, 1943? Who, before he was led away, wrote his wife, Greta, one of the most moving poems and one of the most courageous letters ever penned by man? Yes, there was Kuckhoff and the poet Bonhoeffer and others in this sad land who gave their lives in the name of human decency.
But amidst these ruins I do not hear their names. Was the sacrifice of these few of no account? Is it not rather the spirit of Hitler and Himmler that is rising again from the debris? Is it not their deaths and their deeds that count among these tragic people? And are the Germans not already waiting to follow another diabolical Führer to still another destruction? Alas, so it seems to me.”
*
“Last night I stumbled into a German newspaperman, an old acquaintance from the prewar days, a good anti-Nazi.
“How are the German people taking this trial of the Nazi war criminals?” I asked.
“They think it’s propaganda,” he said.”
*
“Nuremberg, Saturday, December 8
Bitterly cold today, and snow covering the earth. The youngsters, I noticed, were skating on the canal. But for the people living in the unheated cellars under the ruins the cold was cruel. I talked to some of them today, and to some whose houses, in the outskirts, are still intact.
The trial? Ja — propaganda! You’ll hang them anyway. So you make a trial for propaganda. Why should we pay any attention? We’re cold. We’re hungry.”
*
“There was so much that was true that did not make sense: the monumental apathy of the German people and their deep regret, not that they had started the war, but merely that they had lost it; their whining complaints at the lack of food and fuel and their total lack of sympathy or even interest in the worse plight of the occupied peoples, for which they bore so much responsibility; their boredom at the very mention of the Nuremberg trial, which they were convinced was only an Allied propaganda stunt; their striking unreadiness for, or interest in, democracy, which we, with typical Anglo-Saxon fervor and blindness, were trying to shove down their throats.
Can you forget the things Germans said: Paul Lobe, the aging Social-Democrat and former President of the Reichstag, warning — yes, warning! — the Allies that they must not hold the German people responsible for Germany’s crimes, but only the Nazis?
The poet Johannes R. Becher having the guts to go to the microphone in Berlin and tell his fellow Germans that they all bore a share of guilt for Hitler’s crimes and begging them to wake up and face the fact that “the greater part of our people have fallen into an inferno of immorality…. In the immensity of our guilt and the depth of our disgrace our defeat has no parallel in world history…. Let us face the bitter fact that we are despised and hated in the whole world.”
Brave words, and Becher meant them, but did they not fall on barren ground.”
January 30, 2025
not as unbearable as the first of the berlin diaries since it focuses much less on shirer's constant drinks or dinner or little vacations around europe while lecturing on how stupid everyone is (other than him of course!) for not preventing WWII.
fascinating mostly because of his recount of historical events and primary documents that come to light with the end of the war and the nuremberg trials. felt, unfortunately, rather topical and close to home right now with the state of politics, and some interesting discussions about the end of war and how to truly defeat an unjust enemy, but also just so much hope for globalism and social democracy that simply... has not been achieved. i think it would be more interesting to read about this from a different author, but sometimes he's okay.
fascinating mostly because of his recount of historical events and primary documents that come to light with the end of the war and the nuremberg trials. felt, unfortunately, rather topical and close to home right now with the state of politics, and some interesting discussions about the end of war and how to truly defeat an unjust enemy, but also just so much hope for globalism and social democracy that simply... has not been achieved. i think it would be more interesting to read about this from a different author, but sometimes he's okay.
June 23, 2022
Well, it was somewhat sad to realize that what we have now in Russia is just a common garden variety nazism. But it seems like so. The parallels are obvious, and most descriptions can be ported without any changes by simply replacing “Germany” to “Russia”, and adjusting dates. This makes me extremely sad, of course.
June 15, 2021
Disappointing
William Shirer’s Berlin Diary was fresh and spontaneous, engaging the reader in the world of pre-war Germany. The End of Berlin Diary seems forced, two many names dropped without analysis or interpretation. The failure to discuss the horrors of the Concentration Camps is a major flaw. How could he not visit the site of the atrocities, a major theme I the Nuremberg Trials. Overall not his best work.
William Shirer’s Berlin Diary was fresh and spontaneous, engaging the reader in the world of pre-war Germany. The End of Berlin Diary seems forced, two many names dropped without analysis or interpretation. The failure to discuss the horrors of the Concentration Camps is a major flaw. How could he not visit the site of the atrocities, a major theme I the Nuremberg Trials. Overall not his best work.
February 5, 2025
Not quite the book the first one is, but good first-hand reporting nonetheless.
August 6, 2024
William L. Shirer spent more than 15 years of his life overseas as a correspondent, most notably as one of the “Murrow Boys” for CBS radio, stationed in Germany from 1934-40, a witness to Hitler’s rise to power and able to observe first-hand the horrific nature of the Nazi regime. This resulted in his best-selling “Berlin Diary”, which is one of his best-known works along with “Midcentury Journey” and, of course, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.
“End of a Berlin Diary” is a lesser-known follow-up volume where Shirer returned to Germany after the war, to Berlin, Nuremberg and other cities, and witnessed the devastation wrought by the war on both the land and its people, It is pervaded by a mixture of wistfulness, sadness, incredulity, horror, pessimism and not a little schadenfreude at the judgments meted out to the top Nazis at the war crimes trials, and even at times at the wretched state of the German civilians wandering amidst the ruins who, Shirer feared, were deliberately refusing to learn the lessons the war taught them at such great cost.
Wistfulness and sadness, because he saw the major cities of Germany transformed by the Allied bombing campaign—and in Berlin’s case, by the desperate street battles that raged throughout the city in April 1945 as the Russians closed in on the Chancellery, as Hitler cowered in his bunker, and as fanatical SS troops, refusing to surrender, fought building by building, floor by floor, room by room—into unrecognizable wastelands of rubble. Shirer roamed the streets (those that had been at least partially cleared—many he could not find at all because even the pavement or cobblestones had been obliterated) desperately searching for familiar landmarks and old haunts he used to frequent—theaters, night clubs, hotels, newspaper and radio offices, meeting halls—that simply no longer existed or that were, at best, burned-out shells. If anything at all remained of these places, it was the cellars, in which dazed survivors cowered with a few candles and scraps of wood, wrapped in rags, desperately trying to ward off the cold of the approaching winter.
Wistfulness and regret also because, unlike the Allied occupation troops who resented being there and only wanted to go home, and who knew little about the country, its people and history and who cared even less, Shirer was able to remember the way the cities had been before, and appreciated the magnitude of the loss to the cultural heritage of the world. In Nuremberg he lamented that the beautiful medieval city of Albrecht Durer—so prominent in many of his engravings and woodcuts from the beginning of the Sixteenth Century—was no more. It outraged him that many of the massive concrete structures created by Albert Speer for the annual Nazi party rallies had survived relatively intact whereas so much far more worthy of preservation had perished.
Horror and incredulity, because a once proud people who had produced many of the world’s greatest cultural achievements had allowed themselves to be led astray, down the broad path that leadeth to destruction, by a madman whose mesmeric and siren-like speech appealed to what Shirer felt was the inherent militaristic nature of Teutonic people, along with a desire to be led or ordered by a charismatic pied piper (witness Kaiser Wilhelm, Otto von Bismarck, Frederick the Great). He had no other explanation for concentration camps, “lebensraum”, the Holocaust, wanton aggression—the idea that they were the “master race” and that the normal rules of civilized conduct between peoples and nations did not apply to them and therefore they could do anything they wanted in pursuit of their territorial and racial goals—other than they were blinded to the existence of pure evil and that, when there was a bit of understanding of its true nature, they chose to go along anyway because they believed it was their due.
Shirer’s evaluation of the Germans as an inherently militaristic and “easily-led” people led him to a pessimistic assessment of their future. In talking to many of the Germans grubbing for survival among the ruins, he found that they were sorry for the war—not that they started it, but that they lost it. Many on the Allied side felt that if Germany was allowed to rebuild its industry and reorganize its economy, within five years it would be able to start yet another war, and they saw this as an inevitability considering the course of German history after the Great War. They therefore favored turning Germany into a strictly pastoral, agricultural country prohibited from having any army or navy or heavy industry, and turning the citizens into farmers. While Shirer made no specific reference to this idea, he probably would have been sympathetic to it. While there are indirect references to the Cold War’s beginning and the emergence of the Soviet Union as the principal adversary of the West, the book was published before the promulgation of the Marshall Plan and there is no discussion of the rationale behind it, which envisioned West Germany, with a defensive Bundeswehr, as the first line of defense against the Soviets and their allies (not by choice!) in the Warsaw Pact.
Shirer contrasted at great length the pathetic appearance of the Nazi criminals in the dock at Nuremberg—little shrunken men in shabby clothes, some glum-looking, others defiant—with the pomposity and arrogance they had displayed strutting about in their glittery uniforms as they inflicted unspeakable horrors upon the world. Julius Streicher and Joachim von Ribbentrop received particular ridicule. His descriptions oozed contempt and not a little satisfaction at their ultimate fates, and he was disappointed at the acquittal of von Papen, who helped orchestrate Hitler’s rise to power.
The Allies captured thousands of documents showing the inner workings of the Nazi regime. Shirer had access to these and reproduced many of them—Hitler’s political testament continuing to blame the Jews for everything even at the end of his life; conferences from the 1930’s where Hitler told his generals exactly what he was planning to do; evaluations of the military capabilities of the Allies; contingency plans in case things went wrong; rantings and ravings recorded at the party rallies; all sufficient to reveal the full extent of Hitler’s hatred and madness and the appalling degree to which the German people and military allowed him to get away with it, even when they (at least a few of them) knew better. These accounts are presented in very small print and are rather tedious to wade through, but for a historian or journalist they are a treasure trove.
At the end of the book Shirer revealed a palpable sense of relief at being able, at last, to escape the chaos, death and destruction of Europe and return home to his family and to sanity and to devote himself to reflection, writing, and, if possible, making sense of all he had seen and heard. While he applauded the creation of the United Nations and was hopeful that it would be able to make a difference in world affairs, he nevertheless remained very uneasy about prospects for a lasting peace or that the world would really be much different as time went on. Sadly, events would soon prove him right, and have continued to prove him right ever since. He would no doubt agree that civilization is a very thin veneer, with very little required to strip it away.
***** review by Chuck Graham *****
“End of a Berlin Diary” is a lesser-known follow-up volume where Shirer returned to Germany after the war, to Berlin, Nuremberg and other cities, and witnessed the devastation wrought by the war on both the land and its people, It is pervaded by a mixture of wistfulness, sadness, incredulity, horror, pessimism and not a little schadenfreude at the judgments meted out to the top Nazis at the war crimes trials, and even at times at the wretched state of the German civilians wandering amidst the ruins who, Shirer feared, were deliberately refusing to learn the lessons the war taught them at such great cost.
Wistfulness and sadness, because he saw the major cities of Germany transformed by the Allied bombing campaign—and in Berlin’s case, by the desperate street battles that raged throughout the city in April 1945 as the Russians closed in on the Chancellery, as Hitler cowered in his bunker, and as fanatical SS troops, refusing to surrender, fought building by building, floor by floor, room by room—into unrecognizable wastelands of rubble. Shirer roamed the streets (those that had been at least partially cleared—many he could not find at all because even the pavement or cobblestones had been obliterated) desperately searching for familiar landmarks and old haunts he used to frequent—theaters, night clubs, hotels, newspaper and radio offices, meeting halls—that simply no longer existed or that were, at best, burned-out shells. If anything at all remained of these places, it was the cellars, in which dazed survivors cowered with a few candles and scraps of wood, wrapped in rags, desperately trying to ward off the cold of the approaching winter.
Wistfulness and regret also because, unlike the Allied occupation troops who resented being there and only wanted to go home, and who knew little about the country, its people and history and who cared even less, Shirer was able to remember the way the cities had been before, and appreciated the magnitude of the loss to the cultural heritage of the world. In Nuremberg he lamented that the beautiful medieval city of Albrecht Durer—so prominent in many of his engravings and woodcuts from the beginning of the Sixteenth Century—was no more. It outraged him that many of the massive concrete structures created by Albert Speer for the annual Nazi party rallies had survived relatively intact whereas so much far more worthy of preservation had perished.
Horror and incredulity, because a once proud people who had produced many of the world’s greatest cultural achievements had allowed themselves to be led astray, down the broad path that leadeth to destruction, by a madman whose mesmeric and siren-like speech appealed to what Shirer felt was the inherent militaristic nature of Teutonic people, along with a desire to be led or ordered by a charismatic pied piper (witness Kaiser Wilhelm, Otto von Bismarck, Frederick the Great). He had no other explanation for concentration camps, “lebensraum”, the Holocaust, wanton aggression—the idea that they were the “master race” and that the normal rules of civilized conduct between peoples and nations did not apply to them and therefore they could do anything they wanted in pursuit of their territorial and racial goals—other than they were blinded to the existence of pure evil and that, when there was a bit of understanding of its true nature, they chose to go along anyway because they believed it was their due.
Shirer’s evaluation of the Germans as an inherently militaristic and “easily-led” people led him to a pessimistic assessment of their future. In talking to many of the Germans grubbing for survival among the ruins, he found that they were sorry for the war—not that they started it, but that they lost it. Many on the Allied side felt that if Germany was allowed to rebuild its industry and reorganize its economy, within five years it would be able to start yet another war, and they saw this as an inevitability considering the course of German history after the Great War. They therefore favored turning Germany into a strictly pastoral, agricultural country prohibited from having any army or navy or heavy industry, and turning the citizens into farmers. While Shirer made no specific reference to this idea, he probably would have been sympathetic to it. While there are indirect references to the Cold War’s beginning and the emergence of the Soviet Union as the principal adversary of the West, the book was published before the promulgation of the Marshall Plan and there is no discussion of the rationale behind it, which envisioned West Germany, with a defensive Bundeswehr, as the first line of defense against the Soviets and their allies (not by choice!) in the Warsaw Pact.
Shirer contrasted at great length the pathetic appearance of the Nazi criminals in the dock at Nuremberg—little shrunken men in shabby clothes, some glum-looking, others defiant—with the pomposity and arrogance they had displayed strutting about in their glittery uniforms as they inflicted unspeakable horrors upon the world. Julius Streicher and Joachim von Ribbentrop received particular ridicule. His descriptions oozed contempt and not a little satisfaction at their ultimate fates, and he was disappointed at the acquittal of von Papen, who helped orchestrate Hitler’s rise to power.
The Allies captured thousands of documents showing the inner workings of the Nazi regime. Shirer had access to these and reproduced many of them—Hitler’s political testament continuing to blame the Jews for everything even at the end of his life; conferences from the 1930’s where Hitler told his generals exactly what he was planning to do; evaluations of the military capabilities of the Allies; contingency plans in case things went wrong; rantings and ravings recorded at the party rallies; all sufficient to reveal the full extent of Hitler’s hatred and madness and the appalling degree to which the German people and military allowed him to get away with it, even when they (at least a few of them) knew better. These accounts are presented in very small print and are rather tedious to wade through, but for a historian or journalist they are a treasure trove.
At the end of the book Shirer revealed a palpable sense of relief at being able, at last, to escape the chaos, death and destruction of Europe and return home to his family and to sanity and to devote himself to reflection, writing, and, if possible, making sense of all he had seen and heard. While he applauded the creation of the United Nations and was hopeful that it would be able to make a difference in world affairs, he nevertheless remained very uneasy about prospects for a lasting peace or that the world would really be much different as time went on. Sadly, events would soon prove him right, and have continued to prove him right ever since. He would no doubt agree that civilization is a very thin veneer, with very little required to strip it away.
***** review by Chuck Graham *****
April 7, 2020
Shirer's "Berlin Diary" ended pretty much when he was forced to leave Berlin in December 1940, with the other "Western" news correspondents. After the war, he went back to Germany, to cover the Nuremberg trials. He probably decided then and there to begin researching his magnus opus, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, since the all of the German archives were then open to Allied newsmen covering the trial. And while he was there, Schirer "completed" his first memoir, "Berlin Diary", with this book, called, not surprisingly "End of a Berlin Diary". Shirer shares the fresh shock the world was under, at the discovery of so much hate and scorn for human life, on the part of the German army and government. And, while describing a ruined but hopeful Europe immediately after the war, he focuses on the Nazi monsters who were on trial. A fascinating book, though a little disjointed.
April 23, 2016
Lack of nuance, few insights and the inclusion of too many dry documents make this one a disappointment. Try the better 'Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-41' by the same author instead.
December 9, 2021
Not as moving especially as it relies on documents rather than Shirer's thoughts about events as they happened in his earlier book. Still his summing up and the fact that such detail was kept during the events is fascinating along with his observations about Nuremberg and the trials there.
July 28, 2021
Regreso a Berlín 1945 a 1947 - Segunda parte del fantástico "Diario de Berlín 1936 a 1941" escrito por William L. Shirer. Se publicó en 1947 y comienza donde se quedó el anterior libro.
En Diario de Berlín vimos las notas dejadas en su diario por el periodista norteamericano, vimos como se vivió la pre guerra y el comienzo de la guerra en Alemania y nos quedamos cuando el autor escapa de Berlín con los nazis pisandole los talones.
Encontramos a una persona alejada durante 4 años de las zonas de guerra y añorando un poco estar en la acción. Por otro lado está contento de haberse alejado de la población Alemana, la cual encuentra como bestias que permitieron al régimen nazi crecer.
Por otro lado lo vemos con una visión muy crítica con su gobierno y el aliado, sobre todo por el surgimiento de las Naciones Unidas y las distintas posiciones sostenidas por los aliados, vamos el comienzo del distanciamiento entre el bloque de Estados Unidos y el comunista.
Me sorprendió encontrar una visión muy crítica con Estados Unidos e Inglaterra y más abierta a la Rusa, por lo menos se le reconoce a los rusos su fuerte participación en la Victoria.
William teme que se cometa el mismo error cometido al final de la segunda guerra, y es no cortarle la cabeza a la víbora. Dejar a Alemania en una posición que le permita volver a recuperarse.
Y en parte fue lo que pasó, se metió pila de plata para reconstruir Alemania cuando los países vecinos pasaban hambre y su población moría de frío, cuando ellos fueron las víctimas de la guerra.
Luego hay una parte en que se cuenta el viaje de un mes o dos que realizó a la Berlín destruida por la guerra. De esta parte yo esperaba mucho más por el dinamismo y lo interesante que fue el diario desde Berlín de antes de la guerra y la verdad me decepcionó.
Por qué? El autor tuvo la suerte de leer los archivos secretos encontrados de los nazis y hay mucho copio y pego, de documentos que son muy interesantes pero que no era lo que quería, yo quería el día a día de una Berlín vencida y arruinada.
Obviamente eso que yo quería hay, pero poco. De lo poco que hay se ve a un pueblo alemán derrotado pero no vencido, no asumen sus culpas y hacen responsables a el partido pero no a sí mismos.
Es un MUY buen libro, detallado, documentado y muy adelantado a su época con la información pero sobre todo con las opiniones vertidas, se nota que el autor sabía mucho del tema y vivió en carne propia el horror de esa época.
Pero no está a la altura del primero, y eso hace que sea un poco decepcionante. También se nota más apresurado, me hubiera gustado que se detuviera en algunas cosas.
Es recomendable leerlo? Sin dudas, pero primero lean el primero.
En Diario de Berlín vimos las notas dejadas en su diario por el periodista norteamericano, vimos como se vivió la pre guerra y el comienzo de la guerra en Alemania y nos quedamos cuando el autor escapa de Berlín con los nazis pisandole los talones.
Encontramos a una persona alejada durante 4 años de las zonas de guerra y añorando un poco estar en la acción. Por otro lado está contento de haberse alejado de la población Alemana, la cual encuentra como bestias que permitieron al régimen nazi crecer.
Por otro lado lo vemos con una visión muy crítica con su gobierno y el aliado, sobre todo por el surgimiento de las Naciones Unidas y las distintas posiciones sostenidas por los aliados, vamos el comienzo del distanciamiento entre el bloque de Estados Unidos y el comunista.
Me sorprendió encontrar una visión muy crítica con Estados Unidos e Inglaterra y más abierta a la Rusa, por lo menos se le reconoce a los rusos su fuerte participación en la Victoria.
William teme que se cometa el mismo error cometido al final de la segunda guerra, y es no cortarle la cabeza a la víbora. Dejar a Alemania en una posición que le permita volver a recuperarse.
Y en parte fue lo que pasó, se metió pila de plata para reconstruir Alemania cuando los países vecinos pasaban hambre y su población moría de frío, cuando ellos fueron las víctimas de la guerra.
Luego hay una parte en que se cuenta el viaje de un mes o dos que realizó a la Berlín destruida por la guerra. De esta parte yo esperaba mucho más por el dinamismo y lo interesante que fue el diario desde Berlín de antes de la guerra y la verdad me decepcionó.
Por qué? El autor tuvo la suerte de leer los archivos secretos encontrados de los nazis y hay mucho copio y pego, de documentos que son muy interesantes pero que no era lo que quería, yo quería el día a día de una Berlín vencida y arruinada.
Obviamente eso que yo quería hay, pero poco. De lo poco que hay se ve a un pueblo alemán derrotado pero no vencido, no asumen sus culpas y hacen responsables a el partido pero no a sí mismos.
Es un MUY buen libro, detallado, documentado y muy adelantado a su época con la información pero sobre todo con las opiniones vertidas, se nota que el autor sabía mucho del tema y vivió en carne propia el horror de esa época.
Pero no está a la altura del primero, y eso hace que sea un poco decepcionante. También se nota más apresurado, me hubiera gustado que se detuviera en algunas cosas.
Es recomendable leerlo? Sin dudas, pero primero lean el primero.
April 20, 2023
This is the continuation of the 'Berlin Diary' by radio journalist Willam L Shirer and covers the period after the end of hostilities and finishes with the Nuremberg war trials of twenty key nazis, including Goering. This book doesn't have the immediacy of the previous 'Berlin Diary', but nevertheless is very interesting and includes some secret minutes of meetings attended by Hitler, senior Nazis and German Generals at which key decisions of the war were taken. I was curious about what William L Shirer’s radio broadcasts sounded like as he often seemed to do them under considerable difficulty as well as last minute censorship changes. I was surprised that they are available from a number of sources ranging from transcripts on hardcover ($90.69), paperback ($49.57) and Kindle ($11.99). Those prices vary depending on format and how comprehensive the content is and the actual single broadcasts are $5, but You Tube has them for free. Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s87hf...
It is interesting that Shirer was an alert American journalist who, as well as working as a rado journalost, kept a diary in the pre-war and the early war days in Germany, and turned it into a profitable lifetime career until his death in December 1993 and his books and broadcasts are still presumably earning royalties for his dependants, unless they have sold the rights. I found both volumes of the Berlin Diaries to be particularly interesting and told me a great deal about the Nazis, Germany pre-and post-war, as well as Europe and the wartime period. I am happy to recommend it to anyone with a feeling for history.
It is interesting that Shirer was an alert American journalist who, as well as working as a rado journalost, kept a diary in the pre-war and the early war days in Germany, and turned it into a profitable lifetime career until his death in December 1993 and his books and broadcasts are still presumably earning royalties for his dependants, unless they have sold the rights. I found both volumes of the Berlin Diaries to be particularly interesting and told me a great deal about the Nazis, Germany pre-and post-war, as well as Europe and the wartime period. I am happy to recommend it to anyone with a feeling for history.
March 22, 2023
If you read the first book, you should definitely read this one. Williams prose meets the moment and captures this pivotal time in history. He captures the exhaustion, despair, frustration and relief that the war is over.
The sequel in my mind is not as good as the original, but still stands as a great memoir to theses events in history. He mentions many stories and facts that I didn’t know prior.
One curious point found interesting is the author hardly mentions the Holocaust. He does in the end and admits he doesn’t cover it because it deserves a book in its own right. The atomic bomb too, is mentioned, but more as matter of fact and doesn’t truly make light of its horrors. It seems somewhat surprising that these atrocities receive passing references, but it also possibly speaks to the authors exhaustion and jadedness to the horrors of WW2.
The sequel in my mind is not as good as the original, but still stands as a great memoir to theses events in history. He mentions many stories and facts that I didn’t know prior.
One curious point found interesting is the author hardly mentions the Holocaust. He does in the end and admits he doesn’t cover it because it deserves a book in its own right. The atomic bomb too, is mentioned, but more as matter of fact and doesn’t truly make light of its horrors. It seems somewhat surprising that these atrocities receive passing references, but it also possibly speaks to the authors exhaustion and jadedness to the horrors of WW2.
October 23, 2022
It's very sad to see that what is going on today in Russia is more or less the same as what went on in Germany 70 years ago. They end of a Berlin diary is an absolute must to understand some for the dynamics that happened post war between Russia and the US that led to the cold war. It also details how the UN charter was written and the institution created and the excitement around it. Shirer gives us a daily review of things ongoing at the time and the emotions involved. It's history in the making.
September 5, 2025
Εντάξει, δε μου άρεσε τόσο όσο το πρώτο. Παρόλα αυτά είναι κι αυτό πολύ καλό. Ο πόλεμος τελείωσε, η καταστροφή που έχει συντελεστεί είναι απίστευτη. Ο συγγραφέας γύρνα στη γερμανία, σε μέρη που είχε ζήσει πριν την καταστροφή. Μας περιγράφει τη δίκη στη Νυρεμβέργη και τους πρωταγωνιστές του δράματος που δικάζονται για τα εγκλήματα τους. Σε μερικά σημεία μου άφησε μια γλυκόπικρη γεύση. Οι <<καλοί>> της ιστορίας δεν είναι εντελώς άμοιροι ευθυνών για το κακό που συνέβη. Αξίζει να διαβαστεί.
dnf
May 3, 2024I can't believe how little I liked this compared to the first book. It felt scattered, much less interesting, and also somehow less well-written. I had to put it down at about the 60% mark because I couldn't justify forcing myself to finish it when there are so many other books I want to read, and this felt like a real slog.
June 14, 2019
this is a good book particularly if you're interested in WW2 and specifically Germany's leadership in WW2. there are many reference documents used that Shirer had access to while covering the Nuremberg trial. Gives a very good feel for what things were like in Germany immediately after the war.
June 1, 2021
author appalled by lack of guilt among adult Germans at end of WWII. and an naivete of Russian intentions or past atrocities by Russia.. plus no mention of US systemic racism in armed forces or at home?
Read
November 7, 2022Lots of unique pieces of information put together in one book like a post-war puzzle. I found the diaries of the people close to Hitler most interesting, as well as learning about the state of the world after the war and expectations of the future.
August 3, 2023
An educated, critical view of Germany in defeat.
Shirer's books on the Third Reich should be required reading to this day. His intimate and profound knowledge illuminate and, to a degree, explain the dark, evil, barbarous depths to which a nation can sink.
Shirer's books on the Third Reich should be required reading to this day. His intimate and profound knowledge illuminate and, to a degree, explain the dark, evil, barbarous depths to which a nation can sink.
September 8, 2023
Наиболее понравившаяся часть — читать найденные архивы нацистов, понимая, как все выглядело с той стороны на самом деле. Не помню, чтобы о таком рассказывали в школе. Также книга сподвигла провести 100500 часов в Википедии читая про Холохости и everything related
January 28, 2024
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Berlin Diary are far superior showcases of Shirer's giftedness as a reporter and researcher. I don't know if this was rushed into publication for some reason, but it seemed to need better unity, editing, and organization of the material. Disappointing.
July 13, 2024
A real time traveling machine. It is not only about history’s facts but also, through Shirer’s eyes, readers can see and almost feel what was the life of people living in the devastated by war Europe.
April 21, 2025
Unlike Berlin Diary where you are put on the front row as a witness of what is happening in Germany, the " end of a Berlin diary" is too much based on diaries, letters, extracts of documents. The reader is pushed to become more of a student instead of a participant.
November 21, 2021
An excellent read!
Read
March 21, 2022This book is kinda lame even though I love Hitler. He's my favorite super hero. Hitler is my favorite war hero and he deserved rights of all the jews.
February 4, 2023
Not as enthralling as the first part because it's not only the diary but mostly citations of the documents, still, rather interesting.
December 2, 2023
Listened to the audiobook. Good perspective on WWII.
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