The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Author: William L. Shirer

This may be the longest book I’ve ever read. It was a fascinating history book that provided a detailed history of the rise of Hitler and his Third Reich. We learned all about the Holocaust in school, as well as some of the major events of World War II, but we didn’t cover much of the rise of the third reich like the Beer Hall Putsch, or any of Hitlers major invasions. I actually happened to be in the middle of reading this book during a meetup with my company in Munich. Munich was the epicentre of the rise of the Nazi party, so it was pretty surreal to be there and be reading about it at the same time.

One thing that struck me with the book, is while it was clear that Hitler was at times a strong political and military strategist, a lot of his success came from weakness or pure naievity from other world leaders. Particularly from France and England, who had opportunities to crush the Germans early on and never took them. One extreme example of this is when Germany was invading Poland. Hitler managed to skirt around responsibility for invading Austria or Hungary by claiming he was acting in defence and helping the German people there, but with Poland it was a clear and blatant act of aggression to invade. France had a massive army piled up on Germanys Western border and could have moved on Germany while Germany was largely preoccupied in Poland. Both England and France were talking tough to Germany at the time, and telling them not to invade Poland, and there would be consequences, but they ultimately failed to back up their words with action. Poland was effectively thrown to the wolves, and France and England missed a golden opportunity to strike at the heart of Germany.

I also wonder if Hitler was truly a great strategist. Its seems to me he was more of a liar who could time and again convince world leaders of his lies, as well as a really aggressive and hugely arrogant leader. His aggression, combined with his lies, is what I think caught so many countries off guard as Hitler’s armies stormed in or fabricated some nonsense about why the Germans needed to invade. Only after a ridiculously long pattern of this did the Western powers start to push back, but by then, they had lost a lot of ground.

There were several failed assassination attempts on Hitler. In some of the attempts, it seemed like it was another example of people being too sheepish and missing golden opportunities, but its easy to say that in hindsight. There were also classic mishaps like the bomb wasn’t wired correctly. One assassination attempt that almost worked was when the assassins were able to bring in a briefcase with a bomb to a meeting in a bunker with Hitler and some of his top leaders. Everything went according to plan. They had the bomb in the room with him, and all they needed to do was detonate it. The person carrying the suitcase subtely slid the suitcase under the table closer towards Hitler. One of Hitlers leaders bumped his leg on it or something, and he moved it slightly out of the way, resting it on the edge of a big wooden table leg. This act saved Hitlers life as the explosion was shielded enough by the Wooden table leg to not kill him, and instead killed three of his officers and a stenographer. The book was filled with moments like this where it felt like if the littlest thing had changed or happened differently, history may have looked very different.