Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941.
First Edition of Shirer's Berlin Diary; Inscribed by Him
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941.
SHIRER, William L.
Item Number: 118552
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941.
First edition of this classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Gareth L. Pawlowski William L. Shirer.” Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket.
Berlin Diary is a first-hand account of the rise of Nazi Germany and its road to war, as witnessed by the American journalist William L. Shirer. Shirer covered Germany for several years as a radio reporter for CBS. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable as the Nazi press censors made it impossible for him to report objectively to his listeners in the United States, Shirer eventually left the country. The identities of many of Shirer's German sources were disguised to protect these people from retaliation by the German secret police, the Gestapo. It provided much of the material for his subsequent landmark book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The book was published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf on June 20, 1941, almost six months before Germany declared war on the United States, and simultaneously in Canada by Ryerson Press, when Canada was already at war with Germany. It was "the first attempt by a big-name American journalist to shed light on what was really happening in Nazi Germany" and sold almost 600,000 copies in the first year of its publication. The book was widely praised by academics and critics at the time of its publication.
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