Unlike most histories, this cuts off halfway through the war, and was published in 1941 when the outcome was still undetermined. Winston Churchill and Shirer himself come out as fairly prescient prophets of doom, and there doesn't seem to have been much retrospective tweaking, just some commentary from 1941. (Later I discovered Shirer rewrote or created most of the 1934–1938 content years later, and toned down his naive admiration of Hitler c. 1935 with the benefit of hindsight.) What's notable is the feeling of being at the centre of a widening gyre, the speed with which events unfolded, the cowardly choices made by many of the politicians, and the complacency and passivity of the German people as this unfolds around them. Of course we can't help but compare this to Putin's machinations and invasions in the present day, and the similarly cowardly choices being made. One also has to imagine oneself in the thick of this, and how you yourself would act as society slowly fell apart—one would hope to be as principled as Shirer, who stuck it out attempting to broadcast what was really going on to Americans despite heavy censorship, until he recognised when the compromises were too great and packed it in, only narrowly escaping to the US.

Notes: a sense at the beginning that Hitler might back down, and we could be reading a counterfactual alternative history of Europe—but sadly no • Shirer predicts Constantine Oumansky, Soviet ambassador to the US, will come to a sticky end: "I have known many Soviet diplomats, but they have all been liquidated sooner or later." Oumansky in fact became ambassador to Mexico, and was killed in a plane crash in 1945. • Appearances by the delightfully-named isolationist Representative Ham Fish (actually Hamilton Stuyvesant Fish III) • references to the World War (meaning WWI), and one mention that this will be a "second World War" • Repeating the myth that a division of Polish cavalry made a fruitless charge against hundreds of German tanks—the Charge at Krojanty, well debunked now • encountering Phillip Johnson, an American fascist—the same Phillip Johnson who became a well-respected architect after the war, and disavowed all his silly Hitler fanboy activities (but I bet he'd have been happy to become America's Albert Speer if Hitler had won) • The Führer's favourite movies were It Happened One Night, and Gone With The Wind • watching the rise of radio journalism, and its struggle to be taken seriously by other media, rather like the Internet in its early days • Shirer escaping via unoccupied France, Barcelona, and Lisbon—just like the opening to Casablanca. ( )

Interesting account of an American reporter in Berlin just before and at the start of Hitler's war. ( )

Had to return this to the library. On page 300 or so. Quite excellent on-the-ground account of the build-up and explosion of war.

History brilliantly recorded in the making, with the immediacy and urgency of journalism, which you don’t encounter in academic history books.
This journal published in 1941 starts with episodes from Shirer’s three years reporting as an American journalist from Berlin in 1934. He then moves to Vienna in 1938 to work for an American broadcaster, describing breathlessly the Anschluss on 12 March.
Following the Anschluss he moves to Geneva for safety from censorship, but travels to Prague for the Sudetenland crisis in September 1938, and then moves back to Berlin.
As you would expect, Shirer’s journalistic style is highly readable, even when he is listing the names of politicians or generals attending “peace” conferences. As published in 1941, there is a little hindsight in Shirer’s comments, but nevertheless what comes across as the moral cowardice of Britain and France in the face of Nazi aggression is notable, especially with regards the Sudetenland. In particular, as time passes and Shirer’s entries more frequent, the “breathlessness” of the history becomes greater, even though you know the overall story.

Several times during this book Shirer mentions people committing suicide, or threatening to commit suicide, over the political situation; often these are Jews but also left wing individuals, and often due to their becoming refugees.

The book starts with what might be read as a “humble brag” by Shirer after spending a year of leisure in Spain in 1933:
I’ve regained the health I lost in India and Afghanistan in 1930–1 from malaria and dysentery. I’ve recovered from the shock of the skiing accident in the Alps in the spring of 1932, which for a time threatened me with a total blindness but which, happily, in the end, robbed me of the sight of only one eye.
Having finished this journal, you can only admire his personal bravery once the fighting begins in trying to report what the censors allowed. ( )

This is the book that put the idea of becoming a foreign correspondent in my mind. ( )