William L. Shirer: Rise and Fall

When we were at a neighbor’s house a couple of weeks ago, my wife Barbara smiled and asked about a curious and completely out of character book on one of the shelves … a book with a red swastika on its spine. I laughed because I have that same book in my office.

When I sold software and traveled on a regular basis, I carried my research books on planes and trains. A 1,264-page paperback copy of William L. Shirer’s swastika-emblazoned The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich kept me company on quite a few flights and train rides. (Confession: I did not read every page). I hated the thought of what even a peripheral glimpse of a swastika on the cover of a book I was carrying might say about me, so I covered that repugnant symbol with a mailing label.

William L. Shirer was, of course, the preeminent correspondent and historian of the opening chapters of World War II. He wrote with an instinctive blend of first-person journalism and reflective narration. While he is most widely known for his books about the war – Rise and Fall in particular - Shirer, in company with Edward R. Murrow, was also a pioneer on some of the first wartime radio broadcasts for the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Shirer, who was fluent in German and French, had a remarkable knack for being on the scene at unique moments in history. He was there for the German Anschluss in Austria, Hitler’s furious harangues to packed stadiums in Berlin and Nuremberg, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier at Munich, and Hitler’s ritual staging of the armistice signing at Compiegne.

William L. Shirer (center)) at Compiegne. The museum building behind him would be dynamited several days later.

Because French admirals, generals, and politicians play such prominent roles in the book that I’m writing, my favorite Shirer book is The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940. Despite its dry title, with its sharply drawn portraits of the men who led the downfall of France, and attempted to control the allegiance of the French Navy, “Collapse …” fascinated me, and has been an especially valuable resource for my book. In this case I read all 948 pages. While I'm at it, I promise my book will be much shorter.

When Barbara and I visited France for the first time, we took separate trains to separate sites on one of our days. She visited Claude Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny while I took a 47-minute train ride to Compiegne. I’ve been obsessed with Compiegne for a long time. France and Germany signed their armistice in a rail carriage there at the end of World War I, an act that Adolf Hitler termed “the greatest dishonor of all time.” In 1940, in what Hitler called “an act of reparative justice,” he forced the French to sign an armistice in the same rail carriage in that same quiet glade. My visit was one of the most moving experiences in this project. I want to save my stories about Compiegne for another time. Compiegne will always have a special meaning to me.

William L. Shirer was tipped off about the staging of the June 21, 1940 armistice events at Compiegne by a German soldier, and made his way there from Paris. On the morning of Friday, June 21, 1940, American radio listeners could hear over their crackling sets: “Hello America. … This is William L. Shirer… We’ve got our microphone at the edge of a little clearing in the Forest of Compiegne” as Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and other German leaders marched into the glade.

He was everywhere that counted – and captured the details to share with us - early in the war.

Thanks for reading.