Review: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William Schirer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read the huge work of history that this Scholastic Book Services edition abridges ostensibly for YA readers: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. After that hefty tome's success, William Shirer was commissioned to write this for a young adult audience. However, this account loses none of the immediacy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany due to the inclusion of captured source documents, stenographer notes, and other first-person accounts including those of Shirer. The story of Hitler's rise from obscurity, the horror of Nazi Germany's mass killings, the peak of military success before turning on Russia, and the paranoia and insanity that marked Hitler's downfall in a claustrophobic bunker all read well with nothing apparently held back of simplified unnecessarily. This book is by no means simplified-and is sure to appeal to adults as well and compact at less than two hundred pages tells the Hitler arc with a brisk pace making for possibly a more engaging read than larger works.

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