Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's emprre has been widely acciaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century's blackest hours. The Rise andFall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told eXamination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.

HOUGH I LIVED and worked in the Third Reich during the first half of its brief life, watching at first hand Adolf Hitler consolidate his power as dictator of this great but baffling nation and then lead it off to war and conquest, this personal experience would not have led me to attempt to write this book had there not occurred at the end of World War II an event unique in history.

This was the capture of most of the confidential archives of the German government and all its branches, including those of the Foreign Office, the Army and Navy, the National Socialist Party and Heinrich Himmler's secret police. Never before, I believe, has such a vast treasure fallen into the hands of contemporary historians. Hitherto the archives of a great state, even when it was defeated in war and its government overthrown by revolution, as happened to Germany and Russia in 1918, were preserved by it, and only those documents which served the interests of the subsequent ruling regime were ultimately published.

FOREWORD

    Book One: THE RISE OF ADOLF HITLER

BIRTH OF THE THIRD REICH

BIRTH OF THE NAZI PARTY

VERSAILLES, WEIMAR AND THE BEER HALL PUTSCH

THE MIND OF HITLER AND THE ROOTS OF THE THIRD REICH

BookI Two: TRIUMPH AND CONSOLIDATION

THE ROAD TO POWER: 1925--31

THE LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC: 1931--33

THE NAZIFICATION OF GERMANY: 1933--34

LIFE IN THE THIRD REICH: 1933--37

Book Three: THE ROAD TO WAR

THE FIRST STEPS: 1934--37

STRANGE, FATEFUL INTERLUDE: THE FALL OF BLOMBERG,

  FRITSCH, NEURATH AND SCHACHT

ANSCHLUSS: THE RAPE OF AUSTRIA

THE ROAD TO MUNICH

CZECHOSLOVAKIA CEASES TO EXIST

THE TURN OF POLAND

THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

THE LAST DAYS OF PEACE

THE LAUNCHING OF WORLD WAR II

Book Four: WAR: EARLY VICTORIES AND

     THE TURNING POINT

THE FALL OF POLAND

SITZKRIEG 1N THE WEST

THE CONQUEST OF DENMARK AND NORWAY

VICTORY IN THE WEST

OPERATION SEA LION: THE THWARTED INVASION OF BRITAIN

BARBAROSSA: THE TURN OF RUSSIA

A TURN OF THE TiDE

THE TURN OF THE UNITED STATES

THE GREAT TURNING POINT: 1942--STALINGRAD AND

EL ALAMEIN

   Book Five: BEGINNING OF THE END

THE NEW ORDER

THE FALL OF MUSSOLINI

THE ALLIED INVASION OF WESTERN EUROPE AND THE

  ATTEMPT TO KILL HITLER

Book Six: THE FALL OF THE THIRD REICH

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY

Goetterdaemmerung: THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH

AFTERWORD

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX