Exposed by genuine historians as fake history, William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was so heavily promoted that it sold tens of millions of copies worldwide.

From first page to last, the CBS reporter’s fictional novel was stuffed to the page margins with allied propaganda, inaccuracies, blatant lies and half-lies.

The half lie is the most damning lie of all: Throughout, his fictional account tells of what the Reich did without explaining why they did it.

Massively promoted by government-subsidised palace publishers and government departments, ‘educational’ establishments, Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich became the world’s most popular book on Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

It was said that every bookcase included a copy of this hyped distortion of real history.

William L. Shirer’s phoney history was acclaimed by Hugh Trevor-Roper. The English historian’s reputation was demolished when tasked by British Intelligence to ascertain the facts about Hitler’s death; he authenticated Hitler’s Diaries, which were later proved to be bogus.

Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has never gone out of print. Despite its reputation as a fake history, it remains the first port of call for many duped readers who think they are purchasing a definitive general history of Hitler’s Germany.

The émigré German scholar Klaus Epstein spoke for many when he pointed out that ‘Shirer’s book presented an ‘unbelievably crude’ account of German history, making it all seem to lead up inevitably to the Nazi seizure of power.

‘It had glaring gaps in its coverage. It concentrated far too much on high politics, foreign policy and military events, and even in 1960 it was ‘in no way abreast of current scholarship dealing with the Nazi period’.

Getting on for half a century later, this comment is even more justified than it was in Epstein’s day. For all its virtues, therefore, Shirer’s book cannot really deliver a history of Hitler’s Germany that meets the demands of the early twenty-first-century reader

The three-times-married, controversial William L. Shirer is bizarrely obsessed with the imaginary sexual behaviours of the Reich’s elite, taking every opportunity to falsely claim that a person was a homosexual or otherwise ‘depraved’.

‘At the same time, he can’t seem to decide whether the Nazis were ruthless, talented, calculating thugs, or hapless clowns who stumbled into power by the fortunate chance that everyone else was dumber than they.

William L. Shirer slipped the hangman’s noose when he was tipped off that the Gestapo was preparing to charge him with an espionage case, which carried the death penalty. He began making arrangements to leave Germany, which he did in December 1940.

William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich became an overhyped bestseller. The hardback was reprinted 20 times in the first year and sold more than 600,000 copies through the Book of the Month Club edition alone

Serialization of a condensed version in Reader’s Digest and critical acclaim ensured its success in the US. Fawcett Crest acquired paperback rights for $400,000 – a record for the time – and an additional 1 million copies were sold at $1.65 (equivalent to $17 in 2024).

NOTE: WITNESS TO HISTORY by historian Michael Walsh is likely the one book that overturns the war victor’s propaganda. It is widely regarded as the most popular book in the history of historical revisionism.

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Affordable illustrated copies available from the US-based The Barnes Review provide thousands of never-before-known facts about the origins of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler’s almost successful attempt to introduce a new world order, the opposite of the decaying Judaic multi-racial degenerate cess pit endured today.

With an international readership of hundreds of thousands, Witness to History has radically changed the minds of millions duped by the propaganda of the victors. One book by one man is changing history and perceptions of the Third Reich.  

‘I have read a lot about WWII and Germany, including David Irving’s books, but you wrapped it all in a really tidy and factual package.  I highly recommend it to all my history truth-seeking friends.  Thank you for such a great book.’ ~ B. Wiggles. You can share this story on social media: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK.

WITNESS TO HISTORY Mike Walsh FORBIDDEN HISTORY: The bestselling epic of the Third Reich 1918-1959. ‘Of all the innumerable written source materials I have read during the last 70 years concerning Adolf Hitler, Witness to History is the most compelling, realistic overview of the Third Reich in print because its events are told by those who made them.’ ~ Marc Roland. https://barnesreview.org/product/witness-to-history-the-reich-legend-uncensored/