627 pages, Johns
Hopkins University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0801870569
Berlin Diary: The
Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer could almost be called the rough
draft for his more-famous The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich. That second work was the result of the
accumulation of all that Shirer had witnessed and reported on during his time
in the Reich, while his Diary is much
more raw and unrefined, as benefits a diary. Shirer is a shrewd observer of
people and has excellent abilities to communicate those observations to his
readers, two qualities that came in handy during his time as a correspondent.
He makes very perceptive comments about events he sees in everyday life, and
even if his observations are not totally accurate they still give a great picture
of life in Nazi Germany. As you read Berlin
Diary be conscious of the fact that, although Shirer was a journalist (from
an era where that really meant something), this is more of a memoir than a history;
Shirer sorta lets his hair down a wee bit and communicates what he is feeling,
his revulsion at what is happening right in front of him, and his frustration at
not being able to say what he really thinks because of Nazi censors.
As
he is dragged through many official press conferences and staged events, Shirer
is able to piece together the news behind the news. He translates some of the
censored comments that people are allowed to make into their real message, a great
example being his translation of the death notices commonly published by German
families for relatives lost or killed either in war or “other government
actions”. While the messages were heavily censored, individual citizens managed
to tell their family members stories, which are often horrific. Related to
this, I found some of the technical aspects of his broadcasts to be very
interesting. At the time, CBS, like most radio networks, didn’t allow taped
broadcasts; news had to be live. The gyrations Shirer went through to get
access to telephone, and later shortwave links, between Europe and the US was
fascinating, and since he was part of a very small foreign news team in
Germany, Shirer often had to double as producer, broadcast engineer and
politician just to keep himself on the air. The contrast between these stories,
and the current crop of talking heads on modern news is staggering.
Sometimes Shirer lets his emotions get the better of him; no doubt the hypocrisy, half-truths and outright lies of the Nazi regime infuriated him, but his inability to ask direct questions of Nazi officials when he knew they were lying and, even worse, the censorship which precluded his telling an honest story seem to have driven him crazy. Some parts of the book, particularly the later chapters allow this emotion to get in the way of the story but, to be fair, the man lived in a very trying situation, and did a better job than most of his colleagues would have done, and a damn sight better than any contemporary “journalist”, too.
Sometimes Shirer lets his emotions get the better of him; no doubt the hypocrisy, half-truths and outright lies of the Nazi regime infuriated him, but his inability to ask direct questions of Nazi officials when he knew they were lying and, even worse, the censorship which precluded his telling an honest story seem to have driven him crazy. Some parts of the book, particularly the later chapters allow this emotion to get in the way of the story but, to be fair, the man lived in a very trying situation, and did a better job than most of his colleagues would have done, and a damn sight better than any contemporary “journalist”, too.
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