Criticism
Whereas nearly all American journalists praised the book, scholars were split. Some acknowledged Shirer's achievement but most condemned it. The harshest criticism came from those who disagreed with the Sonderweg or "Luther to Hitler" thesis.
Klaus Epstein listed "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period.
Elizabeth Wiskemann concluded in a review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual... which will certainly prove useful."
Forty years later, historian Richard J. Evans, author of The Third Reich Trilogy (2003 to 2008), conceded that Rise and Fall is a "readable general history of Nazi Germany" and that "there are good reasons for success." But Shirer worked outside of the academic mainstream, Evans noted, and his account was not informed by the historical scholarship of the time (1960).
In West Germany, the "Luther to Hitler" interpretation was almost universally rejected in favor of the view that Nazism was simply one instance of totalitarianism that arose in various countries. Gavriel Rosenfeld asserted in 1994 that Rise and Fall had been unanimously condemned, and considered dangerous to relations between America and West Germany, as it might inflame anti-German sentiments in the United States.
Read more about this topic: The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)