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:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“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–?)