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A modern classic and the definitive study of Adolf Hitler, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II by the foreign correspondent who saw firsthand how the Nazi movement swept Europe. William B. Shirer presents nuanced profiles of major and minor figures as well as exacting details of the political movements, wartime strategy, and atrocities of the Third Reich. This epic work is required reading to understand modern history and how fascist dictators can captivate a population to wicked ends. No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world. The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind. Here is the complete story of Hitler's empire, one of the most important stories ever told, written by one of the men best equipped to write it.