William L. Shirer (1904–1993)

I finished it! (and just a couple of hours before the new year, the pressure was on)
I'd like to say that I have widely read and studied the events of WW2 and this book has helped to add so much perspective to the timeline and connect key moments into the bigger picture.
Many parts of this book were hard to read and hard to understand how humans can have so much cruelty in them but I strongly believe they should never be forgotten.
Overall the book was very readable and easy to follow.… (mehr)

This book is causing me to have a lot of thoughts. Thoughts about
- Effectiveness
- Deception - how easily people are deceived
- How the wicked sew confusion and misunderstanding
- How a person can be an evil genius

“Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave;”
(Joseph Smith History, endnote)

Parallels between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump
1. Bully, demean, throw temper tantrums
2. Instill a hatred in the people as a means of rising to and gaining more power
3. In negotiations change your stand without any compunction - be wildly inconsistent
4. Lie repeatedly, regardless of how blatant it is — Sycophants repeat the blatant lies
5. Obfuscate — to encourage their followers and deceive others
6. Throw friends under the bus when the sycophants are no longer useful

I see some historical similarities. In chronological order:
Hitler: I will make Germany great again.
Trump: I will make America great again
Putin: I will make Russia great again.

And from the Afterword:
“This book had a surprising reception. No one—not my publisher, my editor, my agent, my friends—believed that the public would buy a book so long,”
“And though the academic historians, on the whole, were cool to the book and to me (as if I were a usurper with no right to invade their field—to write good history, they said, you had to teach it), there were notable exceptions.”
“In Germany, to put it mildly, the book did not fare very well with the reviewers. The Germans simply could not face up to their past.”
“Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present.”… (mehr)