The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

When William L. Shirer started up the Berlin bureau of Edward R. Murrow's CBS News in the 1930s, he quickly became the most trusted reporter in all of Europe. Gaining the trust of the Nazi elite, Shirer obtained a unique perspective of the party's rise to power. Unlike some of his esteemed colleagues, he did not fall for Nazi propaganda and warned early of the Third Reich's threat.

When the Germans swept into Austria in 1938 Shirer was the only American reporter in Vienna, and he broadcast an eyewitness account of the annexation. In 1940 he was embedded with the invading German army as it stormed into France and occupied Paris. The Nazis insisted that the armistice be reported through their channels, yet Shirer managed to circumvent the German censors and again provided the only live eyewitness account. His notoriety grew inside the Gestapo, who began to build a charge of espionage against him. His life at risk, Shirer had to escape from Berlin early in the war. When he returned in 1946 to cover the Nuremberg trials, Shirer had seen the full arc of the Nazi menace. His experience inspired him to write The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—the magisterial, definitive history of the most brutal ten years the modern world had known.

Drawing on never-before-seen journals and letters from Shirer's time in Germany, award-winning reporter Steve Wick's The Long Night brings to life the maverick journalist as he watched history unfold and first shared it with the world.