But Trevor-Roper too surprised.

The headline above his

page-one review gave a hint as to what he
would have to say: LIGHT ON OUR CENTURY’S
DARKEST NIGHT The Awful Story of Hitler’s Germany
Is Movingly Told in Masterly Study “In ordinary
circumstances,” Trevor-Roper began, “it would be
impossible, only half a generation after its end … to
write its history. But with the Third Reich, nothing
was ordinary, not even its end. In that total annihilation
all the secrets of [Hitler’s] rule were broken open,all
the archives captured…. “Now, as neverbefore,
the living witnesses can converge with the historical truth.
All they need is a historian. In William L.
Shirer they have foundone….” This was heady stuff,
and at the very beginning of the review. It
almost took my breath away. The concluding lines were
almost as breathtaking. “This is a splendid work of
scholarship, objective in method, sound in
judgment, inescapable in its conclusions.” I was
brought down to earth by the front-page review in
the rival New York Herald-Tribune Book Review. Its
author, Gordon A. Craig, then a historian at
Princeton, did not agreeat all with his Oxford colleague
that the Third Reichhad found its historian in me. By
no means! He thought the book was too long and
“out of balance.” He regretted that I had not read the
book of an obscure German historian. The fact that
the book was based not on what other historians had
written but on original sources—captured secret
German documents—did not impress him, if he
noticed it. 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. Led
by the chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer,
the book was furiously attacked and the author maligned.
“A German-hater!” Adenauer called me. Sincethe book
dealt objectively with Nazi Germany and the crimes the
 Germans committed against the human spirit and against
their neighbors and against the Jews of Europe, and
since I allowed the documented facts to speak for
themselves, I was somewhat taken back by the
vehemence of the German reaction, but not
entirely surprised.
And now, as the thirtieth-anniversary edition of The Rise
and Fall goes to press,
the world is suddenly confronted with a new reunification
of Germany. Soon, united, Germany will be strong
again economically and, if it wishes, militarily, as
it was in the time of Wilhelm II and Adolf
Hitler. And Europe will be faced again with the
German problem. If the past is any guide, the
outlook is not very promising for Germany’s neighbors,
who twice in my lifetime have been invaded by the
Teutonic armies. The last time, underHitler, as the
readers of this book are reminded, the German
behavior was a horror in its barbarism. People
ask now: Have the Germans changed? Many in the West
appear to believe so. I myself am not so sure,
my view no doubtclouded by the personal experience
of having lived and worked in Germany in the
Nazi time. The truth is that no one really knows the
answer to that crucial question. And quite
understandably the nations that were former victims of
German conquest do not want to take any chances
again.
Is there a solution to the German problem? Perhaps.
It lies in enmeshing reunited Germany in a
European security system out of whichit could never
breakloose to pursue its past policies of aggression.
In one fundamental sense, the situation has
changed since the fall of the Third Reich. The
development of the hydrogen bomb, as I
mentioned at the end of my Foreword, written in
 1959,has rendered an old-fashioned conqueror like Adolf
Hitler obsolete. If ever a new adventurer such as Hitler tried
to lead the Germans to new conquests, he would
be repelled by a nuclear response. That would
put a quick end to German aggression. But,
unfortunately, it would put an end to the world
too.
So maybe the H-bomb and the rockets and planes
and submarines designed to deliver it, horrible threat
though they are to the survival of the planet,
will, ironically, help, at least, to solve the German
problem. No more bloody conquests by the Germans,
or by anyone else. Perhaps it will help too if
the erringgovernments 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. William L. Shirer