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Before the Nazies could destroy the files, famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer sifted through the massive self-documentation of the Third Reich, to create a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind--now in a special 30th anniversary edition."One of the most important works of history of our time."THE NEW YORK TIMES
阿道夫·希特勒也许是属于亚历山大、恺撒、拿破仑这一传统的大冒险家兼征服者中最后的一个,第三帝国也许是走上以前法国、罗马帝国、马其顿所走过的道路的帝国中最后的一个。那段已经闭幕了的历史,至今依然在人类的心灵中震颤。 本书是全世界最畅销的反映纳粹德国历史的巨著它精彩绝伦地记述了被希特勒称为"干秋帝围"而实际上只存在了1 2年零4个月的第三帝国从兴起到覆灭的全部过程。以其大量的、真实的资料成为论述纳粹德国最具权威的作品,是希特勒纳粹德国令人颤栗的故事最杰出的研究成果。 本书是全世界最畅销的反映纳粹德国历史的巨著它精彩绝伦地记述了被希特勒称为“干秋帝国”而实际上只存在了12年零4个月的第三帝国从兴起到覆灭的全部过程。在短短的12年中;不可一世的第三帝国在人类历史上制造了惨绝人寰的灾难.留下了一段惊心动魄的历史。随着第三帝国的迅速崩溃,人们缴获了大晕秘密文件、私人日记、发言记录以及纳粹党领导人的电话录音,德国外交部485吨档案当时就存放在美军的仓库里,于是一个极端独裁政权的全部秘密和罪恶活动就在它覆灭的同时全部公之于世了这就是本书大量的真实的资料来源。 作者简介
威廉·夏伊勒(William L.shirer),生于美国芝加哥,是著名的驻外特派记者、新闻分析员与世界现代史学家。他为哥伦比亚广播公司担任战地记者期间,报道了许多有关纳粹德国从柏林兴起到灭亡的经过。本书最初于1 959年出版.刚一面世就立即轰动了整个世界。英国著名历史学家特雷弗·罗珀在《纽约时报》上称赞他是将“活着的证人能够与史实结为一体”的非凡杰出的历史学家。他还著有《柏林日记》(1941年)、《第三共和国的崩溃》(1969年)和关于欧洲政治,斯堪的纳维亚的书及三本小说。 精彩书评
"One of the most important works of history of our time."
-Orville Prescott The New York Times
"The New York Times Book Review A splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions."
--Hugh Trevor-Roper
"A monumental work, a grisly and thrilling story."
--Theodore H. White 精彩书摘
Chapter 1
BIRTH OF THE THIRD REICH
On the very eve of the birth of the Third Reich a feverish tension gripped Berlin. The Weimar Republic, it seemed obvious to almost everyonse, was about to expire. For more than a year it had been fast crumbling. General Kurt von Schleicher, who like his immediate predecessor, Franz von Papen, cared little for the Republic and less for its democracy, and who, also like him, had ruled as Chancellor by presidential decree without recourse to Parliament, had come to the end of his rope after fifty-seven days in office.
On Saturday, January 28, 1933, he had been abruptly dismissed by the aging President of the Republic, Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialists, the largest political party in Germany, was demanding for himself the chancellorship of the democratic Republic he had sworn to destroy.
The wildest rumors of what might happen were rife in the capital that fateful winter weekend, and the most alarming of them, as it happened, were not without some foundation. There were reports that Schleicher, in collusion with General Kurt von Hammerstein, the Commander in Chief of the Army, was preparing a putsch with the support of the Potsdam garrison for the purpose of arresting the President and establishing a military dictatorship. There was talk of a Nazi putsch. The Berlin storm troopers, aided by Nazi sympathizers in the police, were to seize the Wilhelmstrasse, where the President's Palace and most of the government ministries were located. There was talk also of a general strike. On Sunday, January 29, a hundred thousand workers crowded into the Lustgarten in the center of Berlin to demonstrate their opposition to making Hitler Chancellor. One of their leaders attempted to get in touch with General von Hammerstein to propose joint action by the Army and organized labor should Hitler be named to head a new government. Once before, at the time of the Kapp putsch in 1920, a general strike had saved the Republic after the government had fled the capital.
Throughout most of the night from Sunday to Monday Hitler paced up and down his room in the Kaiserhof hotel on the Reichskanzlerplatz, just down the street from the Chancellery. Despite his nervousness he was supremely confident that his hour had struck. For nearly a month he had been secretly negotiating with Papen and the other leaders of the conservative Right. He had had to compromise. He could not have a purely Nazi government. But he could be Chancellor of a coalition government whose members, eight out of eleven of whom were not Nazis, agreed with him on the abolition of the democratic Weimar regime. Only the aged, dour President had seemed to stand in his way. As recently as January 26, two days before the advent of this crucial weekend, the grizzly old Field Marshal had told General von Hammerstein that he had "no intention whatsoever of making that Austrian corporal either Minister of Defense or Chancellor of the Reich."
Yet under the influence of his son, Major Oskar von Hindenburg, of Otto von Meissner, the State Secretary to the President, of Papen and other members of the palace camarilla, the President was finally weakening. He was eighty-six and fading into senility. On the afternoon of Sunday, January 29, while Hitler was having coffee and cakes with Goebbels and other aides, Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag and second to Hitler in the Nazi Party, burst in and informed them categorically that on the morrow Hitler would be named Chancellor.
Shortly before noon on Monday, January 30, 1933, Hitler drove over to the Chancellery for an interview with Hindenburg that was to prove fateful for himself, for Germany and for the rest of the world. From a window in the Kaiserhof, Goebbels, Roehm and other Nazi chiefs kept an anxious watch on the door of the Chancellery, where the Fuehrer would shortly be coming out. "We would see from his face whether he had succeeded or not," Goebbels noted. For even then they were not quite sure. "Our hearts are torn back and forth between doubt, hope, joy and discouragement," Goebbels jotted down in his diary. "We have been disappointed too often for us to believe wholeheartedly in the great miracle."
A few moments later they witnessed the miracle. The man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, who had been a down-and-out tramp in Vienna in his youth, an unknown soldier of World War 1, a derelict in Munich in the first grim postwar days, the somewhat comical leader of the Beer Hall Putsch, this spellbinder who was not even German but Austrian, and who was only forty-three years old, had just been administered the oath as Chancellor of the German Reich.
He drove the hundred yards to the Kaiserhof and was soon with his old cronies, Goebbels, Goering, Roehm and the other Brownshirts who had helped him along the rocky, brawling path to power. "He says nothing, and all of us say nothing," Goebbels recorded, "but his eyes are full of tears."
That evening from dusk until far past midnight the delirious Nazi storm troopers marched in a massive torchlight parade to celebrate the victory. By the tens of thousands, they emerged in disciplined columns from the depths of the Tiergarten, passed under the triumphal arch of the Brandenburg Gate and down the Wilhelmstrasse, their bands blaring the old martial airs to the thunderous beating of the drums, their voices bawling the new Horst Wessel song and other tunes that were as old as Germany, their jack boots beating a mighty rhythm on the pavement, their torches held high find forming a ribbon of flame that illuminated the night and kindled the hurrahs of the onlookers massed on the sidewalks. From a window in the palace Hindenburg looked down upon the marching throng, beating time to the military marches with his cane, apparently pleased that at last he had picked a Chancellor who could arouse the people in a traditionally German way. Whether the old man, in his dotage, had any inkling of what he had unleashed that day is doubtful. A story, probably apocryphal, soon spread over Berlin that in the midst of the parade he had turned to an old general and said, "I didn't know we had taken so many Russian prisoners."
A stone's throw down the Wilhelmstrasse Adolf Hitler stood at an open window of the Chancellery, beside himself with excitement and joy, dancing up and down, jerking his arm up continually in the Nazi salute, smiling and laughing until his eyes were again full of tears.
One foreign observer watched the proceedings that evening with different feelings. "The river of fire flowed past the French Embassy," André François-Poncet, the ambassador, wrote, "whence, with heavy heart and filled with foreboding, I watched its luminous wake."
Tired but happy, Goebbels arrived home that night at 3 A.M. Scribbling in his diary before retiring, he wrote: "It is almost like a dream...a fairy tale...The new Reich has been born. Fourteen years of work have been crowned with victory. The German revolution has begun!"
The Third Reich which was born on January 30, 1933, Hitler boasted, would endure for a thousand years, and in Nazi parlance it was often referred to as the "Thousand-Year Reich." It lasted twelve years and four months, but in that flicker of time, as history goes, it caused an eruption on this earth more violent and shattering than any previously experienced, raising the German people to heights of power they had not known in more than a millennium, making them at one time the masters of Europe from the Atlantic to the Volga, from the North Cape to the Mediterranean, and then plunging them to the depths of destruction and desolation at the end of a world war which their nation had cold-bloodedly provoked and during which it instituted a reign of terror over the conquered peoples which, in its calculated butchery of human life and the human spirit, out-did all the savage oppressions of the previous ages.
The man who founded the Third Reich, who ruled it ruthlessly and often with uncommon shrewdness, who led it to such dizzy heights and to such a sorry end, was a person of undoubted, if evil, genius. It is true that he found in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to that time, a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends. But without Adolf Hitler, who was possessed of a demonic personality, a granite will, uncanny instincts, a cold ruthlessness, a remarkable intellect, a soaring imagination and -- until toward the end, when, drunk with power and success, he overreached himself -- an amazing capacity to size up people and situations, there almost certainly would never have been a Third Reich.
"It is one of the great examples," as Friedrich Meinecke, the eminent German historian, said, "of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life."
To some Germans and, no doubt, to most foreigners it appeared that a charlatan had come to power in Berlin. To the majority of Germ... 前言/序言
历史的重负与文明的抉择:一部审视二十世纪中期欧洲政治与社会转型的宏大叙事 本书并非聚焦于单一国家或特定意识形态的兴衰,而是一部深刻剖析二十世纪中期欧洲,特别是中欧和东欧地区,在剧烈社会、经济与思想变革浪潮中,不同政治力量如何崛起、角力,并最终塑造出现代欧洲版图的复杂历史画卷。它以宏阔的视野,将目光投向了两次世界大战之间以及战后重建的漫长历程中,那些塑造了当代世界秩序的关键性事件、人物与结构性矛盾。 第一部分:旧秩序的瓦解与新思想的萌芽(1900-1929) 本卷深入探讨了“美好年代”的表象之下,欧洲帝国体系(如哈布斯堡王朝、奥匈帝国、奥斯曼帝国)内部潜藏的民族主义、工业化带来的阶级对立以及帝国主义扩张的内在张力。我们考察了早期现代性危机,即科学理性主义与传统信仰体系、精英统治与大众民主诉求之间的冲突。 帝国边缘的躁动: 详细分析了巴尔干半岛、中欧次级民族国家的早期政治光谱,考察了泛斯拉夫主义、泛德意志主义以及区域民族主义的交织影响。这些地区在现代化进程中的滞后与不平衡,为后来的动荡埋下了伏笔。 思想的激进转向: 探讨了尼采、柏格森等思想家对传统形而上学的冲击,以及新心理学、社会学对个体和社会结构理解的颠覆。重点考察了社会主义、自由主义、以及早期保守主义思潮在知识分子群体中的传播与变异。 第一次世界大战的深层根源: 拒绝将战争归咎于单一的事件或外交失误,而是将其视为一个世纪以来地缘政治竞争、军事化思维定势和经济殖民扩张的必然总爆发。书中对协约国与同盟国在战争动员、后勤保障及宣传战中的差异进行了细致对比。 第二部分:战后的破碎与激进主义的试验场(1919-1933) 战后欧洲迎来了“威尔逊时代”的短暂希望,随后便是普遍的幻灭。这一时期是激进主义思想付诸实践的试验田,也是民主制度在面对经济萧条和政治极端化时显露脆弱性的关键阶段。 凡尔赛体系的内在缺陷: 分析了新成立的民族国家边界划分、巨额战争赔款、以及“集体安全”机制(国际联盟)的结构性无力。特别关注了中欧和东欧新生的共和制国家,它们在经济基础薄弱和政治派系林立的情况下,如何难以维持稳定的宪政体制。 革命的浪潮与反革命的应对: 梳理了苏维埃俄国革命对整个欧洲政治生态的深远影响。在西欧,工人运动和激进左翼力量的崛起引发了中产阶级和精英阶层的强烈恐惧。书中详细对比了意大利的“红色两年”和德国的斯巴达克团起义,以及保守势力如何利用这种恐惧进行组织和反扑。 经济危机的先兆与社会断裂: 考察了战后初期的恶性通货膨胀对社会信用的毁灭性打击,以及1920年代后期资本流动带来的脆弱繁荣。分析了农业人口向城市迁移与工业部门的结构性失业,如何为民粹主义动员提供了广阔的社会基础。 第三部分:结构性危机与意识形态的全面对决(1933-1939) 本书将重点转向三十年代,但这并非单纯聚焦于某一个崛起中的极权政权,而是将其置于一个更广阔的全球性结构危机背景之下。这一时期是意识形态成为决定国家命运的决定性十年。 极权主义的比较研究: 采取跨国视角,对欧洲不同形式的专制主义、威权主义和极权主义进行细致辨析。考察了它们在组织、宣传、对知识分子和宗教机构的控制、以及对青年群体的动员策略上的异同。书中着重分析了非核心的、在边缘地区(如南欧、东欧小国)的威权实验,它们如何相互借鉴,并在特定历史条件下被放大。 “新秩序”的经济逻辑: 分析了不同政治体制下国家对经济的干预模式。探讨了大规模公共工程、工业重组计划背后的经济驱动力——无论是为了实现社会平等、还是为了追求战争潜力,还是单纯为了转移国内矛盾。 国际关系的“信任赤字”: 审视了英法等传统强国在面对区域性冲突(如西班牙内战、埃塞俄比亚危机)时的绥靖政策背后的复杂心理:是对新一轮大规模战争的厌倦、对国内经济问题的优先处理,以及对欧洲大陆力量均衡的错误估计。 第四部分:第二次世界大战的全球性影响与欧洲的重塑(1939-1949) 战争的爆发不再是孤立的军事行动,而是长期积累的结构性矛盾的总清算。本书将战争视为一个加速器,它以前所未有的速度和暴力摧毁了旧的社会结构,并为新的世界秩序奠定了基础。 占领下的欧洲社会生态: 细致描绘了被占领地区民间社会、抵抗运动、合作政府以及占领当局之间的复杂互动。重点分析了占领政策如何因地制宜,以及不同社会阶层在生存压力下做出的道德与政治选择。 后勤与科技的战争: 考察了工业动员、石油战略、密码战和新兴技术(如雷达、喷气式飞机)在战局中的决定性作用,这些技术进步深刻影响了战后的社会生产力。 解放与清算的阵痛: 战争结束并非和平的开始。本卷详述了战后对叛国者、合作者的审判,以及大规模的人口迁徙、边界重划对中东欧数百万平民生活带来的颠覆性影响。特别是对战后初期的人道主义危机和重建挑战进行了深入讨论。 结论:遗产与反思 本书的最终目的,是引导读者超越对单一“邪恶帝国”的简单道德批判,转而理解二十世纪中期欧洲文明在面对工业化、大众政治与民族主义三重压力时所经历的系统性崩溃与痛苦的重建过程。它是一面镜子,映照出人类社会在危机时刻,制度、领导力和意识形态如何共同作用,决定文明的走向。全书基于对多国原始档案、外交电报、社会调查和私人信件的广泛研究,力求提供一种多维、审慎且充满历史同理心的叙事。