The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Published 1960 · 500,000 words · about 33 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction
How hard is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to read?
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich scores 26 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- German political and military terminology. Clear for a general audience.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Concrete political and military history with embedded analysis.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Extremely dense with names, dates, events, and documentary evidence.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological narrative. Direct and transparent.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The Third Reich itself is symbolic. Otherwise documentary history.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Shirer's moral indignation provides critical distance from his subjects.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- The outcome is in the title.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Six books covering 1925-1945. Massive but well-organized.
How The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is regarded
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.