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The Landmark series for children, both American and World, is a wonderful, with few exceptions, collection of books written in the 1950s and 1960s and published by Random House. The publisher chose well-known authors, some of whom were novelists and some of whom had not written for children before, and had a historical consultant for each title to make sure that the writing was accurate. There are 122 American Landmark books and 63 World Landmark books. The reading level is fairly broad, intended for upper elementary to early high school levels. The books were intended to convey sound history or biography but in such a manner as to not detract from the intrinsic interest of the story, as history textbooks often do, but to bring out the fascination and drama of the history or historical character being discussed. History is at heart a series of stories, especially at this level, and should be told as such. For the overwhelming majority of the 185 titles, this effort was successful.
Adolf Hitler was a real person, a human being who chose evil and had the political power to make his evil affect many other human beings. What he did to Europe, to the people in the countries the Nazis captured, to the soldiers who fought against him, and especially to the six million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust, should be clearly known, as a part of history, by every school child. You would think that would be the case already in the US, since World War II was such an important part of 20th century history, with continuing consequences even into the 21st century. However, the terms “Hitler”, “fascist”, and “Nazi” are widely thrown around today as insults in a knowingly or unknowingly incorrect fashion. Reading The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler, by William L. Shirer, will hopefully correct this historical and linguistic ignorance.
This Landmark book, written in 1961, is taken from a much longer book by Shirer entitled The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which is the most comprehensive study of Nazi Germany from beginning to end that exists, at least in a readable form that a non-historian reader can understand. William L. Shirer was a journalist who covered Nazi Germany from 1934 through the war. He had actually covered the German side of the early war up to the fall of France, so that he had first-hand experience from which to write his most famous book. To have such an authority write a Landmark book must have been a coup for the Random House publishers at the time.
The Landmark book covers the essential facts about Adolf Hitler. Since he was a human being and not a demon or evil alien, it is worth exploring his life, always keeping in mind the evil into which he led Nazi Germany. Hitler’s early life, his rise to power, and his leadership of Germany during World War II are all clearly told by Shirer. After reading this book and understanding the real man and what German fascism actually was, the student will know what calling someone a “Hitler” or “fascist” actually means and will be able to intelligently judge ignorant usage of these terms in our modern culture.