The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer Page A

dealing with the main Nuremberg trial have been invaluable in taking one behind the scenes in the Third Reich. The first is the forty-two-volume
Trial of the Major War Criminals
, of which the first twenty-three volumes contain the text of the testimony at the trial and the remainder the text of the documents accepted in evidence, which are published in their original language, mostly German. Additional documents, interrogations and affidavits collected for that trial and translated rather hurriedly into English are published in the ten-volume series
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression.
Unfortunately, the extremely valuable testimony given before the commissioners of the International Military Tribunal is mostly omitted from the latter series and is available only in mimeographed form on deposit with a few leading libraries.
    There were twelve subsequent trials at Nuremberg, conducted by United States military tribunals, but the fifteen bulky published volumes of testimony and documents presented at these trials, titled
Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
, contain less than one tenth of the material. However, the rest may be found in mimeograph or photostats in some libraries. Summaries of other trials which shed much light on the Third Reich may be found in
Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals
, published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office in London, 1947–49.
    Of the unpublished German documents other than the rich collections in the Hoover Library, the Library of Congress and the National Archives—which contain, among other things, the Himmler files and a number of Hitler’s private papers—one of the most valuable finds has been that of the so-called “Alexandria Papers,” a good proportion of which have now been microfilmed anddeposited at the National Archives. Information about a number of other captured papers will be found in the notes. Among the unpublished German material, incidentally, is General Halder’s diary—seven volumes of typescript with annotations added by the General after the war to clarify certain passages—which I found to be one of the most valuable records of the Third Reich.
    Some of the books which have been helpful to me are listed below. They are of three types: first, the memoirs and diaries of some of the leading figures in this narrative; second, books based on the new documentary material, such as those of John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Alan Bullock, H. R. Trevor-Roper and Gerald Reitlinger in England, of Telford Taylor in America, and of Eberhard Zeller, Gerhard Ritter, Rudolf Pechel and Walter Goerlitz in Germany; and third, books which provide background.
    A comprehensive bibliography of works on the Third Reich has been published in Munich as a special number of the
Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte
under the auspices of the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. The catalogues of the Wiener Library in London also contain excellent bibliographies.
PUBLISHED DOCUMENTARY MATERIAL
    Der Hitler Prozess.
Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1924. (The record of the court proceedings of Hitler’s trial in Munich.)
    Documents and Materials relating to the Eve of the Second World War, 1937–39.
2 vols. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1948.
    Documents concerning German–Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany.
London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939. (The
British Blue Book.
)
    Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39.
London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1947-. (Referred to in the notes as
DBrFP.
)
    Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45.
Series D, 1937–45. 10 vols, (as of 1957). Washington: U.S. Department of State. (Referred to as
DGFP.
)
    Dokumente der deutschen Politik, 1933–40.
Berlin, 1935–43.
    Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs
(mimeographed). London: British Admiralty, 1947. (Referred to as
FCNA.
)
    Hitler e Mussolini—Lettere e documenti.
Milan: Rizzoli, 1946.
I Documenti diplomatica