The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Characters

The man; the myth; the fanatical, megalomaniacal, and genocidal Fuehrer.The man whose name is a code word for evil. …Make that Evil with a capital "E." We're willing to bet that you know a fair b...

In 1941, when Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, flew to Scotland in a harebrained attempt to negotiate peace with the Allies, Hitler "stripped his old comrade of all his offices," a...

Chamberlain was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (the United Kingdom) from 1937 to 1940. He's gone down in history as a symbol of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler's Germany in the period before W...

Sir Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as the British Prime Minister in May of 1940. He's gone down in as one of the great heroes of WWII, the man who refused to surrender to Hitler.We...

Goebbels was one of Hitler's most trusted right-hand men throughout the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and he went to his death as one of the fanatical Fuehrer's most devoted acolytes.Shirer cha...

After joining the Nazi Party in the early 1920s, Hermann Goering quickly established himself as one of its most important players. Goering helped Ernst Roehm to organize the Nazi Storm Troopers, an...

Rudolph Hess makes his first appearance in the book as Hitler's "close friend" and "devoted follower" (1.2.76). In the early days of the Nazi Party, he served as Hitler's personal secretary, and la...

When he was twenty-six years old, Heydrich was a young naval intelligence officer being booted from his position for "refusing to marry the daughter of a shipbuilder whom he had compromised" (2.8.1...

Next to Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler was one of the most notorious and sinister figures who contributed to the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and, more significantly, to the horrors of the Hol...

Mussolini—Il Duce—enters Shirer's narrative as a kind of role model for Hitler's youthful political ambitions. As he remarks, Mussolini's success in establishing a fascist dictatorship in Italy...

Like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin is too huge a historical figure for us to give you a full picture of the man. What we can give you is a clear sense of how Shirer's Stalinappea...

Eva BraunEva Braun was Hitler's mistress throughout the final twelve years of his life, and on the day before his death, he married her. Eva spent much of her life with Hitler far from Berlin, wait...

Max AmannAmann was, in Shirer's words, "the hard-headed manager of the Nazi publishing business" (1.4.1). He's one of the more peripheral members of the Nazi entourage, but in addition to raking in...

Heinrich BrueningBruening served a brief term as the Chancellor of the German Reich in the early 1930s, and, in Shirer's words: "It was the tragedy of this well-meaning and democratically-minded pa...

Throughout The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer names dozens of the captains, generals, admirals, and field marshals who served in the German Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe (Air Force) during th...

General Ludwig BeckBeck makes a brief appearance early on, where he appears as a colonel in the German Army. By the time he reappears, he's been promoted to the rank of general, and has also been n...

General Freiherr Werner von FritschFritsch deserves a mention here, because, like General Werner von Blomberg, he was one of the German Army generals who was dismissed in disgrace in 1938 after bei...

General Dwight D. EisenhowerAlthough Eisenhower would be elected President in 1952,his position in our story is only as the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. No big deal.Throughout most of TR...

Leopold PoetschIn his Introduction to the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of TRFTR, Ron Rosenbaum commends Shirer for "bring[ing] forth from the shadows of amnesia this nearly forgotten figure, an aco...

King Leopold IIIShirer first takes note of Leopold in Chapter 9: The First Steps, as he describes the shifting nature of Germany's international relations after Hitler announced Germany's formal tr...

President Eduard BenešEduard Beneš had the great misfortune of watching his country get broken up by Hitler and the Western politicians who helped him to do it. He's one of the few political figu...

Georges BonnetGeorges Bonnet was the Foreign Minister of France in the lead-up to the Second World War. He participated in the negotiations that led to the Munich Agreement, and Shirer describes hi...

Sir Nevile HendersonHenderson was the British ambassador to Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War, and he played a particularly important role in the negotiations that led to the...

Count Galeazzo CianoCiano was the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini, and he served as Italy's Foreign Minister from 1936 until 1943, when he briefly became an ambassador to the Vatican. He helped to s...

Matsuoka YosukeMatsuoka Yosuke was the Japanese Foreign Minister during the early years of the Second World War. It was to Matsuoka that Hitler had made his fateful promise that Germany would back...

Colonel Józef BeckColonel Beck was Poland's Foreign Minister from 1932 until the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Before Nazi Germany turned on his country, Beck collaborated in Hitler's seizure...

Birger DahlerusBirger Dahlerus was a Swedish businessman and personal friend of Hermann Goering. Shirer describes him as a "curious" fellow who played an equally curious role in the final negotiati...

Maxim LitvinovMaxim Litvinov was the Soviet Foreign Commissar in the years leading up to the Second World War, but in May 1939 he was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov.Shirer characterizes Litvinov as...