biography
| name: |
Shirer, William L(awrence)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1904–93)
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| biography:
| Journalist and writer, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. After working as a correspondent in Europe and (briefly) in India, he joined CBS (1937) and broadcast on the momentous events in Europe from Vienna, London, Prague, and ultimately Berlin, alerting Americans to the peril of Nazism. At the outset of World War 2 he covered the German army in the field, and wrote a syndicated column for the New York Herald Tribune (1942–8). Leaving CBS in 1947 in a dispute over the scope for personal opinions, he worked for the Mutual Broadcasting System before turning to writing full-time. His comprehensive study of the Nazi regime and its origins, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), though called over-sensational by some and condemned in West Germany as anti-German, won wide praise and a National Book Award, besides becoming a best-seller. Other books range from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–41 (1941) to Gandhi: A Memoir (1979), based on interviews with Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s. His memoir, Twentieth Century Journey, was published in two volumes (1976, 1984). |
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