William L. Shirer

William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service, Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what would become a CBS radio team of journalists, and he became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II . With Murrow, he... organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts. Shirer wrote more than a dozen books beside The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, including Berlin Diary ; The Collapse of the Third Republic , which drew on his experience living and working in France from 1925 to 1933; and a three-volume autobiography, Twentieth Century Journey . Born in Chicago in 1904, Shirer attended Washington High School and Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He graduated from Coe in 1925.
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