William L. Shirer
William Lawrence Shirer (/ˈʃaɪrər/; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He 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 became a CBS radio team of journalists known as "Murrow's Boys". He became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1939–1940). Along with Murrow, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts.
William L. Shirer
December 28, 1993 (aged 89)
American
Journalist, historian
2
Shirer wrote more than a dozen books besides The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, including Berlin Diary (published in 1941); The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), which drew on his experience living and working in France from 1925 to 1933; and a three-volume autobiography, 20th Century Journey (1976 to 1990).
Personal life[edit]
Shirer's father was a Chicago lawyer, when he was born in 1904. When he was a child, his father died and the family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Shirer attended Washington High School and Coe College in Cedar Rapids. He graduated from Coe in 1925. He had to deliver newspapers and sell eggs to help the family finances. After leaving school he worked on the local newspaper, but ultimately was determined to leave Iowa. Working his way to Europe on a cattle boat to spend the summer there, he remained in Europe for 15 years.[1]: 236
He was a European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune from 1925 to 1932, covering Europe, the Near East and India. In India he formed a friendship with Mohandas Gandhi. Shirer lived and worked in France for several years starting in 1925. He left in the early 1930s but returned frequently to Paris throughout the decade. He lived and worked as a correspondent in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1940.
In 1931, Shirer married Theresa ("Tess") Stiberitz, an Austrian photographer. The couple had two daughters, Eileen ("Inga") and Linda. Shirer and his wife divorced in 1970. In 1972 he married Martha Pelton, whom he divorced in 1975. His third (and final) marriage was to Irina Lugovskaya, a long-time teacher of Russian at Simon's Rock College. Shirer and Irina had no children.
Shirer was residing in Lenox, Massachusetts at the time of his death.[2]
Pre-war years[edit]
As a print journalist and later as a radio reporter for CBS, Shirer covered the strengthening one-party rule in Nazi Germany beginning in 1933. Shirer reported on Adolf Hitler's peacetime triumphs like the return of the Saarland to Germany and the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
Shirer was hired in 1934 for the Berlin bureau of Universal Service, one of William Randolph Hearst's two wire services. In Berlin Diary, Shirer described this move, in a self-proclaimed bad pun, as going from "bad to Hearst". When Universal Service folded in August 1937, Shirer was first taken on as second man by Hearst's other wire service, International News Service, then laid off a few weeks later.
On the day when Shirer received two weeks' notice from INS, he received a wire from Edward R. Murrow, European manager of Columbia Broadcasting System, suggesting that the two meet. At their meeting a few days later in Berlin, Murrow said that he could not cover all of Europe from London and that he was seeking an experienced correspondent to open a CBS office on the Continent. He offered Shirer a job subject to an audition—a "trial broadcast"—to let CBS directors and vice presidents in New York judge Shirer's voice.
Shirer feared that his reedy voice was unsuitable for radio, but he was hired. As European bureau chief, he set up headquarters in Vienna, a more central and more neutral spot than Berlin. His job was to arrange broadcasts, and early in his career he expressed disappointment at having to hire newspaper correspondents to do the broadcasting; at the time, CBS correspondents were prohibited from speaking on the radio.
Shirer was the first of "Murrow's Boys", broadcast journalists who provided news coverage during World War II and afterward.
CBS's prohibition of correspondents talking on the radio, viewed by Murrow and Shirer as "absurd", ended in March 1938. Shirer was in Vienna on March 11, 1938, when the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) took place after weeks of mounting pressure by Nazi Germany on the Austrian government. As the only American broadcaster in Vienna (NBC rival Max Jordan was not in town), Shirer had a scoop but lacked the facilities to report it to his audience. Occupying German troops controlling the Austrian state radio studio would not let him broadcast. At Murrow's suggestion, Shirer flew to London via Berlin; he recalled in Berlin Diary that the direct flight to London was filled with Jews trying to escape from German-occupied Austria. Once in London, Shirer broadcast the first uncensored eyewitness account of the annexation. Meanwhile, Murrow flew from London to Vienna to cover for Shirer.
The next day, CBS's New York headquarters asked Shirer and Murrow to produce a European roundup, a 30-minute broadcast featuring live reporting from five European capitals: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Rome, and London. The broadcast, arranged in eight hours using the telephone and broadcasting facilities of the day, was a major feat. This first news roundup established a formula still used in broadcast journalism. It was also the genesis of what became CBS World News Roundup, still on the network each morning and evening, network broadcasting's oldest news series.
Shirer reported on the Munich Agreement and Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia before reporting on the growing tensions between Germany and Poland in 1939 and the German invasion of Poland that launched World War II on September 1, 1939. During much of the pre-war period, Shirer was based in Berlin and attended Hitler's speeches and several party rallies in Nuremberg.
Post-war years[edit]
During the war Shirer became a director of the Society for the Prevention of World War III, which lobbied after the war for a harsh peace with Germany.
Shirer received a 1946 Peabody Award for Outstanding Reporting and Interpretation of News for his work at CBS.[5]
The friendship between Shirer and Murrow ended in 1947, culminating in Shirer's leaving CBS in one of the great confrontations of American broadcast journalism (below).
Shirer briefly provided analysis for the Mutual Broadcasting System and then found himself unable to find regular radio work. He was named in Red Channels (1950), which practically barred him from broadcasting and print journalism, and he was forced into lecturing for income. Times remained tough for Shirer, his wife Tess, and daughters Inga and Linda until Simon & Schuster published The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960. The hardback was reprinted 20 times in the first year and sold more than 600,000 copies through Book of the Month Club alone and 1 million copies overall. Serialization of a condensed version in Reader's Digest and critical acclaim ensured its success in the US. Fawcett Crest gained paperback rights for $400,000 – a record for the time – and a further 1 million copies were sold at $1.65 (equivalent to $17 in 2023). It won the 1961 National Book Award for Nonfiction[6] and Carey–Thomas Award for non-fiction.[7]
Shirer and Murrow[edit]
The dispute between Shirer and Murrow started in 1947 when J. B. Williams, a maker of shaving soap, withdrew sponsorship of Shirer's Sunday news show. CBS, through Murrow, who was then vice president for public affairs, and CBS head William S. Paley, did not seek another sponsor, moved Shirer's program to Sunday midday and then stopped producing it, all within a month. CBS maintained that Shirer resigned based on a comment made in an impromptu interview, but Shirer said he was essentially forced out. Stating in his third volume of memoirs: "I had no intention of staying on with CBS so that Paley and Murrow could humiliate me further."[8]
Shirer contended that the root of his troubles was that the network and sponsor did not stand by him because of his on-air comments, such as those critical of the Truman Doctrine, and what he viewed as an emphasis on placating sponsors rather than an emphasis on journalism. He also said that the sponsor (as well as others) had hinted that he was "too liberal" at a time when the Cold War was beginning.[8]
Shirer blamed Murrow for his departure from CBS, referring to Murrow as "Paley's toady".[9] He admitted to being "puzzled" as to why Murrow (and Paley) did not stand by him in this situation. Shirer believed there were possibly several factors: he had turned down an offer from Phil Wrigley (who was the largest single advertiser on CBS at the time) to broadcast in Chicago (which upset Paley), a subtle rivalry between Shirer and Murrow (that Shirer contends he never felt), and the fact Paley and Murrow blamed Shirer for the negative publicity that arose out of Shirer's leaving. CBS received thousands of letters and phone calls protesting the end of Shirer's broadcasts. Tuesday after the broadcast announcing Shirer's final show would be in a week, picketers appeared in front of the entrance to CBS. The episode hastened Murrow's desire to give up his vice-presidency and return to newscasting. It foreshadowed his misgivings about the future of broadcast journalism and his difficulties with Paley.[8]
The friendship between Shirer and Murrow never recovered. In her preface to This is Berlin, a compilation of Shirer's Berlin broadcasts published after his death, Shirer's daughter Inga describes how Murrow, suffering from lung cancer which he knew could be terminal, tried to heal the breach with Shirer by inviting the Shirers to his farm in 1964. Murrow tried to discuss the breach. Though the two chatted, Shirer steered the conversation away from contentious issues between the two men, and they never had another opportunity to speak before Murrow died in 1965. Shirer's daughter also writes that, shortly before her father's death in 1993, he rebuffed her attempts to learn the source of the breach that opened between the two journalists 45 years earlier.
In The Nightmare Years (1984), the second volume in Shirer's three-volume memoir, 20th Century Journey, Shirer describes the birth and growth of a warm relationship with Murrow in the 1930s. Although his reminiscences are wound together with his version of their professional relationship, he emphasizes that he and Murrow were close friends as well as colleagues. He does not mention their break. A number of touching recollections are included. Thus, it is easy to understand that their break in 1947, based on business disagreements, was made bitter by the close personal relationship they once had.
Another aspect of The Nightmare Years is Shirer's description of his and Murrow's three-way relationship with Paley. Shirer says that, in private, he and Murrow were contemptuous of Paley and almost always sided against him in the 1930s. Thus, when Paley and Murrow ganged up on Shirer in 1947, it was a shock, although Shirer does not say so explicitly.