An eyewitness to many of the critical events in Europe in the 1930s, William L. Shirer (1904-1993) reported the key developments leading to World War II and wrote widely on the history of Nazi Germany.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 23, 1904, William Lawrence Shirer was the son of Seward Smith, a lawyer, and Josephine (Tanner) Shirer. After graduating from Coe College in 1925, Shirer left his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to set out for Paris on one last youthful fling before settling down to work in the United States. Crossing the Atlantic via a cattle boat, Shirer dreamed of becoming a poet and novelist. Hundreds of other American men and women with similar dreams were then coming to Paris, however, and Shirer could not find work with the major American newspapers with Paris editions.

On the morning of his last day in France, resigned to returning to what...