William L. Shirer Quote
About ten o’clock tonight I got caught in a mob of ten thousand hysterics who jammed the moat in front of Hitler’s hotel, shouting: We want our Führer. I was a little shocked at the faces, especially those of the women, when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail. They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few moments, I think many of the women would have swooned from excitement. Later
About ten o’clock tonight I got caught in a mob of ten thousand hysterics who jammed the moat in front of Hitler’s hotel, shouting: We want our Führer. I was a little shocked at the faces, especially those of the women, when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail. They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few moments, I think many of the women would have swooned from excitement. Later
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About William L. Shirer
As a young man just out of college, in 1925 Shirer was hired by the Chicago Tribune and later worked for the International News Service; he 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 well known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II. Together with Murrow, on Sunday, March 13, 1938, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts.
Shirer published 14 books besides The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, including Berlin Diary (published in 1941), The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), several novels, and a three-volume autobiography, 20th Century Journey (1976 to 1990).