BERLIN DIARY

Here's the answer to those who have wondered whether Shirer's veiled allusions on the air, speaking from Berlin, have cloaked pro-Nazi sympathies. Here's the message between and behind the lines. Here is as thrilling and vigorous and all-inclusive a denunciation of Germany, her leaders, her policies, her people, her actions, her purposes as has come in any book we have read. Millions have listened to Shirer, who, during seven years, has been on the ground at the crucial moment — the fall of Austria, of Czecho-Slovakia, of Poland. He and his devoted friend, Edward Murrow, have been jointly responsible for the policies that have brought international hook-ups to the place they hold. This diary shows an amazing comprehension of what has been happening, before the world realized it; his advice would have saved many missteps had diplomats and statesmen heeded him. The record suffers not at all by a sense of having been told before, since Shirer presents it all with fresh evidence, a human approach, and the intimate details that make one feel one has gone through it with him. Sell the book as an important link in understanding what has been happening, as preparation for what is still to happen. Sell it as absorbingly interesting reading, throughout its close to seven hundred pages. Often enough his prophetic insight has proved itself. What can he do for the future ahead? A book for public libraries, bookshops, rental libraries.