How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In Berlin too a foreign observer could watch the way the press, under Goebbels' expert direction, was swindling the gullible German people. For six years, since the Nazi "co-ordination" of the daily newspapers, which had meant the destruction of a free press, the citizens had been cut off from the truth of what was going on in the world. (3.16.103)
Is Shirer giving the German people a break, rather than blaming them for going along blindly with Nazi ideology? After all, they were cut off from any other reality by the total crackdown on the free press.
Quote #8
At this point, according to my diary, Hitler had to pause because of the hysterical applause of the German women listeners. […] the young ladies were quite beside themselves and applauded phrenetically […] the young German women hopped to their feet and, their breasts heaving, screamed their approval […] the raving maidens kept their heads sufficiently to break their wild shouts of joy with a chorus of "Never! Never!" (4.22.152-55)
Speaking of feverish hysterics . . .These excerpts are from Shirer's description of a speech that Hitler gave to a room filled mainly with "women nurses and social workers" on the eve of Germany's attempted invasion of Great Britain. It's hard to know what's more over-the-top: the women's adulation for Hitler, or the language that Shirer uses to describe their "phrenetic" frenzies.
Quote #9
At this point the deputies of the Reichstag leaped to their feet cheering, and the Fuehrer's words were drowned in the bedlam. (4.25.158)
This is the reaction of the Nazi statesmen in the Reichstag when Hitler announced, in December 1941, that Germany considered itself at war with the U.S.A. Shirer's use of the word "bedlam" is important, because the word connotes "madness" and "frenzy." It comes from the name of the first British "asylum for the mentally ill —St. Mary's of Bethlehem. (Source) It fits well with the author's fondness for describing the Nazis—and the German people more generally—as crazy hysterics.