William L. Shirer's politics are clearly representative in this book which clearly influence his evaluation of Germans and Nazi Germany. He judges German culture and ethnics and war hungry. He does not like them. Shirer suffers from the same racist assumptions the Nazi's did only the object of his disgust differs from the Nazis. The German people are villains and are responsible for Nazi ideology. As a journalist reporting on current affairs at that time, Shirer succinctly saw that Hitler had no desire or fire in his gut to invade England. Indeed, during the summer of 1940, Shirer speculated that Hitler wanted to invade Communist Russia. Shirer reflects that Hitler was surprised Churchill rejected his peace offers during the summer of 1940 and was greatly agitated by Churchill's rejections of peace. Oddly, Shirer does not hold Churchill accountable for his continuing the war against Hitler so blinded is he with hatred for fascism. Shirer does not express an equal loathing for communism until the Nazi/Soviet pact of August 1939, and even then, he exposes in his diary a hope that the Soviets and Nazis will come to war and the Nazis will be destroyed. Shirer, as with most "progressives" cannot see that communism (socialism) is an evil on par with Nazism. Nor could he condemn the British for their indiscriminate night time bombing. Indeed, Shirer celebrates such bombing. There is a contrived, polemical aspect about Shirer's diary that consistently says that he is writing the "diary" for publication. Shirer is a decent writer and keeps the reader engaged, I am just sorry that his anti-German bias is so profound.