William Shirer is an American journalist who wrote a highly extensive book chronicling the coming and going of Nazism, called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and while his work is generally well received outside of Germany, I’ve come to learn that most historians within Germany disapprove of it. Apparently one of the major disapprovals was Shirer’s “Sonderweg” perspective of German history, as well as having anti-German sentiments and omitting important information that contributes to German history. Overall, it sounds to me like Shirer just had a rather American perspective on how things occurred, which is understandable given that he is American.
However, I’m interested in reading about the rise and fall of Nazism from a domestic perspective, the German perspective. So the question is, what equally in-depth (and single volume) work thoroughly covers roughly the same material, from a German historian(s)?
German Jewish historian and scholar Victor Klemperer wrote diaries from 1933-1955 which I highly recommend. In fact he published diaries from the Weimar era as well, but I haven’t read that stuff. Although all the years he covers don’t go in a single volume, he does have one entitled The Klemperer Diaries which covers 1933-1945. Keep in mind however that this is a comprehensive first hand account, but obviously he wasn’t privy to certain things at the time which historians now might know, so it’s not necessarily a history in that sense.
I’d also highly recommend Life and Death in the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche. I believe he quotes Klemperer at various points. Well written and comprehensive.