Talk:Berlin Diary

End of a Berlin Diary
I'd like to see the sourcing for the depiction of End of a Berlin Diary as "generally considered to be a lesser work." By whom? What is the basis of this assertion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomstoner (talk • contribs)


 * While I agree that End of a Berlin Diary is a lesser work than Berlin Diary, I agree that this assertion ought to be attributed or removed.


 * Also, please sign your comments by typing four tildes ( ~ ). Thanks. &mdash; JonRoma 03:48, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

End of a Berlin Diary info removed
I've pulled the following from this entry since it more properly belongs in its own article space and was detracting from this entry. -- Broken Sphere 15:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

"Shirer wrote a sequel to the diary in 1947, End of a Berlin Diary (ISBN 1-56849-428-9), which is generally considered to be a lesser work. Certainly the coverage of Germany in the aftermath of the Third Reich and the war's destruction is less spellbinding than the original Berlin Diary ' s coverage of the political events during the early years of the Third Reich and the German military triumphs during the war's first year."

"In the sequel, Shirer returns to a shattered Berlin and, among other interesting events, has a chance meeting with a Russian soldier who'd read the author's translated diary in the trenches near Stalingrad. The book includes many captured Nazi documents relating to the war and Nazi atrocities, many of which were uncovered for the prosecution of the Nuremberg Trial, which Shirer also covers in the sequel."

This book had an effect upon eugenic sterilization
In this site: [Kr] you can read at the end:

"A psychiatrist named Foster Kennedy gave an address to the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in 1941. In it, he strongly advocated not only for the forcible sterilization of the mentally retarded, but for killing them, especially if they fell below a certain functional level. Because he assumed that such individuals were in constant suffering and would be better off dead, he referred to this killing as euthanasia or mercy killing. His address was published in the Journal of the American Psychiatric Association in July of 1942. In the same issue an opposing viewpoint by another psychiatrist, Leo Kanner, was also published, along with an editorial. While Kanner had no objection to sterilization, he did object to euthanasia. He also questioned the validity of assuming that people of low IQ would necessarily beget children who were also mentally deficient, but did not spend any time exploring the ramifications that would ensue for his philosophy if this were indeed the case. He believed that sterilization should be reserved only for those who could not perform useful work. He feared that stopping more functional people of low intelligence from reproducing might lead to a labor shortage in unskilled occupations which would adversely affect the functioning of society. Of note is the fact that by July of 1942, psychiatrists were already aware of what was going on in Germany. Kanner noted, “If [journalist and historian] William Shirer’s report is true – and there are reasons to believe that it is true – in Nazi Germany the Gestapo is now systematically bumping off the mentally deficient people of the Reich…”"Agre22 (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)agre22