When the Mirror Cracked: Postwar German Guilt and Shirer’s Final Warning

WPS.News | Editorial Essay
By WPS News Editorial Desk

William L. Shirer, in End of a Berlin Diary, does not simply report history—he exposes its soul.

This powerful sequel to Berlin Diary spans from the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944 to the sobering gravity of the Nuremberg Trials. It is not merely a continuation—it’s a confrontation.

What Shirer found was not a Germany reckoning with its sins, but a people mourning the loss of their power more than the lives destroyed by it. In his words, they followed Hitler “to the very end,” and when the end came, they grieved not for the victims of Auschwitz or the millions left in mass graves—but for themselves.

Instead of shame, many Germans felt betrayal. They blamed the Allies for their hunger and homelessness, not Hitler for plunging the world into a bloodbath. Shirer records their words, their silences, and their self-pity with journalistic precision and a moral fury that burns off the page.

And what of the Nuremberg Trials? Shirer saw justice done—but wondered aloud whether justice was truly understood. Could a nation weep for itself while refusing to acknowledge what it had done? Could a people lose a war and still not grasp why they had deserved to?

As the world marks 80 years since the end of Nazi Germany’s rule, Shirer’s warning feels no less urgent:
Guilt without remorse. Defeat without reflection. Nationalism without ethics. These are the roads that lead a people straight into hell.

On June 5, 2025, we at WPS News remember Shirer’s voice, which still echoes through the rubble of a ruined Berlin and into our own uncertain century.