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Posted on • Originally published at getcreditworth.com

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: 57 Hours of History, One Credit

#audible #audiobooks #history #bookreview

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title: "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: 57 Hours of History, One Credit"
description: "A practical third reich audiobook review: 57 hours of William L. Shirer at $0.26/hour, narrated by Grover Gardner. Worth your Audible credit or not."
tags: [audible, audiobooks, history, bookreview]

canonical_url: https://getcreditworth.com/blog/rise-and-fall-third-reich-audiobook-review

I do this review the way most people actually decide: numbers first, then a sanity check on whether 57 hours is a commitment you want to make.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich runs 57 hours and 12 minutes. Narrator is Grover Gardner. Cost: one Audible credit, which works out to about $0.26 an hour on the standard $14.95 plan. Rating sits at 5.0 stars from 1,793 reviews. By the hour-per-dollar math alone, this is one of the most efficient credits in the catalog.

What the 57 hours actually are

Shirer was CBS's correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1940, and he wrote the book from his own daily notes plus the captured Nazi archives. That combination is the whole appeal. You get the official documents, but you also get the street-level texture only an eyewitness could file. It reads like a reporter's history, not a textbook, which matters a lot for audio. Sections that would drag on paper move fine when Gardner reads them.

Where it sits in the history category

Every list of best history audiobooks includes this one, and honestly it earns the slot. Later historians have revised parts of Shirer's interpretation since the 1990s, so treat it as a classic account with a journalist's bias rather than the final scholarly word. For a listener who wants one definitive, listenable account of the Third Reich, nothing else really compares. It also stands out among long nonfiction audiobooks because it never forgets it is telling a story with stakes.

Who should spend the credit

  • WW2 history fans who want the classic account
  • Commuters who want a book that lasts two months, not two days
  • Anyone easing into long nonfiction and needs a proven entry point
  • Skip it if you want a short overview. This is a marathon by design.

Verdict

Spend the credit. You won't find a cheaper way to get 57 hours of serious history that is also genuinely listenable. Full value breakdown on the book page, and if you want to run your own math, the credit calculator handles the hour-per-dollar part.

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