Originally shown over three nights on March 6, 7, and 9, 1968, David L. Wolper’s small-screen précis of William L. Shirer’s magisterial true-crime book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is a portal not just into theretofore unseen Nazi footage but also to an age, unimaginable now, when a stern black-and-white documentary, neither slicked up nor dumbed down, could be allotted copious prime-time space on a major television network (well, on ABC—then a very weak sister to the big boy powerhouses of NBC and CBS). It is a riveting work, a cinematic history lesson that belongs on the select list of required viewing on the topic that has spawned more archival ruminations than any other event in twentieth-century history.

Originally shown over three nights on March 6, 7, and 9, 1968, David L. Wolper’s small-screen précis of William L. Shirer’s magisterial true-crime book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is a portal not just into theretofore unseen Nazi footage but also to an age, unimaginable now, when a stern black-and-white documentary, neither slicked up nor dumbed down, could be allotted copious prime-time space on a major television network (well, on ABC—then a very weak sister to the big boy powerhouses of NBC and CBS). It is a riveting work, a cinematic history lesson that belongs on the select list of required viewing on the topic that has spawned more archival ruminations than any other event in twentieth-century history.

Originally shown over three nights on March 6, 7, and 9, 1968, David L. Wolper’s small-screen précis of William L. Shirer’s magisterial true-crime book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is a portal not just into theretofore unseen Nazi footage but also to an age, unimaginable now, when a stern black-and-white documentary, neither slicked up nor dumbed down, could be allotted copious prime-time space on a major television network (well, on ABC—then a very weak sister to the big boy powerhouses of NBC and CBS). It is a riveting work, a cinematic history lesson that belongs on the select list of required viewing on the topic that has spawned more archival ruminations than any other event in twentieth-century history.