Exactly how steamy is this story?
R
There's nothing particularly steamy about The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but the book gets an R rating because of the sexually-explicit content that Shirer sometimes chooses to discuss.
Take, for instance, the Nazi "medical" experiments that Shirer describes in Chapter 27: The New Order. Among these "grotesque" and "murderous" experiments was one in which Nazi scientists tried to determine the best and quickest way to warm a frozen man (5.27.376-89).
Heinrich Himmler, the infamous chief of the S.S., urged the scientists to see what would happen if a frozen man was warmed by the bodies of naked women. Sometimes sexual activity ensued, but for the prisoners who were forced to be test persons, scenes like these were just some of the daily tortures they endured.
Historical cruelties like these are anything but steamy. Given that Shirer's subject matter is the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, it's hardly surprising that much of the sexual activity that he mentions throughout the book includes similar elements of violence, coercion, and desperation.