I’m an avid WW2 reader that’s always looking for more. I have read the following:
-Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen
-Rogue Heroes by Ben Macintyre
-Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre
-Double Cross by Ben Macintyre
-Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
-Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
-The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski
-The Saboteur by Paul Kix
-The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer
-The Nazis Next Door by Eric Lichtblau
-40 Thieves on Saipan by Joseph Tachovsky
-My Dear Boy by Joanie Holzer Schirm
-The White Mouse by Nancy Wake
-Code Name: Lise by Larry Loftis
-The Liberator by Alex Kershaw
-The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw
-Against All Odds by Alex Kershaw
-Scholars of Mayhem by Daniel C Guiet
-Agent Garbo by Stephan Talty
-The Last Hill by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
-With The Old Breed by EB Sledge
-The Old Breed… The Complete Story Revealed by W Henry Sledge
-Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
-We Who Are Alive and Remain by Marcus Brotherton
-Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends by Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron
-Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Giles Milton
-Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley
-The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
-Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller
-The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts
-The Conquering Tide by Ian Toll
-Twilight of the Gods by Ian Toll
-A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
-Voices of The Pacific (Expanded Edition) by Adam Makos
-When Titans Clash by David Grant and Jonathan House
-Hitler’s People by Richard J Evans
-A Tomb Called Iwo Jima by Dan King
-The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer
-Codename Nemo by Charles Lachman
-Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis
-The Story of World War II by Donald L Miller
-The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel
Thanks!
by pedote17
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D-Day by Ambrose
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. A shipwreck found off the coast of New Jersey in 1991 turns out to be a WW2 German Uboat that history says should not be there.
The Good War [Studs Terkel]
The Fifteen by William Geroux.
Fascinating story . During WW II, almost 400,000 German POWs were shipped to makeshift prison camps across the US. They worked in farms and in factories, replacing US teens and young adults who were drafted and sent overseas.
Much of this book is the story of these prison camps and how the prisoners were treated ( including being allowed to eat in local restaurants in the south where their African American guards were forbidden to eat at).
This book focuses on the story of the murder of POWs in the camps by fellow prisoners who judged the POWs were either informers or just not Nazi enough. And the response by Nazi officials who charged 15 American POWs with crimes as bargaining chips.
Convoy SC.122 & HX.229 by Martin Middlebrook is outstanding.
(All his books are)
Albert Speer and His Battle With Truth – Gitta Sereny
East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity – Philippe Sands
The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive – Philippe Sands
Try Anne Nelson’s Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler
Try A Woman of No Importance. It’s a biography of Virginia Hall who was a spy operating under the nose of the Nazis in France.
We Die Alone by David Howarth, it’s an almost literally unbelievable survival story
If you liked flags of our fathers you’ll also like
“Flyboys” by the same author.
The Atkinson trilogy for war in Europe and the Ian Toll trilogy for the war in the Pacific.
Both writers are excellent and make the history so rich it feels like fiction.
Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich
By Walter Kempowski
This is a cut and paste the blurb (reading this blurb you might think it’s fiction, but it’s not. It’s a collage of documents).
A monumental work of history that captures the last days of the Third Reich as never before. Swansong 1945 chronicles the end of Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe through hundreds of letters, diaries, and autobiographical accounts covering four days that fateful spring: Hitler’s birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler’s suicide on April 30, and finally the German surrender on May 8. Side by side, we encounter vivid, first-person accounts of civilians fleeing Berlin, ordinary German soldiers determined to fight to the bitter end, American POWs dreaming of home, concentration camp survivors’ first descriptions of their horrific experiences, as well as the intimate thoughts of figures such as Eisenhower, Churchill, Stalin, Joseph Goebbels, and Hitler himself. These firsthand accounts, painstakingly collected and organized by renowned German author Walter Kempowski, provide the raw material of history and present a panoramic view of those tumultuous days. The more than 1,000 extracts include a British soldier writing to his parents to tell them there are no baths, but plenty of eggs and chocolate; an American soldier describing “the tremendous burst of lilacs” as he approaches the Elbe; Mussolini wishing Hitler a happy birthday; Eva Braun bragging to a girlfriend about what a “crack shot” she’s become; and much more. An extraordinary account of suffering and survival, Swansong 1945 brings to life the end of Nazi Germany and the war in Europe
Magnum Crimen by Viktor Novak.
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
By M. T. Anderson. How Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony helped the Allied victory.
– HHhH by Laurent Binet if you fancy a very well researched but fictionalised take on operation anthropoid
– Alan Turing: The Enigma
– the dam busters by Paul brickhill
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M Scott. I read it last year and it blew me away.
*War and revolution* by Domenico Losurdo
Rick Atkins’s European War trilogy
Also, Now the Hell Will Start by Brendan Koener, about an African-American GI who murdered an officer and fled into the Burmese jungle and lived with the natives. Really fascinating looking into a lesser known aspect of the war, and the stuff about the Burma road is interesting.
Highly recommend The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett Graff. It’s a history of the making of the atomic bomb. The book is particularly good in audio form.
Band of Brotgers
Night by Eli Wiesel (I hope that’s how it’s spelled)
In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson; Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand, Hiroshima by John Hersey
Timothy Snyder has two books Bloodlands and also Black Earth are both very engaging and thought provoking histories largely of Eastern Europe around ww2. Highly recommend!
The splendid and the Vile
Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Reads like a novel
Countdown 1945 by Chris Wallace
Sons and Soldiers by Bruce Henderson
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown
Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent
Lucky 666 by Bob Drury