10 Favorite WWII Books

[HungaryTom]

Janusz Piekalkiewicz: Der Zweite Weltkrieg

This is a 800+ pp history book - with photos - I cherish this book since the age of 15.

Novels?
The Young Lions
Twenty Thousand Thieves
The Fate of a Man

 

[NoirDame]

I got some books for Christmas. I am especially excited about my Eating For Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity by Amy Bentley because I'm planning on writing my thesis on Food Rationing and the impact on the homemaker during WWII.

I also got:

The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II by Erenberg and Hirsch


and American Women in a World at War: Contemporary Accounts from World War II by Litoff and Smith

 

[TM]

The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan. Just a great account of D-Day. And he managed to interview many of the participants in order to get the real story and to cross-reference the facts. There is one great example of his story of a paratrooper cutting himself down off a tree and leaving his belt and confronting an old lady. Later he interviewed an old lady who told him that exact story, confirming it.

http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Day-Classic-Epic-D-Day/dp/0671890913/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198629519&sr=8-2

Cross of Iron by Willi Heinrich. A fictional account of a group of German soldiers in retreat from the Eastern Front. Later made into a motion picture by Sam Peckinpah. A grueling story, especially the part of the battle in an abandoned factory.

http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Iron-Cassell-Military-Classics/dp/0304352411/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198629850&sr=1-1

Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka. A harrowing story of simple soldiers in the Japanese defeat at Leyte. Also a great heart-wrenching movie.

http://www.amazon.com/Fires-Plain-Tuttle-Classics-Shohei/dp/0804813795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198630035&sr=1-1

And Japans Longest Day by the Pacific War Research Society. An amazing account of the last days of the Pacific War. It deals with the highest levels of the Japanese government and military in the coming to terms of surrender. And like Cornelius Ryan they interviewed most all of the living participants, except for the Emperor.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-0296480-5740822?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Japans+longest+day&x=11&y=15

Tony

 

[merkman]

Inside the third reich, Albert Speer

Paris Underground, Etta Schieber. this is a great book that really gives the feel of living in Paris during the occupation.

The first and the last, Adolf Galland.

All of Ernie Pyle's books.

I fought you from the skies, Willi Heilmann. This is a pretty obscure novel based on fact by a German pilot. Wish I could find it again..read it years ago and got lost somewhere.

 

[Corto]

In NO particular order (+4):

1. "Baa Baa Black Sheep" by Gregory "Pappy" Boyington (USMC aviation, PAC theater.)
2. "Wartime" by Paul Fussell (essays by a WWII Army infantry vet.)
3. "Cross of Iron" by Willi Heinrich (German infantry novel. Somewhat apologist but interesting.)
4. "Das Boot" by Lothar Gunther Buchiem. (U-Boat novel)
5. "Run Silent, Run Deep" by Edward L. Beach. (AMAZING US sub novel).
6. "Goodbye Darkness" by William Manchester (USMC PAC theater memoir)
7. "Semper Fi, Mac" by Henry Berry (WWII USMC anecdotes, HIGHLY recommended)
8. "The Big Red One" (roman a clef novel- he lived it) and "A Third Face" (memoir, some WWII stuff- but worth it...) by Samuel Fuller. Both highly recommended.
9. "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk (USN novel. VERY gripping)
10. "Mister Roberts" by Thomas Heggen (USN novel. Moving.)
11. "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan. (Account of D-Day. The best.)
12. "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George MacDonald Fraser (CBI Theater infantry memoir by the "Flashman" author).
13. "Once a Legend" by Jon Hoffman (About "Red" Mike Edson. From the Banana Wars (incl. early Marine aviation in Nicaragua) to Marine Raider ops in WWII.)
14. "Jews and the French Foreign Legion" by Zosa Szajkowski (Grueling account of how Jewish legionnaires were given up to the Germans and used as slave labor in the Sahara)

Unfinished, but good:
"The Phantom Major" by Virginia Cowles (SAS/LRDG)
"Popski's Private Army" by Vladimir Peniakoff (personal LRDG memoir)
"Flight to Arras" by Antoine de St. Exupery (French. Memoir of an air recon mission as ze Germans rolled into France.)
"Army of Shadows" by Joseph Kessell (French Resistance memoir. No punches pulled. Unfortunately out of print. Movie is available- HIGHLY recommended)
"Road to Mandalay" by Lowell Thomas (CBI theater, memoir, overview)
"Defeat into Victory" by GEN William Slim. (Burma campaign memoir by the man who led it.)
"War of the World" by Niall Ferguson (revisionist history of the causes of WWII. Not sure I buy his premise.)
"No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War" by Hirroo Onoda (hardcore memoir by a Japanese soldier who stayed hidden in the Philippines jungle for 30 YEARS, because...his orders didn't specify surrender... )

 

[Mustang]

This is great

I really appreciate the information, and you all are going above and beyond by explaining what it is you like about each book :eusa_clap . I should have done the same ...and will probably go back and edit my list. In retrospect, I wish I didn't put everyone in a box, so to speak, by specifying a number (10). However many you wish to post is fine by me. It doesn't appear that it has mattered anyway lol . Thanks everyone, and don't stop on my account!

 

[Corto]

one more...

"The Thin Red Line" by James Jones (he also wrote "From Here to Eternity" and "Whistle").

Gritty Army-in-the-Pacific infantry novel. Much better than the movie.

edit:
"A Midnight Clear" by William Wharton. (US Army Infantry/Ardennes- more than likely, roman a clef.)
He also wrote "Birdy" a novel about WWII-era PTSD.

Both books were better than their movies.

edit again...
"American Guerilla" by Roger Hilsman (memoir)- this is an interesting one. The author was a young officer in the OSS (I think) and staged a raid in Burma to bust out his father (a colonel) who was being held in a Japanese POW camp in Burma.

Hilsman later went on to become a DoD adviser in the Kennedy administration, during which he is blamed for being part of the process that escalated the war. However, during the Johnson administration he was a voice of dissent against approaching the war in Vietnam by conventional military force.

 

[Story]

"Popski's Private Army" by Vladimir Peniakoff (personal LRDG memoir)

"Defeat into Victory" by GEN William Slim. (Burma campaign memoir by the man who led it.)

Both are very good. Pay particular attention to what Slim says, in retrospect, about the Gallabat operation (Nov/Dec 1940).

"CATCH-22", by Joseph Heller. It's fiction but the truth that's hidden behind the fiction is still applicable to military life today. After all, you can only see the Major when he isn't in. :eusa_doh:

"AMERICAN GUERILLA in the Phillipines", by Ira Wolfert. About USN Ensign Iliff David Richardson, an officer on a minesweeper transferred to Torpedo Boat Sqd #3 until they were shot out from under him. Refused to surrender, joined up with the guerillas and fought til the Allies returned.

 

[rokket]

Four swell books are:

• The United States Navy in WWII (SE Smith Ed.)
• Submarine! (Capt. Edward L. Beach)
• Clear the Bridge (Adm. Richard O'Kane)
• Thunder below! (Adm. Eugene Fluckey)

Yes, they're all Navy, but the are also all 1st-hand accounts. The first book is amazing, all by people who lived it, either sailors, soldiers, or war correspondents. Great insight and reporting on combat (sea combat and island storming, ETO beach landings), and the language and world view of the time, and all filled with great details.

Pear Harbor (the less than stellar picture from a few years ago) would have done better to just grab 20 little accounts from the first book and add in a little romance - MUCH more interesting!lol

 

[Story]

12. "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George MacDonald Fraser (CBI Theater infantry memoir by the "Flashman" author).

http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/latest-entertainment-news/Flashman-author-Fraser-dies-aged.3636072.jp



The novelist George MacDonald Fraser, author of the popular Flashman series of adventure stories, has died, his publisher has said.
The 82-year-old former soldier, who died after a battle with cancer, worked as a journalist for the Scotsman newspaper for many years.

He also wrote screenplays and a memoir of his experiences as an infantryman in the Burma campaign, but it is for his semi-historical novels based around Sir Harry Flashman that Fraser will be best remembered.

In Flashman and its 11 follow-up titles, Fraser re-imagined the bully of Thomas Hughes' Victorian classic Tom Brown's Schooldays grown up and serving as an officer in the Army.

Each of the novels purports to come from packets of faux-autobiographical notes - the Flashman Papers - discovered in the 1960s.

Fraser's Flashman fights, drinks and womanises his way around the British empire, playing a leading role in the pivotal historical events of the century on the way.

Despite being a vain, cowardly rogue, Flashman emerges from each adventure covered in glory.

Though many found Flashman's 19th-century racism and sexism distasteful, the books sold in huge numbers, and Fraser was widely praised for his attention to historical detail. The author Kingsley Amis called him "a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist".

Fraser, who lived on the Isle of Man, was awarded an OBE in 1999 for a literary career that included a number of screenplays including the Bond movie Octopussy.

He was born in Carlisle in 1925, and served with the Army in Burma and India during the Second World War.

 

[Corto]

http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/latest-entertainment-news/Flashman-author-Fraser-dies-aged.3636072.jp



The novelist George MacDonald Fraser, author of the popular Flashman series of adventure stories, has died, his publisher has said.

Horribly sad!

I just made a new thread before I saw this.

I've read about ...90% of all his books...truly wonderful stuff...

 

[Corto]

Gallabat

Both are very good. Pay particular attention to what Slim says, in retrospect, about the Gallabat operation (Nov/Dec 1940).

I looked in the index of my addition, but couldn't find "Gallabat" listed specifically. Was there a name for the operation? Something else I should look under?

Given what information I've found on the internet, I'm guessing this operation has some relevance for current military operations today...I'll keeping pouring through "Defeat" to try and find Slim's two cents...

 

[Corto]

Four swell books are:

• Submarine! (Capt. Edward L. Beach)
  
  Yes, they're all Navy, but the are also all 1st-hand accounts.

• 
  
  
  I'm actually reading Beach's "Dust on the Sea" right now...
  
  Some of it is better than "Run Silent...", only because publishing in the 1970's afforded him more leeway to write about "adult themes", but...it's very technical.
  
  I think a real submariner would get a lot out of it. As a life-long civilian I can say that sometimes it's rough sledding- but still fascinating...
  
  Bottom line, I think "Run Silent, Run Deep" is more accessible.
  
  I also have "Submarine!" collecting dust on my shelf. Looking forward to that one.