"Your top 10 WW2 books?" Topic

Hi all,

I just finished reading Iron Hulls Iron Hearts by Ian Walker, it is an excellent book on the Italian armoured divisions in the desert campaign. Here in England there is a common view that the Italian army in WW2 was rubbish. This book tries to point out the fallacy of this view. I recommend it to anyone interested.

This made me think, I wonder how many other good books there are out there I don't know about. So give me your top 10 fiction or non fiction WW2 books.

I have given you 16 in no particular order below, though i do particularly recommend the first two…

Winchester, C Ostfront Hitler's war on Russia 1941 – 45
Johnson, J.E. Full Circle – The Story Of Air Fighting
Clark, A Barbarossa
Clayton, T & Craig P Finest Hour
Clayton, T & Craig P The end of the beginning
Whiting, C The battle of the bulge Britain's untold story
Barnett, C The Desert Generals
Frank, R B Guadalcanal
Perrett, B Knights of the black cross
Trotter, W R Frozen Hell 1939 winter war
Walsh, S Stalingrad The Infernal Cauldron
Wellum, G First Light
Wright, D Tarawa A hell of a way to die
Zaloga, S Blitzkrieg – Panzer colour markings book
Zaloga, S & Grandsen, J The Eastern Front Armies – Camoufllage and markings

As you can see they vary greatly. I like pretty much all of B Perrett's work.

Andy

I don't know that I've read enough WWII books to have 10 favourites. I've probably only read 30 or so, not counting Ospreys or other uniform references, but here are some that really stood out to me as either being well written, well researched or in other ways exceptionally interesting.

War Without Hate: The Desert Campaign of 1940-43
by John Bierman, Colin Smith

Russia At War, 1941-1945 by Alexander Werth

Tobruk: The Story of a Siege by Anthony Heckstall-Smith

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalin as Military Commander by Albert Seaton

Beyond Stalingrad: Manstein and the Operations of Army Group Don by Dana V. Sadarananda

An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson

All of those sound interesting, I would be interested in hearing if anyone else recommends any of them….

I always enjoyed the books of PAUL CARELL – very readable & give the German viewpoint. I think he wrote 4 books; two about the eastern front (Hitler Moves East & Scorched Earth), one about the African campaign (Foxes Of The Desert)and one about the western front (They're Coming)

Thanks Paul,

I have just ordered 2nd hand copies of the desert one and the normandy one. If I like them I would like to start with the hitler moves east book but I haven't found a cheap copy of that yet :)

Keep em coming. If this thread is a success (for me at least) I will do one for all the other periods I am interested in….

Andy

I read Crusade by Rick Atkinson, that was very good. Don't think I have read army at dawn….

Niall Barr "Pendulum of War"

Peter White "With the Jocks"

My others would be the usual suspects (D'Este, Bidwell, etc)

Not in my top 10 but definitely worth reading is:
Robert Weiss "Enemy North, South, East, West"

Hara – Japanese Destroyer Captain
Sakai – Samurai
Prange – At Dawn We Slept
Toland – The Rising Sun
Inoguchi – The Divine Wind
All classics

I have read Hara Japanese Destroyer Captain and concur it is an excellent book

I have to say that I am neither a fan of 'Paul Carrell' nor Bryan Perrett. The only decent book the latter has ever written is 'A Brief History of Blitzkreig', the rest are rehashes of other peoples stuff.

Anyway, 10 favourite WW2 books (if not the best).

Mailed Fist by John Foley
Tank Tracks by Peter Beale
Kursk by David Glantz
Steel Inferno by Mike Reynolds
Rommels North African Campaign by Green and Massignani
It Never Snows in September by Kershaw
The Gothic Line by Douglas Orgill
The Russo-German War 1941-45 by Albert Seaton
Six Armies in Normandy by John Keegan
Lost Victories by Erich von Manstein (yes, I know…)

Ordered a copy of With the Jocks….

Barker – Eritrea 1941. An excellent book on the forgotten campaign in east africa. Well written and a great for wargaming.

Mario Cervi. The Hollow Legions covers the italian invasion of greece. There is not a lot on this campaign and this is as good as it gets in english.

I also like the Barrie Pitt books on the North African campaign. Rick Atlinsons books are probably the best of the more recent books.

Books by Willi Heinrich. He wrote Cross of Iron as well as two other's who's titles escape me for the moment and my copies are buries in a box somewhere. One dealt with partisians and the other with a German soldier returning home after the war and a stint in a Russian POW camp.

Sorry, didn't realise we were allowed fiction as well.

Catch 22
The Naked and the Dead
Death of a Regiment – John Foley
The Cruel Sea – Montserrat
HMS Ulysses – Alistair Maclean
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Cross of Iron

It's difficult to make a top 10 but here are a few that I have read and recommend.

First 4 by Mark Zuehlke
-
Ortona,
Liri Valley
Gothic Line
Juno Beach

These focus on the Canadians – the first 3 deal with Italy and the 4th the landings in Normandy. He has written more but I haven't read them yet but I would think they are also worth a read. He writes good detailed histories of battles and campaigns.

Tigers in the Mud – Otto Carius. Mostly on the Eastern Front and full of interesting detail.

Blood Red Snow – Gunter Koschorrek. Memoirs of the Wehrmacht's retreat from Russian in 1943 and 44.

Along this vein, can anyone recommend a good book on Sicily/Italy? I've read Atkinson's Day of Battle, which was good, and would like some other books to look for.

For fiction, years ago, close to twenty I read BOMBER it was by Len Deighton or something like that.
It was about a lancaster bomber crew and their mission just covering one night. It had great detail such as when the German night fighter opens up with a 20mm, it tells wher the rounds went and one just happened to hit a bolt securing to sections together and the consequences of that one hit.

Recently I read a book about the air war for Stalingrad. It starts out with the start of Barbarossa and includes the Romanians air force, Italian motor boats and German submarines in the Black Sea as they required air support. It talks of having to divide air resources to support the Caucuses and Stalingrad. As most books I've read deal with German Panzers and infantry it was a good change and an eye opener.

For Sicily I highly recommend Carlo D'Este's "Bitter Victory ". His "Decision in Normandy" is also good. My all time favorie is "A Time for Trumpets" by McDonald.

Other recommendations:

A Bridge too Far – Ryan
An Army at Dawn – Atkinson
A Game of Foxes – Farago

One of the best books I've ever read introduced me to the concept of combat fatigue back in the mid 70s. I think this book is required reading for anyone who is interested in military History:

The Sharp End by John Ellis.

I'm going to crib from other people's posts above, so thanks for opening this topic.

I'll go with a top 3, all personal accounts:

Company Commander, by MacDonald.

To Hell and Back, by Murphy (yes, he became an actor, yes, this is great.)

The Brass Ring, by Mauldin (yes, the pulitzer-winning cartoonist).

Arnhem Lift – Louis Hagen
With the Jocks – Peter White
Troop Leader -- Bill Belamy
The Devils Birthday
Then & Now Market Garden
Voices of Stalingrad
Tank Men – Kershaw
Together We Stand
Russia's War – Overy
A Drop to Far – Lt Col John Frost

A copy of the sharp end ordered…..

That's 4 books I have ordered as a direct result of your posts today guys, and probably a few other people will buy a few of these books as well.

Didn't anyone like any of my favourite books btw? :(

Andy

I got The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors for Fathers' Day this year and enjoyed it tremendously.

Spookily enough I spent an afternoon in Haye on Wye last week and managed to get a couple of hundreds quids worth of books (all WWII!) for probably a third of that.
2 books I found that I had previously owned, and lost, via lending (note to self: Don't lend books) were Perret's (I'm not a fan either, but this is a gem) little "Valentine in North Africa" and Ellis' "the Sharp End" -The latter definitely gets straight into my top ten..there are some inacuracies but it puts A LOT into perspective:
So..in no order:

The Sharp End- John Ellis
The Battle of the Bulge, Then and Now- Pallud
The Blitzkrieg legend – Prieser
Operation Goodwood – Dagliesh
Normandy 1944- Zetterling
Panzer Tactics- Schneider
Panzers on the Eastern front – Erhard Raus
Fatal Descision – Carlo D'Este
Barbarossa- Alan Clark
(Bit of a cheat this one) Any of "Omaha" "Utah" "Beyond the beachhead" by Balkoski

To be honest 10 isn't enough…

Quarterd Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser,the Caine Mutiny

"Eastern Approaches" by Fitzroy McLean – don't know how accurate it is but it's fascinating.

I am glad novels were included. I would second -

Bomber
HMS Ulysses
Cross of Iron

Merridale, "Ivan`s War"

Gantz, "Before Stalingrad"

My ten best, though in no particular order.

Tank: Ken Tout (40 Hours of Battle)(brilliant)
A bridge too Far: Cornelius Ryan
Overlord: Max Hastings
The Colditz Story: P.R.Ried
The forgotten Soldier: Guy Sajer (brilliant)
Fighter Pilot: Paul Richey
Springboard to Victory:(Battle for Kohima) C.E.Lucas Phillips
Panzer Leader: Heinz Guderian
The Battle for Hurtgen Forest: Charles Whiting
The Battle of Britain:(Then and now) Winston G Ramsay (A very moving book)

D-Day: Stephen Ambrose
The Narrow Margin:?

Spike Milligans auto biographies about his WWII service.

"And No birds Sang" by Farley Mowat (sp?)

"US Army in WWII" the ETO and Pacific volumes

"The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill

The Narrow Margin:?

by Dempster and Wood. Definitely.

Ditto to Doc Ord's choice of "Quartered Safe Out Here"

"The Gods Were Neutral" and "Brazen Chariots" by Robert Crisp

Ned Beach's "Run Silent, Run Deep"

"They Were Expendable" – W. L. White – not great history, but a good read AND it brings home the desperation of early 1942 in the Pacific.

"Up Front" – Bill Mauldin

Sledge – "With the Old Breed"

W. R. Carter – "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil"

Lat, but not least, does Morrison's "History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II" count as one book or fifteen? If the latter, then "The Two Ocean War" will have to stand in.

Recalled another excellent book on a less-than-common topic: "Tug of War" by Denis and Shelagh Whitaker. It covers the campaign in the Scheldt Estuary, from the battle for Antwerp through the Walcheren landings. Obviously the focus is mostly on the Canadians. Denis Whitaker was CO of the RHLI during the campaign and he and his wife did a masterful job of accessing both documentary evidence and personal accounts from all sides.

"Tug of War" is also the title of a superb one-volume history of the Italian Campaign by Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham.

Ken Tout's "Tank" is excellent. I also enjoyed Beevor's "Stalingrad" and a book about the invasion of Crete called "Ten Days That Shook the World" – I don't remember the author's name. Len Deighton's "Blitzkrieg" and "Fighter" were great for his fresh perspective.
"Quartered Safe Out Here" is another fave. Anything by Belfield and Essame is good, also Dennis Whitaker's series about the Canadians in NW Europe. I liked Nigel Hamilton's 3-part biography of Montgomery too……..

I've just dug out the other book I wanted to recommend. "Battle" by Kenneth Macksey. It could best be described as faction.He is a military historian and has taken a real battle outside Caen, but describes it from the point of view of three fictional characters (British/American/German)

The First Team- John Lundstrom
The First Team in the Guadalcanal Campaign- John Lundstrom
Clash of the Cariers- Barrett Tillman
Black Sheep: The Definitive History of Marine Fighting Squadron 214- Bruce Gamble
Hellcats- Barrett Tillman
The Forgotten Fleet- John Winton
US Destroyer Operations in WII- Theodore Roscoe
US Submarine Operations in WII- Theodore Roscoe
The Big E- Cdr Ed Stafford
Dauntless Helldivers- Cdr Harold Buell

My list shoes my bias towards the PTO in WWII but I have so many books that have been read and reread, it's hard to pick the top 10!
Lance/Corsair

I found the following book to be a great insight into Britain's greatest war time general and his relationship with Churchill,

War Diaries 1939-1945: Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke

I have read Len Deighton's Fighter and Blitzkrieg many years ago and remember enjoying them a great deal.

I am afraid i have read that book "Battle" and personally did not like it at all…

I love Band of brothers the TV series, but not so keen on the book. Mr Ambrose tends to be one of the "America won the war on it's own forget those whinging limeys and the commies" type of authors, as a Brit I find this approach REALLY annoying, but if you are either American OR agree with that sentiment then I suspect all his books are very good.

To balance the odds, if you are interested in books that give a much more pro British angle, try Charles Whiting. Advance warning though he is biased the opposite way.

UPDATE – Ordered a copy of "Narrow margin" and seriously considering Ken TOut books….

You guys are costing me a lot of money :)

I'll second 'Quartered Safe Out Here' by Fraser- probably the best first hand account of war I've read (just beats 'Adolf Hitler- My Part In His Downfall' by Spike Milligan).
Anthony Beevor- Crete
Laurence Rees- The Nazis A Warning From History
Patrick Bishop- Fighter Boys
Kenneth Macksey- Beda Fomm
Alan Clark- Battle for Crete.
Robert Lyman- Slim, Master Of War
David Thomas- Crete, The Sea Battle
George Psychoundakis- The Cretan Runner
Max Hastings- Overlord

That's it for me, a lot on Crete but it makes for a great read. I personally get a bit lost with the Eastern front stuff- the vast, unfamiliar geography (same with the Pacific, I understand why the 14th was the forgotten army, it's all a bit far away and exotic). Reading the Slim biography redressed the balance a bit.

No one has mentioned my favorite US ETO memoir _Roll Me Over: An Infantryman's World War II_, by Raymond Gantter (ISBN: 978-0804116053) -- a very lively and moving account by an over-aged, over-educated, infantry sergeant.

I just read a fantastic new novel by Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy entitled _Day_, which details the experiences of a Lancaster crewman.

The First Team- John Lundstrom

Engage The Enemy More Closely – Corelli Barnett

Pendulum of War – Niall Barr

The Most Dangerous Enemy – Stephen Bungay

A Time For Trumpets – Charles B MacDonald

Guadalcanal – Richard B Frank

The Forgotten Fleet – John Winton

Wing Leader – Air-Vice Marshall J. E. "Johnnie" Johnson, my childhood hero, who autographed and mailed me my copy when I was nine.

Ordinary Men – Christopher Browning. Not necessarily a favorite, but one that's important to read, I think.

Three Corvettes – Nicholas Monsarrat

Didn't see "Sgt. Rock" or "The Haunted Tank" on the list so far…?

Monophagos

'Tanks Advance' by ken Tout, is also a very good book.

Didn't see Six Armies in Normandy by John Keegan. Don't remember the whining limeys part of Band of Brothers-enjoyed the book as much as the HBO series. Really enjoyed Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, so give it a double endorsement.

K.

- With the Jocks is full of so many ideas for skirmishes
- Alamein by Stephen Bungay has an interesting approach

A Frozen Hell. Haven't finished it yet and already have several Winter War scenario ideas.

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. Guess I am a bit biased toward it because my grandfather was on the Gambier Bay. Maybe I'll get into gaming WW2 naval one day. CVE-73 will be first on the list to buy if I do.

It Never Snows in September. Read it some time ago and enjoyed it.

I tend to read a lot of WW2 literature but most of it washes over me. A few that have stuck are

Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor

Pegasus Bridge, Stephen Ambrose (he doesn't just do US won the war on our books)

Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle For Britain: A New History in the Words of the Men and Women on Both Sides, Joshua Levine

I like the "Forgotten Voices" books very much as they are the recorded thoughts of ordinary people caught up in the second world war and are universally fascinating.

Some of these should be read together, as they give different viewpoints:

North Africa
Crisp – Brazen Chaiots

The U.S. in North Africa
Ernie Pyle – Here is Your War
Atkinson – An Army at Dawn

Airborne at D-Day
Ambrose – Pegasus Bridge
Ambrose – Band of Brothers
Donald Burgett – Currahee!

Market Garden
Ryan – A Bridge Too Far

U.S. armored task force
Baron, Baum, & Goldhurst – Raid!

Stalingrad
William Craig – Enemy at the Gates
(note that the movie of the same name was actually based on a novel called "War of the Rats", and not this book)

Marines in the Pacific
William Manchester – Goodbye Darkness
Josephy – The Long and the Short and the Tall

Not so much a combat book
William Craig – The Fall of Japan

Novels:
The Cruel Sea
Piece of Cake
Cross of Iron
I Was There

There are others that I read when I was younger (including a fantastic book about Midway that I haven't read since 5th grade, and whose title is lost in the mists of memory. I seem to recall that it was a weave of documented fact and personal recollections – much as Ryan and Craig's works are), but have no clear recollections of.

Barnett, C The Desert Generals.
- go with that: rock on Auchinleck.

'Forgotten Voices' books are hideous: you're just getting into a subject and it ends.

Top 10 personal accounts:

18 Platoon – Sidney Jary
By Tank Into Normandy – Stuart Hills
Tank! – Ken Tout
Armoured Guardsman – Robert Boscawen
Sunset in the East – (?)
Quartered Safe Out Here – George MacDonald Fraser
Arnhem Lift – Louis Hagen
The Next Moon – Andre Hue
Commando Subaltern At War – Williams(?)
With The Jocks – Peter White

Top 10 unit/formation histories:

Tank Tracks (9RTR) – Peter Beale
Gunners At Arnhem – Peter Wilkinson
War Bush (81 West African Div) – Hamilton
Red Crown & Dragon (53 Welsh Div) – Patrick Delaforce (my favourite one of his)
21. Panzer-Division – Perrigault
Normandy 1944: German blahblahblah – Zetterling
Go To It! (6th Airborne Division) – Peter Harclerode
Airborne Armour (6th AARR) – (?)
Steel Inferno (I. SS Panzer-Korps) – Reynolds

Top 10 battle/war histories:

It Never Snows in September – Robert Kershaw
Burma 1942 – Lyall-Grant and Tamayama
Not The Slightest Chance – (?)
Hell's Highway Trilogy – Tim Saunders
Arnhem Then & Now – Karel Magry
Villers Bocage Thru The Lens -
Gold Juno Sword – Georges Bernage
Hill 112 – Georges Bernage
Breaking The Panzers – Kevin Baverstock
Arnhem 1944: The Airborne Battle – Martin Middlebrook