Book Recommendation: WW2

HMP

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Im looking for some recommendations for WW2 books
Im pretty set on the Soviet side of things, and, truly, not a lot of interest, at this time, in the Pacific Theater.
So Western front of the European theater.
 
Fighter Pilot by Robin Olds covers WW2 through Vietnam it’s the story of his life which was pretty epic.

A Higher Call by Adam Makos covers two stories a German fighter pilot and an American bomber pilot.
 
Fighter Pilot by Robin Olds covers WW2 through Vietnam it’s the story of his life which was pretty epic.

A Higher Call by Adam Makos covers two stories a German fighter pilot and an American bomber pilot.
man Im glad you posted this, you'd told me about it and I forgot about those two, they'll be bought soon!
 
Well, hell, just ordered A Higher Calling
 
There's also Stalingrad, by Beevor, and if you're as interested in the people of WWII , the stories of the Russian snipers were interesting to me (including the female russkie sniper).
 
Stephen Ambrose wrote a number of books on the subject. I highly recommend him. I’m not in front of my bookshelf at the moment, but I never read any of his works that I didn’t enjoy.


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The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (Rick Atkinson)
The whole series: https://www.amazon.com/Liberation-T...&keywords=guns+at+last+light+by+rick+atkinson

Be forewarned: these books are D-E-T-A-I-L-E-D and as a result take a looooooooong time to read. I’ve been reading off and on for 2+ years and I’m not even through the second book. But damn do they shine light in all the cracks of the war. Have a dictionary or a mobile device with www.dictionary.com at the ready—I have no problem admitting there are words on every page that are a little above my paid grade!

I read the Forgotten 500 a little while back and thought it was pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-50...&qid=1542893224&sr=8-1&keywords=Forgotten+500
It’s about Allied air crews shot down over Yugoslavia that are essentially “forgotten” but eventually rescued by a ballsy clandestine operation. It will also show how the Soviets had infiltrated the Allied operations so deeply and set the stage for things to come after WWII—infuriating, but lots of hindsight “ah ha” moments.

Thunder Below: https://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Belo...&qid=1542893356&sr=8-1&keywords=Thunder+below
Story of the most successful sub Captain who even claimed a Japanese train on the mainland! It’ll blow you away when you realize the responsibility given to a 20-something year old and the balls of icy steel of the crews...and how many we have no idea where they went/are (other than Davy Jones’ locker),

The Last Fighter Pilot: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Fighter...893474&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+fighter+pilot
THe war was on when the guy took off in his Mustang, and it ended while he was in the air—so technically the very last wartime fighter pilot flight. It’ll hit you between the eyes at how frequent death was around those guys, both in missions and just training.
 
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Anyone read The Longest Winter?
saw it in B&N the other day
 
By Donald R Burgett:
Curahee!
The Road to Arnhem
Seven Roads to Hell
Beyond the Rhine



By Carlo D'Este:
Patton: A Genius for War
Decision in Normandy



By Stephen Ambrose:
Citizen Soldiers
D-Day
Band of Brothers



By Russell Miller:
Nothing Less than Victory: The Oral History of D-Day



By Doug Stanton:
In Harm's Way



By Clint Willis:
The War
 
Im looking for some recommendations for WW2 books
Im pretty set on the Soviet side of things, and, truly, not a lot of interest, at this time, in the Pacific Theater.
So Western front of the European theater.
This is probably not what you are looking for, and given your profession and your degree of literacy in history, may be one you have already read. For the rest of us, it deals with the political maneuverings that led up to the war, and not merely the stratagems and tactics of the military operations.

Nevertheless, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick Buchanan is an absolute masterpiece. He shows how neither WWI NOR WWII were "good wars." Rather, both were avoidable, and were examples of a phenomenally stupid and cowardly commitment to empire and financial elites which literally ruined the entire West, destroyed our commitment to liberty, and launched us on a downward trajectory to globalism, worldwide tyranny, and bankruptcy.

It was an eye opener to me.
 
By Donald R Burgett:
Currahee!
The Road to Arnhem
Seven Roads to Hell
Beyond the Rhine

I went to school with a kid who said his Dad was writing a book. Not too long afterwards, Currahee showed up in the Reader's Digest condensed version in our mailbox.

Together, these are very personal stories from a 101st paratrooper, from D-Day -1 to VE Day. What these men went through was ugly.

Block out two days and read them together in order. They will leave a strong impression.
 
It’s in the Pacific, but it’s a great story of a rescue mission that I had never heard about.

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides
 
"Operation Jedburgh" by Colin Beavan
Covers OSS ops in France during the lead up to D-Day.
 
@tanstaafl72555 Not a bad suggestion, I would be very interested in more about Churchill

Then read Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Damien Lewis.

“How Churchill’s secret warriors set Europe ablaze and gave birth to modern black ops”.

It’s about the precursor to the SBS and SAS and how they learned their lethal trade using on the job training

One Churchill quote I like:

“...there comes out from the sea from time to time a hand of steel which plucks the German sentries from their posts with growing efficiency...”
 
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Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller. About the Mighty 8th Air Force. Includes many great and harrowing facts. When you start it, you won’t be able to put it down.
 
If you're interested in the runup to WWII, read The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill. Superbly written by the man who was there.
 
Some of the best accounts of WW2 I have read were written by John Toland, an American historian. He wrote what many consider to be the definitive biography of Hitler. Much of what he wrote was about the war in the Pacific, but he wrote quite a bit about the European theater. He also wrote an excellent history of the last year of WW1.
 
Sometimes it is interesting to get the other side's perspective. This one was good: D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944 by Holger Eckhertz
It's a collection of memories from German soldiers.
 
Sometimes it is interesting to get the other side's perspective. This one was good: D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944 by Holger Eckhertz
It's a collection of memories from German soldiers.

That was a gift I got last year, I really enjoyed the read
 
I really enjoy James D Hornfischer's books on the U.S. navy during WW2. Neptune's Inferno is my favorite. Reads like a novel and covers the naval side of the Guadalcanal campaign. We had our butts handed to us until we learned how to fight the Japanese.

On a more personal note I recommend St. Vith: Lion In The Way by Ernest Dupuy. It's the story of the 106th infantry division during the battle of the bulge. My grandfather served in it and was captured by the Germans. The conditions they dealt with were terrible though not as bad as the eastern front.
 
I’m sure @Qball knows of quite a few on the aviation side.


Sorry it took so long to reply Daniel. I meant to respond and then I forgot all about it.

@HMP My son is currently reading The Bomber Boys. He says it's very good. Chuck Yeager's first autobiography is very good as well. The entire book is not just about WWII, but if I recall, a large part of it was about Yeager's experiences during the war.

Of course, I'm sure you'll enjoy reading A Higher Call when it arrives.

Take a look at this link to the bookstore at the National Museum of the USAF. They have countless books related to WWII aviation:

http://store.airforcemuseum.com/boo...kCvb-XJOpJTSTKM1-y8ROe7esGaEvXnUaAl3KEALw_wcB

Hope that helps.
 
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So what I did was order A Higher Call through B&N so I could just stop in yesterday and pick it up
I started it last night and the introduction alone was very enjoyable.
Dan told me a brief summary of what took place, though I cant remember details of what he said (IF he really went into it), so I have an idea of what heroic and honorable thing took place, but Im interested in knowing the background - why he'd do it, and then, how the heck do they find each other etc
 
Not a book, but definitely interesting: Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told

I have only gotten through about half of this. This is Nazi propaganda, throughout. The mark of a good propagandist is to take the lies and omissions of the prevalent narrative (the "heroism" of Churchill, the appalling coverup of Ally collusion with the USSR, the abandonment of the Cossacks at the end of the war, etc etc), and mix them with propaganda lies, justifying them in the hopes that when one realized the accepted narrative is propaganda, that one will not look too closely and just swing over to the opposite propaganda narrative.

Just one example. The so called "Danzig" massacre is used to justify Hitler's invasion of Poland. I used the phrase "so called" because the claim of Poles murdering over 58,000 Germans (or any number of Germans, in fact) is utter bullshit. There is absolutely zero evidence for this in any historical archives of the era. The entire claim was based on the 1940 work of Nazi propagandist Hans Schadewaldt, found here

https://www.scribd.com/doc/53056883...-Against-the-German-Minority-in-Poland#scribd

Other than this screed from a paid Hitler apologist, there are no references to any such atrocity. There are a number of these in the film, which I would expect.

The film does a good job in showing WHY Hitler rose to power. Germans were not animals, nor demonic, nor savages. They were an incredibly humiliated, debased, defeated and degraded people, who had not prompted nor wanted WWI, yet were ruined by the stupid belligerence and arrogance of Versailles. Lots of very good context setting in the film, for which I was grateful. I think what I have seen so far is worthwhile just for that. It helps explain WHY the Nazis would find Germany a fertile ground for proud Nationalism (which is not a bad thing, in itself), and why the annexation of Austria, Sudentenland, etc would be supported. It also brings out the utter mendacity of the west (Churchill and Roosevelt) and the evil of WORLD Socialism (compared with the evil of NATIONAL socialism, which it glosses over). All this and more are redeeming features of the film (which, again, I have not finished).

However, it is clear that they are trying to do the impossible. Hitler was a monster. He was demonic, perverted, egomaniacal, and Satanic. You just cannot, in any rational context, blame this on "lies of the joos" or the truism that history is written by the victors.

I have not gotten to the part of the film where the death camps are explained away as a "hoax" and relegated to the results of typhus, plague or other such nonsense. I fully anticipate this, as this is the general course of "Joo Khazar Zionist propaganda" explanations of the "there was no holocaust" crowd.... I could be wrong on what is coming, though..... this ain't my first rodeo.

All in all I would have to thank you for the link. The film has been enjoyable so far, and informative. It is still bullshit propaganda, but that does not mean it is valueless. Thank you, and I am sincere when I say it. I would recommend it.
 
The more I read, the more appreciative I am of Henry Ford, who said "History is more or less bunk." It is VERY hard to get to "what really happened" because there are so many competing agendas among those who write it.
 
Hitler was a monster.
Who was loved by his people. Turns out if forces are at work to destroy a people, they will select a fighter to lead them.

or the truism that history is written by the victors.
Yep. You have the victors neo-Marxist propaganda, i.e., what we learn in history class, and you have Nazi propaganda. The truth lies somewhere in between.
 
The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad, the title pretty much sums up what the book is about, I enjoyed it a great deal.

The Forgotten Soldier, this is about a German soldier that lived from the beginning of the war and lived through the entire war serving on the eastern front, a great book that really gives you some insight as to what the war was like for your average German soldier fighting the Russians.

Samurai! : Saburo Sakai writes about his experience as a Zero pilot in WW2.

Give this a look to see if you find it interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saburō_Sakai







 
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Forgotten soldier sounds good!
 
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