World War II Reading Recommendations
Categories: History , Staff Picks , Nonfiction
Ken Burns’ new series, The War, which debuted on PBS last week, has generated an enormous amount of buzz in the media the past few weeks. And why not? Not only is Ken Burns responsible for a number of absolutely terrific award-winning documentaries but World War II remains the most important event of the last century.
Despite this, I bet there’s more than a handful of folks out there who, like me, have only a sketchy understanding of the war that changed the world. Lucky for us, quite literally hundreds of books on the subject have been published. On the other hand…the sheer volume of titles can be bewildering. With that in mind, here are a few titles—some old, some new—to get you started.
The Second World War by renowned military historian John Keegan, is a thought-provoking synthesis of the “largest single event in human history.” Keegan eschewed the traditional chronological narrative in favor of a detailed analysis of the major theaters of operation.
William Craig traveled through three continents and interviewed hundred of survivors—German and Russian soldiers and civilians—while gathering research material for Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. The result is a riveting account of one of the bloodiest, most important battles of World War II. Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege by Anthony Beevor is another good possibility.
Described as a “masterpiece of military history,” The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 (Cornelius Ryan) offers a gripping account of the hours preceding and following the Allied invasion of Normandy. A good companion piece to this classic is D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by the bestselling historian Stephen Ambrose.
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945 is another Ambrose title that deserves mention. Drawing extensively on interviews with combat veterans from both sides of the front lines, Ambrose details the hardships and triumphs of the GIs, junior officers and enlisted men of the European Theater of Operations.
And of course, you’ll want to read The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 (Geoffrey Ward), the lavishly illustrated companion volume to the Ken Burns series. “Told almost exclusively from the perspective of those who did the actual fighting, and dying, as well as those back home who waited for their loved ones to return,” The War is both an excellent overview of the conflict and a profoundly moving testimonial to the resiliency of heroism of those involved in World War II.
Rick Atkinson won the Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first volume in his “Liberation Trilogy” about the American Army in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe. The eagerly awaited second volume, The Day of Battle; The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 will be published in early October.
Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle by Richard B. Frank is an excellent starting point for learning about the naval, ground, and air campaigns of the most important Pacific offensive. When it was published, the New York Times described it as a “vividly and carefully crafted monument that is worthy of the Americans and Japanese who collided 49 years ago on a then little-known island named Guadalcanal.”
In Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign; 1941 – 1945, Evan Thomas examines the Battle of Leyte Gulf from the perspective of four commanders (two Japanese and two American) involved in what would turn out to be one of the largest and most complicated naval engagements in history.
Overshadowed by other more well-known offensives, the Battle of Kursk was an epic showdown between the armored forces of the Soviets and the Germans that would ultimately prove to be an important turning point in the war on the Eastern Front. David Glantz and Jonathan House give the tank battle the attention it deserves in their exhaustively detailed chronicle, The Battle of Kursk.
Off the battlefield, cryptographers on both sides of the Atlantic feverishly raced to break the German and Japanese codes. Stephen Budiansky drew up on declassified Army, Navy and British government documents for Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II, his fascinating examination of the communications intelligence war.
Biographies about important World War II figures abound. Here are a few worth seeking out:
- American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur by William Manchester
- Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War by Eric Larrabee
- Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham
If you’d like to read some fiction titles set during the War, there are plenty of terrific possibilities, including such classics as From Here to Eternity, The Naked and the Dead, Run Silent Run Deep, War and Remembrance, and Twelve O’Clock High. How about a few more recommendations? My fellow blogger, Joan, has written about some of her favorites WW II novels, including The Soldier’s Return, The Great World: A Portrait of Survival, and Human Voices.
N.B. Thanks to Jess for sharing some nonfiction reading recommendations with me!
