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10 notable world war ii books of 2021.

Must-reads of 2021 picked by historians and scholars in the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. 

best rated ww2 books

Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

by Edward B Westermann

best rated ww2 books

Ed Westermann is a highly prolific scholar and author on the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. His latest, Drunk on Genocide , explores the intersection between alcohol, images of masculinity, and German atrocity on the Eastern Front. He is struck by the number of times that alcohol figures in the mass murder of Jewish victims. The schnapps flowed freely before, during, and after the roundups and shootings, and some of the grisly scenes of sadism and torture carried out by drunken SS-men or German soldiers simply beggar the imagination. Of course, we might say that another kind of intoxication is at work here, with Hitler and the German people alike being drunk on visions of dominance, empire, and racial superiority.    The book is perhaps best read in concert with Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich . On one level, it’s comforting to hear that men have to be in a drunken stupor to commit horrific crimes like the Holocaust. We should also realize, however, that we live in a world in which drugs and alcohol are available everywhere, in the tendency to hate all too common.

Recommendation by Rob Citino, PhD Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian 

by Stephanie D Hinnershitz

best rated ww2 books

This book by my friend and colleague Stephanie Hinnershitz is simply one of the best and most important books of 2021. Her research yields a number of vital findings, but two stand out here. First, she clarifies that what happened to the roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans impacted by Executive Order 9066 was “incarceration,” not “internment”—the traditional, yet quite problematic, term more familiar to us. Second, she demonstrates how the system of relocation and incarceration devised by the American state for Japanese Americans depended on what she calls “coerced labor.” Japanese American Incarceration  will be the reference point for future discussions of this crucial subject in the history of the United States and World War II.  

Recommendation by Jason Dawsey, PhD Research Historian  

by Enzo Traverso

best rated ww2 books

Cornell University intellectual historian Enzo Traverso has produced a remarkable series of studies of modern European politics and social thought. Revolution: An Intellectual History , the most recent addition to this body of work, focuses on “revolution for better or worse” in Europe since the French Revolution (with selective attention to revolutions outside of the European continent). Using Walter Benjamin’s notion of “dialectical images,” Traverso clearly sympathizes with the emancipatory aspects of modern revolutions (which he distinguishes from rebellions), while not romanticizing them. Richly illustrated, Traverso’s book is a demanding, yet quite rewarding exploration of the iconography, experience, and conceptualization of revolution. The book will and should elicit lengthy commentary and debate on a subject that is far from exhausted.  

Recommendation by Jason Dawsey, PhD Research Historian

The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

best rated ww2 books

Crafted as part of his Revisionist History  podcast, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia  provides a deeply provocative exploration into the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo. In so doing, Gladwell exposes a broader audience to strategic bombing, wartime decision-making, and the events leading up to the end of World War II that have long been topics of debate among historians. The book is a quick read, but the lengthier quotations are most effective in the podcast. 

Leaders, their ideas, and their character are central to Gladwell’s story, as are the moral implications of wartime decisions. In addition to the inventors and chemists that played a role in US efforts to hasten the end of the war, the treatment of General Curtis LeMay and his predecessor Haywood Hansell, central figures in the story, are particularly insightful. Gladwell’s insights into the cognitive dissonance of what other American senior leaders, such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson or General Joseph Stilwell, understood LeMay was doing to Japanese cities and civilian populations are particularly perceptive. 

Recommendation by Michael Bell, PhD Executive Director, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy  

Island Infernos: The US Army’s Pacific War Odyssey, 1944 by John C McManus

best rated ww2 books

John C. McManus’s Island Infernos  is the second installment of a trilogy detailing US Army operations in the Pacific in 1944 (the preceding work won the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History). Although not the author’s main objective, the series acts as something of a historical corrective. Popular memory suggests the Marine Corps stood alone against Japanese forces, fighting their way across numerous remote islands. McManus shows the extent to which the Army also was responsible for the American victory in the Pacific. In 1944, a make-or-break year for Allied forces against Japan, soldiers engaged in intense amphibious operations while support forces managed a massive logistical effort across almost a third of the globe’s surface. Any reader interested in a fuller picture of the Pacific War should pick up McManus’s two volumes. His attention to detail, archival research, and mastery of the literature is peerless. 

Recommendation by Adam Givens, PhD DPAA Research Partner Fellow  

When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance by Michael S Neiberg

best rated ww2 books

Was America’s partnership with Vichy France a necessary evil to stave off further Nazi encroachment in Europe and beyond, or a desperate and panicked diplomatic move undertaken by US policy makers who realized in 1940 how underprepared the nation was for a potential global war with Germany? Approaching the Vichy-American collaboration as “necessary pragmatism” overshadows how dangerous it was for Anglo-American relations, and Michael Neiberg’s use of the warped memory of US-Vichy cooperation makes his book a great introduction to the reality of this complex moment in WWII history.

Recommendation by by Stephanie Hinnershitz, PhD Research Historian

The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower

best rated ww2 books

Wendy Lower’s book, The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed , investigates the history of the Holocaust as it unfolded in Ukraine in the summer and fall of 1941. By tracing the origins and context surrounding a photograph documenting the murder of a woman and her children in Miropol, Ukraine, Lower unleashes a powerful microhistory of the first phase of the Holocaust, or “the Holocaust by bullets.” Her fast-paced and gripping narrative incorporates her own experience in researching the family in the photo, the photographer, the perpetrators, and the killing site. In doing so, she offers important insights on issues surrounding conflicting local memories and the nuances of collaboration. More importantly, Lower successfully argues for the use of photography as vital historical evidence, but cautions that photos should be scrutinized as carefully as any other historical documentation. Readers interested in the Holocaust or the history of photography will find the book a well-written and detailed study that contributes to the historiography of mass murder and genocide during World War II. 

Recommendation by Jennifer Popowycz Leventhal Research Fellow

Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America’s World War II Military by Thomas A Guglielmo

best rated ww2 books

Thomas Guglielmo’s book truly is a “new” history of how racism shaped the military experience for many minorities who served during World War II, and he uses one powerful phrase to describe this form of “Jim Crow militarism”: white supremacy. But what makes this book such an important read for anyone interested in WWII history is the story of the veterans who challenged this deeply rooted notion that White soldiers were naturally superior to non-White servicemembers and later shaped postwar social movements for equality and justice. 

Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at War 1895-1945 by Anthony Tucker-Jones

best rated ww2 books

Sir Winston is back, and this time he’s more dangerous than ever! While the appearance of a new book on Churchill might give some potential readers pause, given the already bulging library of books on Sir Winston, Master and Commander  works due to its razor-sharp focus. This is the story of Churchill as a warrior—fighting in them, writing about them, and eventually helping to direct the greatest one of them all.    While some of the episodes here might be familiar, such as his wartime disagreements with FDR over the Normandy invasion, many others will be revelatory, especially to US readers. Churchill’s service with the Malakand Field Force on the North West Frontier of the Indian Raj (1897), the great charge of the 21st Lancers at the battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898 (the “last great cavalry charge in history,” as it’s often called), the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902): Winston was in every one of them. In later years, he was a fiery advocate for intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, and on multiple occasions he called for an invasion of Ireland to quell disturbances there. As a warrior, Churchill was larger than life, and in Anthony Tucker-Jones, a knowledgeable and erudite military historian, he has found a worthy chronicler.

X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II by Leah Garrett

best rated ww2 books

Garrett, a Professor at Hunter College, has penned a unit history of the British No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop—X Troop—and weaved into it the personal stories of the men who comprised it. What the reader is presented with is a beautiful tapestry of human suffering, resilience, and resistance. X Troop, made up of young, Jewish men who escaped Europe as the Nazis rose to power, is a story not often told in the broad library of WWII histories, a story where Jewish people act as their own liberators and strike back at the Third Reich.   Garrett’s deep research and investigation is mixed with a wonderful writing style, which leads to remarkable storytelling. From their individual escapes, to the unfortunate, but enlightening tales of antisemitism they faced in the UK and other areas, members of X Troop served throughout Europe—from Dieppe to D-Day to the Battle of the Scheldt, and then on to the liberation of their own homelands. 

Recommendation by Jeremy Collins Director of Conferences and Symposia

best rated ww2 books

Museum Store

The Museum Store has hundreds of books on World War II, such as bestseller biographies and autographed copies. 

best rated ww2 books

Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy

Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy is a national center for research, higher education, publications, and public programming.

Explore Further

Barry Keoghan portrays Lieutenant Curtis Biddick

What Happened to Lieutenant Curtis R. Biddick?

Churchill in parade with V for Victory

V for Victory: A Sign of Resistance

Created by a Belgian politician and broadcaster fleeing Nazi persecution, the V for Victory symbol became one of the most enduring signs of the war. 

A B-17 Flying Fortress of the Eighth Airforce's 100th Bomb Group

The 'Bloody 100th' Bomb Group

The Eighth Air Force’s hard luck unit was filled with colorful personalities who made the unit one of the most storied of World War II.

WWII Air Medal.

The Air Medal: An Effort to Bolster Morale

Authorized during the one of most difficult periods during the air war, the Air Medal was an effort to rally the US Army Air Forces crews.

The USS Arizona burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

The Fallen Crew of the USS Arizona and Operation 85

The Operation 85 project aims to identify unknown servicemen who perished aboard the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Montgomery Police Lieutenant D.H. Lacky fingerprinting Rosa Parks

'Maxwell Opened My Eyes': Rosa Parks, WWII Defense Worker

Before her historic protest in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks was a Home Front worker at Maxwell Airfield.

A formation of Republic P-47s prowl for targets

Patchwork Plane: Building the P-47 Thunderbolt

Roughly 100 companies, coast to coast, helped Republic Aviation Corporation manufacture each P-47 Thunderbolt.

Chiang Kai-shek, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Sextant Conference

The Cairo and Tehran Conferences

In a series of high-stakes strategic conferences in late 1943, the Allies made several key decisions that shaped wartime strategy, while reflecting the changing balance of power between the Allied nations and foreshadowing the postwar emergence of the bipolar world.

best rated ww2 books

100 Must-Read World War II Books

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Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

This post on World War II books is sponsored by Libby .  The one-tap reading app from OverDrive.

best rated ww2 books

In search of World War II books, by any chance? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

100 Must-Read World War II Books | bookriot.com

Below, I’ve compiled a list of fiction, YA, memoir, biography, and history for you to check out. This is by no means a comprehensive list. The number of World War II books available is vast . People love to read about one of the worst events in history. In a way, this makes no sense—the list below makes for some depressing reading. But in another way, the list contains reading that is compelling and essential: we need to know our history now, if ever.

So take a look at the list below and let me know in the comments if your favorite World War II book didn’t make the cut!

Descriptions come from publisher copy on Goodreads.

All the Light We cannot See by Anthony Doerr

“[ All the Light We Cannot See is] about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. ”

Atonement by Ian McEwan

“ On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. ”

Blackout by Connie Willis

“ Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day.”

Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Translated by Denver Lindley

“ In autumn 1941, a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks they brave the ocean’s stormy waters and seek out British supply ships to destroy. But their targets travel in well-guarded convoys. When contact finally occurs, the hunter quickly becomes the hunted .”

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

“ Herman Wouk’s boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. ”

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

“ Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. ”

China Dolls by Lisa See

“[ Grace, Helen, and Ruby ] become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything. ”

The City of Thieves by David Benioff

“ During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive.”

Code TAlker: A Novel About the navajo Marines of World War II by Joseph Bruchac

“ Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war…yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. ”

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

“ With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II.”

The Gallery by John Horne Burns

“ A daring and enduring novel—one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military—’The Gallery’ poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower. ”

Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy

“ In a stunning tour-de-force, Marge Piercy has woven a tapestry of World War II, of six women and four men, who fought and died, worked and worried, and moved through the dizzying days of the war. ”

The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning

“ Guy and Harriet Pringle, newly married, arrive in Bucharest in the autumn of 1939. The city they find is one of contrasts and rumours, on the edge with wavering loyalties and the tension of war, peopled with an international cast of characters, including the inimitable and eccentric Russian émigré Prince Yakimov. ”

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

“ January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….”

The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean

“ An entire navy had tried to silence the guns of Navarone and failed. Full-scale attacks had been driven back. Now they were sending in just five men, each one a specialist in dealing death. ”

Half Blood Blues by esi edugyan

“ The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black.”

HHhH by Laurent Binet

“ HHhH: ‘ Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydric,’, or ‘Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich.’ The most dangerous man in Hitler’s cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the “Butcher of Prague.” Heydrich seemed indestructible—until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History. ”

The Investigation by J.M. Lee,Translated by Chi-Young Kim

“ Fukuoka Prison, 1944. Beyond the prison walls, the war rages. Inside, a man is found brutally murdered. What follows is a searing portrait of Korea before their civil war, and a testimony to the redemptive power of poetry. ”

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

“ Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. ”

Jackdaws by Ken Follett

“ D day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity ‘Flick’ Clairet, the stakes have never been higher. ”

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, Translated by Charlotte Mandell

“ A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France…Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. ”

Life AFter Life by Kate Atkinson

“ What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?…Does Ursula’s apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can—will she? ”

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

“ Life and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman’s characters must work out their destinies in a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war.”

A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka

“ Whimsical, wise, beautiful, magical, and sometimes even heartbreaking, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True weaves together two remarkable stories, reimagining half a century of Polish history through the legacy of one unforgettable love affair. ”

A Midnight Clear by William Wharton

“ Set in the Ardennes Forest on Christmas Eve 1944, Sergeant Will Knott and five other GIs are ordered close to the German lines to establish an observation post in an abandoned chateau. Here they play at being soldiers in what seems to be complete isolation. That is, until the Germans begin revealing their whereabouts …”

The Narrow Road to the Deep north by Richard Flanagan

“ The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds. ”

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

“ Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners—three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. ”

A Pledge of Silence by Flora J. Solomon

“ When Margie Bauer joins the Army Nurse Corps in 1941, she is delighted to be assigned to Manila—the Pearl of the Orient. Though rumors of war circulate, she feels safe—the island is fortified, the airbases are ample, and the Filipino troops are well-trained. ”

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

“ What would happen if someone did the unthinkable—and didn’t deliver a letter? Filled with stunning parallels to today, The Postmistress is a sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women-and of two countries torn apart by war. ”

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

“ This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy. ”

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

“ Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. ”

The Seventh Cross by Anna SEghers

“ Written in 1939, first published in 1942… The Seventh Cross presented a still doubtful, naive America a first-hand account of life in Hitler’s Germany and of the horrors of the concentration camps. ”

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

“ Depicting both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lifetime of emptiness that pursues a survivor, ‘The Shawl’ and ‘Rosa’ recall the psychological and emotional scars of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. ”

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

“ Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore…we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut’s) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. ”

Small Island by Andrea Levy

“ Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. ”

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

“ Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman’s past—one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction. ”

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi

“ Trudi Montag is a Zwerg —a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudy harbors in her cellar. ”

Suite française by Irène Némirovsky

“ Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940, Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. ”

The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh

“[The trilogy’s] central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him. ”

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

“ Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame. ”

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell

“ It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. ”

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

“ On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents and wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures in post-war Germany. ”

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

“ From the acclaimed writer Peter Ho Davies comes an engrossing wartime love story set in the stunning landscape of North Wales during the final, harrowing months of World War II.”

When the Emperor was divine by Julie Otsuka

“ Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination ‘both physical and emotional’ of a generation of Japanese Americans. ”

Children’s/Young Adult

Between shades of gray by ruta sepetys.

“ Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known.”

The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

“ Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist—books. ”

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

“ Berlin 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. ”

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

“[ The Chosen is the] story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. ”

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

“ Oct. 11th, 1943—A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun. ”

Dust of Eden by Mariko Nagai

“‘ We lived under a sky so blue in Idaho right near the towns of Hunt and Eden but we were not welcomed there.’ In December 1941, thirteen year-old Mina Masako Tagawa and her Japanese-American family are sent from their home in Seattle to an internment camp in Idaho. What do you do when your home country treats you like an enemy?”

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

“Ida Mae Jones dreams of flight. Her daddy was a pilot and being black didn’t stop him from fulfilling his dreams. But her daddy’s gone now, and being a woman and being black are two strikes against her. ”

Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian

“ When the Second World War breaks out, young Willie Beech is evacuated to the countryside. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of kind old Tom Oakley. But then his cruel mother summons him back to war-torn London… ”

Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation by Yoshiko Uchida

“ Like any 11-year-old, Yuki Sakane is looking forward to Christmas when her peaceful world is suddenly shattered by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Uprooted from her home and shipped with thousands of West Coast Japanese Americans to a desert concentration camp called Topaz, Yuki and her family face new hardships daily. ”

Mare’s War by Tanita S. Davis

“… somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less-than-perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. ”

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

“ Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It’s now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. ”

Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

“ In 1942, eleven-year-old Milada is taken from her home in Lidice, Czechoslovakia, along with other blond, blue-eyed children to a Lebensborn center in Poland. There she is trained to be a ‘proper German’ for adoption by a German family, and all the while she struggles to remember her true identity. ”

You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen by Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston Weatherford

“From training days in Alabama to combat on the front lines in Europe, this is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the groundbreaking African-American pilots of World War II. In vibrant second-person poems, Carole Boston Weatherford teams up for the first time with her son, artist Jeffery Weatherford. ”

Straight-Up History

Americans in paris: life and death under nazi occupation 1940-1944 by charles glass.

“ When the German army marched into Paris on June 14, 1940, approximately 5,000 Americans remained in Paris. They had refused or been unable to leave for many different reasons; their actions during the course of the German occupation would prove to be just as varied. ”

Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton

“ A powerful wartime saga in the bestselling tradition of Flags of Our Fathers, Brothers in Arms recounts the extraordinary story of the 761st Tank Battalion, the first all-black armored unit to see combat in World War II. ”

Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee

“ As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. ”

Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You about the Greatest, Most Terrible War in History by James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi

“ Dirty Little Secrets of World War II exposes the dark, irreverent, misunderstood, and often tragicomic aspects of military operations during World War II, many of them virtually unknown even to military buffs.”

Fighting for America: Black Soldiers—the Unsung Heroes of World War II by Christopher Moore

“ The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America . In this inspirational and uniquely personal tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and -women in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home.”

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides

“ On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March.”

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

“ In The Girls of Atomic City , Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents…this is history and science made fresh and vibrant.”

Harlem at War: The Black Experience in World War II by Nathan Brandt

“ In Harlem at War, Nat Brandt vividly recreates the desolation of black communities during World War II and examines the nation-wide conditions that led up to the Harlem riot of 1943. ”

Hiroshima by John Hersey

“ On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey’s journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. ”

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson

“ As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition. ”

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel

“ Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world’s great art from the Nazis. ”

Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard

“ A powerful and unflinching account of the enduring impact of nuclear war, told through the stories of those who survived. ”

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

“In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many. ”

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer

“ The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind. ”

The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 by John Willard Toland

“ This Pulitzer Prize–winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The SEcond World War by John Keegan

“ In this comprehensive history, John Keegan explores both the technical and the human impact of the greatest war of all time. He focuses on five crucial battles and offers new insights into the distinctive methods and motivations of modern warfare. ”

The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill

“ Winston Churchill was not only the war’s greatest leader, he was the free world’s singularly eloquent voice of defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny, and it’s that voice that animates this six-volume history. ”

To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American WACs Stationed Overseas During World War II by Brenda L. Moore

“ Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these African-American women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispel bigoted preconceptions about their abilities … Filled with compelling personal testimony based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers.”

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max hastings

“ A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston’s War captures the full range of Churchill’s endlessly fascinating character. ”

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

“ When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. ”

Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

All but my life: a memoir by gerda weissmann klein.

“ All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein’s six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. ”

Boy 30529: A Memoir by Felix WEinberg

“ In 1939 twelve-year-old Felix Weinberg fell into the hands of the Nazis. Imprisoned for most of his teenage life, Felix survived five concentration camps, including Terezin, Auschwitz, and Birkenau, barely surviving the Death March from Blechhammer in 1945. ”

Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila

“ Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function…Of the original twenty-nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them. ”

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Translated by Susan Massotty

“ The Diary of a Young Girl… continues to bring to life this young woman, who for a time survived the worst horrors the modern world had seen—and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal. ”

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

“ Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention—and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States. ”

The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom by Corrie Ten Boom, John Sherrill, and Elizabeth Sherrill

“ Corrie ten Boom and her family became leaders in the Dutch Underground, hiding Jewish people in their home in a specially built room and aiding their escape from the Nazis. For their help, all but Corrie found death in a concentration camp. The Hiding Place is their story. ”

Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6–September 30, 1945 by Michihiko Hachiya, Translated by Warner Wells

“ The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. ”

Honoring Sergeant Carter: A FAmily’s Journey to Uncover the Truth About an American hero by Allene G. Carter and Robert L. Allen

“ President Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to several black soldiers who served in World War II. Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr. was among the recipients. Shocked to learn the extent of Carter’s service, Allene was determined to uncover both the truth about her father-in-law’s wartime record and why his official recognition was so long in coming. ”

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke and Jennifer Armstrong

“‘ You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis all at once. One’s first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence.’ An amazing, courageous, uplifting autobiography about a brave teenager who was not afraid to get involved.

Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J. Mazzeo

“ From the…author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler—the ‘female Oskar Schindler’—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. ”

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm

“ Once rumored to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, Vera Atkins climbed her way to the top in the Special Operations Executive, or SOE: Britain’s secret service created to help build up, organize, and arm the resistance in the Nazi-occupied countries. ”

Night by Elie Wiesel, Translated by Marion Wiesel

“ Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity .”

Nisei Daughter by MOnica Itoi Sone

“ With charm, humor, and deep understanding, a Japanese American woman tells how it was to grow up on Seattle’s waterfront in the 1930s and to be subjected to ‘relocation’ during World War II. ”

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

“The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew.”

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW by Alexander Jefferson and Lewis Carlson

“ One of the few memoirs of combat in World War II by a distinguished African-American flier, [this book] is also perhaps the only account of the African-American experience in a German prison camp. Alexander Jefferson was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. ”

Spy Princess: The life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu

“ This is the remarkable biography of Noor Inayat Khan, code named ‘Madeleine.’ The first woman wireless transmitter in occupied France during WWII, she was trained by Britain’s SOE and assumed the most dangerous resistance post in underground Paris.”

Tuskegee Airman: The Biography of Charles E. McGee: Air Force Fighter Combat Record Holder by Charlene E. McGee Smith

“ Colonel Charles E. McGee fought in World War II, in Korea and in Vietnam. He holds the record for the highest three-war total of fighter com-bat missions of any pilot in US Air Force history. His military service began as one of the Tuskegee Airmen in the 332nd, famed pioneers who fought racial prejudices to fly and fight for their country in WWII. ”

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

“ On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. ”

The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy by Judith L. Pearson

“ Virginia Hall left comfortable Baltimore roots of privilege in 1931 to follow her dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. She watched as Hitler rolled into Poland, then France, and she decided to work for the British Special Operations Executive .”

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by ANonymous, Translated by Philip Boehm

“ For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. ”

Graphic Novels/Memoirs

Maus i: a survivor’s tale by art spiegelman.

“ A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father’s story and history itself. ”

Onward Towards our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki, Translated by Jocelyne Allen

“ Shigeru Mizuki is the preeminent figure of Gekiga manga and one of the most famous working cartoonists in Japan today… Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is his first book to be translated into English and is a semi-autobiographical account of the desperate final weeks of a Japanese infantry unit at the end of WorldWar II. ”

Truth: Red, White, and Black by Robert Morales and Kyle Baker

“W riter Morales pursues [the idea of Captain America] and also draws inspiration from U.S. government experiments in the 1930s that left unwitting African-Americans infected with syphilis, leading to many deaths. Beginning his story in 1940, Morales incisively depicts the racism his various African-American characters confront both in civilian life and in the military.”

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The 10 best novels about World War II

Posted by Mal Warwick | Historical Novels , Reading Recommendations | 4

The 10 best novels about World War II

The 10 books highlighted here may not be the very best novels written about World War II. But they are the best ones I’ve read and reviewed since January 2010. I’ve given every one of them a rating of ★★★★★. There’s a second list below that includes some four dozen runners-up. All are novels I’ve awarded either ★★★★☆ or ★★★★★, eliminating a substantial number I gave lower ratings (or never finished reading at all).

This post was updated on February 12, 2024.

For the most part, I’ve left out novels set in the pre- and post-war periods, including only a couple that seem important in understanding how the war came about and how it affected the people who survived it.

You’ll notice several titles each by three authors who have written series of thrillers that are set at least in part during World War II: Alan Furst and Alex Gerlis , who write about espionage, and the late Philip Kerr , whose protagonist was an anti-Nazi detective in Hitler’s Germany. However, the action in many of the novels by Furst and Kerr takes place either before or after the war and do not appear on this list.

The 10 best novels about World War II are listed first. A second list that includes all five dozen books follows. That list is broken up into five sub-lists. Within the top list and each sub-list the titles are listed in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. Each includes a link to my review.

Cover image of "All the Light We Cannot See"

All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr (2014) 545 pages ★★★★★— This superb Pulitzer Prize-winner deserves the award it won

Literary awards can be a poor guide to enjoyable reading. Britain’s Man Booker Award-winners, for example, strike me as a mixed bag at best. Generally, though, a book that wins a Pulitzer and is a finalist for a National Book Award deserves more than a casual look. That’s certainly the case with  All the Light We Cannot See,  an historical novel long at or near the top of the national best-seller lists, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In this stirring novel, two teenagers are caught up in the frenzy and the mortal dangers of World War II: a German boy who is extraordinarily clever with all things electronic, and a blind French girl who reads Jules Verne. Author Anthony Doerr explores the trajectory of their lives in parallel, moving them inexorably toward a fateful intersection in the book’s surprising climax. Read the review .

Image of one of 10 outstanding novels about World War II

The Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett (1978) 364 pages ★★★★★— The 40th anniversary edition of Ken Follett’s classic WWII spy novel

British author Ken Follett is best known to a wide public these days for the Kingsbridge Trilogy , his mammoth multi-generational account of an English cathedral town. Together, the three books run to nearly 3,000 pages (and a fourth, a more recent prequel, takes the total to nearly 4,000). They’ve reportedly sold more than 80 million copies around the world. But that’s only half of the 160 million books Follett has sold since the publication of his first novel in 1974 . And he has been topping the bestseller lists ever since the publication of his classic WWII spy novel,  The Eye of the Needle, in 1978. The book sold 10 million copies, and it frequently appears on lists of the all-time best spy novels . So it’s no surprise that Penguin has brought out a 40th-anniversary edition of the novel. It fully deserves all the attention it gets.

In this novel, two of the most fascinating inventions of World War II figure prominently in Eye of the Needle . One is the XX Committee , or Twenty Committee, otherwise sometimes know as the Double-Cross Committee, which was entirely real. The other was not real at all: the fictional First United States Army Group under General George S. Patton , or FUSAG . Together, these two elements constituted what may well have been the most elaborate deception ever deployed in war. Read the review .

Cover image of "Spies of the Balkans"

Spies of the Balkans (Night Soldiers #11) by Alan Furst (2010) 288 pages ★★★★★— Alan Furst’s superb novel, “Spies of the Balkans”

In the long, tense years of the Cold War, spy stories and films grounded in the rivalry between East and West appeared in such profusion that the genre degenerated into self-parody, eventually giving birth to bawdy satires. The public, it appeared, had long since ceased taking spy novels seriously.

Then, in 1988, came Alan Furst with Night Soldiers , cultivating fresh ground with its wickedly insightful and historically accurate portrait of European espionage in the time between the wars. With each successive novel, Furst broadened his view of the period, setting his tales in such far-flung cities as Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and Salonika, the Greek setting of his latest creation, Spies of the Balkans . In these complex and tightly written stories, Furst came across as not just a talented writer but an able historian as well.

Spies of the Balkans delves into the world of Costa Zannis, a senior police official in Salonika in 1940-41 as Hitler’s war machine lurches south toward Greece. Zannis, heir apparent to the police commissioner, becomes caught up in the characteristically Byzantine political affairs of the Balkans while juggling overlapping love affairs with two extraordinary women. An anti-German military coup in Yugoslavia, an “underground railway” for Jews escaping Nazi Germany, and the British Secret Service all figure prominently in the story. It’s a gripping tale. Read the review .

Cover image of one of the best novels about World War II

The Best of Our Spies   (Spies #1) by Alex Gerlis (2012) 620 pages ★★★★★— An extraordinary World War II spy story grounded in historical fact

A number of excellent nonfiction books have been written about the exploits of British Intelligence in World War II, some of them by the practitioners themselves. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben McIntyre stands out among recent examples. The title refers to what was variously called the XX Committee, the Twenty Committee, or the Double Cross Committee, a high-level body in British government charged with mounting a number of secret operations to deceive the Germans about the location of the Normandy Invasion. Their work, code-named Operation Fortitude and kept secret for decades, was spectacularly successful. It may have made the difference between the success or failure of the all-important invasion.

Naturally, an historical event so rich in detail and possibilities as the Allies’ successful deception that made the Normandy Landing possible has given rise to many spy novels as well as a passel of nonfiction books. The most satisfying of the novels I’ve read is The Best of Our Spies , by Alex Gerlis. Working on the foundation of historical fact, including some real-life characters as well as the locations where the action really took place, Gerlis has woven a deeply engrossing and suspenseful tale that does as good a job as any nonfiction book in conveying what Operation Fortitude was really like. Read the review .

Cover image of "Fatherland"

Fatherland  by Robert Harris— A gripping alternate history novel about the world after a Nazi victory

April 1964. Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday is a week off, and Germans everywhere in the Fatherland are preparing for the massive celebration. To cap the joy of the adoring masses, US President Joseph Kennedy will be arriving to negotiate detente with the Third Reich. Nazi officials hope that will take pressure off the Eastern Front, where German troops are still engaged in a desperate battle with Soviet partisans funded and equipped by the USA.

In Robert Harris’ alternate history novel, the Allies’ Normandy Invasion failed, driving Britain out of the war, and Nazi armies occupied all of European Russia. Hitler forced the US to cease fighting by exploding a V-2 rocket over New York City. The USSR is a rump state, with Joseph Stalin’s capital now in the Siberian city of Omsk . The Holocaust is unknown. Everyone is aware that millions of Jews were resettled in the East but no one wonders where they are. The Third Reich is triumphant in Europe. Together with the USA, which won its war with Japan by dropping nuclear weapons, the two superpowers—Germania and the USA—reign supreme over the planet. This is the backdrop for the blockbuster 1992 bestseller, Fatherland . Read the review .

Cover image of "The Eagle Has Landed"

The Eagle Has Landed  by Jack Higgins (1975) 372 pages ★★★★★— A classic espionage thriller that’s well worth rereading

Any list of the best espionage novels of all times must include Jack Higgins’ World War II caper story, The Eagle Has Landed. Published in 1975, this classic of the genre has sold more than 50 million copies. The novel introduces Liam Devlin, a fast-talking agent for the Irish Republican Army, who is featured in three of Higgins’ subsequent thrillers. Though nominally about espionage, as the story revolves around an imaginary plot by the Nazi military intelligence agency, the Abwehr , in 1943, the novel is more properly a thriller, action-filled virtually from the beginning to the end.

The principal characters in The Eagle Has Landed include two real-life leaders of the Third Reich, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, and Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and widely regarded as heir apparent to Adolf Hitler, who also figures in the plot as a minor character. It is Hitler who conceives the idea to land paratroopers in England to kidnap or kill Winston Churchill, inspired by the real-life rescue of Benito Mussolini by a German agent.

To carry out this outlandish scheme, Himmler turns to a senior member of Canaris’ staff, Colonel Max Radl, and forces him to carry out the scheme against his will. Radl recruits a highly decorated paratrooper, Lt. Colonel Kurt Steiner, and Liam Devlin to play the leading roles in the plan. They proceed on the basis of intelligence reported to them from England by Joanna Grey, a pro-Nazi Afrikaner woman who has inherited a large home on the Norfolk coast. Read the review .

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A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther #9)  by Philip Kerr (2013) 477 pages ★★★★★— Mass murder in the Katyn Forest

In the spring of 1940, Josef Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, systematically murdered some 22,000 Poles . Among the victims were half the members of the Polish officer corps, police officers, government representatives, royalty, and leading members of Poland’s civilian population. More than 4,000 of them were buried in the Katyn Forest, a wooded area near the city of Smolensk, located near the Belarus border west of Moscow. Philip Kerr’s illuminating novel is based on the international investigation first carried out there in 1943.

Though it might seem improbable, the Wehrmacht operated a War Crimes Bureau from 1939 to 1945. Ostensibly, the purpose of this organization was to uncover war crimes committed not just by the Allies but by Nazi Germany as well. Of course, it’s no surprise that records of the bureau’s inquiries into mass murder by the Wehrmacht (or, much more often, the SS) did not survive the war. Those that brought to light atrocities by the Allies did survive — but most were classified and hidden away by the US Government until 1975, when they were belatedly passed along to West German officials. Read the review .

Miracle at St. Anna

Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride (2001) 324 pages ★★★★★— Black soldiers on the front line in Tuscany in World War II   

“This book is a work of fiction inspired by real events and real people.” So writes James McBride in an author’s note that precedes the text. He continues: “It draws upon the individual and collective experiences of black soldiers who served in the Serchio Valley and Apuane Alps of Italy during World War II.” They were among the storied “Buffalo Soldiers” of the US Army’s segregated 92nd Infantry Division . The division garnered thousands of honors, including two Medals of Honor, 208 Silver Stars, and 1,166 Bronze Stars, yet many of the white officers who commanded the unit circulated false reports of the troops’ poor performance. In Miracle at St. Anna , an engrossing account of the division in action in Italy late in 1944, James McBride brings that reality to light.

McBride’s story recounts the experiences of the four surviving soldiers of a squad in action in the Serchio Valley in December 1944. Privates Sam Train, Bishop Cummings, and Hector Negron, and Second Lieutenant Aubrey Stamps barely escape with their lives when the racist white captain directing artillery fire from division HQ against the Germans angrily refuses to support their company as they face murderous enemy fire. Instead, he targets the Germans facing a white detachment. The company is, in the language of the times, cut to pieces. Caught alone on the wrong side of the Serchio Valley, the four men hole up in the tiny village of St. Anna. Read the review .

Image of one of 10 outstanding novels about World War II

The Book of Aron  by Jim Shephard (2015) 274 pages ★★★★★— A brilliant novel of the Warsaw Ghetto

The annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto was one of the signature events of the Second World War. Its story has been told innumerable times, in print, on film, and in oral histories. But, since I don’t go out of my way to seek out books about the Holocaust, I hadn’t yet come across a book that tells the tale from the perspective of a child. The Book of Aron, a novel by Jim Shepard, does that job brilliantly. It is a superb contribution to the extensive literature about World War II.

This is not one of those predictable tales of the heroic but doomed Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The action takes place in the months leading up to the uprising. The story revolves around the life of a boy named Aron, the son of a poor Jewish couple from a Polish shtetl  near the Lithuanian border. Aron is eight years old when the tale begins in 1936, but the book focuses on the tragic months in 1942 when he is thirteen. As the Nazis progressively shrink the borders of the Ghetto and starve its residents, Aron and his gang of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds turn to petty crime in an effort to survive. Read the review .

Cover image of "The Winds of War"

The Winds of War (World War II #1 of 2) by Herman Wouk (1971) 898 pages ★★★★★— Is this classic World War II novel the best ever?

Imagine trying to tell the story of World War II through the lives of a single family. After all, the war engaged more than 100 million people from 30 countries in a conflict that raged for years on three continents. Yet half a century ago a remarkable author named Herman Wouk set out to do exactly that for American readers. In two volumes totaling 2,300 pages, Wouk follows US Navy Captain Victor Henry, his wife, his two sons, the women they marry, his young daughter, and a handful of other characters as they are tossed about by “the winds of war.” The 900-page story by that name encompasses the years 1939 through 1941. And it’s followed by another 1,400 pages in a companion volume spanning the remaining years of the war. These classic World War II novels remain a compelling read fifty years after their publication. Read the review .

All five dozen best novels about World War II

Spy stories.

The Traitor by V. S. Alexander— Dramatizing anti-Nazi resistance in Germany during World War II

The War Girls  by V. S. Alexander— Life in wartime Warsaw before the Ghetto Uprising

Transcription by Kate Atkinson— Kate Atkinson’s latest is a beautifully written spy story

Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin— Resistance, and collaboration, among the rich and famous of Paris

Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black— A suspenseful World War II espionage thriller set in Paris

A Single Spy  by William Christie— A Soviet spy in Nazi Germany

1945 by Robert Conroy— What if Japan hadn’t surrendered?

The Lazarus Solution  by Kjell Ola Dahl— A gripping tale of intrigue in wartime Stockholm

Novels of espionage by Ken Follett

  • The Eye of the Needle — The 40th anniversary edition of Ken Follett’s classic WWII spy novel
  • The Key to Rebecca — One of the best World War II spy stories
  • Hornet Flight — The Danish Resistance and a secret Nazi base

Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers series

  • Red Gold (Night Soldiers #5) — A brilliant novel of the French Resistance
  • Blood of Victory (Night Soldiers #7) — Spies at work in WWII Istanbul and Rumania
  • Spies of the Balkans (Night Soldiers #11) — Alan Furst’s superb novel, “Spies of the Balkans”
  • A Hero of France (Night Soldiers #14) — Vive la Resistance!
  • Under Occupation (Night Soldiers #15) — Alan Furst on the French Resistance

Alex Gerlis’s tales of spies in Europe

  • The Best of Our Spies   (Spies #1) — An extraordinary World War II spy story grounded in historical fact
  • The Swiss Spy   (Spies #2) — World War II spies in Switzerland
  • Vienna Spies   (Spies #3) — A stirring tale of spies in wartime Vienna
  • The Berlin Spies (Spies #4) — The best spy novelist you’ve never read
  • Prince of Spies (Richard Prince #1) — British spies and the Nazi V-2 rocket

Munich by Robert Harris— Robert Harris explains why Neville Chamberlain went to Munich

The Eagle Has Landed  by Jack Higgins— A classic espionage thriller that’s well worth rereading

Luciano’s Luck by Jack Higgins— Fact and fiction about the Mafia and the WWII Allied invasion of Sicily

Tightrope  by Simon Mawer— A well-written novel about World War II British espionage

The German Client (Bacci Pagano #6)  by Bruno Morchio— An outstanding novel about the Italian Resistance in World War II

My Father’s House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy #1)  by Joseph O’Connor— The WWII Vatican Escape Line for Jews and Allied POWs

The Consequences of Fear (Maisie Dobbs #16) by Jacqueline Winspear— Maisie Dobbs investigates a murder involving British intelligence

The war at home

Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders  by Tessa Arlen— A charming cozy mystery set during the Blitz

Everyone Brave Is Forgiven  by Chris Cleave— The human cost of World War II

All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr— This superb Pulitzer Prize-winner deserves the award it won

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan— This bestselling historical novel is a winner

The Letter Writer  by Dan Fesperman— Nazi saboteurs, the Mafia, and crooked cops

The Nightingale  by Kristin Hannah— A deeply affecting novel of the French Resistance

Mercury Pictures Presents  by Anthony Marra— European refugees add luster to wartime Hollywood

Warlight  by Michael Ondaatje— A wartime mystery wrapped in fog

The Holocaust

The Paris Architect  by Charles Belfoure— A reluctant hero in World War II

The Postcard  by Anne Berest— One family’s story, from the pogroms to the ovens of Auschwitz

The German Girl  by Armando Lucas Correa— A deeply affecting novel of the Holocaust

The List  by Martin Fletcher— A suspenseful tale of Holocaust survivors in post-war London

We Must Not Think of Ourselves  by Lauren Grodstein— The drama before the Warsaw ghetto uprising

The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon— Hunting Nazis in Argentina

The Glass Room  by Simon Mawer— A brilliant novel explores life in Nazi Europe

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris— Holocaust memories: A deeply moving love story set at Auschwitz

The Book of Aron  by Jim Shephard— A brilliant novel of the Warsaw Ghetto

Beyond the Wire  by James D. Shipman— Jews stage an uprising at Auschwitz

Mila 18  by Leon Uris— A classic novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

War and Remembrance  (World War II #2 of 2) by Herman Wouk— Two World War II novels brilliantly convey the scope of the conflict

The Book Thief  by Marcus Zusak— War and the Holocaust are the backdrop for this novel

Mystery and suspense

The Berlin Project by Gregory Benford— An alternate history of the Manhattan Project

The Secret Guests by Benjamin Black— Booker Award winner Benjamin Black returns to historical fiction

The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen— A touching tale of love and betrayal in World War II Italy

Fata Morgana by Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney— Clever plot twists in a time travel tale

Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy— What if the Cold War had turned hot in 1945?

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean— A novel about memory evokes the siege of Leningrad

SS-GB  by Len Deighton— In an alternate history, the Nazis occupy England

The Historians by Cecilia Ekbäck— A spellbinding WWII thriller set in neutral Sweden

The Reckoning by John Grisham— John Grisham digs deeply into history with this excellent WWII novel

V2 by Robert Harris— A WWII thriller about Nazi “vengeance weapons”

Clark and Division (Japantown Mystery #1)  by Naomi Hirahara— Murder strikes a WWII Japanese American family

The Good German by Joseph Kanon— The cost of total war was clear in Berlin after World War II

Field Gray (Bernie Gunther #7)  by Philip Kerr— Bernie Gunther’s life in flashbacks

The Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr

  • Prague Fatale (Bernie Gunther #8) — A hard-boiled detective in Nazi Germany
  • A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther #9) — Mass murder in the Katyn Forest
  • The Lady from Zagreb (Bernie Gunther #10) — Cynicism and romanticism in Nazi Germany

World Gone By (Coughlin #3) by Dennis Lehane— Suspenseful historical fiction that’s hard to put down

December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith— A standalone novel from the author of the Arkady Renko stories

The American Agent (Maisie Dobbs #15) by Jacqueline Winspear— Maisie Dobbs pursues a killer in Britain during the Blitz

A Sunlit Weapon (Maisie Dobbs #17)  by Jacqueline Winspear— Maisie Dobbs meets Eleanor Roosevelt

In a class by itself

The Postmistress of Paris by Meg Waite Clayton— Rescuing anti-Nazi refugee artists from WWII France

Bomber  by Len Deighton— An intensive look a single RAF Bomber Command mission in World War II

Miracle at St. Anna  by James McBride— Black soldiers on the front line in Tuscany in World War II

The Diamond Eye  by Kate Quinn— That famous Soviet female sniper in WWII

Task Force Baum  by James D. Shipman— An ill-fated mission to rescue American POWs in WWII

The White Lady  by Jacqueline Winspear— A terrific standalone historical thriller

The Winds of War (World War II #1 of 2) by Herman Wouk— Is this classic World War II novel the best ever?

War and Remembrance (World War II #2 of 2) by Herman Wouk— Two World War II novels brilliantly convey the global conflict

For related reading

This post is one of  My 10 top reading recommendations .

I’ve written a long article, “ 7 common misconceptions about World War II .” I’ve posted it on this site along with other articles about the war.

You might also enjoy my post, 10 top nonfiction books about World War II and 20 most enlightening historical novels .

Check out The 10 most consequential events of World War II and 15 good books about the Holocaust, including both fiction and nonfiction . Great war novels might also interest you.

And you can always find all the latest books I’ve read and reviewed, as well as my most popular posts, on the Home Page .

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Robert James Bridge

Kinmel Revisited Published By https://www.penitpublicationsLLC USA I.S.B.N. 978-1-952894-36-7 Kinmel Revisited- Historical Fiction Set Around the true story of the Kinmel Army Camp Riot in 1919. Kinmel Camp was situated on the North Wales Coast adjacent to the village of Bodelwyddan which is hardly noticeable today, but back in 1919 it was on the front page of every tabloid newsapaper. The camp was set up for returning soldiers after we failed to supply the ships to take them home. Kinmel camp was said to be cold, damp and basically unfit

Katie RIGG

Hello, I’m trying to find a novel about WW2 that’s set in Italy in 1944/45. It’s based on a true story and includes an afterword in which the real daughter/niece of one of the protagonists requests help in locating a (British?) soldier called George Matthews.

I was shown a copy of the book years ago but sadly have no recollection of either the title or author, although I think it may have been by a British writer.

Any ideas on what it might be called, or how I might be able to find it (I’ve done a fairly extensive search already), would be very welcome.

Many thanks.

Mal Warwick

So sorry, Katie. There have been thousands of novels published about World War II, and I’ve read only a tiny fraction of them. I wish I could help. But thanks for writing, and good luck!

Thank you anyway! Katie

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The greatest books ever written about the Second World War

From biographies to bird's-eye views, memoirs to timeless reportage, here is a selection of the best non-fiction books ever written about the Second World War.

best rated ww2 books

To call the Second World War merely a war is almost a misnomer; it was never just one war, but so many wars in one. Certainly, it was far too big, too vast and varied, to remember as a single event. The sheer volume of books about it are testament to that.

No war in history – except possibly the one that ended 20 years earlier – has inspired more literature. WWII has been seemingly endlessly written about, pored over, interpreted and re-interpreted – most recently, with the release of the film Oppenheimer , which takes place against the backdrop of the Second World War.

The film's release has caused a resurgence of interest in literature about WWII. But, with so many books to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start.  

Mercifully, we’ve got the scope to help – and have rounded up the best non-fiction books ever written on the conflict. 

Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw (1991)

To read this book is to ride shotgun through the mangled mind of a maniac – a mind so twisted, dark and terrifyingly pathetic that it demands a guide. Fortunately, Ian Kershaw has spent a lot of time there – and he knows the scenic route.

Far from the puffed-up political strongman that history remembers, Kershaw paints a portrait of an idle, tasteless, disillusioned loafer who got lucky. Kershaw’s examination of how a 'spoilt child turned into the would-be macho man' is unrivalled, not only in its breadth and depth, but in its richness of character. Here was a man, plagued by paranoia, Parkinson’s Disease and arteriosclerosis who had no firm ideas beyond a gut-deep hatred of Bolsheviks, poor social skills and a quite chronic case of donkey breath. And yet he convinced a nation that a brutal genocidal war was a good idea, and that he had the chops to take on the world.

This is a heavyweight biography from a world-champion historian. It remains undefeated in its category.  

Inside the Centre by Ray Monk (2013)

This extensive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer shines a unique light on one of the most contentious and influential figures of the period. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer oversaw the efforts to beat the Nazis in creating the first nuclear bomb. But Inside the Centre delves deeper into the man called the 'father of the Bomb', uncovering Oppenheimer's complicated and fragile personality, and how the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings weighed on his conscience. This is a thorough investigation into a fascinating figure, and definitely worth a read.

Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts (2018)

'We are all worms,' Winston Churchill once told a friend. 'But I do believe that I am a glow worm.'

And glow he did. We all know the headlines – his rousing speeches play on a perpetual loop at the back of Britain’s national psyche – but Andrew Roberts’ exceptional biography gets further beneath the skin of the old bruiser than anyone – bar, perhaps, the man himself – has before.

The greatest challenge of writing a biography of Churchill is that Churchill has already done it inimitably ( My Early Life ,  The World Crisis ,  The Second World War ). But Roberts never falls into the punji hole of trying to out-Churchill Churchill. He writes with supreme authority, brio and no small amount of panache of Churchill’s exhilarating life, from his birth in 1874, to his death ninety years later. Nor does he pull his punches when it comes to Churchill’s many mistakes, either. Which is why Roberts’ tome earned the reputation of 'the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written'.

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi (1947)

If you are to read one book about The Holocaust in your lifetime, let it be this. It is the most profound, haunting, and soul-churningly beautiful book I have ever read about the atrocity. I try to avoid bringing myself into these recommendations, but in this case I can’t help it: my copy reduced me to tears. Or, take it from Phillip Roth, who called it 'one of the century's truly necessary books.'

Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist and member of Italy’s anti-fascist resistance when he was arrested and herded to Auschwitz in 1944. If This Is a Man relives the horror of his experience.

If you’re looking for a historical investigation into the rise and appeal of Nazism, or an inquiry into the origins and nature of evil, look elsewhere. This is a guidebook to Hell. It’s a story of collective madness, sheer evil, incredible stupidity and cruelty, but also humanity, spirit, grit and luck. Buy two copies – you may need a spare. 

X Troop by Leah Garrett (2021)

It might invoke Inglorious Basterds , but this isn’t fiction. Here, the real-life tale of Jewish refugees from Britain, sent to infiltrate and disrupt the Nazi war effort at every turn, is brought to vivid life by in-depth original research and interviews with the surviving members by author Leah Garrett.

Trained in counter-intelligence and advanced combat, these survivors – who lost families and homes to the Third Reich – became a unit known as X Troop, and their untold exploits, now published in full, illuminate a hitherto unknown story from an endlessly documented era.

The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (1985)

War is seldom told from a woman’s point of view. And yet, a million women fought for the Red Army during the Second World War. The Unwomanly Face of War tells their stories, in their words. Snipers, pilots, gunners, mothers and wives: Alexievich spoke to hundreds of former Soviet female fighters over a period of years in the 1970s and 1980s.

After decades of the war being remembered by 'men writing about men,' her goal was to give a voice to an ageing generation of women who’d been dismissed as storytellers and veterans, shattering the notion that war need be an ‘unwomanly’ affair.

In the author’s words, ‘“Women’s” war has its own colours, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.’ It is a challenging read, namely because it is difficult to swallow in one go, but it would be hard to think of any book that feels more important, immersive and original. It was also one part of a body of work that earned its author a Nobel Prize in 2015.

Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness by Sinclair McKay (2020)

On February 13th, 1945 at 10:03, British bombers unleashed a firestorm over Dresden. Some 25,000 people – mostly civilians – were incinerated or crushed by falling buildings. In some areas of the city, the fires sucked so much oxygen from the air that people suffocated to death.

Dresden, now, has become a byword for the immeasurable cruelty of war. But was it a legitimate military target, or was it a final, punitive act of mass murder in a war already won? McKay’s account of that awful day – and many on either side – is probably the most gripping and devastating of them all. It is certainly the most comprehensive.

He tells the human stories of survivors on the ground as well as the moral conflicts of the British and American attackers in the sky. But McKay is under no illusion: Dresden was an atrocity. Sizzling with heart, anger, and brooding intensity, this tells the story of a once-great city pulverised to ash. No other Dresden book beats it. 

First Light: The Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in the War-Torn Skies Above Britain by Geoffrey Wellum (2002)

It took Geoffrey Wellum 35 years to turn his notebooks into a narrative. And a further quarter-century to get them published. The result is best described as one of the most engaging personal accounts of aerial warfare ever written.

Wellum was 17 when he joined the RAF in 1939, and 18 when he was posted to 92 Squadron. That’s where he first encountered a Spitfire. At first, he was clueless about the ways of combat, ravaged by fear and self-doubt. He found himself flying several sorties a day. He fought the Battle of Britain, and against German bombers during the Blitz. He fought at day and at night, from the skies above Kent to those above France. By 21, he was a battle-hardened flying ace who’d shot down as many enemies as friends he’d lost. In the end, life-or-death stress of mortal combat began to take its toll, as he succumbed to battle fatigue.

It is a beautifully written story of fear and friendship, bravery, bullets and, ultimately, burn out. You can practically smell the oil and gun smoke in the ink. 

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (1998)

Many terrible battles were fought during the Second World War, but none come close to the savage four-month German Soviet battle of Stalingrad. It was all shades of awful. For context, consider that the Allied death toll in Normandy reached an appalling 10,000. At Stalingrad, it was closer to a million.

The staggering scale, the megalomania, the depravity, the crushing absurdity, and the unspeakable carnage that took place across Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943 is exquisitely captured in Beevor’s definitive history of the event.

He magnificently combines a novelist’s verve with an academic’s rigor as he recounts, step by step, how the battle unfolded in all its miserable awfulness. In doing that, Beevor has created an unforgettable diorama of one of the most savage battlefields in history, one of wholesale death, indignity and waste.

1945: Victory in the West by Peter Caddick-Adams (2022)

By March 1945, victory was within the Allied grasp – yet, the last 100 days of the Second World War would prove to be some of the very hardest. In this latest tome from Peter Caddick-Adams, the writer, broadcaster, and former lecturer in Military and Security Studies at the UK Defence Academy – not to mention a PhD-holding expert in multiple war zones – zooms in on the brutal last days of the Allied forces, as exhausted they slogged on through villages and towns, fighting bloody battles and finding, near its end, the barbarities of Hitler’s death camps.

Meticulously researched but compellingly told, 1945: Victory in the West is a new masterwork with a strong claim to canonical status in the World War Two library.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer (2023)

While not technically a book about the Second World War, Beyond the Wall addresses the legacy of the war on Europe; specifically, how it led to the creation of the socialist state of East Germany.

Far from the Cold War caricature of desolation often painted by the West, historian Katja Hoyer finds that despite the hardship and oppression, East Germany was home to a rich political and cultural landscape. She traces the history of the German Democratic Republic from the exiled German Marxists who created it, through to the building of the Berlin Wall, the prosperity of the 1970s, and the rocky foundations of socialism in the mid-1980s.

This unique story, which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, compiles interviews, letters and records, to give a clear picture of the Germany that nobody really knows about: the one beyond the Wall.

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The Top 10 World War 2 Books of All Time

With so many amazing World War 2 books out there, however can I choose my Top 10 World War 2 books?

In general, I can’t say that I am huge into historical fiction. Not to say that I don’t like it, I just don’t find that historical fiction is my go-to genre. However, when it comes to books about World War 2, I can’t seem to get enough.Of all the periods of time, World War 2 seems to have one of the clearest depictions of good versus evil. The acts of bravery and depths of horror stand out in stark contrast against one another.

Unlike the complicated politics of the first World War, World War 2 seems so much more clear cut. I love reading both fictional and nonfiction accounts of the events that occurred in such an important period of history.

Am I really qualified to choose the top 10 books of any subject, much less the top 10 World War 2 books? Probably not, but I’ll do it anyway. Having an opinion on a topic is my prerogative as a blogger.

I can’t say that I’ve read every World Ward 2 book out there, but I aim to do so someday. Though, I will admit that I have read quite a few. Generally, I gravitate toward bestselling World War 2 fiction, but I have tried to read a lot more World War 2 nonfiction lately.

As with any list, my list of the Top 10 World Ward 2 books is quite subjective. Maybe you’ll love it and be inspired to pick up Audie Murphy’s autobiography. Maybe you’ll hate it because I left off Anne Frank’s diary.

Whether you love it or hate it, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear how your top 10 World War 2 books differ from mine. Or feel free to check out what WWII historical fiction our readers love the most.

Don’t Miss a Thing

Top 10 World War 2 Books – 5 Best Fiction

book cover All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony doerr.

Let’s kick off this list of the Top 10 World War 2 books with one of my favorites. I’m not at all surprised it won a Pulitzer Prize; the writing is fabulous. Anthony Doerr masterfully interweaves the stories of Marie-Laurie, a blind French girl who flees from Paris to the coastal city of Saint-Malo with her uncle, and Werner, a German radio operator charged with rooting out the French resistance. While the plot is interesting in and of itself, the character development and storytelling will keep you glued to the page.

Publication Date: 6 May 2014 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt vonnegut.

How to describe Slaughterhouse-Five? It’s a postmodern anti-war science fiction World War II novel, which gives it a unique place among World War 2 books. The unreliable narrator tells the tale of Billy Pilgrim, a time-traveling man being held in an alien zoo. Through flashbacks, we relive Billy’s capture during the Battle of the Bulge, life as a POW working in a slaughterhouse (Slaughterhous #5) during the Dresden firebombing, and his subsequent life after the war. If you can get past Vonnegut’s strange style, his discussion of fate, free will, and death earn it its place among the top 10 World War 2 books. For, “so it goes.”

Publication Date: 31 March 1969 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller

I hated this book when I first read it. I mean, I absolutely despised it. It’s completely ridiculous. Heller’s brand of satire involves stories that are over-the-top exaggerations, and he’s never heard of character development. Yet, a few months after I finished it, random bits from the book would pop up in my mind and make me laugh. The man whose name is Major Major Major Major. The Allies bombing their own bridge. I promise you, you’ll either love this book or hate this book. But, if you are in the right frame of mind, you’ll eventually see why this book earned its place in the Top 10 World War 2 Books.

Publication Date: 10 November 1961 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity

Elizabeth wein.

I know many would scoff at my choice, but I can’t recommend this book enough. You’ll find yourself immersed in a world of intrigue with the story British spy, Agent “Verity.” Captured when her plane crashes in occupied France, Verity is interrogated by the Gestapo in an attempt to learn of her mission. As she confesses under torture, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat wondering what secrets she is willing to exchange for her life. How far is she willing to go for her mission? A brilliant and emotional read that you won’t want to miss. Definitely my favorite of the World War 2 books for teens.

Publication Date: 15 May 2012 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The Caine Mutiny

Herman wouk.

To round out the fiction section of my top 10 World War 2 books, I’ve chosen Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Written only six years after the end of the war, The Caine Mutiny has astounding detail most modern authors can never hope to achieve. Mostly because the story is heavily based on the author’s own experiences during the war. The story details the life aboard the U.S.S. Caine and the moral complexities of wartime decisions, especially the hard choices that need to be made by a captain at sea.

Publication Date: 1951 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Save for Later

Top 10 World War 2 Books

Top 10 World War 2 Books – 5 Best Nonfiction

book cover The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Hiding Place

Corrie ten boom.

What would you do if you noticed your neighbors suddenly disappearing? A quiet old maid living with her older sister and elderly father, Corrie ten Boom knew that she had to act. Her family joined the Dutch Underground and built a secret room to hide Jews within, for which they were to pay the ultimate price. Corrie ten Boom’s heartrending account of her life will inspire you to have faith, hope, and courage no matter what obstacles you may face.

Publication Date: November 1971 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy

To Hell and Back

Audie murphy.

Audie Murphy was one of the most decorated soldiers in World War II, earning basically ever honor possible including the Congressional Medal of Honor. Reading his book, I came to the part describing his account of the actions that earned him the Medal of Honor, and he made it sound like it was no big deal. He single-handedly held off a whole company of German soldiers for more than an hour. But he just did what had to be done. That’s the true mark of a hero. Interestingly enough, after World War II, Audie Murphy went on to become a movie star, even starring in the film adaptation of his autobiography.

Publication Date: 1949 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Night by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

I was debating putting two Holocaust stories on this list, but I think you should read both of them. While Corrie Ten Boom illustrates finding the joy within any trial, Elie Wiesel’s story is a heart-wrenching account that really shows no mercy. While I love good World War 2 novels, World War 2 nonfiction books fully illustrate the depth of the Holocaust. It is our responsibility to read books like this, no matter how depressing, so that truly understand the horror of these events to ensure they don’t happen again.

Publication Date: 1956 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand

While we are often reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust, we seem to sometimes overlook the awful events that occurred in the Pacific theater during World War 2. Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book details the life of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner who even shook hands with Hitler at the Berlin Olympics. Shot down in the Pacific Ocean in 1943, Lt. Zamperini managed to survive on a life raft for 47 days only to be found by the Japanese. Lt. Zamperini’s resilience will amaze you as he struggles to survive life as a Japanese prisoner for almost three years.

Publication Date: 16 November 2010 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

book cover Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose

Band of Brothers

Stephen e. ambrose.

Last, but not least, for our Top 10 World War 2 Books we have the thrilling account of Easy Company, a unit of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army. The book gets its title from the Shakespeare quote, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” Instead of following one man’s journey, the cast of characters winds in and out as men come and go from the company due to reassignment, injury, and death. Stephen Ambrose’s powerful book is a remarkable look at the everyday men who became legends. If you haven’t seen the HBO miniseries, you are truly missing out.

Publication Date: 1992 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

How Does Your List of the Top 10 World War 2 Books Stack Up Against Mine?

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with my Top 10 World War 2 Books? What WWII books have I forgotten? Which World War II books should I have left off the list? As always, let me know in the comments!

More World War 2 Books Reading Lists:

  • The Best World War II Novels of the Last Decade
  • WWII Historical Fiction You’ll Be Dying to Share

Recommended

Beneath a Scarlet Sky on boardwalk

Reader Interactions

Hailey says

January 7, 2021 at 11:20 am

This list looks very good, and I enjoy Night, by Ellie Wiesel, but as an avid WW2 Novel lover, I’m shocked that a couple of books are not on this list. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak is one of the most amazing novels I’ve ever read, and definitely deserves to be on this list. I feel that we hardly ever hear the story of citizens of Germany during WW2, and this one does it beautifully. Also, Between Shades of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys, is a fantastic story about a girl and her family who are captured by the Soviet Union, but the book has a really nice underlying theme of love and hope. Please don’t take this as an angry review, just a couple of suggestions, Keep up the great work!

Rachael says

January 11, 2021 at 4:49 pm

Oh, the Book Thief is one of my favorite books. I haven’t read Between Shades of Grey yet, but I have enjoyed her other books. Limiting my list to only 10 books (and only 5 fiction!) was incredibly hard. I will admit that this page is on my list of posts to update this year, so you’ll have to come back and see if I change anything.

February 22, 2021 at 7:05 am

With great respect, you have the typical myopic view of most Americans: that everything written or accomplished by an American is the biggest and best in history. It must not be forgotten that Great Britain, Canada and other countries of the British Commonwealth entered the war in 1939, whereas the U.S. did not do so until 1943. While many of the books to which you have referred are excellent, any real student of WW ll knows that the greatest books ever written by a western author about WW ll were Winston Churchill’s treatise The Second World War, in 6 volumes, which led to Churchill being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Any true scholar or antiquarian bookseller is aware of this and I would encourage you and your readers to read those books, which were written by an author of immense talent whose command of the English language is unmatched.

Carolyn says

April 8, 2021 at 4:30 pm

I have read 84, Charing Cross Road, To Hell and Back, The Nightingale, The Things They Carried, The Alice Network, Code Talker, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. WW 2 fiction and nonfiction are my favorite books

Best Books Hub

Reviews of The Best Books on Every Subject

20 Best World War 2 History Books (Fiction & Nonfiction)

September 4, 2020 by James Wilson

Best-World-War-2-Book

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, I receive a commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

World War 2 remains a topic of fascination for history and war buffs alike. It was a time when America was already struggling, a time when the world was forced to come together, and a time when one person almost dominated the globe in an effort of mass genocide. This world war brought on tales of rations, community and hope alongside tragedies, such as the tale of Hiroshima. Each book offers a different perspective, a different story, and a new opportunity to learn about this turning point in the history of the world.

What are the Best World War 2 Books to read?

The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Learn about the longest battle during winter as you read of soldiers fighting not only the enemy, but also the elements. Discover what life was like as a Jewish child in a book that highlights what it was really like. Understand the world from a different point of view as you absorb text that details what our soldiers saw and felt as they hid from bombs and bullets in the trenches. Women were also liberated during this time in the United States, and this was a turning point in women’s history as more women left the kitchen and made their way into factories to support the war effort at home. Each book tells a new story that has yet to make it to documentaries.

Best World War 2 Books: Our Top 20 Picks

Here are some of the best World War 2 books that you can consider to expand your knowledge on the subject:

1. The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

The Forgotten 500 The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

The Forgotten 500 tells a tale of one of the most heroic rescue missions that took place during this great war. One of the few rescue missions that often gets left out of history books and movies. It is a tale of sacrifice, of hope and of amazing men.

When hundreds of men were shot out of the skies, they were over Yugoslavia, a country occupied by the Germans. The towns people risked their own lives to hide the men, giving them shelter and food until they could escape. Cargo planes dropped them supplies, miracously not being shot down in the process. Airmen constructed a complete air strip with no supplies, all while not letting the Germans find out. This story was classified for many years after it happened, but now the story is being told; a story of heroic men that made a marvellous escape.

  • Authors : Gregory A. Freeman (Author)
  • Publisher : Dutton Caliber; Reprint Edition (September 2, 2008)
  • Pages : 336 pages

2. If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II, One American Officer’s Riveting True Story

If You Survive From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II, One American Officer's Riveting True Story

If You Survive tells the story of one American Officer as he risks his life in one battle after another during this great war. He begins the story by telling of how he enrolled in college, thinking that he would automatically be rejected because he wore glasses. Then, he was drafted anyway. He was ordered to take an IQ test, and stationed in Georgia for five months.

After that, his tale tells of his experience in the field, where he was told that if he could survive for a single day that he might be up for a promotion. This soldier was one of the only men to survive out of his group and remains a national war hero. Learn what he saw, things he did, and how he managed to make it out alive.

  • Authors : George Wilson (Author)
  • Publisher : Ballantine Books; Reissue Edition (May 12, 1987)
  • Pages : 288 pages

3. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

A Woman of No Importance The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

This story is about a woman that most people don’t know existed. Her name is not listed in the history books, and she’ll probably never be mentioned in a school classroom. Even when women of history are mentioned, her name seems to be left off the list of important women. She is one of the most heroic women of history, though.

Virginia Hall was raised in the United States, but went to France as she pursued her study of language. She lost a leg, but never let that slow down her life. Hall was still in France when it was occupied by the Germans, leading her to become one of the most important WWII spies the allies had. She ran underground networks, helped the allies, and helped win the war through her clever tactics and heroic actions.

  • Authors : Sonia Purnell (Author)
  • Publisher : Penguin Books (April 9, 2019)
  • Pages : 368 pages

4. The Things Our Fathers Saw: The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA-Voices of the Pacific Theater

The Things Our Fathers Saw The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA-Voices of the Pacific Theater

This is more than a person recounting history that has previously been documented or explaining a timeline of events. Instead, this book is packed with soldiers telling things that they saw, heard and felt. Don’t be mistaken, though. This book is not full of blood and glorious celebrations like in the war movies. Nor is it full of suspense.

Instead, The Things Our Fathers Saw captures the bravery of our heroic men in a time of crisis. It tells a realistic point of view with the dramatics of Hollywood, giving historians and those that study this war a real view of what happened during some of the greatest battles of our time. The first person point of view that many of these stories are told in makes it feel as though the reader is talking to an old friend as he tells stories.

  • Authors : Mr. Matthew A. Rozell (Author)
  • Publisher : Matthew A. Rozell; 1st Edition (July 31, 2015)
  • Pages : 305 pages

5. The Liberator: One World War II Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

The Liberator One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

The Liberator: One World War II Soldier’s 500 Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau tells the story of one amazing soldier in an impressive narrative style that will keep readers turning the pages. While the story is about a platoon that journeys across a continent, it is told about one soldier, Felix Sparks.

The story begins when they land on the beaches of Europe, and follows this soldier for 500 days of blood, battles and harsh winter conditions as the platoon marches through Europe to confront the enemy itself. If you’re looking for bloody details, suspense and things from the point of view of a soldier, this book might be a good option. It is full of real facts and will tell you stories that you have yet to hear about from history books or Hollywood.

  • Authors : Alex Kershaw (Author)
  • Publisher : Broadway Books; Reprint Edition (October 15, 2013)
  • Pages : 448 pages

6. The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of WWII’s Most Decorated Platoon

The Longest Winter The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of WWII's Most Decorated Platoon

The Longest Winter tells the heroic story of a small number of men, approximately 20, that were told to keep their positions at all costs, and the Battle of the Bulge. These men fought off one siege of German soldiers after another, consistently killing them as they fought to keep their place instead of falling back. They refused to surrender until they ran out of ammunition.

These men survived one of the most heroic battles known in the history of World War II, they survive POW camps, and they then became the most decorated soldiers of the war. This story is passed down from generation to generation by war veterans, and now is retold in the most realistic way possible through descriptive language that remains unmatched. The author of this book is an amazing storyteller that readers will enjoy.

  • Publisher : Da Capo Press; 14th Ptg. Edition (October 25, 2005)
  • Pages : 344 pages

7. The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won

The Second World Wars How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won

This book is written for the reader that already knows a bit about World War II, which saves the reader from a wealth of beginner text. It is also written by a historian, yet it takes a unique approach to the war. Instead of recounting the glorious, famous battles or giving the reader eye witness accounts as other texts do, this book focuses on the logistics behind the war.

Some of the chapters are labelled according to the terrain that was being fought. The second World War involved almost the entire world being transformed into a battlefield, from tropical jungles to the air space above cities to the mighty sea. It also points out how the war was won, which some will prefer to read instead of hearing about how individual battles in certain countries were won.

  • Authors : Victor Davis Hanson (Author)
  • Publisher : Basic Books; Illustrated Edition (October 17, 2017)
  • Pages : 720 pages

8. World War II: The Definitive Visual History from Blitzkrieg to the Atom Bomb

World War II The Definitive Visual History from Blitzkrieg to the Atom Bomb

This book encompasses the history of the second World War, from the beginning stages to the way that war effected the world for years after it was over. Read tales of the most notorious battles, the first atom bomb being dropped and more.

This book not only covers the war, but also tells of Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party, something that led up to his efforts of creating the perfect human race. The Definitive Visual History is a book that is presented in chronological order from before the war began until after it is over. Visual aids, such as maps and pictures, are used to further explain the details of the war. This book is said to be one of the most all-encompassing books on the topic due to it’s visual aids and depth of information on the topic.

  • Authors : DK (Author)
  • Publisher : DK; Revised Edition (May 5, 2015)
  • Pages : 372 pages

9. The Child of Auschwitz: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

The Child of Auschwitz Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

A piece of historic fiction that captures the brutality of the war for the Jews while simultaneously giving a sense of hope and warmth as readers follow a tale of fear and love, marriage and childbirth. This story downplays a portion of the horrors of the war in favor of a lighter, more romantic note at times, but this is what makes it a page turner.

This is based on a true story, and is an extremely accurate book. It tells of a woman that truly existed and gave birth to a child in Auschwitz, a concentration camp. The story is comprised from several biographies of Holocaust survivors and documentaries, making it impressively accurate. The child was born towards the end of the war, small and hungry, and presumed to not live long. This story reflects what it was like for women in a concentration camp, and for the children that were born in them.

  • Authors : Lily Graham (Author)
  • Publisher : Bookouture (November 11, 2019)
  • Pages : 242 pages

10. World War II at Sea: A Global History

World War II at Sea A Global History

This book recounts the tales of the sea in chronological order. It explains how the United States created a Navy that far surpassed anything known to the world at the time in order to fight this war. It also tells of America creating fleets of merchant ships to make sure that it’s allies had the supplies that they desperately needed to fight beside them in the war.

This is not a book about American history, though. It tells of other countries and their navies, as well as battles that were both won and lost at sea. World War II was fought on every type of land, in the air and in the sea. This book describes in exceptional detail everything that happened at sea during the great war, from the beginning until the aftermath of the war.

  • Authors : Craig L. Symonds (Author)
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press (May 2, 2018)
  • Pages : 792 pages

11. World War II: Visual Encyclopedia

World War II Visual Encyclopedia

This encyclopedia is for children ages 9-12 that are interested in learning more about this war. It is age appropriate in its images and text, yet still provides plenty of information regarding historical facts and important logistics. Young readers will learn about the major people involved in the war, such as Hitler and the United States president at the time. They will also learn about some soldiers and generals that made a mark in the history books during this time.

In addition to learning about people, children will discover historic battles and the weapons that were used to fight them. They can learn basic information about rockets, the atomic bomb and submarines. This book is filled with enough information to satisfy eager learners without traumatizing them with gory details that are not appropriate for children.

  • Publisher : DK Children (August 4, 2015)
  • Pages : 208 pages

12. The World War 2 Trivia Book: Interesting Stories and Random Facts from the Second World War (Trivia War Books) (Volume 1)

The World War 2 Trivia Book Interesting Stories and Random Facts from the Second World War (Trivia War Books) (Volume 1)

People that love random facts about anything or find WWII fascinating can learn facts that most people don’t know with this one of a kind book. Historians leave out the random facts while history teachers don’t have time for them, but this book encompasses quite a few of them. For example, it tells of Adolf Hitler being rejected as an art student and that one of the key players in the war was once a male model.

Not only is this book packed with fun information, it’s also got it’s fair share of scary and bloody details to satisfy the gory appetite that some war buffs seem to have. The book itself is divided up carefully so that readers can enjoy a page or two a day instead of feeling that they have to read the entire book at once. This is a nice option for people that only read four pages every morning.

  • Authors : Bill O’Neill (Author)
  • Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 17, 2017)
  • Pages : 172 pages

13. Eyewitness to World War II: Unforgettable Stories and Photographs From History’s Greatest Conflict

Eyewitness to World War II Unforgettable Stories and Photographs From History's Greatest Conflict

This book provides a wealth of information about the second world war from every point of view possible. Read letters that soldiers sent home as they fought through the war across the ocean. Understand what it was like for women at home as you read journal entries full of emotion. The text gives a thorough view of the world from various perspectives to capture the full effects of the world war on everyone, including those on the home front.

Other portions of the book also capture strategies used with maps as visual aids and teach about historical battles as well as important figures. View pictures of WWII artifacts, enjoy wonderful details and absorb cool facts. This all in one book on World War II covers a wide variety of material to both educate and fascinate the reader.

  • Authors : Stephen Hyslop (Author), Neil Kagan (Editor)
  • Publisher : National Geographic; First Edition (October 30, 2012)
  • Pages : 352 pages

14. The Secret History of World War II: Spies, Code Breakers, and Covert Operations

The Secret History of World War II Spies, Code Breakers, and Covert Operations

The Secret History of World War II takes readers behind the scenes of the historical facts of the great war into the world of secret deals made in back rooms, underground spies and more. Learn about covert missions as they are explained in great deal. Witness formerly classified documents that are now available to the public. View exclusive photographs of hundreds of artifacts. Some of them are well known, and others are being revealed for one of the first times. All images are highly detailed.

WWII was fought on many battlefields, from land to air to sea, but few know of the secret battlefield that helped win the war. These top secret missions and heroic spies not only helped make the war, they made history. Every dark part of history is full of dark secrets, and they are finally revealed in this unique history book by National Geographic.

  • Authors : Neil Kagan (Author), Stephen G. Hyslop (Author), Kenneth W. Rendell (Foreword)
  • Publisher : National Geographic (October 25, 2016)

15. World War II Map by Map

World War II Map by Map

This book tells the story of World War II in chronological order. It includes battles that were fought on land, air and sea, complete with detailed maps so that readers can follow along to see how the war progressed, what trails platoons took and more. Each map is specifically included to coincide with a particular battle or mission, making this one of the few interactive world war II books on the market. It is an exceptional teaching tool as well as it encourages you to follow along with each page.

Those that do not want to use the maps in the book can still learn plenty about the war through the text. It covers main battles and events, such as the atomic bomb and the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defining event that brought the United States into the war.

  • Authors : DK (Author), Smithsonian Institution (Contributor)
  • Publisher : DK (September 3, 2019)

16. NEW YORK TIMES COMPLETE WORLD WAR II: All the Coverage from the Battlefields and the Home Front

NEW YORK TIMES COMPLETE WORLD WAR II All the Coverage from the Battlefields and the Home Front

The New York Times has existed for years. It maintains a high quality, provides accurate information and keeps the American public informed, as it has for years. During the time of World War II, the New York Times became one of the most popular newspapers in the country as it covered the war daily.

Now, you can read the same publications that Americans on the home front were reading as the war progressed. Take a step back in time with the older publications and follow the war from the view of a person at home reading the news with this exceptional collection of articles. This book includes articles for a six year period from the archives of the Times. Several additional pieces have been added to educate readers further on the topic of World War II.

  • Authors : The New York Times (Author), Richard Overy (Editor), Tom Brokaw (Foreword)
  • Publisher : Black Dog & Leventhal; Har/Dvdr Edition (November 5, 2013)
  • Pages : 612 pages

17. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II

A World at Arms A Global History of World War II

This book takes a unique approach to WWII. Instead of focusing on the actions of the Allies or particular soldiers, it offers a global perspective that begins at the end of the first world war. Text explains how countries were re-shaped by the first global conflict that shook the world, and how that impacted the second world war.

As it covers the events of the second world war, it briefly touches on every part of the globe, thoroughly explaining how certain actions impacted the rest of the world, and the effect that they had on WWII. For example, the attack on Pearl Harbor is what brough the United States into the war, which greatly helped the Allies. It also covers actions of the Axis and Neutrals, something that many history books do not thoroughly cover. This book offers a comprehensive look at every aspect of WWII.

  • Authors : Gerhard L. Weinberg (Author)
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press; 2nd Edition (March 28, 2005)
  • Pages : 1208 pages

18. Atlas of World War II: History’s Greatest Conflict Revealed Through Rare Wartime Maps and New Cartography

Atlas of World War II History's Greatest Conflict Revealed Through Rare Wartime Maps and New Cartography

This impressive history book comes with all the exceptional facts, rare photographs and detailed imagery that National Geographic has become known for. It tells the story of WWII from a historical point of view, educating readers about battles fought on land, in the sea and in the air, including some of the most famous battles of the war. Stories in the book from soldiers’ points of view show readers what it was really like during times of war.

Detailed maps are included to help readers see the stages of the war as platoons moved through Europe during the harsh winter before approaching Germany. Exclusive maps that were used by the president and airmen are featured as well. These are accompanied by photos of landmarks, battle fields and a close-up view of WWII artifacts so that readers can do more than just learn about the war, they can take a trip back in time to a place long ago.

  • Authors : Stephen G. Hyslop (Author), Neil Kagan (Editor), Kenneth W. Rendell (Foreword)
  • Publisher : National Geographic; Comprehensive Edition (October 30, 2018)
  • Pages : 256 pages

19. The Story of World War II: Revised, expanded, and updated from the original text by Henry Steele Commager

The Story of World War II Revised, expanded, and updated from the original text by Henry Steele Commager

The Story of WWII tells the same story, but with a twist. Instead of a just historical point of view written by a historian or a soldiers point of view, this book provides a little bit of everything. It includes journalists that covered the war, and some of the most amazing stories. These journalists were seen on the frontlines, they interviewed soldiers and covered the home front, leading to them being the most informed people of the war and it’s effects as they rippled across the globe.

This is much more than just a book about journalists, however. It also covers battles, bloodshed and more from soldiers that fought in the war, giving a point of view that critics claim to be the most realistic yet. Alongside journalists and soldiers, readers will encounter civilians caught in the middle of the war at home and more. This book gives readers a glimpse at the war from every possible angle.

  • Authors : Donald L. Miller (Author), Henry Steele Commager (Author)
  • Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Revised & enlarged Edition (November 6, 2001)
  • Pages : 704 pages

20. DK Eyewitness Books: World War II

DK Eyewitness Books World War II

This children’s book is written for kids that are above the age of 8. The language is easy to understand for children, but also written in a tone that adults can enjoy it as much as children do. Often, this book is preferred for children or students that express an interest in the war as it is an exceptional introduction into the history of one of the great wars.

Children can learn about key players in the war as well as some of the most important battles that led to the victory of WWII in age appropriate language. Weapons are featured that some children might think are cool, and the gruesome details are left out to make sure that children enjoy reading the book without being scared. Instead, they can have fun learning about history with this appropriate children’s book.

  • Authors : Simon Adams (Author)
  • Publisher : DK Children; Pck Har/CD Edition (June 25, 2007)
  • Pages : 72 pages

Choosing the Best World War 2 Books

World War II remains one of the most talked about topics in history. It is one of the few wars that has been fought on every type of battlefield possible. Blood and a lack of humanity seemed to be a common theme throughout the war as a man attempted mass genocide that would extend to the ends of the Earth. How he did this, how the war was won, and the individuals that were directly impacted by the war will forever be imprinted into our minds. These books both educate and entice with their facts, photographs and stories that make them impossible to put down.

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The best novels set in World War Two

We've compiled a selection of some of the best novels and fictional books about the second world war, inspired by the tumultuous years of conflict in europe and beyond..

best rated ww2 books

World War Two was one of the most devastating modern conflicts in modern history, and the tragedies and triumphs of the war years have been inspiring novelists ever since. Readers seem to be equally fascinated by this period of history, whether it be the  political machinations behind the rise of the Nazis , or the  lives of women on the home front . So for fans of historical fiction, we’ve compiled a selection of some of the best novels about World War Two, set in Europe and beyond.

If you're looking for more inspiration for your next read, discover our edit of the  best historical fiction novels of all time, here .

The Kitchen Front

By jennifer ryan.

Book cover for The Kitchen Front

‘ The Great British Bake Off s et in World War Two . . . an enchanting hug of a novel’ – Cathy Kelly

Two years into WW2, and German U-boats have disrupted Britain's supply of food, forcing the country into rationing. In an effort to help out British housewives, a BBC radio programme called The Kitchen Front launches a new cooking contest, with a grand prize of being the programme's first ever female co-host.

For Audrey, a young widow, winning would change her life. A chance to pay off her husband's debts and look after her young children would mean everything. However, with rivals appearing around every corner, the route to success will not be an easy one . . .

The Prince of the Skies

By antonio iturbe.

Book cover for The Prince of the Skies

Writer, romantic, pilot, hero. Anthoine de Saint Exupéry has one dream, and that's to be a pilot. Despite his aristocratic origins, nothing can keep Anthoine grounded with his determination to take to the skies. From the bestselling author of The Librarian of Auschwitz , Antonio Iturbe, comes an incredible novel based on the real life of Anthoine de Saint Exupéry and his mysterious death. Together with friends Jean and Henri, Anthoine pioneered new mail routes across the globe and changed aviation forever. At the same time, Anthoine began work on The Little Prince , a children's story that would go on to reach millions of readers around the world – despite the looming shadow of the Second World War. The Prince of the Skies is a tale of love and companionship, war and heroism, and the power of the written word. 

The Nightingale

By kristin hannah.

Book cover for The Nightingale

Set in France during the Second World War, Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale is a story of two sisters, Viann and Isabelle. The pair are reunited after Viann’s husband is sent to fight, with Isabelle travelling from Paris to rural France to support her sister. Together, they face extraordinary hardships and heartbreak. A multi-million-copy bestseller, this heartbreaking historical romance is being adapted into a film starring Elle and Dakota Fanning, which is set to come to the silver screen in 2022.

The Most Precious of Cargoes

By jean-claude grumberg.

Book cover for The Most Precious of Cargoes

Told with a fairytale-like lyricism, this is a moving fable of family and redemption set against the horrors of the Holocaust. Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a forest. Despite their poverty and the war raging around them, the wife prays that they will be blessed with a child. 

A Jewish man rides on a train with his wife and twin babies. When his wife no longer has enough milk to feed them both, in desperation he throws his daughter into the forest, hoping that she’ll be saved. When the woodcutter’s wife finds the baby she takes her home, though she knows this act of kindness may lead to her death. This moving tale is a testament to our capacity for kindness in even the darkest times. 

The Yellow Bird Sings

Book cover for The Yellow Bird Sings

In Poland, 1941, Róza and her five-year-old daughter, Shira, spend their days and nights hiding in a farmer's barn after escaping being rounded up with the other Jews in their town. Róza tells her daughter stories of a yellow bird, the only one who can sing the melodies Shira composes in her head. Róza would do anything to keep her daughter safe, but eventualy she is faced with an impossible choice  –  keep her close, or let her go and give her a chance to survive. 

The Fifth Column

By andrew gross.

Book cover for The Fifth Column

On his release from prison following a deadly confrontation with a Nazi sympathiser, all Charles Mossman wants to do is make amends with his wife and daughter. But, as support for America to enter the war of the side of the Allied Forces grows, the Nazi sympathisers are driven underground and Charles realises there are sinister forces surrounding them that will bring about the downfall of his nation by any means.

by Ken Follett

Book cover for Jackdaws

Set in France during the war, Jackdaws is a story of the French Resistance and a daring plan to help the Allied Forces. When a mission to destroy a telephone exchange vital to Nazi communications fails, British secret agent Flick Clairet takes an all-female team to infiltrate the exchange and finish the job. This is a gripping novel of love, courage and revenge.

The Order of the Day

By eric vuillard.

Book cover for The Order of the Day

Winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, France’s most well-known and prestigious award, The Order of the Day is the gripping story of the pivotal meetings which took place between the European powers in the run-up to the Second World War. This darkly comic yet incredibly moving account shows how the actions of a few men brought the world to the brink of war.

Dear Mrs Bird

By aj pearce.

Book cover for Dear Mrs Bird

The year is 1941, London is at war, and to say wartime spirit is alive and kicking is a radical understatement. The story centres on Emmeline Lake, who – contrary to her desire to become a ‘Lady War Correspondent’ – unwittingly takes up a position at the Woman’s Friend magazine, answering heartfelt letters from women seeking advice. The book is saturated in positivity but manages to steer clear of saccharine: a warmer, jollier, more uplifting book you will struggle to find.

The Morning Gift

By eva ibbotson.

Book cover for The Morning Gift

This classic WW2 romance is a story of unexpected love, independence and belonging from award-winning author Iva Ibottson. Eighteen-year-old Ruth loves her life in Vienna until the Nazis invade and her family is forced to flee. A terrible misunderstanding means she is left behind, and her only hope of escape is the marriage of convenience offered by Quinn, a young English professor who offers to bring her back to London.

To Die in Spring

By ralf rothmann.

Book cover for To Die in Spring

In 1945 it seems that the worst of the war is over, and Walter and Friedrich work together on a dairy farm in northern Germany. But then they are forced to ‘volunteer’ with the SS, and Friedrich is sent to the front where the senseless violence he experiences leads him to desert. When he is captured and sentenced to death, the friends are reunited in terrible circumstances.

The English Patient

By michael ondaatje.

Book cover for The English Patient

As the Second World War draws to a close, four disparate characters shelter in a house in an abandoned Italian village. Hana, a nurse, grieves for her father as she tends her last remaining patient, an anonymous Englishman burned beyond all recognition. Caravaggio, a spy and former thief, slowly extracts the story of the Englishman’s past from him, while a touching relationship develops between Hana and Kip, a Sikh bomb disposal expert. This is a heartbreaking love story and a beautiful novel about the traumas of war.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

By richard flanagan.

Book cover for The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the story of Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon living through the horrors of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway. As he struggles to save the men under his command from starvation, beatings and cholera, he is haunted by an affair with his uncle’s wife years before.

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The Best Novels About World War 2

Ranker Books

This is a list about the best novels about World War 2 - basically a genre onto itself considering how extensively it has been covered in literature and art. But what are the best historical books about World War 2? Many you have probably heard of because they have won awards or have been turned into movies. Also known as the Second World War, this global war lasted from 1939 – 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world’s nations that eventually formed two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. WW2 books can be novels that focus on the war itself as the central story, or they can feature the war tangentially, as a force that impacts the lives of its main characters.

World War 2 was the most widespread war in history and was marked by the deaths of millions of civilians due to the use of nuclear weapons and the Holocaust; it was the deadliest war in the history of the world. It ended May 8, 1945, and the world was left picking up the pieces from the battlefield. WWII was responsible for the formation of the United Nations, a program that fosters international co-operation to prevent future conflicts. Many biographies were birthed from this time period in history , including some of the world’s greatest novels like The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Thomas Keneally’s Schindler's Ark which later inspired the film Schindler’s List . Good WW2 lists continue to come out every year, with top novels like  All the Light We Cannot See winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015.

War and Remembrance

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Night

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The Bridge over the River Kwai

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The Best Fiction Books » Thrillers (Books)

The best world war ii thrillers, recommended by graham hurley.

The Blood of Others by Graham Hurley

The Blood of Others by Graham Hurley

For all its horrors, World War II was a time when things happened to people and that, perhaps, is what makes it such an enduring source of fascination. Graham Hurley , author of the Spoils of War series, recommends five of the best World War II thrillers, including one that reads like nonfiction.

Interview by Sophie Roell , Editor

The Best World War II Thrillers - Bomber by Len Deighton

Bomber by Len Deighton

The Best World War II Thrillers - HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean

HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean

The Best World War II Thrillers - Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson

Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson

The Best World War II Thrillers - Fatherland by Robert Harris

Fatherland by Robert Harris

The Best World War II Thrillers - The Kindly Ones: A Novel by Jonathan Littell

The Kindly Ones: A Novel by Jonathan Littell

best rated ww2 books

1 Bomber by Len Deighton

2 hms ulysses by alistair maclean, 3 piece of cake by derek robinson, 4 fatherland by robert harris, 5 the kindly ones: a novel by jonathan littell.

Before we get to the thrillers you’ve recommended, why do you think we remain so fascinated by World War Two?

I’ve often asked myself that question. I was born just after the war. My dad had fought in that war, as most dads had. He’d been in the RAF and had quite an exciting time. That was evident to me, even as a child, and in fact it was the period of his life that he most treasured when he got older. My mum had been in London under the bombing, and she’d spent many nights in various shelters. I know a lot about wars from my years as a maker of TV documentaries. Wars are horrible. However, what is incontestable is that things happen to people in wars.

We didn’t have a TV. I used to haunt the Clacton-on-Sea library, and I’d come back every weekend with armfuls of books. Most of those books had emerged from the Second World War, and they began to fuel my appetite for reading about it. When I became a writer, I belatedly recognised that this war and the fact that things happen to people—these are plot-led thrillers—became all important.

So that holds true for people my age. The question is why that fascination has been sustained. My writing career took a long detour into crime fiction. I wrote 16 crime fiction books. It occurred to me, as I wrestled with my agent and tried to find a new publisher for a change of genre direction, that the Second World War had been the biggest crime scene ever. If you look at it in those terms, there’s limitless scope—if you’ve got the curiosity and the right mentality—to go in whichever direction you want. That holds true as a reader, and as a watcher of TV series or movies.

I know you do a lot of research for your books. How important to you is historical accuracy? What’s the interaction between fact and fiction in a good World War II thriller?

Writing fiction is an act of trespass. As a writer, you owe it to your fictional characters, wherever they may have come from, however old or young they may be, to try and get them right. To try and get the small details, the nuance, the body language, the background right. When you’re writing in a genre where you’re dealing with a mix of real people, real events, real chronology, and invented characters, you’ve got to get the facts right and somehow come up with a marriage of the smallest details that’s going to leave the reader turning the pages.

As a reader, the minute that I hit a wrong note—this can apply to wars or relationships or contemporary politics—a little bell sounds in my head. I think, ‘Hang on. To what degree do I trust this person? Have they made a deliberate error? Or are they too lazy to have done the heavy lifting to get the obvious things right?’ If the answer to that is yes, it makes me wonder why I’d go on, and often I don’t.

Let’s talk about the World War II thrillers you’ve chosen. First up is Bomber by Len Deighton, which was published in 1970. It’s about a fictional RAF bombing raid on the night of June 31, 1943. Tell me why you picked it and what’s so good about it.

I’ve chosen these five books for reasons that link to my own journey as a writer. I went to Cambridge to read English and I started writing for two publications. One was Granta , which was then a magazine, and the other one was Varsity , which was the university newspaper. If you were any good, they sent you off on assignments.

One of my early assignments was to go down to Brighton to interview Len Deighton . I was a huge fan of Len Deighton as a thriller writer and spy novelist. I thought he was a brilliant read, and I thought his background research was impeccable. I admired the way he could make the language dance on the page. I was to meet him at his hotel and then, in the afternoon, go out to the Downs where they were shooting Oh! What a Lovely War .

He was the most self-effacing, generous person. He gave me lots of time. He bought me lunch, which was a treat for a penniless student. On set, we inspected the trenches they had dug in the chalk downs on top of the cliffs. It was a memorable afternoon. I wrote the piece, and he liked it (or he was gracious enough to say that he liked it) and it went down well. I became even more of a Len Deighton fan.

Bomber was published in 1970 and was relatively late in his oeuvre. It’s a big book. I have a fixation with various aspects of the Second World War and in my head, of all the guys who did genuinely heroic stuff, bomber crews were way up there, towards the top. They conducted this strange life of going out, often two or three times a week, and courting near-certain death. A typical tour was 30 trips, and it was unusual to finish that. They knew what was lying in wait for them. To survive against those odds, and to keep on doing it, to come back to eggs and bacon and clean sheets, must have been a weird life.

“55,000 aircrew died during the war”

I leapt on Bomber and I devoured it. It was a departure for Len Deighton, because it had taken a year and a half for him to research. That’s his account and I believe him. It’s painstaking in terms of its detail. To my mind, he smuggles a weight of narrative detail into dialogue, which can be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes it’s successful; sometimes it’s not. What’s incontestable is that this fictitious bombing raid is invented for the night of the 31st of June 1943, and the events are narrated from multiple points of view. It’s a hugely ambitious novel.

It has lots of key characters. There’s the plane itself, a Lancaster. It’s called O for Orange, nicknamed the Creaking Door. It has a crew of seven. It’s under the command of a 25-year-old captain whose name is Sam Lambert. He’s married to the lovely Ruth. Once dusk falls and he’s in the dark over Germany, he’s going to be at the mercy of the Luftwaffe night fighters. He’s going to try to dodge, to fox, to fool the Luftwaffe Fighter Command station, which is on the Dutch coast. Welcome to the world of Oberleutnant Victor von Löwenherz in his Junkers 88.

Each of the points of the narrative throws up subplots, in terms of wives, kids, mistresses, and emotional complications. The plane doesn’t take off until halfway through the book. It’s driven on (as your life would be, if you were part of that crew) by this remorseless determination to join the bomber stream; to evade, if possible, the attentions of the gunners and the night fighters; to plant your bombs as close as possible. In the dark, with the kind of rudimentary bomb aiming gear that they had, that was incredibly difficult to do, as well as bad news for the people underneath, many of whom were in villages short of the target. They were the ones who tended to get woken up at night by a very large bang. Len Deighton, at the controls of this book, did incredible justice to all of that.

It’s quite a cold book, and it has an unhappy ending, as so many of these trips did, from the point of view of the Bomber Command men in the Lancasters, the men in Junkers 88s, and the people beneath the so-called bombing point.

I applaud this book. It doesn’t have the warmth that many of his earlier books have, but it is an outstanding achievement.

On those bombing raids to Germany, I thought the fatality rate was about 50 or 60 percent. Are you saying that over the course of 30 trips, it was closer to 100 percent?

The key statistic is around an 8 percent chance of surviving 30 trips intact. You might come back wounded; much more likely, you would be dead or taken prisoner. It is a horrifying statistic to go to bed with at night.

My mum’s cousin was one of them. He died somewhere over the Netherlands. As you were saying at the beginning, we’re all touched by this in some way, aren’t we?

I think we are. And the real bitterness for the men, who took the risk of flying and dying or sometimes surviving, was what happened to them after the war. 55,000 aircrew died during the war. That’s a lot of men, a quantum illustration of the risks that they ran. Yet they never received the recognition that was awarded to the Navy, the Submariners, the Royal Marines, or the Combined Operations Headquarters staff in terms of the collective war effort.

The men from Bomber Command were neglected. That was because they were led by a man called Arthur Harris, known as ‘Butch’ or ‘Bomber’ Harris. He was incredibly focused and effective. He was a hard man. He did his best to protect his men, but he was going to lay waste to German city after German city, and that produced footage towards the end of the war that, once the war was over, horrified large parts of the rest of the world. ‘Look what the Brits have done. Look what Bomber Command has done!’

It was partly because it was the only option. If you’re bombing at night, it’s bound to be imprecise. Americans bombed by day and had a different kind of bombsight, so they were much more accurate. Plus they had a screen of fighters, P-51 Mustangs.

If you put yourself in the head of any member of a bomber crew surviving by the end of the war, you can share that sense of being abandoned, having risked your life night after night, year after year. That would have made anyone extremely bitter.

Let’s go on to HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean.

This was published in 1955. It mattered to little me because I was in the period of falling in love with reading. One of the first books I laid my hands on, having taken the step up from the junior library to the senior library, was this book, HMS Ulysses . One look at the cover, one read of the first page, and you knew exactly what it was about.

The HMS Ulysses was a light cruiser, one of the warships on the Arctic run that went from Scapa Flow in the Orkneys (way off the top of Scotland) via Norway and around the North Cape to Murmansk. These were incredibly risky and horrible journeys, with the odds that you would come to grief. We lost over 100 ships on those Arctic convoys.

In the winter, when the weather was at its worst, you’re talking temperatures of minus 20 degrees. There is constant snow, everything is icy, your mug of coffee would stay hot for about six seconds. The boat is being flung everywhere. It weighs 7000 tonnes, but it makes no difference because the waves are enormous. On top of that, the enemy (U-boats, and bombing raids from Luftwaffe airfields in Norway) is trying to kill you. There are endless reasons why you’re not very happy.

I realised, as anyone reading this book will realise, that it’s an essay in exhaustion. The book starts off with a mutiny. The men are knackered, and they have had enough. The Vice Admiral, known as Farmer Giles, has made a series of terrible decisions and suffered a mental breakdown. The captain, whose name is Richard Vallery, has tuberculosis. He’s a sick man, but he’s ultra-loyal to his ship and his crew and is determined to get them through it. This is a key convoy, and he’s there to protect it.

“We lost over 100 ships on those Arctic convoys”

Alistair MacLean had served on these convoys. He’d been a wireless and torpedo operator as a seventeen-year-old, so he had hands-on experience of what it was like. That’s key. Len Deighton did his best to become a bomber pilot, and people say that if you read Bomber, you’ll discover how to fly a Lancaster. But he was far too young to have fought in the war. MacLean wasn’t. He had been through it. As a result, for me as a young reader, every page, every paragraph, every exchange of dialogue had an authenticity you can’t miss. I read it time and time again and thought, ‘Can things have been that bleak, that desperate, that testing, and how did those guys ever come through?’

I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but the fact is that most of them don’t. The novel has an enormous cast of characters, and the characters by and large are the ship’s company. They are young, old, experienced, inexperienced, novice. Together, they have to man up and fight the enemy, not just on this trip, not just on the trip before, but on the trip to come, assuming they make it to Murmansk. Do they get there? You’ll have to read the book.

I read this book as an eleven-year-old. I’ve got an eleven-year-old grandson and I gave him HMS Ulysses last year for his birthday. To my delight, he devoured it in ten days. You asked about writers who don’t do their homework and whether the reader notices. Even when you’re eleven you can smell the real thing, and by God, this was the real thing.

Why were they going to Murmansk?

The Germans were partners with the Russians after the non-aggression pact of 1939. Hitler honoured that pact for less than two years: in June 1941, he invaded the Soviet Union. That was a blessing for us because it was someone else doing the fighting and the dying. That sounds cynical, but it was important. It is one of history’s ironies that the Communists became the capitalists’ best chance of surviving the war and beating the Nazis. The Soviets could only do that with a lot of material help. Much of that help came from the United States via Britain. It was Britain’s job to get the tanks, the Spitfires, the Hurricanes, the fuel, the ammunition, and the food, to Murmansk. Then, it all went south into Russia by rail. That is why those convoys—and they cost an arm and a leg, in terms of men and shipping—were so important. We had to put money on the table to keep the Soviets fighting our mutual enemy.

Let’s move on to the next World War II thriller you’re recommending, Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson, which was published in 1983 and takes us back to the RAF.

I read this book as soon as it came out. It was the first of a number of revisionist takes on the RAF’s performance in the early years of the war. It’s set in the period between 1939 and 1940, and the Phoney War (French: drôle de guerre). We were sorely unprepared for it. Above all, the RAF was sorely unprepared for it.

The novel casts a fairly jaundiced eye upon what happened to the men in Hornet Squadron. They’ve been shipped out to northern France. In the book’s opening pages, Squadron Leader Ramsey lands his Hurricane after a trial flight in broad daylight and ends up nose down in the slit-trench. He tries to get out of the cockpit, falls, breaks his neck, and dies. He’s replaced by a New Zealander called Squadron Leader ‘Fanny’ Barton. Within a couple of weeks, he shoots down what he takes to be a two-engine enemy aircraft and realises rather late in the day that it’s a Blenheim, one of our own. Yet another commander arrives in the form of Squadron Leader Rex, who’s upper-class. Now the squadron is living in luxury: great food, lovely views, clean sheets, and four-poster beds in a French chateau near the airfield.

The rest of the book takes us into the business of trying to stay alive. When you lack experience, the right kind of aircraft, and you are at the mercy of the world’s best air force, the Luftwaffe, terrible things happen. Often there’s a degree of black humour in it.

One of the things that sent me to the book was reading an early review in the Times. The reviewer was outraged because this was a book that said, ‘Hang on. This isn’t a story of the few and the brave, of heroism and so forth. It pertains to real life.’ Again, the key word is authenticity. Derek Robinson hadn’t been in the war, but he did a lot of research. He’s also a bloody good writer. I love this book. I think it’s great.

You’re also bringing out the more tragic, non-heroic side of World War II in your latest book, The Blood of Others . It’s about the 1942 Dieppe Raid (aka Operation Jubilee) and it’s horrifying, what happened. Lord Mountbatten comes across very badly indeed.  

If you’re dealing with real people, and Mountbatten is a very good example, then you owe it to them to try and climb inside their heads and their hearts, and figure out every detail. Often I start with body language. You can get a lot of this from the wartime black and white film archive, particularly the German archive, because they’ve got lots of it and it’s of good quality. You can get a fix on people like Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and so on. Mountbatten was the first time I dealt with anyone with his connections. I read a couple of books about him. When I worked in television, I shared an office with a relative of his, so I knew the world he came from.

I wouldn’t dream of putting the first paragraph down until I’ve read at least forty books and highlighted the bits that matter and stripped out those half-line references that I can sprinkle over the narrative to give it authenticity—the smell and taste of that period. All that takes a long time.

I got to grips with how and why the 1942 raid took shape. It served all kinds of purposes, not least of which was fending off the Russians forever saying, ‘You’ve got to get into Europe. You’ve got to open the second front.’ There was a big Second Front Now movement, with vast rallies across the country from 1942 onwards, but we didn’t have the manpower or the boats. We couldn’t mount D-Day overnight. We had to keep the Russians quiet, and it was Mountbatten’s job to do that.

I also came across Noël Coward, and In Which We Serve , and there are passages about that in the book.

Over the eight books that comprise the Spoils of War collection, I love pushing the narrative on, through passages of dialogue, meetings, and encounters (often under pressure) between real people and my fictional characters. As I keep saying, you’ve got to get the real people right. In this book, I’m dealing with the Germans, the French (obliquely) and, above all, the Brits in London.

I realised at the end that this raid should never have happened. The Germans knew about it. It had been discovered in its former incarnation (not as Operation Jubilee but as Operation Rutter) by the Luftwaffe. They’d spotted the invasion fleet off the Isle of Wight, bombed the key ferries, and gone home. There was only one tidal chance left the following month. They thought that even the Brits wouldn’t be silly enough to have a second go.

What they’d underestimated was the command chain. Churchill had left the country and was en route to Moscow for his first meeting with Stalin.  Montgomery, who had been associated with the Dieppe raid, had gone to the Middle East to replace Auchinleck. There was no one in charge and it was Mountbatten who took the decision to remount the expedition, in the belief that split-second timing would land those 6,000 Canadians on the beach at the right time to storm the defences, kill lots of Germans, create havoc inland, and then stage a dignified and successful retreat. None of that happened, for the reasons you’ll discover if you read the book.

What was equally shocking was the cover-up afterwards. The strapline that goes with the publicity for the novel is: ‘A catastrophe no headline dared admit.’ And that’s true. History was rewritten. The government—above all, Churchill—took steps to recast what had been a disaster. Other people’s blood, Canadian blood, was spilt on a recce-in-force, a rehearsal, for a coming moment when, on a much larger scale, we would set foot on a different set of invasion beaches—which turned out to be in Normandy—and set in motion the set of events that would end the war.

We’d better get on to the next book, Fatherland . I’m a big Robert Harris fan, though I don’t remember this one very clearly.

I’m a huge Robert Harris fan as well. I’ve loved most of his books. The most recent one, Act of Oblivion , is brilliant. V2 and Munich are not so great, but a lot of his stuff is fantastic.

Fatherland’ s central conceit is that it takes place in Hitler’s Berlin in 1964. Hitler is 75. The 20th of April, the Fuhrer’s birthday, which is a big national celebration, is fast approaching. The novel is cast as a thriller, which is a very clever decision on Robert Harris’s part. It starts off with a body in the Havel, near a favoured island in Berlin called Schwanenwerder. It’s the body of a man called Josef Bühler. Another body is found—of Wilhelm Stuckart. The facts of these two deaths are investigated by a lone detective called Xavier March, who works for the Berlin Kriminalpolizei (Kripo). He identifies a possible third target, who’s still alive, a guy that Robert Harris has playfully named Martin Luther.

In the opening and middle stages of the investigation, the murders appear to be connected with a giant theft. During looting of Poland in 1939, where all three of these men were at the beginning of the war, they lifted vast quantities of fine art and gold. That turns out to be a red herring. In fact, there’s a much bigger secret that lies beyond it.

It’s a good tale well told. As ever, his background research is brilliant. What worked, above all, for me is the way he inserts, en passant, little gems of the way things are. What happened to Churchill? What happened to the British royal family? They’re all in Canada. What happened to the Russians? The Russians have been pushed back east of the Urals. There’s still a guerrilla war going on. It’s being funded by the Americans and offers no real challenge to the Germans, who are settling into the Greater German Reich. In vast areas of the Ukraine, Germans are growing crops. America is under President Kennedy, but it’s not Jack Kennedy, it’s Joe Kennedy, who was ambassador to London, the great appeaser. The ambassador to Berlin is no other than Charles Lindbergh.

Because it’s the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, there’s a celebratory concert in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. There’s a playful reference to a bunch of howling Liverpudlians in a Hamburg cellar who are called the Beatles, taking the city by storm.

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The background is really enticing, and the big driver of the plot is the investigation, where it leads, and what it means. There’s a bit of a problem towards the end of the investigation, but I’d be giving the plot away, so I won’t go there. It’s a very ambitious book but it’s very lightly done, and that’s the mark, in my world, of a superb writer.

The last book you’re recommending is The Kindly Ones . This is a fictional memoir, I believe.

I came across this after I’d drawn up my list of five books for you. I thought, ‘I’ve got to read this.’ I didn’t know it’s nearly 1,000 pages long. It’s written by Jonathan Littell, who grew up in Paris although he’s American. It was written in French, and its original title is Les Bienveillantes (‘the welcoming ones’). I think the title in English is probably the worst title I’ve ever come across in my life. However, this book has knocked everything else I’ve ever read about the Second World War out of the park. It is just incredible.

He strings together the darkest pools of darkness in that period of history from 1941 through 1945. The first atrocity is the massacre at Babi Yar, which happened just outside Kyiv in September 1941. In two days, the Germans murdered 33,000 Jews as a reprisal for compliance with the Russians, who’d left bombs all over Kyiv. I’ve written a book about that event. My wife and I have been to Kyiv, and we visited Babi Yar. I’ve read about Babi Yar, but I’ve never read anything as explicit and detailed as this.

Jonathan Littell’s stroke of genius is inventing, as his central character, an SS Hauptsturmführer called Dr. Maximilien Aue. A middle-ranking and bureaucratically gifted manager, he’s assigned by the SS to keep tabs on what’s happening in Russia as the Wehrmacht pushes on and making sure the job is well done as the Einsatzgruppen move from village to town to city killing Jews and gypsies and intellectuals in their thousands.

He then falls out with his bosses and ends up in Stalingrad. That battle took place between October 1942 and February 1943. I’ve written a book called Last Flight to Stalingrad , so I’ve read endless books about Stalingrad. I know the background, I know the voices, I know the taste and the smell. I thought I’d nailed it completely, and so do lots of reviewers, but then I read Littell. Mon Dieu.

Aue also goes to Auschwitz . He’s assigned to various death camps to make sure they’re doing it right. He ends up on the death march west. The Germans have lost the war. The Russians are advancing, and revenge is in the air. They’re running out of everything. They’re running out of rolling stock, in terms of the railways; they’re running out of fuel, in terms of the Luftwaffe and the tanks. It’s the bleakest possible outlook. He ends up, as most of them did, a refugee in what’s left of Berlin. I’ve written a book called Katastrophe about Berlin in 1945, and again I can only shake my head in admiration at his take on that ruined city.

You’ve got to have a strong stomach to read this stuff. He’s a good writer. He’s far too young to have fought in the war but he’s done his research. The book is obscene, for all kinds of reasons, but he doesn’t blink in the face of extreme horror. For what I would describe as our best interests, he takes us there.

He makes it authentic. After reading all these books—40 books for one of mine, so that’s nearly 300 books—I began to realise how the whole thing holds together. Because he goes into such minute detail over 974 pages, I began to sense the way it really was and felt and tasted. It was an astonishing book to read.

Do you have any nonfiction books about World War Two that you particularly like?

There are two answers to that. The first is a book called First Light by Geoffrey Wellum . He was a Spitfire pilot. He happened to go to the same school I went to. It’s beautifully written. It’s about being a Spitfire pilot over that long, hot summer of 1940. I found it compelling. And—this is another doffing of my authorial cap to Mr. Littell— The Kindly Ones reads like a nonfiction book, and that to me is a brilliant achievement.

“The Blood of Others” by Graham Hurley is published by Head of Zeus on July 6th, 2023 at £20

July 5, 2023

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Graham Hurley

Graham Hurley

Graham Hurley is a British writer. He is the author of 16 crime novels as well as the Spoils of War series, set in World War II. His latest book is The Blood of Others , about the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe.

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The 10 Best WWII Audiobooks for Every History Buff

March 13, 2020

World War II, although well-documented through various mediums, is the basis for a wide range of little-known stories from Europe and beyond that deserve to be heard. From firsthand accounts of soldiers on the front lines to stories of brave women behind the scenes, these are impactful stories of humans coming together in this time of global conflict. Whether you’re well-versed in the war’s history or new to the study entirely, we’re sure you’ll find something captivating on our list of the best WWII audiobooks.

A Higher Call

In the midst of a war that uncovered the deepest evils of mankind, two enemy pilots are faced with unfathomable decisions when their aircrafts meet over German territory. While German Ace Franz Stigler could’ve easily destroyed the American aircraft flown by second lieutenant Charlie Brown, what happens next instead changes the course of their lives forever. A Higher Call uncovers an event kept top secret by major government officials for years, enthralling listeners with haunting tales told from multiple perspectives. Narrated by actor Robertson Deans, known for movies like Vanilla Sky and Star Trek Nemesis, A Higher Call captivates listeners like an action movie while highlighting the importance of honor in even the most tragic circumstances.

Ghost Soldiers

This historical account chronicles a dangerous journey of rescue, heroism, and valor to save prisoners of war in the Philippines in early 1945. Quickly turning more dangerous than they could’ve ever imagined, the paralyzing fear of the POWs and the soldiers trying to rescue them can be felt with every word. What highlights Ghost Soldiers as a stand-out audiobook is its performance by two-time Tony Award-winner James Naughton, a performer known for breathing life into stories in a variety of mediums throughout his illustrious career. Through his emotional performance, you will join the soldiers on their dangerous mission and understand the perils felt by all in the depths of a dark and unforgiving forest.

The Second World War: The Grand Alliance

History buffs will appreciate this unique perspective on the beginning of WWII, as Winston Churchill spins his tale of Britain's isolation before historic alliances were formed in the early 1940s. Rodska’s narration walks the fine line between performance and impersonation, allowing the listener to feel that they are really listening to Churchill himself telling the story. The story follows his exasperation and perseverance as Britain began to fight the Axis Powers, leading up to and throughout the war as Japan attacked the United States and the Allied Powers began to take shape. Churchill displays his confidence as he relays the story of a united front, outlining the Allies’ ability to take on anything that came their way with a matter-of-fact perspective.

In Harm's Way

For four days in the summer of 1945, over 900 men were stranded in the middle of the South Pacific after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by an enemy missile. In Harm’s Way follows the story of three of the 317 survivors from this excruciating experience, detailing both how they survived and their quest to discover the truth in the aftermath. Written by journalist Doug Stanton, this harrowing story highlights the importance of listening to survivors amid a massive cover-up. Boyett’s performance elevates this heroic story further, drawing out the suspense and encapsulating the terror felt with every emotional turn of phrase. In Harm’s Way conveys the bravery of those willing to fight for justice after being forced to fight for their lives.

Irena's Children

This raw story takes you deep inside the horrors of the Holocaust as Nazis prevented families from leaving the Warsaw ghetto and eventually transported them to concentration camps. After learning of their fate, a social worker named Irena Sendler took their story into her own hands, defying orders by sneaking children out to safety. Sendler’s creativity and gumption helped save the lives of thousands of Jewish children, and her little-known story is one of inspiration in the face of true evil. Author Tilar J. Mazzeo of the New York Times best seller The Widow Clicquot reflects the crazed experience of Sendler through her writing. This listen is further enhanced by the performance of actress Amanda Carlin, known from hit shows like Friends and Law & Order, who adds a new depth to an already emotional and heartbreaking narrative.

The Book Thief

One of the most popular historical fiction novels set at the time of WWII, The Book Thief shows the power of small acts of bravery during one of the darkest points in history. This tale follows the riveting life of Liesel Meminger, a foster child who has an affinity for stealing novels, and her belief in the ability of books to change hearts and minds. Told from the unique perspective of Death himself, this audiobook reveals the importance of kindness hidden throughout Nazi-controlled Munich. Jewish actor Allan Corduner brings a Broadway-caliber performance to this listen, making for a stunning entry into the genre’s canon.

Code Name Verity

An Audible Editor’s Pick, Code Name Verity tells the story of two young women seemingly at odds in all regards forging an unlikely bond during WWII that helps them deal with the tragedies surrounding them. One a pilot and the other an operator, the two women work together and establish a deep trust that is soon tested as the pilot is taken as a prisoner of war. Narrated by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell, this historical fiction shimmers with gusto as the performers breathe life into small-town and aristocratic characters alike. This coming-of-age tale is a great reminder of the importance of female bonds against all odds.

Band of Brothers

Take a firsthand look at the infantry tasked with some of the most dangerous assignments of WWII with Band of Brothers. Historian and renowned writer Stephen E. Ambrose, who profiled many presidents—including Eisenhower and Nixon—tells the true story of these men with astonishing and heart-rending detail. Inspiring an HBO series, multiple films, and various other media adaptations, this story has had a significant impact on how society views the tragic events of World War II. Providing a fresh take on an honored story, this audiobook allows the listener to step in line next to these humble men that continually risked their lives for the good of the world.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Named one of the Best Voices of the Century by AudioFile Magazine, narrator Grover Gardner uses his enthralling voice to tell the story of the Nazi party’s rise to power. A must-listen for inquisitive minds, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is one of the most detailed looks at how evil can take over the world. Author, war correspondent, and journalist William L. Shirer knows that in order to avoid repeating history, we must never forget our past. Through detailed analyzation of firsthand accounts, Nazi documents, and various records, Shirier weaves together an intimate non-fiction look at the world’s most dangerous man’s rise to power and the steps that allowed him to commit mass genocide against the Jews.

With the Old Breed

In this listen, a star-studded list of performers bring about a new listening experience for a story that has captivated the world. With the Old Breed is a firsthand account of E.B. Sledge’s survival in two of the most dangerous battles in the Pacific Ocean. History enthusiasts and veterans alike will appreciate this harrowing dive into one man’s journey into the depths of hell and what it took to escape. If you need another reason to tune in, beloved actor Tom Hanks uses his introduction to express gratitude for all who have come together to tell this important part of our nation's history.

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  1. The 20 Best Books about WWII History

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COMMENTS

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