World War II Books

Normandy and Beyond

• Six Armies at Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris – June,6-August, 5, 1944, John Keegan
• The Dead and Those About to Die; D-Day – The Big Red One at Omaha Beach, John C. McManus
• Omaha Beach, Joseph Balkoski (Note: 29th Infantry Division)
• The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944-The American War from the Normandy Beaches to Falaise, John C. McManus
• Closing with the Enemy; How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945, Michael D. Doubler
• A Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagles Nest, Stephen E. Ambrose
• Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler, Bruce Henderson
• Brave Men, Ernie Pyle, Introduction by G. Kurt Piehler
• Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment’s Bloody War from D-Day to VE-Day, James Holland
• The Best Little Army in the World: The Canadians in Northwest Europe, 1944-1945, J.C. Granatstein
• September Hope; the American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus (Note: Operation Market Garden)
• The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24’s Over Germany 1944-1945, Stephen E. Ambrose
• The Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, Charles B. Mac Donald
• Alamo in the Ardennes, John C. Mc Manus
• Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II – From the Battle of the Bulge to the Rhine, Charles B. Mac Donald
• Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy and a Collision of Lives in World War II, Adam Makos
• Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor
• Richard Eager: A Pilot’s Story from Tennessee Eagle Scout to General Montgomery’s Flying Fortress

The Eastern Front

• Panzer Ace: The Memoirs of an Iron Cross Panzer Commander from Barbarossa to Normandy, Richard Freiherr von Rosen
• Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945, Catherine Merridale
• Barbarossa Through German Eyes: The Biggest Invasion in History, Jonathan Trigg
• Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
• The Unwomanly Face of War, Svetlana Alexievich (Note: Soviet Female Snipers)
• The Forgotten Soldier: The Classic WWII Auto-Biography, Guy Sajer (Note: German Soldier)
• War on the Eastern Front: The German Soldier in Russia, 1941-1945, James Lucas
• Death of the Wehrmacht: the German Campaigns of 1942, Robert M. Citino
• Armor and Blood; the Battle of Kursk, Dennis Showalter (Note: July/Aug, 1943)
• Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945, Max Hastings

The Pacific Theater

• The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, Edited by Daniel Marston
• Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, Meiron and Susie Harries
• The Defense and Fall of Singapore, Brian P. Farrell
• Fire and Fortitude: The U.S. Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943, John C. Mc Manus
• Touched with Fire: The Land War in the Pacific, Eric Bergerud
• A Bastard of a Place: The Australians in Papua, Peter Brune (Note: New Guinea)
• Helmet for My Pillow: From Paris Island to the Pacific, Robert Leckie
• The Battle of Midway: The Naval Institute’s Guide to the U.S. Navy’s Greatest Victory, Edited by Thomas C. Hone
• Race of Aces: WWII’s Elite Airmen and the Epic Battle to be Masters of the Sky, John R. Bruning
• The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan, James M. Scott
• Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945, Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio
• The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific 1944-1945, James D. Hornfischer
• Burma ’44: The Battle that Turned Britain’s War in the East, James Holland
• The Last Lieutenant: A Foxhole View of the Epic Battle of Iwo Jima, John C. Shively
• With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, E.B. Sledge
• Into the Rising Sun: World War II’s Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat, Patrick K. O’Donnell
• Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila, James M. Scott
• Retribution: The Battle for Japan 1944-1945, Max Hastings
• The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, A Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell
• Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Fire Bombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, James M. Scott

The Holocaust

• Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
• The Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers, Guenter Lewy
• Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Christopher Browning
• I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years, Victor Klemperer, Translated by Martin Chalmers
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (Note: First Published in 1947)
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• The Nuremberg Trial, Ann and John Tusa
• For “Deep Dives”/In-Depth Research
• Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945, Richard Overy
• The Allure of Battle, Cathal Nolan (Note: Covers many historical periods; excellent discussion of WWII strategy and operational campaigns)
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William Shirer (Note: First Published in 1961, 1,280 pages)
• The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Adam Tooze
• Hitler’s Generals, Edited by Correlli Barnett
• Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany’s Winter Campaign, 1941-1942, David Stahel
• Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44, Robert Forczyk
• A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge, Charles B. MacDonald
• Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941, Mark R. Peattie
• Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, Richard B. Frank
• Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, James D. Hornfischer
• The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, Edited by Mark R. Peattie
• Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, July, 1937-May, 1942, Richard B. Frank