World War Two Must-Read Books
Most of us know the broad outlines of the stories of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who beat back the Axis powers in World War Two. But well worth our time are the stories of resistance fighters, deep cover spies, Jewish men and women, world leaders, and Americans at home who persisted under unbelievably hard circumstances.
Here, I've listed (my favorites first!) books that have taught me the most and shaped my understanding of the war years. Larson's In the Garden of the Beasts is a mind-blowing true account of the scholarly midwestern professor who was recruited to serve as U. S. Ambassador to Germany in the late 30's. While he desperately tries to convince the State Department that the intensifying German persecution of the Jews is growing more dangerous, his daughter is happily embarking on romantic liaisons with both Nazi SS-officers and Soviet spies. And it's all true. When Paris Went Dark paints a detailed, heartbreaking portrait of Paris when the Nazi veil fell over the City of Light. On the Run in Nazi Berlin is the memoir by the grandfather of one of my daughter's dearest friends. How grateful I am that Bert Lewyn survived five years in hiding, right under the Nazis’ noses, then came to the United States after the war to create a beautiful family whom we are privileged to know and love. Happy reading!
Fiction
Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky
Life after Life - Kate Atkinson
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
The Alice Network - Kate Quinn
The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell
Winds of War/War and Remembrance - Herman Wouk
The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk
Once We Were Brothers - Ronald Balson
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
No Quiet Water - Shirley Miller Kamada
Those Who Save Us - Jenna Blum
Beneath a Scarlet Sky - Mark Sullivan
The Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly
Women of the Castle - Jessica Shattuck
The Paris Architect - Charles Belfoure
Daughter of the Reich - Louise Fein
Cradles of the Reich - Jennifer Coburn
22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson
After the Party - Cressida Connolly
The Silent Woman - Terry Lynn Thomas
Finding Rebecca - Eoin Dempsey
The Paris Library - Janet Skeslien Charles
We Were the Lucky Ones - Georgia Hunter
White Rose Black Forest - Eoin Dempsey
The Baker’s Secret - Stephen P. Kiernan
non-fiction
pre-war and life under occupation
In the Garden of the Beasts - Erik Larson
When Paris Went Dark - Ronald Rosbottom
On the Run in Nazi Berlin - Bert Lewyn
Survival in Auschwitz (If This is a Man) - Primo Levi
Life in a Jar : The Irena Sandler Project - Jack Mayer
A Train in Winter (The Resistance Quartet) - Caroline Moorehead
Sisters in Resistance - Tilar Mazzeo
Irina’s Children - Tilar Mazzeo
A Bookshop in Berlin - Francois Frenkel
Escape from Paris - Stephen Harding
The Escape Line - Megan Koreman
Allied soldiers at war
The Last Escape - Nichols & Rennell
Prisoners of the Castle - Ben McIntyre
Band of Brothers - Stephen Ambrose
The Story of World War Two - Donald Miller
Facing the Mountain - Daniel James Brown
Inferno: The World at War 1939-45 - Max Hastings
The Spy Game
Avenue of Spies - Alex Kershaw
A Woman of No Importance - Sonia Purnell
A Guest of the Reich - Peter Finn
The Last Goodnight - Howard Blum
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War - Lynne Olson
Code Name: Lise - Larry Loftis
The Eighth Air Force
Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe - Robert Matzen
Jimmy Stewart, Bomber Pilot - Starr Smith
Masters of the Air - Donald Miller
A Wing and a Prayer - Harry Crosby
Bomber Bases of WWII: 3rd Air Division, 8th Air Force USAAF 1942-45 - Martin Bowman
Jimmy Stewart: a biography Marc Eliot
Flying Fortress - Edward Jablonski
Leaders and the Home Front
The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson
An American Family in World War Two - O'Connell & Minker
