What is your favourite WW2 book?

Just asking to see what people here have been reading.so whats your favourite WW2 book?

 

so far Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. Great book

 

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

I must have read it over 20 times by now...

 

It really depends what my mood is, and what aspect of WWII I'm interested in a given time. I can give you a list of "must have if I'm on a desert island" books:

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors - James D. Hornfischer
Day Of Infamy - Walter Lord
Incredible Victory - Walter Lord
Battleship at War - Ivan Musicant
The Big E (The Story of the USS Enterprise) - Edward P. Stafford and Arthur W. Radford
The Longest Day - Cornelius Ryan
A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan
The Last Battle - Cornelius Ryan
Reach For The Sky - Paul Brickhill
Ragged Rugged Warriors - Martin Cadin
Samauri - Saburo Sakai & Martin Cadin
Fly For Your Life - Larry Forrester
Thunderbolt - Robert Johnson
Nine Lives - Alan Deere
Tumult in the Clouds - James Goodson
To Fly and Fight - Bud Anderson
Foxes of the Desert - Paul Karl Schmidt aka Paul Carell
Invasion! - Paul Karl Schmidt aka Paul Carell

And I could go on. Essentially, I will have to be shipwrecked with my library.

 

Wow, you and I have almost the same reading list. Amazing! Bud Anderson's book is a largely unknown gem, I'm lucky enough to have a copy signed by both him and Yeager. Battleship at War is also a classic, as is most of your list. Well done.

I would add Shattered Sword as the definitive work on Midway.

 

I'm fortunate enough to have met Anderson and Yeager, and have had all my respective books signed by them. They didn't live that far away from where I used to live.

 

Company Commander by Charles B. MacDonald

I still have the original Bantam War Books paperback edition that I bought as a teen in the late 70s. I have reread it countless times over the years. I am actually rereading it now after a several year absence. Like others, I have many close runners-up, and tend to favor first person accounts (i.e. Forgotten Soldier) or anecdotal histories (i.e. A Bridge Too Far).

 

The First Team, Lundstrom (both books)
Shattered Sword, Parshall
The Battle of Kursk, Glantz

Basically, anything with new info

 

To War On a Stringbag

Guadalcanal

The Divine Wind

A Bridge Too Far

The Longest Day

Samurai

 

A Bridge Too Far was my favorite but since I got Island of Fire by Jason Mark, well-being Eastern Front and Stalingrad and all-well you know why its my favorite now ;-))

 

Armored Thunderbolt by Stephan Zaloga.

 

A Bridge Too Far
Foxes of the Desert
The Last Battle
Thunderbolt

 

Seven Roads to Hell, by Donald Burgett. Nothing has stayed with me more than the thought of being tossed from a foxhole multiple times because of tank shells hitting nearby. Talk about serious shockwave....an intense read.

Berlin, 1945 by Antony Beevor is a CLOSE second, since the city of Berlin is quite dear to me and that book is outstanding.

 

I am also reading this now as we speak. Funny, I have had the book for years, and had started it a few times, but could never get into it. This time, I cannot put it down. I gues no book should be read before its time. I also bought the just released mini-series on DVD starring Sam Elliot. I am only watching as far as I have read the novel so far, and already come to realize that the book is better. Every vinette in the book could make a wonderful scene in a movie, if only the scriptwriters would have remained true to the book.

Greg C.

 

Are you thinking of The Great Game? This is what the shadowy struggle between Britain and Russia in the Middle east was called.

 

Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' is my favourite war book. It is also my favourite Organisation Behaviour book, Marketing text book, and certainly trumps Dale Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' as a life skills book.

Michael