Reading World War II

 I’ll bet everyone who has an interest in WWII has their own reading list.  Me too. But I am deliberately not a big collector of this genre. I have about 85 books on the major events, the journalism, memoirs, and also novels in which the war plays a pivotal role.

My primary interest though, is how Britain withstood the onslaught of Hitler’s attacks, and in particular how England, Churchill, and the English people stood up.  I mean Stood Up, when the odds were so stacked against them that Roosevelt initially dragged his feet on aid, fully expecting the Brits to collapse by the end of 1940. However, it isn’t really possible to read about WWII without considering the ultimately massive, U.S. contribution.

This essay is on a small handful of books primarily about the European theater, but with one significant exception, Hiroshima (1940), by John Hersey. This slim book is considered by some the best piece of journalism of the 20^th Century. It views the immediate aftermath of the bomb from the perspective of several of the city’s surviving residents.  Sticking with journalists, and turning to Europe, William Shirer’s Berlin Diary is an inside look at Hitler and Germany between 1939-1941. When Shirer learned he was being watched, he left Berlin, with his hidden notes safely undiscovered by the Gestapo. Among the hundreds of correspondents covering the war, Ernie Pyle is unforgettable for his columns from the trenches written in a style for everyman, Ernie’s War – The Best of Ernie Pyle’s WWII Dispatches (1986), edited by David Nichols. After spending most of the war on or near the front lines of Europe he opted to go to the Pacific and cover that conflict. It did not go well. During a battle for Okinawa in 1945 he raised his head to look around. His loss caused shock and mourning among his followers at home.  

Surely a standout book of history about the beginning of the war, Britain’s early struggles and Winston Churchill is the third volume of William Manchester’s magnificent biography of Churchill, The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm. (2012) by William Manchester and Paul Reid.  I have never read a 1,000-page book where I didn’t want it to end. I think it is time to read it again.  Hitler’s planned invasion of England was profiled in Operation Sea Lion (2014) by Leo McKinstry. But the real value of this book is the fascinating home-brewed barriers the English people prepared for the invasion which never happened, replete with planning fire on the ocean as the Nazis approached the shores of England across the Channel.

As early as 1940, even while England’s very existence was threatened, the government suggested its citizens keep a diary of their experiences during the war. One in particular rises to the top, Nella Last’s War (1981), edited by Broad and Fleming. A humble housewife tells her experience living in Barrow-in-Furness, near a shipyard, of blasted windows, shortages of food, fear for her family, making do with little, and vain attempts to live a near-normal life. Of course, the most famous personal diary needs no introduction, that of Anne Frank, reprinted who knows how many times and read even by school children, Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl.

As for the United States contribution I can think of nothing better than Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn (2003), The Day of Battle (2007), and The Guns at Last Light (2013). From the first landing on the shores of North Africa with an army so green soldiers are literally pissing in their pants in fear, through the bloody battles of Sicily and Italy, to the D-Day invasion and ultimately the collapse of the Nazi regime, they are masterfully written.

There are many others worth your time. So, to finish, I will mention five more good reads as the events occurred chronologically:

-  Miracle of Dunkirk (1982), Walter Lord. The story of an incredible escape of 300,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers.

-  Battle of the Atlantic (2016), Johnathan Dimbleby. Hitler’s attempts to sink American aid with his submarine wolfpacks and starve England.

-  The Longest Day (1959), Cornelius Ryan. The D-Day Invasion, a classic.

-  A Bridge too Far (1974), Cornelius Ryan. The thoroughly botched attack on Arnhem, Holland planned by Field Marshall Montgomery, and resisted by Eisenhower.

-  Dresden, February 13, 1945 (2004), Frederick Taylor. The incredible destruction of a beautiful city by allied bombing.  The value of those day and night raids is still debated today.