Best Books-Understanding WWII

In looking at the bookshelves of other WWII buffs I see that not all of us come at the war from the same direction. I'd be interested in hearing what others here consider the best books written on the war from the standpoint the war's causes and outcomes.

As far as origins there's The Origins of the Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor extremely controversial when it came out but has stood the test of time. I don't have much on the outcomes someone else can help on that hopefully.

jmnlman
Strategist's Personal Library
http://jmnlman.blogspot.com/

For one aspect of the outcomes in Japan especially try John W. Dower's excellent Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Why The Allies Won is very good.

I discovered "Total War, Causes and Courses of the Second World War" (by Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint) almost by accident, but I found their treatment of these isssues quite interesting. It holds a welcome place next to Weinberg's "A World at Arms." Overy's 'Why the Allies Won" is also good.

Robert A. Mosher

I'm reading Churchill's The gathering Storm where he saw what was coming, and the appeasers held sway until Britain almost disintegrated. The hatreds and instabilities now in the world, coupled with rogue possession of fissionable materials (as in Russia) are causing me to fear for our future. I can't read the history of WWII objectively because of the holocaust, being a secular jew . A lot of assimilated jews in Germany and France were dragged from their false security and gassed. So Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden terrify me. my main concern right now is how to move our government toward world peace and stability, and the protection of human rights. It seems the individual citizen can do very little. i think precipitous withdrawal from Iraq will exacerbate the civil unrest and criminal activity. I think we need an enormous UN army to police the world. but I don't see it happening.

Being that I just found LibraryThing, I still have to stock my "online library catalog", but comparing my collection with others in this group, I see what you mean about the differences in war literature! I have to agree that we all are coming from different perspectives.

I still have to read alot of my WWII books (time is not on my side with my passion for reading), still have to list more books here and also have many more I want to purchase to fill it in, so my suggestions may be different one month from now!

My interest in WWII is limited to the German experience. That being said, it is my opinion that "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by Shirer and Adolf Hitler (two volume set) by Toland is the best books from this viewpoint. I'm sure there are more out there, but I still have yet to find them!

Welcome to LT.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich needs to be taken with a grain of salt at some times. A lot of material has come out since its publication. Particularly out of Eastern Europe. Recently the two-volume biography of Hitler put out by Ian Kershaw has managed to supersede just about everything in English available.

jmnlman -

Thank you for the suggestion in reading! If anyone has any other suggestions to read regarding my interests, I would greatly appreciate it. I don't really have anyone to network with regarding this (which is why I'm glad I found this site), so my reading is basically I-happen-to-find-it-and-it-falls-into-my-hands.

There's some good suggestions; let me add one I find very useful A War to Be Won by Murray & Millett.

Len Deighton's "Blood, Tears and Folly" is a good overview of the causes and courses of the first couple of years of the war. It has a distinct British slant, but not totally over the top. Deighton wrties well too, which makes for enjoyable reading rather than a heavy slog.

{edit: get the title right, doofus}

Kimfdim, try Hitler by Joachim Fest. It's an excellent biography, possibly definitive, despite the fact that it's a bit dated, I still think it's better than Kershaw in a number of ways, in the writing in particular.

I do like as an overview of the war John Keegan's The Second World War. I know many think he's overrated as a military historian, but few can match his clarity and breadth of knowledge.

12:Welcome to the group. My personal irritation with John Keegan's The Second World War is that instead of laying out all the campaigns he is most interested in showing a problem then the counter. I'd agree the case studies are very good with excellent research but he seems to be stuck on his model a little too much.

Try 'Appeasement and Rearmament' by James P. Levy for a sympathetic treatment of the near-insoluble dilemmas faced by much maligned British pre-war leader Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain's role in re-arming Britain while avoiding war until there was no choice should be more inspiration than anything else. Thanks to Chamberlain, Britain was united and ready when war came - in fact, better prepared than Hitler. And 70 years later, who can doubt that the Allies fought only because they had to, against a brutal maniac. This also goes a long way to explaining why they won - their conviction of being in the right.

As to appeasement, without the support of their Empire - including Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Australia; Britain would almost certainly have lost. And (like the Americans), none of the above was willling to fight to save Czechoslovakia in 1938.

The Americans, now so fond of vilifying Chamberlain, stood aside until Hitler declared war on them. With the exception of the vital Lend-Lease program, they were not willing to get involved.

There was an excellent democratic case for uniting German-speaking populations with their fellows in adjacent borders. There were too many Germans in the Sudetenland for it to remain Czech - as confirmed by the Czechs themselves after the war, when they expelled 1 million Germans from the Sudetenland. Chamberlain saw no point in repeating World War I for a country most Britons had never heard of. The integrity of the Czech state wasn't worth it. Indeed, today's Czechs and Slovaks agree, having broken the little country up voluntarily.

While obviously not the only possible viewpoint, Levy's is a much needed reassessment of appeasement, which he convincingly describes as the only rational or viable policy at the time - postwar Monday morning quarterbacking notwithstanding.

It's easy to criticise Chamberlain's failings when we all know how it turned out in the end. He deserves a better press.

Just my 2c.

Thanks for inviting me to join the group, I appreciate it.

As for Keegan, I wonder if that model and tendency might be from his time teaching at Sandhurst. At staff colleges, they are probably most interested in laying out the problem, and rather than just laying out the solution as it was carried out at the time, they look at different options for solving that problem or a similar one. Thus, the problem I think would be more important for study than the actual particular historical solution. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I've noticed that tendency in Liddell Hart as well, and in a whole host of other military historians with direct military experience.

What about WW1? Would Hitler suceeded in rebuilding the German military & uniting the German people without the terms of the treaty of Versailles? Some historians believe that WW1 & WW2 are both phases of the same war. I tend to believe that, also. You might want to start with an overview of the 1st half of the 20th century.

14:interesting I'll have to put that on my books to watch out for list.

15:That's a good point never really thought about it that way.

For outcomes, I would nominate Richard Overy's Why the Allies Won the War."

What do you mean by 'outcomes'? I found Overy's book to be greatly lacking, as well as having a plethora of incorrect information in it, including contradictory statements.

"Outcomes", just repeating part of the query of the original post. Seems to me he meant why battles, campaigns, wars, etc. ended as they did. Regarding Overy, could you be a little more specific?

Just off the top of my head: Model commands the 9th Panzer Army during Kursk, two Panzer Divisions at Kursk had around 1,000 tanks amongst them, the T-34 has a 2 man crew, etc. Also contradicts himself, at one point claiming the allies would face a "large army in waiting, seasoned with men battle-hardened from the fearful context in Russia" 16 pages later he recounts that German forces in the West were a shell of their former selves, fitted out with ear and stomach formations and forcefully removed eastern European and central Asian contingents, etc.

Sorry about the above, posted it in the wrong 'thread.'

But do these go to the substance of his argument? My recollection was that his book was well received critically.

No, constant contradictions and outright omissions make this book very much lacking in a lot of what it has to offer. And I can only comment on the Eastern Front aspect of the book. There were some interesting ideas but sadly I have little faith that they were put in a correct context after finding so much sloppy research and reaching conclusions/ideas.

Can you suggest a book that's better (more accurate) than the Overy book? What do you think of the two Rick Atkinson books?

You'll have to be more specific in what you want to be recommended. WWII is quite a general topic and I 'specialize' in the Eastern Front. I have heard a lot of good things about Atkinson and I have ordered his first book, from the current trilogy. I can't offer a lot of criticism because I know close to nothing in regards to the Western Allies and their effort. You can try The Germans in Normandy by Richard Hargreaves, I know the author. His research is pretty good but he is more of a 'pop' historian.

Neither Atkinson or Hargreaves (and _especially_ not the latter) are much use in the context of this thread.

Wages of Destruction is an exceptional look at the causes and courses of WWII from the German POV.

Perhaps not in understanding WWII but Hargreaves gives a good account of Normandy, which is what I would recommend his book for. I also have the opportunity to proof read his next book, which will be on the German invasion of Poland, and he's done an outstanding job with it so he's definitely an author I would recommend for those interested in the topics he covers and will cover in the future.

I can recommend Invasion! They're Coming by Paul Carell. It concerns D-Day and eighty days afterward from the German point of view.

>14 Somerled: thanks for the pointer to this book - I will pick it up - it sounds like an interesting read .

I have been studying WW II for over forty years and must comment that one of the most incisive and revealing works that I have read is 'With Prejudice; the Memoirs of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder' (1966). Air Marshal Tedder commanded all Allied Air assets in the Mediterranean Theatre, and later was Deputy Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower. I recommend it to you.

'The World War II Bookshelf (2004) by James F. Dunnigan lists many works which are aimed at historians and researchers but also has many works suitable for the average military history reader, some of which are:

'THE SECOND WORLD WAR' by Winston L. S. Churchill, is a six volume work which won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

'WHY THE ALLIES WON' by Richard Overy reveals how every missed opportunity and mistake by the Allies was more than matched by even worse errors by the Axis Powers, such that in the end the sheer weight and power of the Allies, and fewer and less serious errors, resulted in victory. It also discusses the striking conclusion that if Hitler had not been misdirecting the war, the Germans would probably have won.

'WAR IN THE SHADOWS' by Robert B. Asprey details the 'Fifth Column' activities which made a significant contribution to Allied victory.

'THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY' by John Keegan is a slim volume which "delivers a masterful discussion of what is right, and what is wrong, about many of the most famous books on the subject of World War II."

'CRUSADE IN EUROPE' by Dwight D. Eisenhower is the inside story of the battle to keep the Allies together until the victory was won.

'DECEPTION IN WORLD WAR II' by Charles Cruikshank at last reveals most of the techniques used in the war which have been Classified until recently, including the biggest one of all; Where the Invasion of France would take place.

'THE WIZARD WAR' by R. V. Jones about the Electronic War and the development of Radars, machine-aided decryption and much else. It mentions again that for a while the Allies had a Radar that could detect German submarines on the surface, but the Germans were unaware that they had been detected until the attacking Allied aircraft were diving on them.

'WAR AS I KNEW IT' by Gen. G. S. Patton. Not an autobiography but rather a selection from the General's Journal during the war.

'WHEN TITANS CLASHED; HOW THE RED ARMY STOPPED HITLER' by D. M. Glantz and J. M. House.

'THE LAST 100 DAYS' (Europe) by John Toland; much less attention is paid to how a war ends than how it begins, but the end of the war is only the prologue for the new post-war world.


The author of 'THE WORLD WAR II BOOKSHELF' recommends the following works ahead of the remaining forty-five titles:

'THE AMERICAN SOLDIER' by S. A. Stouffer reveals what kept the soldiers fighting, even through a winter campaign, when only fifteen per-cent of the army actually engaged in offensive operations under enemy fire.

'THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY' reveals the effectiveness of strategic versus tactical offensive operations, and the importance of air-superiority (control of airspace in the battle area) as the lynch-pin to victory.

'SOVIET CASUALTIES AND COMBAT LOSSES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'; The U.S.A. lost a total of 440,000 lives in WWII. The Soviet Union lost 25,000,000. And we think that we won the war! The western front in 1944/45 was, by Russian standards, a side show.

'REPORTING WORLD WAR II' brings back the feel of the participants, who, at that time, were still wondering how it was all going to work out.

'THE UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II' (Gov. Printing Office) is a hidden gem of military history. How the smallest and least prepared army among the allies created a large force capable of defeating the German and Japanese armies after only about two years.

There are many other titles in the list which are well worth obtaining, but I would like to recommend here my most admired war memoir of this period; 'THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIER' by Guy Sajer, a kid from Alsace who was drafted into the German army, fought in Russia, and survived. This is the one book I would recommend to any young man considering an Army career.

34:What a curious list. The Asprey although pretty good considering when it was published is mostly discussing Vietnam not the second world war. I've already made my views clear on "why" so I won't rehash them. I do find it funny that in a list of recommendations is listed another book which consists of a list of recommendations. That book including David Irving's BS. Nice to see the Glantz.