World War 2 stories

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World War 2 stories

12wonderY
sep 17, 2014, 8:00 am

War appears to be a rich mine for the stories we tell. I find myself drawn to multiple types of books concerning World War 2, both fiction and non-fiction. I've got 41 books tagged WW2 at present. That represents only what I personally own and what I've read since joining LT.

I'd like to use this thread to talk about all of the categories no matter how recent their publication. It's interesting that even today's fiction about those times draws one back to the sensibilities of those times.

Researching how to start categorizing, I found a couple of wikipedia pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction_based_on_World_War_II

but neither teases them out the way I want.

-Action in the trenches
-Resistance
-War work at home
-The holocaust, victims, perpetrators and defenders
-Espionage

What else?

22wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 17, 2014, 8:42 am

In my own collection, the earliest publication I own is The Nazi Primer; Offical Handbook for Schooling the Hitler Youth which I found at a rummage sale. I haven't read it, but I have a collection of books about the perpetration of Evil, which I've been studying for a couple of decades.

Several more books I've read have been about the sociological phenomenon of going along with the crowd, or bucking it.
To that end, I've read
What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders-An Intimate History of Damage and Denial

as well as

Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage

i own, but haven't yet read
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There

By the way, Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times includes those Axis officials who jeopardized their own lives and positions; like a border official who continued to write passes for refugees counter to orders and policy.

3SylviaC
sep 17, 2014, 10:27 am

I have 55 books tagged World War II, a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I'm pretty sure there are others that haven't been tagged, and I haven't read all of the ones that have been tagged.

The list of categories could also include location: Europe, Africa, the East. And the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a notable category.

Later I'll put together a list of some of the books I've found most interesting.

42wonderY
sep 17, 2014, 11:33 am

We may as well be thorough here too, and include movies.

Here's someone's list of the 50 best:

http://www.mrqe.com/lists/ww2/cinemas-best-wwii-movies

5MrsLee
sep 17, 2014, 1:54 pm

I have 37 books tagged WWII. Off the top of my head, some of my favorite authors during that time and about the situation are:
Ernie Pyle who was a journalist covering the men in the trenches. Two of his best known works are Brave Men and Here is Your War. He died from a sniper's bullet in the last months of the war on the Asian front. His books are full of pathos, introspection, humor and bravery.

Winston S. Churchill, I have the six book series he wrote of the whole history of the war, from the causes to the responses and so forth, but I've only read the first three so far. He writes very well.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for introspection on evil, crowd responses and our individual response, as well as faith and its role, reading about his life and his writings is painful and good.

I'm thinking of a category which would include the propaganda movies, journalism and so forth.

6SilverKitty
sep 17, 2014, 4:35 pm

Not precisely a story but. . . Cooking on a Ration is the only WWII book in my collection. I think. I just went back in an tagged it. It's part cookbook for making the best of your ration points, and part pep talk.

My daughter has a Yankee Flier book by Al Avery. I don't remember which one. The first one she read lead to an interest in WWII planes, and a trip to a local air museum to watch old WWII planes fly.

72wonderY
sep 17, 2014, 4:37 pm

>6 SilverKitty: Oh cool! An unexpected category.

82wonderY
sep 18, 2014, 8:32 am

>5 MrsLee: I recently spent a bit of time reading parts of Five Came Back, which tells the stories of five Hollywood directors who enlisted during the war, and what their assignments were. I could be an old movie buff if I wasn't so involved with print media. I remember the old black and white movies on the television with great fondness.

A Bridge Too Far
The Guns of Navarone
The Bridge Over the River Kwai

9patchygirl
sep 18, 2014, 10:17 am

Perhaps categories for women and children during the war? Thanks for the thread. It's prompted me to add and tag some books.

A fairly recent book that I thought was particularly good is Janie Hampton's How the Girl Guides Won the War.

10nhlsecord
sep 18, 2014, 10:27 am

Another topic is life in and escape from prisoner of war camps. We had a number of them, I didn't list them, C read them and they were given away. There are several books about The Great Escape alone with versions by the British, Canadian, and American viewpoints - which, by the way, is another topic in itself.

Espionage is my favourite stuff:

A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson was great;
Camp X was about a spy training school in Ontario; and
The War Magician is a wonderful story about a master of illusion who helped make it hard for the German forces to find what they wanted to destroy.

112wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 18, 2014, 10:56 am

>9 patchygirl: Adding square brackets around the title makes it a link to the book's work page.

How the Girl Guides Won the War

Thanks for chiming in patchygirl. That's an excellent contribution. I'll have to look for it.

In that same theme, I've got a photo collection which was published during the war (1942) - Women for Defense. I wonder if that might have been meant as a propaganda tool, encouraging women to come out for the jobs.

>10 nhlsecord: I've been reading a few espionage books myself this year:

Agent Zigzag
Operation Mincemeat, both by Ben MacIntyre
and a recent novel, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

I am SO impressed with British war intelligence!

122wonderY
sep 18, 2014, 11:01 am

I think I have a slim volume The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill though it's not catalogued yet. Love the movie!

13alco261
sep 18, 2014, 11:43 am

If you are looking for WWII books with vivid/harrowing first person commentary I would recommend any of the following:

Black Sunday Ploesti - the low level bombing raid of the Romanian oil fields - 1 August 1943
Tumult in the Clouds - a fighter pilots autobiography
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors - the epic naval battle off Samar in 1944
At Dawn we Slept - December 7th 1941 Pearl Harbor
Fatal Voyage - the nightmare of the survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis

14patchygirl
Bewerkt: sep 19, 2014, 5:40 am

2wonderY - I'm sorry about the touchstones. I've tried to make them but they won't play:-)

I think the problem is that I'm reliant on my kindle fire to post at the moment. It's a whizzy little gizmo and I'm very glad to have it but it just doesn't seem to recognise the touchstone brackets.

15quartzite
sep 29, 2014, 1:08 am

I've got quite a few-- a number Helen Macinnes While Still We Live is a favorite HMS Ulysses among others by Alistair MacLean Requiem for a Wren and The Pied Piper by Neville Shute are asll in my 'tattered' collection.

16MarthaJeanne
Bewerkt: sep 29, 2014, 3:08 am

Requiem for a Wren

Yes, and many others by Shute as well. What Happened to the Corbetts is another I have a particular fondness for. It was actually written early in the war to warn about possible problems after air raids.

17MarthaJeanne
Bewerkt: sep 29, 2014, 3:21 am

I have a few about the British canals in WWII like
The boat Girls (fiction)
Idle Women (nonfiction) The women from 'the bank' who trained to keep the canal cargoes moving wore IW badges for Inland Waterways, but they were teased that it meant Idle Women.

I also have several on this list: https://www.librarything.com/tag/India,+WWII

(not unsurprising that I own all the books on this list: https://www.librarything.com/tag/Narrowboating,+WWII)

182wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 29, 2014, 9:57 am

I'm in the middle of Pied Piper right now.

19MarthaJeanne
Bewerkt: sep 29, 2014, 9:53 am

Don't both of you mean Pied Piper? It shows as the third choice if you don't include 'the'.

It seems to be a year since I last read it.

202wonderY
sep 29, 2014, 9:57 am

Yep! Corrected.

212wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 30, 2014, 8:13 am

I just saw an advertisement for a book coming out in December about a canine POW. Title is Judy A Dog in a Million by Damien Lewis, who specializes in war stories, and has 3 other dogs in war titles.

222wonderY
okt 23, 2014, 3:46 pm

I didn't like the movie version of The Eagle Has Landed. Smallish changes from the book, but having just read it, they niggled.

I've been plowing through London war notes, 1939-1945. They are extremely entertaining, but it's almost like living through the entire war. Whew! Love the English attitude of stoicism with humor. The chronicler was particularly talented in conveying these in weekly reports.

23SylviaC
okt 23, 2014, 6:48 pm

>22 2wonderY: I know what you mean about London War Notes. I had it out on inter-library loan for one week, so had to rush through it. I wished I could have spread it out more. I found the notes fascinating, because they were written so regularly over the course of the war. It was also interesting to notice some the effects of censorship - like not being able to mention the V-2 rockets until they had already been falling on London for two months.

24fuzzi
Bewerkt: nov 2, 2014, 7:43 am

Woo! I just discovered this thread, nice idea.

>8 2wonderY: I highly recommend two of my favorite "war" movies:

Run Silent, Run Deep
Sink the Bismarck!

I've not yet read the books upon which they are based, but the movies are great!

This month I am planning to finally read Unbroken:, which has been on my TBR/unknowned book list for about a year.

252wonderY
Bewerkt: dec 8, 2014, 9:18 am

Over the weekend, I watched Away All Boats. It was based on a novel which has a good review here:

"Kenneth Dodson poured a lifetime of seagoing experience into Away All Boats. Away All Boats is a story that will leave you feeling as tired as McDougal and the other men of the fictional U.S.S. Belinda. It's a strong story of teamwork, loyalty and people faced with challenges beyond human endurance. It's also a true picture of what life was like aboard a Navy attack transport. In fact, this book has long been required reading at the Naval Academy for it's accurate picture of amphibious warfare."

Great characters!

I'm also more into the meat of Countrymen. The first chapter explains the political climate of Denmark and spends time describing the main players at the national and international level. The rest of the book describes one extended family's escape to Sweden. What makes this story striking is that the rest of society did not hesitate to assist the Jews in any way possible, police included. Also, at least two of the four German political overseers, and possibly a third, disagreed with the Final Solution and gave a clear warning when it was scheduled to happen.

The Germans spoke because of humanitarian concerns. It's in diary entries and meeting notes.
The common Dane, even Jewish Danes, reacted more from a respect for the rule of law. They had much less knowledge of what would actually happen to deported Jews.

26fuzzi
dec 8, 2014, 6:53 pm

>25 2wonderY: Countrymen interests me, partly because my grandfather and his family were from Denmark. They came to the US through Ellis Island in the early 1900's.

27guido47
dec 9, 2014, 3:55 am

Just an observation. I have about 150 books I tagged WWII. Unfortunately my Santee (in Secret Santa) said he preferred Military History.
OK so far...
He had about 2000+ (on War in his Library) and probably a similar number in his Wish list.
Every time I thought of an interesting topic he had more specific/detailed books on the same topic.
He was difficult this year :-)

282wonderY
Bewerkt: dec 16, 2014, 10:10 am

I'm in the last few pages of Countrymen and the story is quite uplifting. There is adequate background material concerning the major players and the political climate.

The Nazi players are allowed to be complex men. One in particular, an assistant to Werner Best, Georg Duckwitz, was part of the internal party resistance movement, and he outright warned the Danes and the Jewish community of the planned raid in the days before its execution. I
The bulk of the book relies on the journals of a particular Jewish extended family, Doctor Meyer and his adult children and grandchildren kept good notes of their ordeal, so their part can be reconstructed and tied into the national picture. Diary entries of other people help to round out the picture, and later commentators are touched on in the last chapter and the epilogue.

The chapters are broken into the actual days of late September and the first week of October 1943.

We see the large picture and then zoom into the particulars. This pattern is followed throughout the book, and interspersed with photos of those days and sidebar information.

One particular Danish Nazi collaborator, nicknamed Gestapo-Juhl, stood out from even the Germans by his passionate pursuit of refugees. But he appears to have stood alone and frustrated, as even the German troops he worked with were reluctant actors.

The Danish police could not act in official ways, but there are multiple examples of their acts of resistance and personal aid and involvement.

College students from Copenhagen took off and made themselves available in the countryside and along the coast as couriers and aides. Multiple communities organized into task forces to house, feed, find boats and collect money to pay for the passages to Sweden. When boats and ships were ready for boarding, citizens biked and wheelbarrowed the children and old people to the loading points.

Those few hundred Jews who were deported were vigorously tracked and aided by the Danish government and were retrieved as soon as possible. There is a photo of white busses sent to the Polish camp to carry them back.

I get tears in my eyes. I'm amazed this isn't more well known.

Heres the wikipedia entry.

There is a made for TV movie done in the 1990s titled October '43 and a Disney film, Miracle at Midnight. My library has the latter and I've got it on order.

Researching the films, they are probably one and the same. Also, that reminded me that hospitals were an important early safe haven. Jews were taken in as patients under assumed names and then moved to coastal towns to board the boats.

29thorold
dec 16, 2014, 10:23 am

>17 MarthaJeanne:
I remember enjoying Emma Smith's books about working on the canals - Maidens' trip and the rest - years ago: I must have borrowed them from somewhere, I don't seem to have them any more.
On a similar theme, Railwaywomen by Helena Wojtczak is a great book about women working in the British railway industry, mainly (but not only) during the wars.

Angela Thirkell gets mentioned frequently in this group: there are four or five of her Barsetshire books that are set on the "home front" during the war (from Cheerfulness breaks in to Miss Bunting, plus a few that are set in the immediate post-war period). Evelyn Waugh's Put out more flags (I don't think the collision between his title and Thirkell's was an accident) is another mildly satirical account of rationing, evacuation, etc. If you're ready to be seriously depressed, there's also Joyce Cary's Charley is my darling, a far from uplifting novel about a bored evacuee who becomes a juvenile delinquent.

30aviddiva
dec 16, 2014, 11:19 am

I have a fondness for stories about protagonists whose lives are changed by chance encounters in air raid shelters during the blitz. Not an uncommon plot device. My favorites include The Wood and the Trees by Mary Elgin (definitely tattered!), Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.

I read an interesting piece of non-fiction recently , The Nazi Officer's Wife, about a Jewish woman who was a "u-boat" -- living openly in Germany during the war by passing as a non-Jew. She kept extensive records of her experience and this book is based on those. I read it for a book club, and didn't expect to enjoy it, but I did.

31MDGentleReader
Bewerkt: dec 18, 2014, 5:27 pm

I thought I had posted here, but apparently not. SOme of these I just went through my collection and found books with the correct subject.
Henrietta's War, Henrietta Sees It Through, and Mrs. Tim Carries On are favorites of mine, period (i.e. not just favorite WWII stories).
Blitzcat was good, I found it in the YA section of my library. Stretches believeability a little bit all the places the cat was during the Blitz, but compelling reading
Frontline 1940 describes nursing during in London during the blitz.
After a Famous Victory describes nursing, you guessed it, after a famous Allied victory in WWII.
Red Sky At Morning
La's orchestra saves the world
Assignment in Brittany
The Eye of the Needle
The Key to Rebecca
Where eagles dare
THe Guns of Navarone
The Eagle Has Landed
Tales of the South Pacific
Mrs. Miniver
The Chalet School At War
The Chalet School Goes to it
Miss Dimple suspects : a mystery, Miss Dimple Disappears, etc.
Saplings
Princess Elizabeth's spy : a Maggie Hope mystery
My Friend Muriel a favorite quote: "If you are eccentric enough to want a hobby that no one else has yet tried, try taking about five hundred alert and inquiring minds and setting them down in a wood in the middle of Buckinghamshire and give them a year or two to ferment. The results will astonish you."
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Conquerors I was actually not able to finish this. FDR was such a ruthless manipulator. Not the books fault, just my reaction.
The Chosen
The Cay

Books on TBR involving WWII:
Striking back : a Jewish commando's war against the Nazis (disclosure, I knew the author slightly, admired him very much before I heard about his war expreiences)
Operation Mincemeat
The Irregulars
Agent Zigzag
The sky is falling
Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot
Dear America: My Secret War

Long as this list is, I am pretty sure that it should be longer.

Fixed The Conquerors touchstone

322wonderY
Bewerkt: dec 17, 2014, 12:12 pm

Your touchstone for The Conquerors goes to the wrong book. I think I've found the correct title from what you said.

Other reviewers agree with your assessment (or Beschloss's portrayal) of FDR.

332wonderY
dec 23, 2014, 3:36 pm

I watched Miracle at Midnight. It was disappointing.
The story has been Disney-fied, which means that liberties have been taken with the original.

In real life, Werner Best argued against the Jewish raids to his German superiors and ordered the raiding troops to only knock on doors. They were not authorized to enter homes if no one answered the knock. The movie Best was a caricature of Nazi evil.

And in real life, there was a very minimal amount of violence, the movie portrayed many gunfights between German troops and resistance fighters. Also, while there were a few Jews who chose suicide, there were no incidents of the Jews shooting Germans during the raids.

The hospital scenes showed Danish staff discussing what to do. The beauty of the actuality was that everyone acted without having to speak about it - they just did what was necessary. I think the real quiet story was more powerfully dramatic than the movie portrayed.

342wonderY
dec 30, 2014, 9:34 am

The Secret of the Village Fool is a picture book I received from SantaThing. The Jews were being rounded up in Poland, and one family of four and two other youngsters were collected by the 'village fool' the odd man who everybody avoided. He and the father of the family dug a room behind his root cellar and under his cabin. He passed the necessities down through a small access hole in his floor. Eventually, a neighbor reported him and the Germans searched the house and root cellar, but did not find the entrance. He was taken for questioning and was gone several days. Thankfully, this happened at the end of the occupation and he was released himself and was able to return and help his adopted family back into the light of day.

There are photos of the root cellar and the family and their reunion with their rescuer decades later.

35fuzzi
dec 30, 2014, 9:08 pm

>34 2wonderY: sounds intriguing. :)

362wonderY
jan 5, 2015, 11:45 am

I returned London War Notes to the library. I ended skimming the last half of the book. The author lost her humor as the war dragged on. I certainly sympathize, but it was hard going, and kept getting harder.

I borrowed The Deceivers by Thaddeus Holt, and it's weight at 1300 or so pages made the car list on the way home. Sadly, though extremely comprehensive, it did not come alive. The book documents ALL espionage units, operations and agents of Britain and the US. It would be a useful sourcebook for writers.

37MDGentleReader
jan 5, 2015, 1:04 pm

>36 2wonderY: I have Good Evening Mrs. Craven, just couldn't get into it. Henrietta's war : news from the home front was the book I was looking for when I read Good Evening Mrs. Craven.

382wonderY
Bewerkt: jan 28, 2015, 2:31 pm

A holocaust resistance book worth mentioning is The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican by J. P. Gallagher. It's the true story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty's work in Rome, using his own and the church's resources to assist refugees. Gregory Peck played the monsignor in the movie based on the book, The Scarlet and the Black.

39Cynfelyn
jan 29, 2015, 7:12 pm

I've just finished The voyage of the Evelyn Hope by Gibson Cowan, a short (184 pp.) account of his and his partner's cruise through the French canals in August 1939, before being trapped in Marseilles on the outbreak of war between France and Germany, spending time on Corsica (French) and Sardinia (Italian) before being captured in the Straits of Messina on Italy's entry into the war in June 1940. Interned, but managing to cross into Yugoslavia on US visas, they got to Athens in good time for the Italian and German invasions of Greece. They left the mainland, and again, were in good time for the fall of Crete in May 1941. The last sentence refers to them swimming off the beach in the hope of reaching a boat to get to British-controlled Egypt.

As the Italian arresting officer put it, "A strange time to be sailing".

40MrsLee
jan 30, 2015, 11:35 am

The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher is not about the war time specifically, but since part of it took place during the war, it touches on it. Many of the chapters are about her crossings on the ocean between New York and France. Interesting reading. She is not explicit about a lot of things, but hints at some of the disdain she had for Nazi party members making the same voyage.

Another book she wrote during the war was How to Cook a Wolf. About living graciously on rationing and shortages.

412wonderY
apr 27, 2015, 1:56 pm

I recently watched The Monuments Men. George Clooney co-wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in the movie. Well, it was such a good ensemble cast, that starring really isn't the right word. Everyone's focus was on the story, and it was done with restraint and taste. It left the viewer wishing for more.

I may take a look at the book by Robert M. Edsel which was the main source of the material. I see there are several more titles that cover the story, such as Salt Mines and Castles.

42flusteredduck
apr 28, 2015, 12:57 am

I don't have my books tagged properly but some about WWII I remember are:

Fiction:
Curtain Up by Noel Streatfeild which appears to be Theater Shoes for US readers (British experiences) - written during the war
Karalta by Mary Grant Bruce (Pied Piper/Australian experiences) - written during the war
Peter & Co by Mary Grant Bruce (Australian experiences) - written during the war
The Home Front by Margaret Craven (US experiences) - written during the war
Strangers at the Farm School by Josephine Elder (British/Jewish experiences) - written during the war
Highland Twins at the Chalet School by Elinor Brent Dyer (British experiences) - written during the war
Lavender Laughs at the Chalet School by Elinor Brent Dyer (British experiences) - written during the war
Gay from China at the Chalet School by Elinor Brent Dyer (British experiences) - written during the war
When the Siren Wailed by Noel Streatfeild (Pied Piper/British experiences)
A Certain Courage by Gordon Cooper (Pied Piper/British experiences)
In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton (Pied Piper/British experiences)
Goodnight, Mister Tom by Michell Magorian (Pied Piper/British experiences)
The Devil in Vienna by Doris Orgel (European/Jewish experiences) - semi-autobiographical
War Nurse by Sue Reid (British/VAD experiences)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (US soldiers)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr (European/Jewish experiences) - semi-autobiographical
The Other Way Round by Judith Kerr (British/Jewish experiences) - semi-autobiographical
The Dragonfly Years by Mollie Hunter (British experiences)
The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier (European experiences)
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene (USA experiences)
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (British/Australian POW experiences in Singapore)

Non-Fiction:
White Coolies by Betty Jeffrey (women Australian POWs in Singapore)
The Diary of Anne Frank (no explanation necessary!)
Roses from of the Earth by Carol Ann Lee (biography of Anne Frank - seriously good read)
Dear Heart by Jenny Davis (British wife's letters to her POW husband)
Children with a Star by Deborah Dwork (Jewish children in Europe)
Sophie Scholl and the White Rose by Annette E. Dumbach (German resistance movement)

Okay - that's scary - didn't realise I owned so many books about the Second World War or that I could remember them so well! I have left out books that bridge the wars (like To Serve Them All My Days by R. E. Delderfield and The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell - the latter is particularly interesting though as one of the Mitford sisters was in love with Hitler and another involved with the British fascist leader while another was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War which was a precursor to WWII). Hope it helps - some don't come up as touchstones so have removed brackets on them to avoid confusion.

There are some good TV series too - Foyle's War which is British and an old and long running Australian series from my childhood called The Sullivans which was a somewhat romanticised version of what suburban Australia was like at the time.

I have to stop now - I keep thinking of books to add...

43fuzzi
Bewerkt: apr 28, 2015, 9:39 pm

>42 flusteredduck: I love The Silver Sword!

I'm currently reading HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean, and am enjoying it. It was written in 1955, so it qualifies as a TBSL. :)

442wonderY
Bewerkt: mei 5, 2015, 7:35 am

Since I've started listening to Edsel's The Monuments Men, I've been doing some research and find it touching that George Clooney bears such a striking resemblance to George L. Stout, who was the primary leader of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Allied Armies and the man he portrays in the film. Though, if the story had been filmed back in the day, Clark Gable would have been an even better match.

45fuzzi
mei 5, 2015, 8:08 am

>44 2wonderY: speaking of Clark Gable, I found a copy of Run Silent, Run Deep, and finished reading it early this morning. Yep, it's that kind of book.

Aside from the character names, and a few incidents, the movie is totally different from this book. Both are good, though.

Review coming later, I have to get back to work...

462wonderY
mei 17, 2015, 7:53 pm

Ordering old movies from the library using this reference list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films_1950%E2%80%931989

47fuzzi
mei 18, 2015, 7:08 am

>46 2wonderY: nice list. Bad Day at Black Rock is a good movie, I need to see it again...

482wonderY
mei 28, 2015, 8:26 am

Watched and enjoyed Go for Broke, about the 442nd Battalion of Japanese-American infantry action in Italy and France.

49BonnieJune54
mei 28, 2015, 9:48 am

>48 2wonderY: I saw that years ago. I remember liking it.

502wonderY
Bewerkt: jun 4, 2015, 12:35 pm

I watched Decision Before Dawn, and thought it was excellent. It was full of realistic details of character and culture. Oskar Werner's performance was particularly good. He portrayed a German POW who volunteered to be released back into Germany and collect information for the Allies.

Also decided I was finished with listening to Code Talker, the oral story of one of the surviving Navajo naval communications men, Chester Nez. It was just like sitting at his feet and hearing him tell his life story. I excused myself finally for a pee break, but I was glad to have listened to the bulk of it. He is certainly a hero and worthy of a respectful listen.

Oh, also watched 'Force of Arms' starring William Holden but I wasn't impressed with it.

51fuzzi
Bewerkt: jun 4, 2015, 2:34 pm

>50 2wonderY: I believe all the Code Talkers have passed on. :(

Since I read Run Silent, Run Deep, I have also read Sink the Bismarck!, which was good, but not in the same league. The movie is better, imo. Hmm, funny thing: I read African Queen, and felt the same way, that the movie was superior. Both were written by C.S. Forester.

At home I have two more WWII or thereabouts books to read, both sequels to Run Silent, Run Deep. One is Dust on the Sea, the other is Cold is the Sea. I also have another Alistair MacLean book waiting in the wings, When Eight Bells Toll. I think it takes place during the Cold War, though.

52alco261
sep 6, 2015, 11:46 pm

>51 fuzzi: When Eight Bells Toll is, as you noted, cold war - not WWII. Still, of all of the MacLean books, it remains my favorite.

532wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 18, 2015, 8:20 am

Too exhausted to read in the evenings lately, I've been slipping a movie into the machine and resting on the couch. Last evening I watched Jacob the Liar about life in the Warsaw ghetto. The movie implies that Polish Jews were sent to the camps late in the war. I'm too tired to look it up, but that's alright. If it's inaccurate, I'll give that to them in exchange for the good story.

Then put Life is Beautiful in, but I'd forgotten that I would have to actually watch and read the subtitles and gave it up as too much work.

PS: I see that the novel by Jurek Becker offers two endings and Hollywood offers a third to Jacob the Liar. And that the city is probably Lodz, not Warsaw.

542wonderY
sep 18, 2015, 10:42 am

Here's the Wikipedia list of Holocaust films:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films

552wonderY
okt 15, 2015, 8:25 am

Zero Night, published last year, is the story of a large POW escape of British officers from a camp in Germany. You'd think it would be fascinating reading. Sadly, it was in incompetent hands. Having recently read The Boys in the Boat, I kept thinking "Gosh, I wish Daniel James Brown had been the author."

None of the players ever came to life, though there was every opportunity. There was lots of description and detail. Though the book spelled out the plan and execution well, I had a hard time remembering who was who and then even caring. Now that's pitiful.

Perhaps someone will use the material to make a movie.

56fuzzi
okt 15, 2015, 8:22 pm

No WWII reads here, recently.

572wonderY
dec 21, 2015, 1:09 pm

Recent nonfiction reading about WW2

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, which is so exhaustive and overwhelming, I had to pause half way through and read other things. It provides a surprisingly accessible look into Hitler's mind as well as the progression of the Reich's "solution."

Some primary source readings for middle school children
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
and
Rescuing the Danish Jews, which has a good bibliography.

And I finally purchased my own copy of the film Shooting the Past, which contains a holocaust story, don't know if it's fictional or not.

582wonderY
Bewerkt: jan 13, 2016, 7:39 am

I'm listening to When Books Went to War. It tells the story of civilian and government drives to get books into the hands of soldiers during World War 2. Books were seen as a major priority for morale, education, mental health, boredom abeyance, etc. etc. I've got a print copy on order, so I can take better notes. But a couple of the books that seem to stand out for the men were A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Chicken Every Sunday. Betty Smith, especially, responded wholeheartedly to the servicemen who wrote to her, continuing correspondences throughout the war.

Here's an NPR story on the book: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/10/369616513/wwii-by-the-books-the-pocket-size-editio...

592wonderY
jan 13, 2016, 12:58 pm

>42 flusteredduck: Several on your list have the notation (Pied Piper/British Experiences.) Does that refer to non-parents taking over the care of children? The only one I've read with that notation is Goodnight, Mr. Tom, and that would make sense.

I love that book. It was heart-rending.

60Marissa_Doyle
Bewerkt: jan 14, 2016, 12:13 pm

Between Silk and Cyanide is probably the best book on a WWII subject I've read. The author was a code-maker for the SOE, and more or less revolutionized code-making. Marvelously written.

612wonderY
jan 14, 2016, 7:45 am

>60 Marissa_Doyle: Oh! I'm adding it to my list of want to reads, which is very long at this season.

62MrsLee
jan 14, 2016, 10:52 am

>58 2wonderY: I love that information on Chicken Every Sunday, a delightful story. At least if it's the same version I have. Did not realize there would be so many books of that title until I did the touchstone!

632wonderY
Bewerkt: jan 14, 2016, 11:01 am

by Rosemary Taylor?

Another title on the list is A Sense of Humus. Ordering it from the library.

64Limelite
Bewerkt: aug 3, 2017, 12:31 pm

WWII appears in my tags 52 times. Even though I prefer books about WWI, WWII books seem to be overtaking them.

I especially like books about or on the extraordinary individuals, the so few so many owe so much to, who performed exceptional feats that contributed significantly to saving civilization. For instance, Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II and The Civilian Bomb Disposing Earl.

One of the subject areas I read a lot in is the Enigma/Bletchley Park accomplishments; right now I'm reading Gordon Welchman's autobiographical memoir about his work there, The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes. He was the "other Turing."

Favorite literary novel about WWII? Has to be Michael Ondaatje's, The English Patient. Two excellent and very recent WWII novels also make my Top List, All the Light We Cannot See (blind French girl) and the superb, Narrow Road to the Deep North (Aussie POWs, Burma RR). A distinctly different p.o.v. author (Malaysian) of two very fine WWII novels is Tan Twan Eng; of them, I prefer The Gift of Rain.

I don't find mid-century American author's WWII "personal" novels wear well with age. From Here to Eternity especially not. Herman Wouk and Norman Mailer should be read, I suppose (in one's teens), but I won't re-read them.

General nonfiction about WWII? These made the greatest impression on my much younger self:
Stilwell and the American Experience in China by Tuchman
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer
Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer (Hitler's architect)

(Apologies if this is a garbled post -- preview displaying oddly.)

65JerryMmm
jan 15, 2016, 4:30 am

>64 Limelite: I see you already have Cryptonomicon in your library, really liked that book.

66Limelite
jan 15, 2016, 11:00 pm

>65 JerryMmm:

Sadly, the word has been so over-used as to be meaningless now.

But, awesome!

672wonderY
jan 28, 2016, 12:40 pm

Blitzcat was published in 1989, but Robert Westall draws from his own memories of that time period. He was a teenager living in Northumberland during the war decade. He seems to be a much appreciated documenter of the homefront war. I'll have to look for some of his other titles.

I'm also listening to Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans. It is also placed during the war, mostly in St. Albans and its surrounds. Noah is an evacuee child who is entirely withdrawn and friendless. He is taken in by a struggling and dysfunctional family. The setting and time period are secondary to the emotional ties that develop.

68fuzzi
Bewerkt: jan 30, 2016, 10:29 am

Just finished a relatively short (for the author) WWII story about the German occupation of Greece, The Angry Hills by Leon Uris. It's a good 'un, with enough suspense and authenticity to keep the pages turning. It was based upon a journal written at the time, though the book was published in 1955. If you've never tried Uris due to the size of his novels, this could be a good introduction...it's under 200 pages.

I am culling it, so if anyone wants it, let me know.

69Limelite
jan 31, 2016, 5:43 pm

>68 fuzzi:

Would love to read that! You know, all over the Peloponnese, in the deep country, the stone railroad stations built by the German occupation forces are still in use and look, effectively, as good as new.

But the Greeks are not fond of Germans even to this day. I think only Bulgarians are despised by them more. More than Turks.

Happened to check out CD book, The Postmistress, an original sort of look at WWII from the rather twisted perspective of the MA village postmistress who stops delivering letters in WWII. Not a bad story, interrupted by periods of purple prose. Easy read, excellent characterization, and bits of historical wartime arcana. Uneven as to believability.

70fuzzi
jan 31, 2016, 8:36 pm

>69 Limelite: interesting trivia, thanks for sharing the info.

I sent you a message. :)

712wonderY
feb 1, 2016, 10:04 am

I'm to the 6th disc of Crooked Heart, and finding that yes, the sterility of the characters was a plot device. Not only is there heart expansion happening, but Evans is making her prose warmer and more elegant. I've ordered the print book so I can go back and savor it.

Read the first two entries in War Bonds. Cindy Hval has collected true love stories from the War generation and summarized them, with photos of the elderly couples today. Very nice idea.

722wonderY
feb 6, 2016, 1:09 pm

Just a note to say that War Bonds proved disappointing. The stories were all pretty much the same and I quit reading and returned to the library.

73Limelite
feb 6, 2016, 4:44 pm

Lime Spouse read The Civilian Bomb Disposing Earl: Jack Howard and Bomb Disposal in WWII by Kerin Freeman and liked it very much, reading bits out to me from time to time.

Nonfiction account of the man Churchill called, "The bravest man I know." The Earl of Suffolk, formally, was a wild man whose heroic acts on the Continent in the early days of WWII, perhaps exceeded his story as the nerveless disposer of German ordnance, and certainly contributed invaluable rewards to the Allies and probably assured their eventual victory, unknown at the time to them.

We both agreed. . .somebody outta make a movie!

74fuzzi
feb 6, 2016, 10:05 pm

>72 2wonderY: too bad.

752wonderY
feb 7, 2016, 8:45 am

>74 fuzzi: Not a problem. Plenty more to move on to.

>73 Limelite: That sounds like a fascinating book. Sadly, my library system doesn't have it yet.

But I've started reading Between Silk and Cyanide, the memoir of a British codemaker. He became a playwright after the war, so his use of the language is exceptional. It's a very thick book with lots of minutia, but I think worth reading entire. His humor is subtle and sharp.

76Limelite
feb 7, 2016, 2:41 pm

>75 2wonderY:

Ahh, I'd sent it to you but my son has dibs. Your library may not get it as I purchased it from Amazon.uk.

Here is info from the flyleaf that may be of help to you:

www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Pen and Sword, Ltd. is the publisher.

772wonderY
feb 8, 2016, 7:16 am

>76 Limelite: Yes, I saw that as I upgraded the author's page.

782wonderY
Bewerkt: mrt 3, 2016, 9:43 am

I mentioned in December beginning the very recent analysis of the holocaust in Black Earth. Before the new year, I listened to half the audio book (13 discs total). Taking a break from the relentless death statistics, I wasn't able to renew it. So I ordered it again and resumed listening this week. The first seven chapters analyze the connection between statelessness and death in the war. There is much on politics and the geography of the conflict. There is also great insight into Hitler's reasoning (if it can be called that.) It is a very dark, but dispassionate recounting of awful facts.

Chapter 8 summarizes the author's analysis and he choses to compare Estonia and Denmark, where Jews had diametrically different outcomes. Snyder doesn't praise Denmark. He analyses the hard facts that each country was subject to. He is very convincing.

The later chapters begin to tell individual stories of refugees and rescuers, agents and warriors.

I'm hearing echoes from other materials that I've read and even from films that are part fiction. Leo Marks, in Between Silk and Cyanide, discusses agent insertion and retrieval, European governments trying to continue to function from London quarters (particularly Poland France and Netherlands,) the aid that was sent to help Underground activities. Marissa is right; it's a charming and informative book.

There is mention of officials who helped Jewish refugees, along the lines of Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times

Chapter 11 is discussing Polish Resistance actions, which recall materials from {The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the films Jacob the Liar and Life is Beautiful.

Black Earth is a very important book. I highly recommend it.

79MrsLee
mrt 6, 2016, 2:40 pm

I just finished reading One Man's Meat by E. B. White. Essays written from 1938 through 1943, they are mostly not about the war, but about living on his farm while being aware of all the goings on in the world and his thoughts on it. It is lovely, fun and full of introspective thoughts about the world, humanity and what we are to do with it. Amazing how relevant the thoughts are still today, and interesting to see how things have changed, as well.

80SylviaC
mrt 6, 2016, 4:32 pm

>79 MrsLee: I think I'll have to look for that!

81MrsLee
mrt 6, 2016, 5:46 pm

>80 SylviaC: I believe you could relate to a lot of the farming bits for sure, and his thoughts on politics and humanity are not spoken in such a way to be offensive, but more pondering than pronouncements. We could use more of that today.

82fuzzi
mrt 7, 2016, 8:13 am

>79 MrsLee: arrgh! A book bullet!

832wonderY
mei 12, 2016, 4:54 pm

Watched the old film Since You Went Away, about the Hilton family, mother and daughters lives while Mr. Hilton is fighting overseas. I would list this as a right living story.
Interesting technique having the main characters walk through a crowd every now and again, with the microphone picking up bits and pieces of conversations, all pretty much value-laden about how people are dealing with their circumstances. Also, the family maid, an older black woman, has to find other work, but is welcomed to stay in this home, just because of the love they all share.

84jnwelch
Bewerkt: mei 13, 2016, 3:37 pm

Salt to the Sea, a new one by Ruta Sepetys, is excellent. It centers around three teenagers who, along with others, are trying to escape war-torn East Prussia in 1945. My review is on the book page.

85MrsLee
sep 5, 2016, 10:52 am

Where Away: A Modern Odyssey by George Sessions Perry and Isabel Leighton.

Published in 1944, the story of the U.S.S. Marblehead. A ship which was nearly, but not quite, sunk in the Pacific arena of WWII at the beginning of the war. It is the story of how against all odds, the ship was able to make it to safe harbor after an odyssey voyage of more than 9000 miles through waters full of enemy ships, submarines and air patrols.

Written in an upbeat patriotic style (published in 1944), this manages to be a very human tale. The wonderful illustrations throughout by John J. Floherty help to personalize the men, but the writers have done a fantastic job of writing about many technical details in words which a layman such as myself can understand. They made the story personal without sinking to the level of maudlin. I couldn't put the book down once the action began and ended up finishing it in one day.

It ties in with The Story of Doctor Wassell, in that these are some of the sailors he was trying to save in Java.

I loved reading the bulletins posted for each local the ship landed at. They informed about the currency exchange, the entertainments available and those which were against the law as well as reminding sailors that they were guests and representing their country and had better do so accordingly.

86fuzzi
sep 5, 2016, 11:05 am

>85 MrsLee: sounds interesting!

872wonderY
sep 21, 2016, 11:38 am

Illustrator, Shirley Hughes, happened to be in Florence, Italy shortly after WW2 ended and she heard a local story which she fictionalized as Hero on a Bicycle. At least this is what is related in the introduction. The book was published in 2014.

Although the audio version is read by Simon Vance, and he gets the voices done okay, it's not a particularly compelling story. I had quite a few blips in suspension of disbelief with the details of setting and characters and action.

882wonderY
Bewerkt: sep 30, 2016, 1:25 pm

I watched the classic They Were Expendable, with John Wayne and Robert Montgomery. A commendable production. The camera and set design strove for veracity as well as art. Great water scenes. Tolerably good and restrained acting.

892wonderY
jan 6, 2017, 12:53 am

I've read several WW2 books since September.

The classic A Town Like Alice covers English refugees in Malaya during the Japanese occupation.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is fiction. The action is mostly split between the London Blitz and the English defense of Malta. I was quite taken with the writing and the characters.

A few weeks ago I re-read Snow Treasure, a fictionalized children's book covering the removal of Norway's gold by its citizens for safekeeping in the Americas.

I then poked around and discovered a new non-fiction on that subject, and I've started reading Gold Run.

90MDGentleReader
jan 6, 2017, 1:35 pm

The war that saved my life YA novel about how a child's life is changed when she is evacuated out of London during WWII. Excellent book.

912wonderY
Bewerkt: jan 9, 2017, 11:11 am

Gold Run: The Rescue of Norway's Gold Bullion from the Nazis documents both the removal of the king, his son, the Government (meaning the parliament, I think) and other officials, as well as the gold, right out from under the noses of the invading Germans. A thrilling tale, but not particularly well told.

92marell
Bewerkt: jan 9, 2017, 6:06 pm

WWII is also of great interest to me. I have read many, although I only own a few. I will put together a list of those I've read and try to categorize them. I'll try not to repeat books already posted.

I will write my recommendations shortly. Thanks to all for such an interesting discussion.

93marell
jan 9, 2017, 8:54 pm

I don't really know how to start or do this so I'm just going down my lists of books I've read over the years.

The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnow - Fiction; industrial Detroit during the war; war work; families who have migrated here for war work and who live in short-term housing communities. I really liked it as well as the movie.

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck - Fiction; unnamed Scandinavian country under German occupation. Wonderful.

Fiction by Leon Uris: Battle Cry - Marines in the Pacific; Mila 18, Warsaw Ghetto

Von Ryan's Express and Von Ryan's Return by David Westheimer; Fiction; also the first book a movie with Frank Sinatra

Lost Hero: The Mystery of Raoul Wallenberg by Frederick E. Werbell & Thurston Clarke - Nonfiction

Alicia, My Story by Alicia Appleman-Jurman - Nonfiction, Holocaust. Couldn't put this one down.

The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross - NF

A Bag of Marbles by Joseph Joffo - NF, a Jewish boy living with a family in Paris. Very good.

Two Women by Alberto Moravia. Fiction, Italy; also the movie with Sophia Loren

Rescue in Denmark by Harold Flender Nonfiction; how the Danes saved so many Jews

Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrec NF. I think I've heard recently of some kind of controversy regarding Ms. Aubrec's story.

More later.

94marell
Bewerkt: jan 9, 2017, 11:32 pm

My Faraway Home: An American Family's Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines by Mary McKay Maynard

Tomorrow to be Brave by Susan Travers - Memoir of a woman who fought with the Free French in Africa, eventually becoming the driver for General Koenig of the French Foreign Legion

Letters from Westerbork by Etty Hillesum Nonfiction. Holocaust, Holland

The Man in the Box by Thomas Moran, Fiction

Three Came Home by Agnes Newton Keith NF. Internment by the Japanese.

Nina's Journey, A Memoir of Stalin's Russia and the Second World War by Nina Markovna

The Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister. A Russian Orthodox girl. Excellent.

Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance by Jack and Rochelle Sutin. NF, Poland

The Raft by Robert Trumbull NF. The story of the ordeal of three airmen who spend 34 days in the Pacific on a raft after their plane sinks.

By Stephen E. Ambrose: Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers. Band of Brothers mini-series also. Fantastic.

We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese by Elizabeth M. Norman

The Children of Willesden Lane Beyond the Kindertransport, a Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen

I think I'm done for the night. More to come.

95fuzzi
jan 9, 2017, 9:44 pm

>93 marell: Leon Uris is very good, I've read a few of his works.

962wonderY
jan 10, 2017, 9:46 am

>93 marell: That's a Steinbeck I haven't read yet. I think I own it though.

Thanks for contributing your lists. Lots of interesting stuff there.

97Limelite
jan 10, 2017, 1:33 pm

Remember the WWII maritime novels by Nicholas Monsarrat? The Cruel Sea. Absolutely the best!

And Alistair MacLean's HMS Ulysses -- also very good.

98fuzzi
jan 10, 2017, 9:05 pm

>97 Limelite: HMS Ulysses was indeed very good, but broke my heart.

I did finally read all three books in Edward L. Beach's Run Silent, Run Deep series, keepers!

992wonderY
jan 13, 2017, 3:54 pm

Films The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission and The Fatal Mission. Secret missions to disrupt Nazi plans.

100marell
jan 14, 2017, 5:47 pm

Lonely Vigil: The Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord - NF. Excellent.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin - NF

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman - NF

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm - NF

Resistence by Owen Sheers - South Wales, Sept. 1944 to June 1945. Fiction

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. Has another title in Europe, I believe. Fiction.

James R. Benn writes the Billy Boyd WWII mystery series with Billy Boyd as the title of the first book.

Priest Block 25487: A Memoir of Dachau by Jean Bernard NF

Sarah R. Shaber writes the Louise Pearlie mystery series. Louise works for the OSS in Washington D.C. Great period details in these books.

Caroline Moorhead has written A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets. She also wrote the excellent biography Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life.

Nella Last's War, The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 by Nella Last. This is fascinating and intense reading of life on the homefront in England. NF. There is a BBC production movie also.

Sorry if I've repeated anything already listed.

101BonnieJune54
jan 14, 2017, 7:12 pm

>100 marell: You have a fascinating list of books. What a variety of ways to have experienced WWII.

102marell
jan 14, 2017, 10:41 pm

Thanks to all of you for your comments.

I worked for 20 years in downtown Los Angeles a short distance from the big main library there and two of its branch libraries, plus had access to their extensive inter-library loan system There was always a huge selection of books at my fingertips. And you know how it is, one book leads to another and I always keep my eyes and ears open for recommendations and keep a list of potential reads.

I may have a few more recommendations, so more later. Thank you, 2wonderY for starting this discussion!

103marell
jan 15, 2017, 1:46 pm

Ok, one more I forgot and I don't know how because it is really good. Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides about the January 1945 rescue of Allied prisoners of war in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines near the city of Cabantuan. The prisoners were survivors of the Bataan death march.

104LorisBook
jul 29, 2017, 6:21 pm

I have read two books recently on WWII that were about the women of war. The Unwomanly Face of War, An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich which is out now, and Code Girls; The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liz Mundy due out in October.

105Limelite
jul 29, 2017, 6:38 pm

Just bought A Man Called Intrepid, written in 1972, about the British Secret Coordination espionage organization that HQed in NYC, working with fledgling American spy efforts just before and during WWII unbeknownst to any but the few involved. This is about the man who headed the secret agency that remained hidden in its cloak until 1962 when revealed to Moscow by Kim Philby.

106fuzzi
jul 30, 2017, 9:36 am

>105 Limelite: without Googling it, I seem to recall a movie of the same title.

I'd like to see more good books about Dunkirk, now that a movie about that event has hit the theaters.

107Cynfelyn
Bewerkt: jul 30, 2017, 12:52 pm

Bomber by Len Deighton (1970).

I haven't read it myself, but I remember it being on my dad's shelves. It was also on the longlist for the Lost Booker Prize (2010), so it's presumably aged well. The novel tells the story of a botched night bombing raid by RAF Lancasters over Germany in 1943, told from the several points of view of a RAF bomber crew, a Luftwaffe night-fighter pilot, a German officer in charge of anti-aircraft defences, and the civilians on the ground. In grim detail.

108Limelite
jul 30, 2017, 2:17 pm

>106 fuzzi:

Have you seen the new Dunkirk movie? I haven't but would like to. I'll see if I can find out if a movie was made of the "Intrepid" book. Would probably be a good one, too.

109MissWatson
jul 31, 2017, 5:07 am

>108 Limelite: I think it was a miniseries or some such made for TV. Starring David Niven and Michael York.

110fuzzi
jul 31, 2017, 9:15 pm

>108 Limelite: not seen the new movie yet, I'm so not into going to the movies.

But I'll see it on DVD/BluRay eventually. :)

1112wonderY
okt 17, 2017, 3:44 pm

In the category of holocaust resistance, I read, but did not particularly enjoy The Zookeeper's Wife (Warsaw, Poland) and the much better Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France. Village of Secrets expands on the story of the village of Le Chambon, drawing a much wider circle of heroes into the light. I had no idea previously how well suited the area was for its work.

I'm now reading Defying the Nazis (Prague, Czechoslovakia)

1122wonderY
Bewerkt: feb 13, 2018, 8:48 am

Intelligence, weapons development, and resistance are the themes of Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare I'm listening to the audio and wishing for a cheat card with the cast of characters listed. It almost reads like a novel so far. I had to check that it is indeed non-fiction.

Watched The Longest Day over the weekend. I thought it lacked verisimilitude. There was way too much standing out in the open discussing what to do. The additional materials on the second disk did verify that some of the depictions were extremely accurate. There was one scene where a parachutist hung from a church roof and watched while his entire troop was machine gunned down. In the meantime, there was a window right behind him that he could have smashed and pulled himself in. It was frustrating to watch.

113fuzzi
feb 13, 2018, 8:55 am

As far as WWII (Europe) epic movies go, I liked The Battle of the Bulge. My favorite movie of the Pacific front is Run Silent, Run Deep with (yum!) Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. There's even a young Jack Warden and Don Rickles in it. The British Sink the Bismarck! movie is superior to the book, one of the few times I've had that experience.

114Guanhumara
Bewerkt: feb 15, 2018, 3:44 am

>111 2wonderY: On the subject of Holocaust resistance, one of my favourite books is I escaped from Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba.

After, achieving the above, he went to the Resistance, explained his history, and asked if he could have a pistol, as he would very much like to get a little payback.
The response: Oh no. We don't give pistols to the likes of you.
He was about to get angry, when the resistance leader continued:
To people like you, we give machine guns.

Vrba then proceeded to gain immense satisfaction from successfully executing a number of insanely semi-suicidal attacks on the German authorities.

He has a sardonic humour that belies the grim facts that he narrates. I wondered for a while whether this was, in fact, fiction. However since he was instrumental in providing material which the Poles used to bring the reality of the concentration camps to the attention of the Western Allies, I think it has been authenticated as fact.

ETA: It's been a while since i read this. I can't remember whether that dialogue was with a Polish or a Hungarian resistance leader.

1152wonderY
feb 13, 2018, 11:22 am

>114 Guanhumara: I will try that one. Your indication that "He has a sardonic humour that belies the grim facts that he narrates" makes me think I can manage it.

116Guanhumara
feb 13, 2018, 1:09 pm

>115 2wonderY: Vrba lived through the worst phase of Auschwitz. Make no mistake, what he tells you is truly horrifying. But his resilience and determination make this account uplifting. He did more than simply survive; he had an iron determination to do something about it.

117Cynfelyn
feb 14, 2018, 5:46 pm

>116 Guanhumara:

Primo Levi was also at Auschwitz, in one of the slave labour "work" sections. He describes the genocide, his survival and the aftermath in several books, including If this is a man (1947) and The periodic table (1975).

118Guanhumara
feb 15, 2018, 3:48 am

>117 Cynfelyn: I think you are misreading me. I am certainly not doubting the facts of the Holocaust!

But Vrba's personal exploits, as he recounts them, are rather remarkable, and the reader might reasonably demand corroboration. There are some despicable attempts around, published relatively recently, of people who have attempted to insert tales of their own "heroism" into history, for personal gain, utilising the fact that there are now fewer survivors alive to contradict them.

It seemed therefore important to point out that Vrba's testimony was first made sufficiently early that any false claims that he had made about his personal experience and actions would have been contradicted by his fellow Auschwitz survivors, after the War.

Primo Levi is a great writer. In literary terms, he is of course, superior to Rudolf Vrba. But the topic was Holocaust resistance. Whilst Levi simply endured, Vrba provides an example that there were also Jews like him, who had the opportunity to fight back.

My copy of Levi's Auschwitz Testimonies 1945-1986 includes the evidence that he gave to the commission preparing cases for the Nuremberg Trials. However, naturally he wrote nothing before the war had ended, since he was in the camp until then.

Vrba's original testimony was part of the dossier brought to the Allies by the Polish Resistance during the Second World War, providing detailed evidence of the genocide. His determination to get this information out does him great credit. The fact that Roosevelt and Churchill considered these claims of systematic genocide 'implausible', and choose not to act upon them, does not negate the heroism of those who risked their lives to get the truth out.

He wrote this book, reluctantly, later, weary of thse who still would not accept what really had been going on.

119Cynfelyn
feb 15, 2018, 1:09 pm

>118 Guanhumara: I certainly wasn't casting aspersions! Perhaps I would have been better linking to the OP, >1 2wonderY: who included "The holocaust, victims, perpetrators and defenders".

For a modern interpretation on "Action in the trenches", or at least on the eastern front, Antony Beever. I read both Stalingrad and Berlin: the downfall 1945 several years ago. The way I remember them, both books combine the scholarly detail of Richard Holmes, Tommy : the British soldier on the western front, 1914-1918, with the grinding inhumanity of Dracula, the only other book to have given me a sense of dread. Horror really isn't my cup of tea.

What feels like a million miles away, J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill (1950), tells the story of working elephants in the Burmese forests just before the war, and their trek westward in the midst of the Japanese invasion. Working elephants were immensely valuable to whichever side controlled them, and it was a matter of getting them away, or shooting them.

1202wonderY
feb 15, 2018, 1:35 pm

>119 Cynfelyn: I had to buy my own copy of Elephant Bill because he so much reminded me of my late husband. What a story!

121juniperSun
feb 16, 2018, 11:08 pm

I'm glad this thread is still active.
>34 2wonderY: Your linked book was listed on Children'Books... for which I thank you as I'm currently looking for books to read to my son about WWII, because he related so well to The Ark and Rowan Farm (I remembered liking them from my own childhood). We're almost done withEcho, which I also thoroughly enjoy and find heartwarming. I wish I could remember the title of another from my childhood: about the Red Cross finding homes for orphans, maybe in a castle, after the war. I thought it was written by Kate Seredy, but none of her books rings a bell.

>114 Guanhumara: I recently listened to The One Man audiobook, and at first I thought it was a true tale, until the coincidences became unbelievable. I wonder if it was based, in part, on Vrba's life.

Doing genealogy at my local library I recently picked up these books:
Stalag Wisconsin, since my Dad told about talking with German Prisoner workers when he was a boy (he learned German at home, tho his grandparents had been born here the family still maintained the language). I had no idea how many German Prisoners of War there were in the US.
The Hero Next Door and The Hero Next Door Returns, both of them a collection (probably based on interviews, rather than written by them) of Wisconsin WWII veterans' experiences. Mostly they told amusing scenes, but often enough about injuries/deaths. Each person only had a short chapter, and rarely mentioned any emotional problems. Of course, these are people who've managed to hold their lives together for over 50 years after the war.

I have only a few books marked as WWII, since joining LT. I'm really more interested in books about the Vietnam War, if I had to declare a preference for wars, probably since that is my generation's war.
Rose Blanche, primarily a picture book about a young girl in Germany
A Gesture Life
The Quilt another children's book, I guess, but I can't imagine any child relating to it. Based in northern MN.
The Fire By Night was painful to read, but personally meaningful as my mother and my aunt trained as Army Nurse Cadets, but (fortunately for them) the war ended before they were sent overseas.
From Ashes into Light only a so-so book--the Phoenix references didn't work well for me.
Managing Bubbie a great story about a family's problems with their elderly mother/grandmother. Personally relevant as I have my own elderly mother to try to help.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet about Japanese interment
Frame Work a mystery
The Lighthouse Keeper fiction, which I did not really enjoy.

Some I remember from years ago
Eli Weisel'sNight
and one about Freeing the Animals from a zoo, likely read in 1960's or '70's--seeing the title The Zookeepers Wife reminded me.
I'm going to have to pose my unknowns in Name That Book.

122fuzzi
feb 17, 2018, 7:52 pm

I just read Corrie ten Boom's Prison Letters, which is a small collection of actual correspondence by Corrie and her sister Betsie. Through reading these ladies' descriptions of life behind barbed wire we get a glimpse of what it was like to be imprisoned by the Nazis. It's a good companion to The Hiding Place, but can be appreciated on its own.

123Limelite
feb 23, 2018, 3:57 pm

>119 Cynfelyn: and >120 2wonderY:

Thank you both for jogging my memory of a childhood read, Elephant Bill! Do I recall correctly -- wasn't it illustrated with a few b&w photos?

Must now include in my LT library.

1242wonderY
feb 23, 2018, 6:35 pm

My apologies. My book is a 2014 Elephant Company. It’s still about James Howard Williams, aka Elephant Bill. I haven’t had hands on the 1950 Elephant Bill.

125gmathis
feb 26, 2018, 8:48 am

>122 fuzzi: Wasn't Corrie phenomenal? I recommend The Hiding Place to my sixth grade church kids who are strong readers. I have My Father's House in the TBR stack.

126fuzzi
feb 27, 2018, 8:58 am

>125 gmathis: it was certainly a "wow" book. I'd read The Hiding Place several years ago, and was totally unfamiliar with the story. I also read My Father's House last year, I think, and it was also quite good. It's hard to imagine anyone today being so steadfast in their faith to risk imprisonment, and death.

127MDGentleReader
mrt 2, 2018, 8:34 pm

Their Finest Hour and a Half covers right before and during the Blitz in London. It is about a young woman who gets a job working at the Ministry of Information. The title refers to the making of a film about one of the many boat rescues of Dunkirk.

I thought it was well written. You learn about living in London during WWII. There is also a lot about the making of films, particularly propaganda films, not to mention being a woman in the workplace. The characters are well done and it is a good story, too.

128BonnieJune54
mrt 2, 2018, 9:03 pm

I thought the film version Their Finest was excellent as well. I didn’t know about the book but all of your description pertains to the film as well.

129MDGentleReader
mrt 2, 2018, 10:43 pm

>128 BonnieJune54: 1.99 at Kobo and Kindle.

130BonnieJune54
mrt 3, 2018, 12:30 am

>129 MDGentleReader: BB bullseye. Nothing like a little midnight book buying.

131Limelite
mrt 3, 2018, 3:56 pm

>128 BonnieJune54:

Haven't gone out to the movies in years. Darkest Hour got me off the couch and into the theater last month. Superb political character study of Churchill at the beginning of Britain's involvement in WWII What a portrayal by Gary Oldman!

Little known background details surrounding WWII interest me. That's the reason I also enjoyed Enigma, and less Fat Man and Little Boy. Robert Harris' Enigma was better, maybe I think that because I read the book first. And books I'd read about Oppie were much better. American Prometheus and Monk's Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center easily outclassed the Hollywood version of the Manhattan Project's internecine political battles between physicists and physicists, and physicists and military, as well as Feynman's Memoir, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

1322wonderY
Bewerkt: mrt 12, 2018, 12:30 pm

A friend lent me Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

Loved it. And tagging it as 'right living.'

A Marine corporal and a Catholic nun are stranded on a Pacific island together during World War 2.

133fuzzi
mrt 12, 2018, 12:35 pm

>132 2wonderY: I've not seen that one, but I do recall Father Goose with Cary Grant, similar storyline. :)

1342wonderY
mrt 12, 2018, 12:37 pm

Well, but this one is drama.

135JerryMmm
mrt 14, 2018, 6:37 am

Ya, that description reminded me about Father Goose with Leslie Caron.

1362wonderY
jul 6, 2018, 5:46 pm

I'm listening to Last Hope Island. It fleshes out the European governments-in-exile in London. First we hear how some of the leaders and monarchs escaped, their attitudes and their personal missions. Queen Wilhelmina went reluctantly and wanted to return to fight alongside her people. But she stayed and bloomed; exhorting her people by radio ( Her grandchildren were not permitted to listen to her broadcasts because of the profanities she used on the Germans) and personally meeting all refugees.

Olson is not shy about criticizing SOE, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, as they were responsible for several glaring operational failures. He also baldly discusses Churchill's tight spots between Roosevelt (who cared little how European countries would re-constitute post-war) and Stalin (whose plans were expansive.) Poland and Czechoslovakia were betrayed in particular. Olson spends a lot of time describing the Polish contributions to the war effort.

So it's not a feel-good history. But it is well worth reading. Some of the material is a re-visit now for me.

137MDGentleReader
aug 11, 2018, 12:54 pm

The War I finally Won, the excellent follow up to The War That Saved My Life. Young adult primarily about the at home war experiences of Ada and the people important in her world. Ada grows as a character and confronts head on the issue of war refugees from a country one is at war with. The two books fine as standalones, but I recommend them both.

138fuzzi
aug 11, 2018, 6:10 pm

>137 MDGentleReader: hi! ::waves::

1392wonderY
nov 6, 2018, 1:56 pm

I can't recall what brought it to my attention, but I'm glad I discovered it.

Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness is a PBS documentary about Chiune Sugihara.

Against the orders of his own country, he wrote thousands of transit visas for Polish and Lithuanian jews who were escaping from the German invasion.

Sugihara continued to hand-write visas, reportedly spending 18–20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month's worth of visas each day, until 4 September, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of whom were heads of households and thus permitted to take their families with them. Before he left, he handed the official consulate stamp to a refugee so that more visas could be forged. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit from his hotel and after boarding the train at the Kaunas Railway Station, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out of the train's window even as the train pulled out.

In final desperation, blank sheets of paper with only the consulate seal and his signature (that could be later written over into a visa) were hurriedly prepared and flung out from the train. As he prepared to depart, he said, "Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best."

140fuzzi
nov 7, 2018, 6:23 pm

>139 2wonderY: there are many unsung heroes, glad this one's tale has been told.

141MrsLee
dec 9, 2018, 11:45 am

>58 2wonderY: US Amazon has Kindle version of When Books Went to War on sale today for $2.99. I snagged it!

1422wonderY
Bewerkt: dec 9, 2018, 11:57 am

>141 MrsLee:. That’s great! Good holiday read too. Warm fuzzies.

1432wonderY
feb 4, 2019, 4:28 pm

Just finished Goodnight from London, a recent novel about blitz London. There was an element of romance, but the bulk of the story described historical events seen from street level. Some very evocative scenes - like the mass burial at Coventry.

1442wonderY
aug 29, 2019, 3:25 pm

Film ~ Secret Lives: hidden children and their rescuers during WWII

This was published in 2002, and I'm surprised how many adults from the 1940's were still alive and able to be interviewed. Lovely stories and reunions.

145gmathis
Bewerkt: aug 30, 2019, 8:44 am

>143 2wonderY: Another one for the (long) short list! I read one of Jennifer Robson's stories in a WWI anthology called Fall of Poppies and liked it.

146haydninvienna
nov 16, 2019, 7:42 am

This one could count as a sort of alternate history: The Flying Visit by Peter Fleming, which was published in 1940. It has illustrations by David Low.

The Flying Visit supposes that in 1940, Hitler made a "flying visit" to England. His intention was just to fly over it for purposes of propaganda, but there was this time-bomb in a flask of vegetable juice, wasn't there, which failed to kill him (shades of Georg Elser's unsuccessful attempt on Hitler's life in Munich in 1938, the anniversary of which took place this past week) but destroyed the aircraft he was flying in, so he landed by parachute in Oxfordshire and was taken for a Hitler impersonator at a village fancy-dress ball. Of course a British agent spots him as the real deal and he is taken prisoner, but then what are the British to do with him? The problem is that the Germans had foreseen the possibility of something happening to Der Führer, and had had a double ready to take his place. They were therefore in a position to denounce the one held by the British as an imposter. So what were the British to do? They sent him back.

Fleming's foreword is dated 13 June 1940. The book is a comedy, which sets out to make Hitler ridiculous. It was still possible to do so then.

In the curious way that Life imitates Art, Fleming's little book tells a vaguely similar story to that of Rupert Hess's supposed peace mission to England almost exactly a year after Fleming's book was published. Fleming imagines that Hitler, after realising that he was on English soil, conceives the idea of negotiating a peace settlement with the British and attempts to contact a pro-Nazi local grandee. This was supposed to be exactly what Hess had in mind. (For some further story on Hess, see Ten Days That Saved the West by John Costello—touchstone gives a slightly different title but I'm pretty sure it's the same book. There certainly were some pro-Nazi grandees about: Oswald Moseley and Unity Mitford are now only the best-known.)

Speaking of pro-Nazi grandees: I forgot the Duke of Windsor, who was believed to be sympathetic to the Nazis. Somewhere quite recently, I remember seeing somebody quoted as saying that Mrs Simpson had done a great service to the English people: she had saved them from being ruled by a nitwit (or words to that general effect). I wish I could give a source.

It also just occurred to me that Elser's attempt on Hitler's life failed because although Elser's bomb and its timer functioned exactly as intended, Hitler left the beer-hall—the one where he had begun the Beer-Hall Putsch in 1923, now demolished—half an hour early. Fleming's fictional bomb goes off at an unexpected place because Hitler arrives at the airfield three hours late. And of course Hitler survived yet another assassination attempt by high explosive, in 1944.

Peter Fleming was Ian Fleming's elder brother. The brothers came from a banking family, and Peter had a career before WWII as a journalist and travel writer. He was also an Oxfordshire squire and a backer of Rupert Hart-Davis's publishing ventures.

147fuzzi
nov 16, 2019, 9:38 pm

>146 haydninvienna: enjoyed your review!

148haydninvienna
nov 17, 2019, 1:34 pm

>147 fuzzi: Thanks. I’m pleased about that. I was slightly concerned that I might cop a serve from someone for the reference to making Hitler ridiculous. Actually, I think I should have said that Fleming set out to make Hitler contemptible—“ridiculous” wasn’t actually wrong, but the ridicule had a pretty sharp edge to it.

1492wonderY
mei 2, 2020, 7:56 am

Erik Larson's new book on the Churchill family's experiences during WW2, The Splendid and the Vile is very good. (I'll have to check out his other works now.)

It's long, at 101 chapters, and I'm about half-way through. Although it spends a lot of time with the Churchills, it swirls out to capture a lot of other stories as well; and gives a sizeable amount to general conditions in England.
One factoid, because it has echoes today, got me to research toilet paper. Larson recounts that toilet paper was scarce, and the king asserted a royal prerogative by ordering that a certain brand be acquired from the US on a regular basis, for his use. The brand mentioned was Bromo-Soft, which took me to this page:

**CAUTION: one or two squeam inducing images**
How Brits went soft on toilet paper

150Limelite
Bewerkt: mei 2, 2020, 11:59 am

>149 2wonderY:

Thanks for your post. You made me want to read this book. If you're interested in more by Erik Larson I'd like to rec Dead Wake, a compelling examination of the vents leading up to, what happened during, and the aftermath of the sinking of the Lusitania. Vivi is the best adjective for it.

1512wonderY
mei 2, 2020, 12:06 pm

>150 Limelite: As I'm listening to the chapter on the bombing of Coventry at the moment, "vivid" is not a sales point.

152BonnieJune54
mei 2, 2020, 2:25 pm

I’m enjoying Pied Piper . It was mentioned in this thread earlier.
Nice to visit people from another era who had their tidy plans for their humdrum lives smacked around by the fates.

153Limelite
mei 2, 2020, 10:24 pm

>151 2wonderY:

I've only read one other Larson book. It lacked the action of Lusitania sinking, being more about political maneuvering. It's In the Garden of Beasts, about the American family of the ambassador to Germany immediately preceding WW II. The emphasis is on building the realization, horror, and impotence of the ambassador in the face of Nazism.

Larson is an interesting writer who writes tightly woven historical snapshots that tell personal stories of individuals swept up by events much greater than they are. I think he has done a great job of carving out this niche for himself and developing his theme of the insignificance of "the little people" when they are caught by circumstances beyond their control or ability to influence.

1542wonderY
mei 2, 2020, 11:20 pm

>153 Limelite: Oh, I think I've read that one too.

155Judith205
mei 3, 2020, 6:02 pm

You probably know this one: Hitler's American Friends, by Bradley W. Hart.

I was particularly struck by Bradley's account of how the British secret service was
more up-to-date on pro-Nazi groups in the US than was our FBI.

Judith

1562wonderY
mei 31, 2021, 2:59 pm

I’m skimming several of the Time-Life World War II books, preparatory to disposing some of them. They are excellent narratives. I’m learning a lot.

Also, listening to Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy, Airman, Gangster, Kill or Die. It’s a flippant title, but a serious book on the Normandy invasion.

157gmathis
Bewerkt: jun 1, 2021, 9:52 am

Yesterday, for Memorial Day, I watched the movie The Monument Men which was a very good theatrical adaptation of the original NF book. (The fact that I eagerly worked my way through a 640 page non-fiction work speaks quite well of the author!)

158BonnieJune54
jun 1, 2021, 4:58 pm

>157 gmathis: I liked that one too. The Last Vermeer is related. Nazi’s and paintings in Amsterdam.

159fuzzi
jun 4, 2021, 12:07 pm

>156 2wonderY: that's a great series. My dh has a few odd copies that I snagged for him at library sales.

160gmathis
jun 16, 2021, 11:08 am

I picked up a couple of 25-cent Barbara Cartland cheapies for nostalgia reasons (one of my first mom-approved "grown-up" authors) and have just started "A Heart is Broken," which apparently was retitled "The Way Forward" somewhere along the way. Fiancee jilted by her Canadian Air Corps officer travels from Canada to England and, well, you know... I had always associated Dame Barbara with Regency era or undated, nonspecific "long ago" stories--didn't know she'd upgraded to the 20th century!

161alco261
Bewerkt: jul 21, 2021, 7:07 pm

There are a number of very good non-fiction books about the air war aspect of WWII.

Two that cover the same subject (I think both are worth reading) are about the 1 August 1943 low level bombing raid on Ploesti - home of Hitler's Romanian oil fields.

Ploesti by Dugan and Stewart

Black Sunday: Ploesti by Hill

Both are filled with first person accounts of that nightmare ground-air battle. The planes flew across the Mediterranean from Libya. They thought it was going to be a surprise raid but the Germans picked them up well before they dropped down to zero altitude for the run in on the targets. As a result the German flak batteries were manned and ready when the planes came over the target. I think the first book gives a better account of the background for the reasons for the raid, its planning, the training of the crews and the events of the mission from the perspective of a unit's action over the target.

The strength of the second book is the plane-by-plane recounting of events. Obviously those who didn't return have their stories told from the standpoint of witnesses who last saw them before they went down, their letters home, and any surviving diaries. An interesting side note - the author of the second book read the first book (as did I) when he was a teenager. It was his reading of the first book that provided the motivation to do the research for the second work.

The war at sea also has a number of excellent non-fiction accounts. If I had to pick just one it would be

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors which is the account of the unbelievable sea battle off Samar in the Philippines. I must admit to a little bias here-I probably favor this book over others about the war at sea because once upon a time I too was a tin can sailor. :-)

As for ground action - The Longest Day has been mentioned and I think it is a good book but I think D-Day by Ambrose is the better read.

...and finally - The Wizard War by R.V. Jones which was published as "Most Secret War" in England. It is the history of the British scientific effort in the war effort. This may sound like a rather dry read - it isn't.

162AbigailAdams26
Bewerkt: jul 25, 2021, 4:53 pm

>1 2wonderY: WWII is certainly a subject that has produced some engrossing, terrifying, powerful and informative books.

I'll never forget reading Sara Zyskind's Holocaust survivor memoir, Stolen Years, as a child, and being both horrified and transfixed by its tale of human evil. It launched a years-long reading project, in which I read over thirty similar testimonies, some published for children, some for adults, in a futile effort to "understand." I haven't cataloged even a fraction of what I read back then, but some books about the Holocaust that stand out to me, from that period are:

Stolen Years by Sara Zyskind (juvenile)
Fragments of Isabella by Isabella Leitner (juvenile)
Upon the Head of the Goat by Aranka Siegal (juvenile)
Night by Elie Wiesel (adult)
Witness to the Holocaust by Azriel Eisenberg (adult)
The Auschwitz Album by Peter Hellman (adult)
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom (adult)

I also read Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, which you mention in your second comment. The minister of Le Chambon, the Rev. André Trocmé, was a great personal hero of my father's, and this book was in his library. When my father was a young man, newly graduated from high school, he went to Europe, working his way over on a ship. When he was in France, he volunteered at a refugee camp set up for people who had fled the First Indochina War. It was here that he met Rev. Trocmé, and it was this encounter, along with his admiration for figures like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that influenced him to become a minister.

163AbigailAdams26
jul 25, 2021, 5:57 pm

I have quite a few titles I have tagged WWII (114 right now), but a great many of them are either children's fiction, or picture-books. Some stand-outs of these, that I have enjoyed, include:

Children's Novels

Happy Tramp by Muriel Denison, who is better known as the author of Susannah of the Mounties and its sequels. It tells of a young English girl who is evacuated to the United States in 1940, during WWII, and of her new life and home. An English sheepdog figures prominently. I thought the scenes on board the vessel bringing the heroine and 200 other children over to North America were particularly interesting.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr, an autobiographical novel about Kerr and her family, who escaped Germany just in time, eventually making their way to the UK. There are two sequels: The Other Way Round and A Small Person Far Away.

When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park, about a young girl and her family during the Japanese occupation of Korea.

The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen, about a young Jewish girl in contemporary America who is catapulted back through time to a Polish ghetto during WWII, and who is the only one who knows what is about to happen. This one is particularly powerful.

Picture Books:

Two excellent picture-books about American civilians sending/giving aid to European civilians, immediately after the war are: Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming (historical fiction based on fact) and One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II by Lita Judge (non-fiction). There's also Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot by Margot Theis Raven, about the "Berlin Candy Bomber" (non-fiction)

Some outstanding picture-books about the internment of North Americans of Japanese descent are: Naomi's Tree by Joy Kogawa, about a Japanese-Canadian family who are interned during the war. Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind by Cynthia Grady, which looks at the internment of Japanese-Americans from California through the lens of the letters they wrote to their Euro-American librarian and friend, Clara Breed. Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki (fiction) and Barbed Wire Baseball by Marissa Moss (non-fiction) about the baseball leagues organized inside the internment camps.

S.D. Nelson's Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story is a powerful picture-book biography of Native American Ira Hayes (Pima tribe), who was one of the marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, in the famous photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal.

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle tells a fascinating and unexpected story of resistance and cross-religious solidarity.

How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz, an autobiographical picture-book about the author and his family, who fled east from Poland during WWII, eventually finding themselves in Kazakhstan.

Irena's Jars of Secrets by Marcia K. Vaughan, about Irena Sendler, the Polish Catholic social worker who risked her life, during WWII, to rescue over 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Coming on Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson, about the experiences of a young African-American girl whose mother is away working in a factory, during WWII.

The House Baba Built: An Artist's Childhood in China by Ed Young, an autobiographical look at the creator's childhood home in Shanghai, which became a refuge for family fleeing Nanjing, as well as Jewish refugees from Europe.

Finally, Christmas: A Story a very interesting contemporaneous picture-book, written by Eleanor Roosevelt during the war, and intended as a sort of reflection on what the conflict was about (morally speaking), for children.

1642wonderY
jul 25, 2021, 6:12 pm

>162 AbigailAdams26: I finally did read Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed and loved it. The reason I had a copy was I had boasted that I could locate any book. A gentleman in my church study group took me up on that boast. He didn’t remember the title or the author, just had a vague description to give me. This was years ago in internet infancy and I was a librarian. I failed at first, but I kept looking and finally was able to present him with a copy and bought one for myself.

I also read Village of Secrets. It gives much more detail (a lot more!) of the region, the other denominations and church groups, and stories of some of the children.

165AbigailAdams26
jul 25, 2021, 7:58 pm

>164 2wonderY: Well done to you for tracking it down! I will keep Village of Secrets in mind - thank you.

166gmathis
jul 26, 2021, 8:20 am

>162 AbigailAdams26: I teach fifth and sixth graders at church, and I regularly recommend The Hiding Place to my stronger readers. They regularly report back to me how much they love Corrie's story! Thank you for posting the list of children's titles--I'll start sniffing them out!

167AbigailAdams26
jul 29, 2021, 8:38 pm

>166 gmathis: The Hiding Place does seem like an excellent book for tweens and teens. I first read it at that age myself. I hope some of the titles I've mentioned are helpful with your church classes. I'm curious: what other WWII titles do you use, if any, in that capacity?

168AbigailAdams26
jul 29, 2021, 8:40 pm

An adult memoir that I read, and found very compelling (it was too disturbing to say I "enjoyed" it), was Helga Schneider's Let Me Go. In it, the author attempts to come to terms with the legacy of her estranged mother, who was a committed Nazi, and a concentration camp guard.

169gmathis
jul 29, 2021, 9:01 pm

>167 AbigailAdams26: I make book recommendations more for kid-bonding purposes than I do teaching purposes when we have some recreational time between sessions. The Book Thief is one I like to propose to my older and more mature sixth graders. And I'm veering a little off-topic here, but another good "grown-up" read-aloud I use is Jesus Freaks, which (don't be scared off by the title) is an anthology of short stories and vignettes that stretch from first century Rome to the Cold War and more recent decades -- people who went to the extreme to take a stand for what they believed in. Again, some of my older and better readers have sunk their teeth into that one.

170AbigailAdams26
jul 29, 2021, 9:37 pm

>169 gmathis: Believe it or not, I have never read The Book Thief, although it is on Mt. TBR. Jesus Freaks I have never heard of, although it sounds intriguing. Thank you - I find stories of people who take a principled stand for what they believe in very powerful.

1712wonderY
okt 24, 2021, 2:22 pm

I’m still moving my books to my new home. I’m down to just two large bookcases, two small ones, and those piled atop the overmantel in the living room. (I guess I’m not counting the piles on the floor of the living room; but those are slowly shrinking too.)
Anyway, the small piles along the edge of the stairs all fit into one box this trip. It’s mostly my Edna Ferber collection. But the one I picked up to read is Ernie Pyle in England.

I’m sorta unimpressed by his writing. For all his fame, I expected something with more punch. So far, it’s merely adequate. If I wasn’t interested in the subject, I’d probably not continue.

172MrsLee
Bewerkt: okt 26, 2021, 6:37 pm

>171 2wonderY: I loved This is Your War and especially Brave Men, but found some of the other works of his not as endearing. I read them for the perspective in time and place.

173marell
okt 26, 2021, 11:19 pm

I recently finished The Rose Code by Kate Quinn. Bletchley Park and so much more. I thorougly enjoyed it. It’s long, as it covers the war from its beginning to its end, but I read it over a weekend. Couldn’t put it down.

1742wonderY
Bewerkt: okt 27, 2021, 1:27 am

>173 marell: You remind me that I wanted to read The Huntress by Quinn. Just ordered it.

175marell
okt 27, 2021, 10:18 am

>174 2wonderY: The Huntress is on my list too. She is a new author for me, so I’m looking forward to reading more of her books.

1762wonderY
dec 30, 2021, 8:15 am

Ended not finishing The Huntress, as the main character didn’t appeal.

I have read several other WW2 books this year.
I Had Seen Castles is short, disjointed and the battle scenes are horrifying.
I think I mentioned above in the thread the three Time-Life titles I skimmed in May.

A Way Through the Sea is a fictional story of the evacuation of Danish Jews to Sweden. I don’t recommend it; it stretches believability too far in places.

I watched the first season of PBS Home Fires, set in small town England during WW2. Parts were painful. Well done.

I listened to Rogue Heroes. This is about the formation and operations of the SAS units. Special Air Service. They’re the ones who operated behind enemy lines in uniform. Brave and daring. I’ll need to borrow the paper book and read the last chapter again.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption is excellent. It focuses on a couple of downed airmen who survive weeks in the Pacific and then months in captivity.

Geniuses at War has only six chapters. It is about the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park during WW2.
The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry.
I may have missed some of the story (audio and in the house), but it seemed to focus most on Turing and Max Newman. Gosh, I’d love to see video of them creating the machines.

I might not have tried the audio if I’d known it was a Harlequin, but it had a bit more substance than I would have supposed. Radar Girls is set in Hawaii, but not the main island, during WW2.

I think that’s it.

177gmathis
dec 30, 2021, 8:41 am

Far too new to be tattered, but I recently finished The Last Bookshop in London. The title, of course, caught my eye first. It's a gentler take on life in London during the Blitz.

178MDGentleReader
jan 1, 2022, 11:13 am

>177 gmathis: I really enjoyed that book.

Another non-Tattered WWII book I recommend: The Rose Code. About 3 women who worked at Bletchley Park. Based on actual women who served.

179MDGentleReader
jan 1, 2022, 11:33 am

I second the recommendations for the non-Tattered The Last Bookshop in London and The Rose Code, I had similar reactions to them that >173 marell: and >177 gmathis: had.

1802wonderY
jul 14, 2022, 12:42 pm

I found a dormant group, with just a handful of threads, but the books mentioned make a wonderful list:

https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/837/The-People-of-World-War-II

181fuzzi
jul 14, 2022, 2:03 pm

>180 2wonderY: thank you, I'll check it out.

182gmathis
jul 14, 2022, 8:45 pm

I stumble on to more non-tattered titles that fit this category than otherwise, but I'm currently enjoying The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg. Hops very pleasantly back and forth from early 2000's Alabama to stateside U.S. during WWII.

183MrsLee
Bewerkt: jul 14, 2022, 9:00 pm

I mentioned elsewhere that I read c/o Postmaster by Corporal Thomas St. George. I didn't love it, but it had its interesting points. American G.I. in Australia.

184MrsLee
Bewerkt: aug 7, 2022, 12:48 am

I'm reading The Hinge of Fate by Winston S. Churchill at the moment. Not exactly a story, but very interesting.

185nrmay
aug 8, 2022, 12:02 pm

I just finished The Alice Network by Kate Quinn about events in both WWI and WWII

186gmathis
aug 8, 2022, 2:35 pm

>185 nrmay: What did you think of The Alice Network? If I remember correctly, Alice was a little more rough around the edges than I generally care for, but it didn't stop me from finishing the book.

187nrmay
aug 10, 2022, 1:19 pm

>186 gmathis:

I loved the intrigue and suspense of The Alice Network, and the author's notes about how much of it was true and based on real people. The torture and the prison details were way too harsh for sensitive me but I couldn't stop reading.
I also liked Quinn's The Huntress about the aftermath of WWII and hunting Nazis.

Others I've read recently -
Irena's Children, Tilar Mazzeo
Secrets of a Charmed Life, Susan Meissner
Pastoral, Nevil Shute
War That Saved My Life, Kimberly Bradley
Chance, Uri Shulevitz
The Warsaw Orphan, Kelly Rimmer

I continue to be enthralled by the stories of courage that came out of the WWII era.

188fuzzi
aug 10, 2022, 1:56 pm

I highly recommend HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean. It's very moving, an intense story.

1892wonderY
sep 17, 2022, 9:32 am

I’ve read two good, though obscure books lately.

Nicholas Winton’s Lottery of Life. The story wasn’t known for 40 years because he never spoke of it. His wife found a suitcase of papers in the attic that revealed that Winton had transported 669 Czech children to England and a few other places before the Germans invaded that country. His clear vision and no nonsense getting things done is a remarkable story.
Matej Mináč is a filmmaker, and has built his career around this story, finally earning an international Emmy.

Hitler’s Savage Canary is a collection of discreet stories of the resistance in occupied Denmark. Lampe collected them just after the war. They contain fascinating details and wonderful heroism.

190MrsLee
nov 3, 2022, 7:42 pm

The Hinge of Fate by Winston S. Churchill. Written in 1950 about the year 1942 in WWII. My impressions now that I've finished.
"Reading this gives the grand view from the chess master's point of view. Although losses are spoken of, they are mentioned in vast quantities that the brain can't really cope with. 50,000 P.O.W.s, 1,000,000 tons of shipping, 5,000 dead, etc. All given the same value of loss in a sentence or paragraph. A grand game to be won or lost. I don't think Churchill meant to be callous or unfeeling. It's just that that is the only way to report and cope. The war had to be won and that was the only way to accomplish it.

It is good though, to have read books like Ernie Pyle's "Brave Men" or "This is Your War" to have balance and know that each man lost had a name. A family. A story."

191gmathis
okt 29, 2023, 9:01 pm

I'll ask you fine folks first, because I trust your judgment regarding content: are you aware of any books about Enigma or Bletchley Park operations that would be suitable for middle grade readers? I've got a couple of church kiddos who are history buffs and perked up when I told them a little about it. (Not what we normally discuss on Sundays. Trunk or Treat. We had a long hitch in between customers and got to chatting ;)