All of them were. Not sure they were entirely authentic though. “Hey this punishment battalion needs more Tiger tanks!”. 
Good point. I do recall that Sven Hassel’s books were met with some controversy regarding accuracy.
It’s one of those utterly bizarre honour in war things that the Captain of Glowworm was awarded his VC, at least partly but it’s a hell of a commendation, on the submission via the Red Cross of the Captain of the Admiral Hipper.
A similar charge by a hopelessly outgunned ship against a giant is the case of the Jervis Bay, this time against the *Admiral Scheer
*
Ah, I just remembered a really good one: City of Thieves. May be a bit mature-subject-matter-kind-of-intense for Qin (Imp made me mention this part), but in general, wow, what a great book. Inside, and outside the siege of Stalingrad looking for eggs.
my favorite WWII novel is Battle Cry, which was Leon Uris’s first book.
If you’d like to read something about (perhaps not so) ordinary civilian life in Nazi Germany for a change, you should give “The Book Thief” by Mark Zusak a go.
Yep, “I must say, I am bloody tired.”
Once An Eagle by Anton Myrer is a good one. It goes beyond just WWII - it’s about the life of a career army officer and it extends through a major portion of the twentieth century - but WWII is a big portion of the story.
One interesting book is Fox on the Rhine by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson. It’s a realistic book about a WWII battle. But what makes it different is that it’s alternate history - the book starts with the premise that Hitler is killed by the 20 July plot (the conspirators are defeated and Himmler takes control of Germany).
Most WWII battle novels suffer from an unavoidable problem - if you know anything about history you know how the book is going to end. That means there’s a certain inherent lack of tension in a book about Midway or El Alamein or the Bulge. But by putting this story in an AH setting, the authors are able to write about a major WWII battle while keeping the outcome a surprise.
I’ll also note that the authors wrote two more AH novels; a sequel titled Fox at the Front and a book about the Pacific War titled MacArthur’s War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan. They’re not bad but they’re not as good as their first work together.
I’m guessing it’s Hans Helmut Kirst you’re trying to remember. Aside from the Gunner Asch series he also wrote Night of the Generals, Officer Factory and my personal favourite The Fox of Maulen (also known as The Wolves.
Kist writes more about how people react to the amoral Nazi state than war novels as such but there’s plenty of action going on.
Oh and the movie adaptation of Night of the Generals is worth having a look for - Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole together in a very different movie from Lawrence of Arabia.
Was that the one about a serial killer?
Neither German or Russian, nor a novel but: if you’re prepared to read something that isn’t any of these three, I would recommend in the strongest possible way to anyone who has any interest in the actual daily experience of a soldier in WWII, rather than the geopolitical bits or the blood and guts and derring do, the Spike Milligan War Diaries.
Spike Milligan was a bipolar genius of humor and a jazz trumpeter, who had a long and successful career after the War (he had a very strong influence on Monty Python); these diaries are his humorous yet moving account of his experiences. This is the only thing I’ve ever read that comes anywhere close to letting me understand what it was actually like to be a soldier. Not just the fighting, but the long periods of boredom and fear, how the conscripts filled that emptiness with their own music, comedy shows, pranks and fart jokes; the bad food, horrible NCOs, the unbridled lust, and occasional liaisons with the opposite sex; then the short and terrifying bursts of fighting.
Scabrous and pulling no punches in their raw honesty, these books are hilarious and ultimately incredibly moving, charting Milligan’s military career from trying to avoid the draft, to training, to North Africa, then Italy, his wounding in the battle for Montecassino, then internment in a military hospital with mental illness. There are six books in all but each is fairly slim. I’ve read them all two or three times - they’re unfailingly entertaining.
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
“Rommel?” “Gunner Who?”
Monty: His Part in My Victory
Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall
Where Have all the Bullets Gone?
Goodbye Soldier
There’s a seventh book in the series, written about his post war life, that I didn’t even know about but am ordering from Amazon now: Peace Work.
That’s the one.
That’s the one. Really, that is the one. Few novels will stay in your head the rest of your life. That one will.
Also highly recommended:
From the German side, The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich (basis of the movie Cross of Iron starring James Coburn)
Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead
King Rat by James Clavell
My favorites:
The Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer
Catch-22 by Joseph (?) Heller
and if you’re interested in the Pacific theatre,
Gods of War by John Toland. It has a sequel called Occupation that I haven’t read but I remember really enjoying this book.
[nitpick]cruiser[/nitpick]based on eighteen months as a torpedoman on the Russian convoys..
Nicholas Monsarrats’ “The Cruel Sea” maybe?
Read “Battle of the April Storm”
read “Puckoon” his only humorous novel, which is well worth the trouble.
Psst Check post #8
