It’s that time of year again.
I am hunting for Military and World War 2 books for my FIL for Xmas.
I’ll even start off with a book astro recommended in another thread:
Anything, any country, even written in German, is welcome. I especially am interested in books written from a non american point of view. Especially European.
Mucho Thanks.
Britain’s Imperial War Museum, in London, has an excellent bookstore with hundreds of titles. Most are written from a non-U.S. viewpoint. You can download a catalog of their publications.
They were both written before the war, and, thus, aren’t about WWII directly, but Guderian’s “Achtung: Panzer” and Rommel’s “Attacks” were both written by German generals who would play a major role in the war, and “Achtung: Panzer”, especially, would become the bible of German tank doctrine in the war.
Some of my favs…
To War in a Stringbag by Charles Lamb.
A British torpedo bomber pilot in the Med.
By John Masters.
An officer in a Gurkha regiment in some of the nastiest fighting in the Pacific war.
90% of the first volume takes place before the war but is a fascinating read.
*Boarding Party: The Last Action of the Calcutta Light Horse * by James Leasor.
Completely improbable but true story of a group of middle-aged men recruited for an under-cover mission. Later made into the film The Sea Wolves. Terrible, terrible movie with a great cast. Every time this movie is shown on TV the Baby Ebert cries.
Duel of Eagles by Peter Townsend.
History of the Battle of Britain written by a British pilot. Excellent read.
Finally,
Tank-Fighter Team by Robert Gerard.
The debacle of 1940 from the perpective of an anti-tank officer.
May I suggest fiction? Jack Higgins’s “The Eagles Has Landed” is a great thriller about a Nazi effort to kidnap Churchill, and Len Deighton’s “The Eye of the Needles” is another great thriller, about a German spy on the run who knows that the Allies intend to invade at Normandy and not Calais. Both are interesting and a lot of fun.
Oops, that’s “Eye of the Needle” by Ken Follett. Sorry.
Len Deighton’s “SS-GB” is a great WW2 what-if novel. It takes place in a Britain under Nazi occupation, with the King under SS guard in the Tower of London and the Germans conducting heavy-water atomic experiments in a British seaside resort town. Good stuff.
Damn - another typo! That’s “The Eagle Has Landed.”