These might be out of print and not easy to access where you are, but for the civilian experience in the UK try Norman Longmate’s The Way We Lived Then and Angus Calder’s The People’s War
For German experiences, Victor Klemperer’s diaries
For France, try
Ordering Normandy ‘44, the first, I’m sure, of many from this excellent thread. My thanks again.
Was going to post that, too.
Also Shattered Sword and the Ian Toll Trilogy of the Pacific War. Highly recommended.
As Churchill observed, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.” Often rendered more pithily but inaccurately as “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”
Berlin at War - Roger Morehouse. A detailed and well-written look at life in the German capital during the war.
The Greatest Battle - Andrew Nagorski. The invasion of the Soviet Union and the battle for Moscow.
Also Paul Brickhill’s The Dam Busters, upon which the movie was based.
Brickhill also wrote The Great Escape – he was an inmate at Stalag Luft III
I read those, interleaved, one book from each series back and forth and found it to be just an excellent way to get a view of the US participation in the war.
In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
Lucky Lady interleaves the stories of USS Franklin and Santa Fe (the author’s father was a warrant officer on the latter) as told by members of their crews. IMHO the author gets a tad heavy-handed with the rah-rah-USA at times — the book was written shortly after 9/11 — but some of the stories are compelling. Such as trying to relight the Franklin’s boilers when the ship is still on fire above you.
I’m going to recommend an older classic: The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 by John Toland. It was written fifty years ago but I think it does an excellent job of showing the political situation inside Japan that many other WWII histories seem to pass lightly over.
Definitely check out Erik Larson’s recent bestsellers, In the Garden of Beasts and The Splendid and the Vile.
If you want a counterview, read Nigel Hamilton’s FDR at War trilogy (The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942, Commander In Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943, and War And Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945) It’s basically the memoir of the war that Roosevelt might have written if he had lived past 1945. It can be summed up as every decision Roosevelt made during the war was the right one and most of the decisions Churchill made were the wrong ones.
You might also want to check out The Man Who Never Was, written by Lt Commander Owen Montagu, RNVR, serving in the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. He was the one ran Operation Mincemeat (it was for the invasion of Sicily, not D-Day).
Lots of good suggestions above. I especially like some of the a little off-beat ones, like The Dam Busters. Very interesting.
I am in the middle of The Second World Wars by Victor Davis Hansen. An interesting take on the conflicts.
Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre, was absolutely captivating, and this is coming from someone who does not enjoy military history.
"On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. A stunning military achievement, it was also a masterpiece of trickery. Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in turning German spies into double agents, tricked the Nazis into believing that the Allied attacks would come in Calais and Norway rather than Normandy. It was the most sophisticated and successful deception operation ever carried out, ensuring Allied victory at the most pivotal moment in the war. "
I read a book nearly 40 years ago that I think had the word “Infamy” in the title which was an hour by hour chronicle of everything happening in the world on 12/7/1941. (48 hours, thanks to time zones). Particularly interesting were details about the exploits of a volunteer Spanish division fighting for the Nazis in Russia…in winter! There was also the story of a downed Japanese pilot who terrorized a small island west of Pearl Harbor. Lots of interesting stories that would have been overshadowed by the big event of that day. My google-fu has failed me on discovering the title or author.
Another older classic is At Dawn We Slept by Gordon Prange. An exhaustive study of Pearl Harbor.
Outstanding suggestions. Very grateful.
Probably Day of Infamy by Walter Lord, published in 1957.
Some books on flying in WWII:
Baa Baa Blacksheep - The autobiography of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. He was in the war before the war as one of Chennault’s ‘volunteer’ groups, the “Flying Tigers” in China. He then re-joined the Marines and fought in the Pacific. It’s a very entertaining book.
Twelve O’clock High - The story of the Eighth Air Force, which got hammered in WWII.
Samurai, by Saburo Saki - a gripping account of life for a Japanese fighter pilot.
Thirty Seconds over Tokyo - the story of the Doolittle Raid.
Thunderbolt! - The air war in Europe as told by P-47 Thunderbolt pilot Robert S. Johnson, one of the top allied aces of the war.