Best WWII non-fiction you've read

I really enjoyed Charlotte by David Foenkinos although it is strictly speaking a novel.

As well as Rise and Fall of the Third Riech, William Shirer also published his Berlin Diaries which are good.

Fred Uhlmann - Reunion, autobiography of his life during the rise of the Nazis

Anne Marie Waters - Moondrop to Gascony, autobiography of an SOE agent

Night by Elie Wiesel
A Memoir by a survivor. It is a small, slim volume which haunted me for a long time after I read it. I kept returning to certain passages again and again. It is beautifully written, angry and elegiac.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
A really rich and thorough history of the ‘bloodlands’ of Europe from around 1930 through WW2. It told me a lot about what was happening before the Holocaust as I knew it. Scholarly but not a difficult read.

Another is 'Keep Smiling Through - Vera Lynn'
I actually knew Vera Lynn personally, I went to school with the granddaughter of Vera. Very good book.

Absolutely. Utterly brilliant

Helmet for my pillow - AMAZING memoir about the pacific war during WW2. The HBO series was based on his book.

Another vote for the forgotten highlander

A woman of no importance by Sonia Purnell, about the spy Virginia Hall

Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson

The Unwomanly Face Of War
By
Svetlana Alexievitch

The author grew up among women who had served in the armed forces of the Soviet Union.but who were unacknowledged in official histories. She began collating the accounts of female fighter pilots, tank commanders , front line medics, soldiers and so on but was not allowed to publish the book she had assembled because it differed from the official line.

However, perestroika finally arrived and she could publish. There was a theme running through the book -.some resistance from families, boyfriends, the forces to women signing up. The women themselves were concerned about their femininity; their families about the respectability and virtuousness.of their daughters.

This is a fascinating book.

Another recommendation for Band of Brothers by Stephen E Ambrose.

@ellecf21

twitter.com/auschwitzmuseum/status/1232530007773384704?s=21

Auschwitz itself has said this book is badly written fiction.

It is inaccurate on many levels.

Books by Joachim Fest

• The Face of the Third Reich
• Hitler
• Speer, the Final Verdict

The forgotten highlander by Alistair Urquhart - very moving story about a Scottish soldier who became a Japanese POW from the beginning of Japanese involvement in WW2 until the end of the war. He survived so many things, had so many miracles during such awful times.

Victor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning

Antony Beevor

• Stalingrad

• The Fall of Berlin, 1945
• D Day

Doris Kearns Goodwin - No Ordinary Time (about the US home front during WW2)

Rena's Promise by Rena Kornreich Gelisson.

Harrowing story of two sisters in Auschwitz, and of a sister's promise to her mother that she would always protect her younger sister.

Written with Heather Dune Macadam, who I emailed once and she emailed back telling me that in her last years Rena was suffering with dementia and called her "Mama"

I found that so poignant.

Oh and the Tim Wilde series by Rory Clements

The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor by Eddie Jaku.

My son reads a lot of WW2 non fiction. Recent fave was Helen Fry's MI9.

Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig

Christabel Bielenberg was interviewed in The World at War. She sheltered a Jewish family for a short while and her anguish when she had to ask them to leave is heart-rending - she said that she felt the Nazis had made her one of them.

Both The Diary of Anne Frank and Judith Kerr’s When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit have to be the most powerful for me because I read them as a child and they have stayed with me. I enjoyed Nella Last’s War as shows the nitty gritty of dealing with rationing and everyday life.

Agreed on Anthony Beevor..

Others have mentioned Stephen Ambrose - Yes he wrote well but some of his later works need reading with a pinch of salt because they drift towards fiction...also for reasons never really explained he seemed to take an increasingly anti-British slant as he got older - no, the "Tommies" weren't always stopping to drink tea!!!

I met cristabel Belienberg.... Really posh and a bit intimidated first..

Excuse me if you know this but she popped up briefly in some quite moving interviews in the now very old Thames TV "The World at War" series...

I met cristabel Belienberg. She visited our school in Ireland. Somehow our English teacher knew her. She was a great story teller, she felt so young. She must have been in her 80s but came across as a lively spirit. Really posh and a bit intimidated first but we spent ages chatting with her. She was lovely