Best WWII non-fiction you've read

You saved me the trouble of typing? A Life in Secrets is the best book I have ever read.

I also enjoy Ben Macintyre's books.

Under Fire by Naomi CLifford - based on the diaries of a society girl who volunteered as an ambulance driver in the Blitz - absolutely fascinating.

www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Fire-Diaries-Volunteer-Ambulance-ebook/dp/B09B5BKHM8

Seconded. Spike is writing from an ordinary private’s point of view and it’s such a different insight to the war than you get from members of the Officer class. Plus his war memoirs are often hilarious despite the awfulness of the situation and it’s interesting to read the beginnings of his music and showbiz career entertaining the troops.

Looking For Trouble by Virginia Cowles, a young journalist who covered the outbreak of WWII (up to 1941) for the Sunday Times. She really gets around and seems to have a talent for arriving somewhere just as things are kicking off. She also meets a lot of the key players in the war. I found it a hugely interesting book.

Blitz Spirit compiled from the Mass Observation archive (Becky Brown)

Spike Milligan's war diaries.

@GiltEdges the last one was WW2. I finished it today.

Also "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George Mcdonald Fraser - his time in the Border Regiment in Burma as a 19 year old. So good it's on the reading list at Sandhurst.

Enemy Coast Ahead by Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, DSO & bar, DFC & bar. The story of the bomber pilot's bomber pilot. Raised, trained & led the Dambusters of 617 Squadron. Killed over Holland in 1944, aged 26.

The silver sword by Ian Serraillier. It's a kids book, I first read it when I was about 10 and it stayed with me all my life! I've read it on and off for the past 40 years and it's still as good.

Read The Escape Artist last year and thought it was outstanding.
Agree with Night and A Woman in Berlin.
Currently reading The House of Glass by Hadley Freeman and loving it- about a Polish Jewish family who emigrate to France in the 1930s (haven't got much further than that!)

I missed off A Woman of No Importance, Sonia Purnell.

A lot of my favourites have already been mentioned:
Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Keneally
Five days that shocked the world, Nicholas Best
If this is a man / The Truce, Primo Levi
if this is a woman, Sarah Helm
A woman in Berlin, Anonymous
Agent Zigzag, Ben MacIntyre
Suite Francais, Irene Nemirovsky

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer

Hannah Goslar Remembers - I read it as a young teen and it is an extraordinary read. She was a childhood friend of Anne Frank (and is mentioned in Anne Frank's diary). The book covers Hannah's experience of the Holocaust

The Most Dangerous Enemy - Stephen Bungay, the best history of the Battle of Britain I have encountered.

The Wooden Horse - Eric Williams, non-fiction but reads like a thriller, escape from POW camp in Germany.

The Sharp End - John Ellis, the clearest picture by a historian of the eperience of fighting soldiers in WWII.

A book published originally as a chidren's book but a satisfactory adult read (adults more likely to read the nightmare truths between the lines as times) is Mischling Second Degree by Ilse Koehn. As a girl with one Jewish grandparent, Ilse had to be careful and conformist as a child, neither of which came easily to her. She describes her experiences as a Hitler Youth member - an interesting account of an individual trapped in an evil system.

Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler Across the Pyrenees by Edward Stourton. Smuggling people into Spain along the Chemin de la Liberté.

I've travelled around the Pyrenees quite a lot and recognised so many places, it's fascinating.

If you don't mind narrative 'non-fiction' - i.e., based on a true story (more or less loosely) but written as fiction, then Helen Forrester's autobiographical books about wartime in Liverpool give a real feel for what life was like then (and in the last years of the Depression as well). These are not factual, text-book style histories though, but written as stories.

She also wrote other fictionalised books based on things that happened to her or others she knew.

Can anyone help me with the name of a book written about/by an RAF pilot (I think) in WW2 who was captured, escaped, made it back as far as the Netherlands then was captured again and taken to a POW camp in Eastern Europe. I read it years ago but can never seem to find it when I Google search for it, I think the author was called something Pope?

Ill Met By Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss is the gripping, real life Boys' Own adventure story of the kidnapping of a German General from occupied Crete by two British officers and a group of Cretan partisans.
Patrick Leigh Fermor and Billy Moss were the two British officers, and the tale is told in a rollicking style, with several original photographs in the hardback version.

Colditz Story by PR Reid. Published soon after the war, and was his own story.

Petals Bridge by S aAmbrose... felt his other books were a bit twattish though, but his writing style rather than the actual story.

@tobee I read These Wonderful Rumours! recently and loved it.

Both East West Street and The Ratline by Philippe Sands are absolutely gripping. Someone mentioned Norman Longmate - his classic How We Lived Then is a history of everyday life during WW2, based on diaries, letters, oral history etc, and is just fascinating and wonderful.

The Cut Out Girl

www.penguin.co.uk/books/298975/the-cut-out-girl-by-es-bart-van/9780241978726

I'd add The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan. A description of the battle for Berlin in spring 1945 from the perspective of all parties - German civilians and military, Russian and Jewish. Absolutely gripping.

Might be out of print though as it was written in 1966.