WWII book suggestion

[Thunderboxskin]

DP isn’t a big reader but has recently expressed an interest in it, he’s very into WWII and has said he would be interested in reading a diary or similar of soldiers during the war. I enjoy reading immensely however my knowledge in this area and what kind of book would suit is limited. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would really like to get him something to see if he gets the reading bug!

The book All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings, it is a properly constructed history but draws a lot on personal accounts and diaries.

www.amazon.co.uk/All-Hell-Let-Loose-1939-1945-ebook/dp/B005E8A17A/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&crid=38AYG2PLKVZMY&keywords=max+hastings&sprefix=Max+hast%2Caps%2C174&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1637005850&sr=1-3

Thanks for the suggestion, the blurb sounds like it covers a wide range too

Forgotten voices of the second world war.

Forgotten voices of the holocaust.

Compilations made up, I think, from accounts held by the Imperial War Museum, but not diaries.

Thanks I will look them both up, the diary bit isnt essential.

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
A Woman in Berlin by Marta Hillers
Any of Primo Levi's autobiographical books (I particularly liked The Periodic Table, less fighting more chemistry which suited me).

I'd find a History forum and ask there.

I love that you're leading him down a reading path.

It's a novel but easily accessible and quite short, "Strange Meeting" by Susan Hill.

Also 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks is brilliant.

Thanks for the suggestions, I did consider birdsong as I read that years ago and remember enjoying it. However I think he would be more engaged if it was more factual iyswim.

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. This is the blurb from Goodreads: As good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US Army, kept getting tough assignments--responsible for everything from parachuting into France early DDay morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In "Band of Brothers," Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze & died, a company that took 150% casualties & considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals & letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes.

Then you can watch the HBO series - also brilliant.

“Ill met by Moonlight” by W Stanley Moss fits your bill.

It’s the true story of how Patrick Leigh Fermor & Billy Moss together with a band of Cretan freedom fighters, kidnapped the German general in charge of Crete, and spirited him off the island.
It reads like a Boys’ Own adventure story, packed with danger, excitement and tension.
It will probably need to be ordered.

Not really WW2 but tangentially connected- Winter in Madrid ( by CJ Samson) , great story of British expats in Spain during the civil war. Vividly conjures up a feeling of jeopardy and “ abroadness” .

Eric Newby's autobiographical "Love and War in the Apennines", about being a POW and his escape. Great book by one of my favourite writers.
Paul Richey "Fighter Pilot" is a brilliant account of an RAF pilot in 1940 and beyond. The Simon Garfield collections of accounts of life on the Home Front are good.

Rifleman by Victor Gregg, he joined the Rifle Brigade in 1938,fought in the desert, was taken prisoner at Arnhem & was held in a prison camp where he witnessed the raid on Dresden.

All Quiet On The Western Front

WW1 but short and absorbing

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. A true story about a young Italian guy who escorted Jews over the Alps and then became a driver for a Nazi General and embarked on spying for the resistance

How about The Book Thief?
Or Anne Frank's diary?

I've just started 'A Feather on the Water' by Lindsay Jayne Ashford. I'm not sure how good it is yet but it's set just after WW2, 3 women working at a Displaced Person camp, not an angle I've read before.

I do love the Tom Wilde series by Rory Clements, well worth a read.

This thread is from November. OP has probably bought some books by now.

The Light of Days by Judy Batalion is powerful and fascinating… the young girls ( so ‘normal’ and real) who risked torture and death for the Jewish Resistance in Poland. And yes, the Book Thief is unforgettable.

Have a look at the list by "Pen and Sword", a specialist publisher (though I don't know any specific titles to recommend) :
www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/WWII/c/19

Friends and family have enjoyed Ben MacIntyre's books on Double Cross and other spy or WWII topics, and Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War.

If you can still get hold of them, I enjoyed:

Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse. True story behind the escape tunnel dug under the vaulting horse by POWs, written by one of them. IIRC it covers their journey back to the UK.

Kendal Burt and James Leasor, The One That Got Away . True account of the only successful German POW escape from British hands.

Christabel Bielenberg's The Past Is Myself is an account of her life as an Englishwoman married to a German and living in Germany during the war is good, though inevitably more civilian than military. One of her friends was part of the plot to assassinate Hitler.

Arrghhh!

Still an interesting thread and at least it wasn't revived by a bot.

I know it’s an old thread but:

The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert

womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/features/book/the-dark-room