Best WWII non-fiction you've read

[ellecf21]

Mine was Tattooist of Auschwitz. Possibly one of the most incredible stories I've ever read. What's yours?

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.

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)

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.

Books by Joachim Fest

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

Auschwitz itself has said this book is badly written fiction.

It is inaccurate on many levels.

@ellecf21

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

Another recommendation for Band of Brothers by Stephen E Ambrose.

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.

Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson

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

Another vote for the forgotten highlander

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

Absolutely. Utterly brilliant

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.

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.

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

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