[cowofzot]

Currently; As Far As my Feet will Carry Me. About a German pow who escaped from Siberia & walked 8000 plus miles home.

One's I would reccomend, 2 Eggs on My Plate & German Raider Atlantis.

2 Eggs by Norwegian saboteur Oluf Reed Olsen. Who parachuted back into Norway after recieving training & got stuck under the bomber, managed to break free only to land miles off course with a twisted knee, which he fixed via a cleft in a tree, then walked through the snow for days until he found a house, healed up & did hide & seek sabotage work for years without ever being caught. http://www.alibris.com/search/books/aut ... uf,%20Reed

German Raider Atlantis, 622 days at sea, captured British radio cyphers, along with 6 million pound notes & captured or sunk 22 ships.

[Nattering Nabob]

The most entertaining by far were Stuka Pilot by Hans Rudel and Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner...

[cowofzot]

Agreed. Fly for your Life Stanford Tuck another good one.

[Jarlaxle]

Agreed on that...Bob Tuck's story is good.

Robert Johnson: THUNDERBOLT!
I forget the author, but: Black Sheep One, a biography of Pappy Boyington
War Fish by George Grider (Captain, USN)

[cowofzot]

Yah I liked Johnsons book. He didn't shoot down the 200 plus ace as it turns out, & FW 190 was the top roll rate A/C in Europe, ( he claimed it was the 47). But very good read. I love the part where he vector rolled inside the Spit & the Spit pilot thought he had outurned him. German 190 pilots used the same move.
http://www.1jg51.net/jg51/LwTactics.html

Bye Bye Black Sheep another one. I was lucky to speak to the author before he passed away.

[Godstud]

Samurai by Martin Caidin, Sabura Sakai & Fred Saito. (1985)
It's the biography of WW2 Japan's greatest living fighter ace. He shot down 64 enemy planes. Exceptional since his accounts often were recorded exactly by American pilots who faced him. They mention him in that History Channel show Dogfights a few times. interesting and informative it gives a different view of the air war in the Pacific.
it's one of the few books I've read several times and I had to replace the original version because the pages were falling out of it.

Martin Caiden also does a few books about the design and exploits of other famous planes during WW2 - Flying Fortress about the B-17, Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38, Zero , and many other works of military history. Better than Tom Clancy by a country mile, Martin Caidin twice won the Aviation/Space Writers Association award as the outstanding author in the field of aviation.

Thunderbolt! was written by Martin Caidin AND Robert S Johnson.

[fuser]

Battle of Kursk by David Glantz.... Many could find this one quite boring but I really enjoyed this book for the immense detail it has provided for one of the most significant battle of that War...

[ThereBeDragons]

Blossoms in the Wind - a story about those chosen to be kamikaze pilots
GI: The American Soldier in WWII - exactly what it says on the tin, a profile of America's army during the war
With the Old Breed - one marine's tale of taking islands in the pacific
The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Told by its Perpetrators and Bystanders: viewtopic.php?f=63&t=117182

[Lokakyy]

I liked Warsaw '44 by Norman Davies, which concentrates to the meticulous examination of the Warsaw Uprising, from the Polish, Russian and German side.

Davies is a polophile in a sense, and some undertones in the text ("No Pole could disrespect the heroic fight and sacrifice of these fighters for the Polish nation..." etc.) seem pretty Polish nationalist, but it is a good piece of war history, perhaps partly because I'm interested about Polish history.

Another interesting one (at least for me, who always found the conventional war history with platoons and companies not-my-cup of tea, alternative histories being more interesting to me) is A Woman in Berlin (Eine Frau in Berlin) by anonymous author. It is a first-hand account of a woman living in Berlin after the collapse of the Third Reich, who witnesses both the common struggle for food and necessities in a fallen society as well as the rape and ill-treatment of women by the Russian occupation force.

[Stipe]

Not in a sense. Davies is practically a Polish nationalist. For reasons probably worthy of a separate discussion, British historians of Poland tend to end up identifying themselves (too) closely with their subject. Not that he's a bad historian though.

[Lokakyy]

Not in a sense. Davies is practically a Polish nationalist sometimes.

Indeed, so I perceived. Then again, because he so clearly is one, he is far easier to read as a biased historian than some examples.

For reasons probably worthy of a separate discussion, British historians of Poland tend to really identify themselves (too) closely with their subject. Not that he's a bad historian though.

Interesting subject, though I'm not sure if a thread about it would get decent posts. Is it because of some kind of guilt felt for the betrayal of Poland or something else?

[Ombrageux]

I used to eat, breathe and shit WW2. I had a Prusso-German fetish, in fact. So I read William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall, Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader, Han von Luck's Panzer Commander. I should probably re-read Shirer's book as I was very young when I went through it (and I think I skimmed many chapters). More recently, I've only read tangentially about WW2, as part of general histories and biographies. I have read Marc Bloch's Etrange défaite, and I want to read some of the memoir literature (Churchill, de Gaulle). Although, I'd want to read a "definitive" general history before trusting to reading a politicized and selective memoir. De Gaulle I would read mainly for the style and as a myth-making document. I also have a shiny golden book on the Nuremberg Trials waiting on my shelf. I am also (slowly) plowing through, in Italian, a history of Italy in the war and Ciano's diary.

[Lokakyy]

William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall

I've never bothered with it, but I've been told that it is very problematic because enthusiastists now are reading Shirer as a research book instead of a contemporary writer who he was. Years ago when doing my Bachelor thesis, I can't even remember how many people doing in their work quoted Shirer as "a fact", only to be shot down by the staff member specialised to the World War II.

[Stipe]

Is it because of some kind of guilt felt for the betrayal of Poland or something else?

That might be a substantial part of it, although I think the British-Polish relationship through the course of the war also makes it easy for British historians to sympathize as strongly as they do. You even find it carrying through to British histories of Poland not directly about the war.

[Ombrageux]

He's a contemporary source and the first "reference" text. A good place to start, helps you understand the mentalities and "accepted facts" of the day (on appeasement and the Maginot Line, for example).

[Smilin' Dave]

I think the last WWII book I read was Cross of Iron by John Mosier (it was a gift)... which I hated so much I wrote a blow by blow criticism of it over on HiFo. Mosier isn't a historian and shows no broad knowledge of the subject matter he keeps writing about... and he's arogant... and seems to be pro-German is a suspicious way.

I read it years ago now, but I quite liked Alan Clarke's Barbarossa. More as an overview rather than for his expertise on the subject matter.

[Jarlaxle]

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of Midway

[ThirdTerm]

[youtube]kx0iwRO6jas[/youtube]
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First published in the year after his death in 1970, Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War is a classic military tome from one of the best military strategists of his generation. With his distinctive voice, he covers the most famous of all wars with seering insight and authorative knowledge of tactics and strategy. Few have attempted to condense those six bloody years into one volumne, and Liddell's Hart's achievement is a true classic now republished in the Pan Military Strategy Series.
http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/bhliddellhart/historyofthesecondworldwar

[The Immortal Goon]

A Doctor's War is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

[Husky]

A Doctor's War is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

I'm ordering a copy of this. Have only read positive things about it.