When I went to school it pretty much felt like all they ever taught us was that Hitler was bad. I only learned much later about what happened to Mussolini.
Any interesting books that could offer perspective beyond the German/Japanese side of things? Any odd leaders worth looking into?
Son (daughter), do you realize what you're asking? There're as many works on WWII as there are commentaries on the Bible. They range from grand strategy and general histories down to individual soldiers' stories and company histories.
I have about 30 WWII books on my shelves (I'd have more but space is limited and I have to recycle them periodically.) and over the past 50 years I've probably read a couple of hundred. I like the strategic and major campaign stories best, but lately I've been interested in the US homefront. I could tell you a lot about the major campaigns (ex. Stalingrad, Kursk, France '40, D-Day, Bulge, Operation Bagration, Sicily, North Africa) but in almost every book I read I find reference to a soldier or battle I'd never heard of or know nothing of the details. I'm still frustrated at times about how little is written about the "Japanese Blitzkrieg" of Dec. '41-April '42. I recently read in detail of the US carrier raids of March '42 in the South Pacific for the first time. I never knew how sick Adm. Halsey was on his return and why he didn't participate at Midway... it was a bit more than sun poisoning.
Perhaps if you can a little more specific in what you're interested in. I'm also not exactly sure what you mean by "perspective beyond the German/Japanese side of things." There are quite a few histories of leaders; I particularly like the histories I own about Mark Clark (US, Italian Campaign) and Albert Kesselring (German, all over the place.) Omar Bradley (US, N Africa, France-Germany) IMO is sadly underrated.
I only have one person on ignore, but I've had to ignore him 625 different times.
I meant to mention Vietnam in the subject line as well but it wouldn't all fit.
I feel as ignorant about World War II as I do about Vietnam. I guess it's a frustration with feeling like history only focuses on what it wants us to know. In fact they never got past WWII in all my high school history classes, on one occasion I even flipped ahead in my textbook and read a section on the transfer from Johnson to Nixon. Seems like there was also something mentioned about social change, though I dunno if there was anything more to it than just acknowledging that there had been a switch in political parties. I started equating it to the change in fashion from the 50s to mid-late 60s and then again in the 70s.
Maybe I need to take a course at a community college or something and see if anything captures my interest. The war documentaries they've been showing on Reel America on C-Span 3 are becoming interesting to me.
I'm even growing increasingly frustrated that school never talked to us about the Soviets in Afghanistan. Nothing about Israel-Palestine either. It's like they spent so much time telling us about Mesopotamia and Columbus that anything current era seemed to be overlooked. I was embarrassed to only learn recently that the Berlin Wall encased West Berlin. I always assumed it was endless like the Great Wall. That's something I would prefer to have known earlier in life so I could have a better understanding of it.
I wish I knew how to specify a way of explaining what I seek to learn, but part of the challenge is not quite yet knowing what I think I'll find fascinating. I'd like to learn more Russian history, as well as Italian, might be wise to look into Greece at some point. Recently started an audiobook about the early life of Mao.
Took a class where she gave us a rundown of the conflict in the Middle East so I know about the Dome of the Rock but am probably forgetting a lot of the rest.
A lot of my problem could be not having the ambition to read books since I prefer listening to audiobooks or watching people on C-Span discuss their books and getting kind of a general idea on the subject rather than scouring through encyclopedias.
I looked for audiobooks about Lebanon at the library last week and didn't find anything. I may as well learn about Libya as well. Iran and Saudi Arabia seem to be at the heart of modern conflict so maybe that'd be a a decent place to start. Then maybe I'll get back to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
As for World War II, I'm interested in learning about it perhaps from books published in that time period rather than much later so it doesn't feel like the advantage of knowing the outcome is used by some historian to chastise some of the world leaders as idiots for allowing things to happen when maybe they didn't fully know what was going on yet. I remember watching a show discussing the 1936 Olympics and basically you can kinda get a glimpse into what's about to go down but the world is still oblivious to it. Seems like they said storefronts had signs in the window that implied what we know now and what the Nazi party was up to but the parade was going right by and of course no one thought anything of it.
In addition to battles I might also be interested in what Pentagon figures were up to, or whatever equivalent there was prior to its completion.
I do see some you mentioned that interest me. What's Operation Bagration, and what happened in Sicily?
Sorry for all this rambling. I hope it's not all a jumbled mess.
For a British perspective on a lesser known (to North Americans) part of the Pacific Theater during World War 2, I recommend MOUNTBATTEN by Arthur Swinson, NEW GUINEA by John Vader and SLIM by Michael Calvert. Part of a great series of compact yet photo-heavy World War Two books published by Ballantine in the 60's and 70's.
"Man was meant to grow, not stop!" -Robert Browning
I prefer listening to audiobooks
Oodles of good WWII audiobooks
Rose, there's a Messerschmitt in the Kitchen. Clean it up, will ya?
I couldn't tell you why, but I have about zero interest in "modern" history (after WWII) because it seems that with most of the books I've read, they have a political agenda (the same goes for several of the WWII books I've read written after 2000.)
I'll second Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." I read it the first time when I was 12 (1962) and I reread it for the 4th or 5th time last year. His other books, "The Nightmare Years" and "Twentieth Century Journey" are quite good as well.
A book written from the Japanese POV that I also find quite good is "The Rising Sun" by John Toland. For the war in China "Stillwell and the American Experience in China" by Barbara Tuchman is very good (IMO anything by Barbara Tuchman is very good, especially "The Guns of August" about the first month of WWI.
I've yet to read a good book about the Italian side of the war, nor anything real good about the "Japanese Blitzkrieg" although the video "Japan's War in Colour" (available on YouTube) covers the homeland and that phase of the war pretty nicely. The films "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and "Midway" are both good movies about the leadup and attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific War (if you skip through the love story, that is.)
There are a lot of good videos about WWII. I'll also second "Band of Brothers" though I'm not so hot about "The Pacific" although the biographies the series is based on are good (Helmet for My Pillow; With the Old Breed on Pelileu and Okinawa.)
One of my favorite video collections is "World War II - The Complete Collection." It's a 10-disk set that narrates each section like it's a contemporary newsreel. My only problems with it is that it's too "Americophile", covers the first 2 years of the war too briefly, stretches out the last year too long, and gets some of the facts wrong (IMO), and reuses the same clips too often, but it's still an interesting watch, and it's kind of fun to put it in the background and just listen to the tracks. Here's the link to Pt. 1/10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjvnrSHln-Y
I only have one person on ignore, but I've had to ignore him 625 different times.
That's why I'm hoping to find books from the 50s or earlier. Anything done today has an agenda. I resent being told how to feel, even if it's about something we perhaps all agree on!
shareHere are some books I'd recommend on WWII:
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
Hiroshima by John Hershey
In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton
To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy
At Dawn We Slept by Gordon Prange
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
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Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.
In my public library there's a bibliography of all the books written about WWII up to probably 2010. It's huge, 2 volumes of about 1000 pages each. I don't know if you could find something similar online. I'd judge that most of the books written prior to maybe 1975-1980 were written by contemporaries of the war years.
I only have one person on ignore, but I've had to ignore him 625 different times.