You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I have really got into my historical books again recently - I have recently re-read Is That Not A Man? and just completed The Somme by Peter Hart now onto 11th Hour, 11th Day, 11th Month by Joseph E Persico which is now making me more interested in reading more on the First World War about Verdun and other historical battlefields. I have also read All Quiet on the Western Front which I subsequently found out is not a historical account but a novel (albeit written by a German veteran) and I would happily read more accounts from the German side.
Ohh and I have also read (but intend on rereading) With The Jocks by Peter White.
I have tried reading Antony Beevor but don't get on with his writing style and have Overlord by Max Hastings still to read.
So - what else would anyone recommend?
Catastrophe is very good. It's focused on 1914 and you really get the reality of how WW1 was largely a German/French war at first. Savage Continent is worth reading, though very depressing.
Two I have enjoyed and that give a differnt perspective
All Quiet on the Western Front - Henre Remarque - a german soldiers first had account of WW1
and The Foresaken army Heinrich Gerlach - again a german soldiers account of stalingrad
I'm on with Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August at the moment, a Pulitzer prize winning account of the first month of WW1. Definitely worth a look.
I've also got The Deluge to read at some point.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. First hand account of life in the Pacific in WWII so not a historical or strategic analysis but excellent all the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_the_Old_Breed
"Marked for death - the first war in the air" is a good read. As is "1918, the final act".
Geoffrey Wellum "First Light", Max Hastings' "All hell let loose"; "Bomber Boys". I've got loads, they are just some I can remember off the top of me head.
Two Leon Uris novels I have enjoyed - IIRC basically historically correct with fictionalised charectars
Battle cry - about marines in the pacific campaign
Mila 18 - the story of the Warsaw Ghetto and uprising
*glances at bookshelves*
A few here,
Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre
First Light - Geoffrey Wellum
The Most Dangerous Enemy - Stephen Bungay
Enigma - Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Anthony Beevor has quite a few books on WW2 inculding one called The Second World War
^^ As my OP, I don't get on with Antony Beevor - I just don't like his writing style. I got about 30% into Stalingrad and gave up.
And TJ - I have read All Quiet On The Western Front (which is actually a novel, not a true account)
Do'h
Its still good tho 😉
Loads of good stuff out there.
A few off the top of my head.
WW1 - The Donkeys - Alan Clark and then Mud, Blood Poppycock - Gordon Corrigan.
Storm of Steel - Ernst Junger
Goodbye to All That - Robert Graves
WW2 - Enemy at the Gates - William Craig
Quartered Safe Out Here - GM Fraser
The Forgotten Soldier - Guy Sajer
Audiobook - Blueprint for Armageddon - Dan Carlin
An Epic 5 part, something 15+ hrs, WW1 history. Free download from his website. Really recommend if you haven't heard it.
Dan carlin downloads
The Bombing War, Europe 1939-45 by Richard Overy. It’s a big history book, but really well written, and gives a different (objective) perspective - not jingoistic at all. In addition to the well known parts of the air campaign by both Axis and Allies, there’s a lot of stuff about geographic areas that are often overlooked.
I read the above after reading Geoffrey Wellum ‘First Light’ and ‘Luftwaffe Fighter & Bombers’ by Chris Goss. The latter is a day by day history of the Battle of Britain from perspective of Luftwaffe aircrew, and includes loads of first hand accounts, and photos taken by ground crew/air crew at the time. Fascinating to read this after the Wellum book.
Its still good tho
Agreed - I am going to re-read it again though, especially after finding out that the author of the book I am currently reading says it should be mandatory reading for all world leaders.
"we die alone" by David howarth is quite a good account of one man's amazing feat of survival during WW2. It was actually mentioned in another book I read and I thought I'd give it a go.
The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart.
Winged Victory, Yeates- a bit difficult to describe (suggest you look at the reviews to see whether it might be the sort of thing that floats your boat), semi-autobiographical novel by a WW1 pilot.
An Army At Dawn and its sequels. Makes quite a change to see the war from the US point of view rather than the British one:
http://liberationtrilogy.com/books/army-at-dawn/
One to avoid: Band of Brothers. Poorly written, and the TV series is much much better.
Operation Mincemeat – Ben Macintyre
First Light – Geoffrey Wellum
+1
Also
Agent Zigzag – Ben Macintyre
Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies - Macintyre, Ben
Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks who Plotted Hitler's Defeat
Milton, Giles
Danger Uxb: The Heroic Story of the WWII Bomb Disposal Teams Paperback by James Owen
wings on my sleeve by eric winkle brown
One to avoid: Band of Brothers. Poorly written, and the TV series is much much better.
I have that (and Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose too) - I nearly picked CS up to start reading yesterday but chose 11th Hour instead. I did try it once before but couldn't get into it and gave up (so I can believe the same can be said for Band of Brothers too - and yes I did enjoy that series).
Hear what you say about Anthony Beevor but his Second World War book is far better in my view than his single campaign books like Stalingrad and Berlin (though I enjoyed those too). It gives a great overview of the geopolitics, regional conflicts and alliances around the world which led to a truly global war. how the Sino Japanese war, Russo Japanese war, the Chinese civil war etc. all affected the conduct and outcome of WW2. How in fact WW2 was just an extension of WW1.
There is an incredible example of the global element at the beginning of the book. A picture of a young Korean in Wermacht uniform captured by the Americans in Normandy. He had been captured and conscripted in turn by the Japanese, the Red Army, then the Germans!
The other great thing about Beevor is his use of eyewitness accounts, by ordinary fighting men and civilians as well as the generals and politicians which makes it all a little easier to relate to.
Give him another try!
I should say though that even me, a massive Beevor fan boy, gave up on his history of the Spanish Civil War. The voluminous preamble explaining 19th and 20th century Spanish politics, theology and royalty and the hundreds of factions involved was just too turgid to wade through!
Another vote here for first light.
Give him another try!
Yeah I may do at some point - the Peter Hart one I have just finished (The Somme) relies very heavily on veteran's accounts, diary entries etc too. And it was fascinating to get a much better understand of what happened (why the German trenches were better, why they didn't go running Over The Top on July 1, why the Allies struggled at times against a materially very similar opposition etc).
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer is an account of a French guy IIRC who had a parent from Alsace, and he got cinscrioted into the German army. I very personal account and a good read.
I think the definitive set of first hand accounts is "The War the Infantry Knew" by Captain J.C. Dunn:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Infantry-Knew-1914-1919-Chronicle/dp/0349106355
The story of a battalion, but far, far more than that with referenced memories from loads of people.
Just be glad it hasn't happened in our generations
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/7897/47326797291_693cd4f34b_o.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/7897/47326797291_693cd4f34b_o.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
(The second pic is representation IMO, not the actual men)
The Thin Red Line by James Jones. The book not the film that is loosely based on it.
From wiki...
British historian and military writer John Keegan nominated The Thin Red Line as, in his opinion, one of only two novels portraying Second World War combat that could be favorably compared to the best of the literature to arise from the First World War (the other was Flesh Wounds (1966) by British writer David Holbrook).[6] Paul Fussell said that it was "perhaps the best" American WWII novel, better than A Walk in the Sun and The Naked and the Dead.[7]
I was reading about this book earlier, it looks fascinating, and I’ll probably pick up a copy some time soon.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/711773072/virginia-hall-the-subject-of-a-woman-of-no-importance-was-anything-but
It's a few years since I read it but I enjoyed this account of WW II Desert warfare.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3338501-popski-s-private-army
The Good War by Studs Terkel if you like eyewitness accounts (and it was the model for World War Z).
Big fan of anything by Ben Mcintyre, the three mentioned above plus Rogue Heroes, about the early days of the SAS.
Abdolutely my favourite WWII book, and one of my very favourite books of all time, is Paul Brickhill's The Dambusters - an amazing story wonderfully told, tracing 617 squadron from their earliest roots to the end of the war, an engaging, engrossing story told with a wonderful dry humour. And what characters - 617's most famous leader has to be Guy Gibson, but Leonard Cheshire... Wow, what a story he could have told, had he not been far too modest to do so. Brickhill also wrote The Great Escape and Reach For The Sky which are cracking reads, but The Dambusters trumps all for me. 🙂
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Road of Bones (The siege of Kohima) by Fergal Keane is a good read. My wife's grandfather fought there.
Spike Milligan's War Memoirs. They're not just funny.
Rising 44 is pretty brilliant, one of the most readable WW2 books that I've read.
The First World War by Liddel Hart is a decent narrative history of WW1. It was written reasonably soon after the war finished so some of the analysis is still quite raw, but I thought it had aged pretty well.
I read 'The beauty and the sorrow' by Peter Englund earlier this year.
It's 20 diary accounts of WW1 all woven together in chronological order. It looks at the war on all fronts from a wide range of perspectives. It's quite eye opening.
Big fan of anything by Ben Mcintyre, the three mentioned above plus Rogue Heroes, about the early days of the SAS.
Rogue Heroes is sat on my bedside table to read next. Just finished Skunk Works (cold war rather than WW2) another excellent read...
As an aside, if you like Ben McIntyre, I can recommend The Spy and The Traitor (cold war). Also on the cold war theme, David E. Hoffman's books Dead Hand and The Billion Dollar Spy are also excellent.
As an aside, if you like Ben McIntyre, I can recommend The Spy and The Traitor (cold war).
Is that his latest, Oleg Something what defected to the west? I remember hearing extracts on Book Of The Week, cannae wait to read it! 🙂
Is that his latest, Oleg Something what defected to the west? I remember hearing extracts on Book Of The Week, cannae wait to read it!
Yep Hard back only at the moment. Fascinating read and ties into The Dead Hand nicely as well as Oleg played a big role in helping Reagan and Thatcher understand the Soviet point of view regarding nuclear disarmament.
IIRC Oleg Gordievsky is still alive somewhere in the UK (trying not to be poisoned by Putin).
Sound, look forward to that - BOTW said his location is still classified and he is still under 24 hour surveillance as the KGB still want him knocked on the back of the head. And I honk about the odd long day....
as footflaps mentions Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is brilliant
Audiobook – Blueprint for Armageddon – Dan Carlin
An Epic 5 part, something 15+ hrs, WW1 history. Free download from his website. Really recommend if you haven’t heard it.
This, and the first two parts of his podcast about the Japanese - and the back story (from ~1900) that provides insights into their WW2 campaign. - "Supernova In The East"
And if you're not a fan of podcasts, or never heard him before, try ten minutes. Awesome voice and ridiculous amounts of research (he averages 2.5 podcasts per year...
Also Dan Carlin Ghosts of the Ostfront is a great listen
Geert Mak In Europe is brilliant. Easy to read on a commute etc as is a collection of articles.
.
If you’re interested in strategy as opposed to action, then Alanbrookes war diaries are very good indeed. They also make an interesting counter to the traditional deferential view of Churchill...
1914 by Lyn McDonald. The first few months of WW1 in the words of the participants.
Battalion by Alistair Borthwick. An account of everyday life and the fighting for one Scottish Battalion from North Africa to northwest Europe after D Day. He was the battalion intelligence officer so in an ideal position to be aware of events. An easy to read style by the same guy who wrote the outdoors classic of 1930s Scotland camping and rock climbing - Always A Little Further.
Most Secret War by by Jones. A fascinating book about developing technology in WW2 and the battle of the beams.
Most Secret War by by Jones. A fascinating book about developing technology in WW2 and the battle of the beams.
+1
Forgot to add that one to my list!
Some great suggestions so far, thank you everyone. I have to say that I am really enjoying my current read (11th Hour, 11th Day, 11th Month by Joseph E Persico) - about 50 pages in and already quite engrossed - and as I hadn't read that much about the run up to The Great War I am finding lots of interesting things out (even down to the manner of dress of soldiers at the start of the war, still dressed in bright regimental clothing) and the fact that France lost almost a third of the UK's total casualties throughout the war in the first month with entire battalions wiped out completely simply because they were approaching battle in a traditional way although Germany were using the new 'Schlieffen plan'. And had they not diverted from that in the first month, the eventual outcome could have been very different.
Some of these coal miners volunteered because they were promised a good rate of pay. But they didn't get, so they tried to go on strike.
Interesting how those negotiations went.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zggykqt
^^^ Birdsong (the novel) recounts the story of the miners very well (that was the book that lit the flame of interest in reading about the wars because it described so much that went on that I had no idea about - I have barely read a novel since - it's all historical accounts).
Sea Wolves by Tim Clayton. Submarines in WWII.
Wings on my Sleeve by Eric "Winkle" Brown (one of those lives where the author was at everything important and flew just about every plane made)
<div class="kno-ecr-pt kno-fb-ctx gsmt hNKfZe" data-local-attribute="d3bn" data-ved="2ahUKEwiOp-zRxcrhAhX4VRUIHSh3A0sQ3B0oATAUegQICxAK">The Flowers of the Forest: Scotland and the First World War by Trevor Royale.</div>
<div data-local-attribute="d3bn" data-ved="2ahUKEwiOp-zRxcrhAhX4VRUIHSh3A0sQ3B0oATAUegQICxAK"></div>
Currently reading The Shetland Bus by David Howarth. SOE supplies by fishing boat to Norway.
Sea Wolves by Tim Clayton. Submarines in WWII.
The Silent Deep is a good read on the The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945...
If you liked First Light, "War in a stringbag" by Charles Lamb and "6weeks of Blenheim Summer" by Alastair Panton make good comparison in my view.
From WW1, +1 for Winged Victory, also Aces Falling and Somme Success by Peter Hart
From the other side, Duel Under the Stars by Willhelm Johen is an account of a german night fighter, and I have just read Rocket Fighter by Mano Ziegler about the development of the Me 163 which is facinating
Somme Mud by E Lynch is very good and a remarkable story of WW1
For whom the bell tolls - Hemingway, Spanish civil war not the world wars, but will finish for ever any thought that war is anything but vile.
Goodbye to all that - Robert Graves. Again WW1 and after classic
To be honest there are loads of interesting books about the wars but these are the ones that have stood out for me.
If you want to extend the brief a bit to Vietnam, then this is an absolute corker, and sums up the utter bonkersness of it all. Christ only knows how he survived it!
As said the Ben Macintyre books are great, 'They gave me a Seafire'-Mike Crosley and if you can find it 'Achtung Swordfish!'-Stanley Brand, is also a good read. I have a copy signed by the author and the artist (Terry Lee) who painted the cover art (he used to be my boss).
Some of my favourites have already been mentioned.
Quartered Safe Out Here by George McDonald Fraser - a superb writer (creator of the Flashman series) writing about his experiences as an infantryman during the tail end of the Burma campaign.
War in a Stringbag by Charles Lamb - enthralling tales of his exploits flying a Fairy Swordfish biplane and the Axis and Vichy French.
One that has not yet been mentioned yet is Currahee by Donald R Burgett - a memo of an American paratrooper covering his training and drop into Normandy. As a kid I borrowed it several times from the local library and it had a powerful effect on me. I read it again 20 years later and it was as powerful as I remembered.
The above are all personal accounts of war. If you are looking for wider historical accounts then you could look at some stuff by James Holland. He has written several WW2 books and is an easier (IMO) writer than Beevor to read. I have his "Big Week" on my to read.
Sniping In France 1914-18: With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts,Observers,and Snipers
Major H. Hesketh-Prichard DSO MC
A fascinating account on the evolution of trench warfare and lessons learned from the perspective of a big game hunter brought in to improve our sniper & scout training as well as combat the German equivalents.
Fiction but Bomber by Len Deighton is well worth reading. Don't be put off by what feels like a boys own opening. It tells the story of one raid from many perspectives including those on the ground with the bombs falling on them.
Tommy by Richard Holmes - made him cry writing it - and did the same to me - lots of personal accounts included from the brotherton library in leeds
Lyn Macdonald - 1915 death of Innocence - made me cry again....
One to avoid - Mud blood and poppycock - that was crap and badly written and poorly support by decent historical research
I`ve just ordered To Hell and Back, the story of Audie Murphy.
If you haven't already I'd read The Cruel Sea and Das Boot back to back. Two sides of the same battle.
Lots of good recommendations there. For WW2 flying reminiscences I think The Big Show by Pierre Clostermann is my favourite. Flames in the Sky by him is also excellent although the authenticity of some of the accounts has been questioned. Fighter Pilot by Paul Richey is superb. The Last Enemy by Richard Hilary is a classic. Sigh for a Merlin by Alex Henshaw is a great account of the behind the scenes test pilot role churning out Spitfires at Castle Bromwich. The War Diaries of Neville Duke is an excellent read and if you want a German perspective, I Flew for the Fuhrer by Heinz Knoke is good.
Liddle-Hart. Proper oldschool.
Catch 22 gets to the heart of it too.
The Giro - admittedly its mostly about the Giro/ Italian cycling but there’s a couple of paragraphs covering Italian imperial ambitions and the role these played in initiating WW1. Something I’d not come across previously.
Finished Rogue Heroes, was a very interesting read, some amazing survival stories in there.
Now half way through Sea Wolves after seeing it on this thread.....
If you haven’t already I’d read The Cruel Sea and Das Boot back to back. Two sides of the same battle.
I love Cruel Sea but "Three Covettes" by the same author is brilliant. He wrote it during the convoys which he served on. Written and published largely in note form because he didn't think he'd live long enough to get it out otherwise. It's basically Cruel Sea but for real. Superb.
I'm not a huge fan of war novels, I prefer non fiction, but I've read and absolutely love The Cruel Sea, so it gets a plug off me.
As someone else said, give Beevor another go. The First World War and The Second World War are excellent, and Stalingrad and Berlin are required reading for me. The events described in Berlin read like old testament, wrath of god type of stuff. Eye opening.
I read Bloodlands and Black Earth by Timothy Snyder in the last year. Both excellent, dealing with the twin effects of Soviet and then Nazi occupation and atrocities on the unfortunate people of central and eastern Europe. Very well done, but be warned, grim and depressing.
Chickenhawk, as already mentioned by Binners, is just insane. It makes the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now seem like an everyday occurrence. Well worth a read.
Would also recommend First Light by Geoff Whellum, Wings on my Sleeve by Eric Brown and Fly For Your Life about Robert Stanford Tuck.
Vader
If you haven’t already I’d read The Cruel Sea and Das Boot back to back. Two sides of the same battle.
For the third side, that of the merchant seamen:
Martin Middlebrook's "Convoy"
and for more detail
Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War" in 2 volumes.
Merchant seamen had a death rate over 30% in WW2.
The Atlantic convoys were a bloodbath.
My father was a deck officer and was sunk twice, including on Convoy HX229 in foul conditions. He was then called up and commissioned in the RNVR but refused a posting into submarines - which he loathed, even our own. He got put on the tugs instead - towing the Mulberry Harbour units in for the Normandy Landings on D-Day after which he was invalided out.
My uncle, also a deck officer saw his father in law's ship vaporised in front of him on a convoy. With that and other incidents he suffered badly from what we were told was "shell-shock" and retreated into alcoholism. A lovely witty man who could turn into a raging arsehole in seconds.
Almost all the ships my father had served on at some time were later sunk during WW2 (I researched them), but it's unfortunate he was no longer alive when I discovered the actual U-Boat that had sunk him was itself sunk a week later.
these
[img] 
[/img]
Alert In The West is a great account of a FW190D pilot in the latter stages of WW2.
Combat Crew by John Comer is a harrowing account of the US bomber offensive, he was a flight engineer in B17. A fantastic book!
Merchant seamen had a death rate over 30% in WW2.
Just reading Sea Wolves and British submariners (and boats) had a life expectancy of 3 months! They had 86 U boats in construction at one time as half of the fleet was lost each year! Most U boat captions sailed on the first mission on a brand new boat and some had to dive in anger for the first time before the sub had even been for test dives to test for leaks etc!
Sea Wolves by Tim Clayton. Submarines in WWII.
he used to be my brother in law, Finest Hour by him is worth a read too.
"Bomber Stream Broken" by James "Chips" Campbell. Friend of my father's.
A novel, but written by an ex-bomber crewman.
Origins of the second world war
AJP Taylor