WWII Nonfiction Books

The Long Night by Steve Wick

When William L. Shirer agreed to start up the Berlin bureau of Edward R. Murrow's CBS News in the 1930s, he quickly became both the most trusted and most determined reporter in all of Europe. He did not fall for the Nazi propaganda, as some of his esteemed colleagues did, and fought against both Nazi censorship and American disdain for his relentless tactics. He warned of the consequences if the Nazis were not stopped, all the while developing close ties to the party's elite and maintaining contacts whose allegiances could not be won by other reporters, thus obtaining a unique perspective of the party's rise to power. From the Night of the Long Knives to his removal at bayonet-point from the broadcast center in Vienna during Anschluss, and from the front lines of Germany's invasion of France to his coverage of the Nuremberg trials and the Nazis' demise, Shirer redefined the importance of journalism.

The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson

Spring, 1942. The United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and sent them to incarceration camps across the West. Nearly 14,000 of them landed on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, at the base of Heart Mountain. They faced racism, cruelty, and frozen winters. Trying to recreate comforts from home, many established Buddhist temples and sumo wrestling pits. Kabuki performances drew hundreds of spectators. Then in fall, 1943, the camp's high school football team, the Eagles, started its first season and finished it undefeated, crushing the competition from nearby, predominantly white high schools. As the team's second season kicked off, the young men faced a choice to either join the Army or resist the draft. Parson profiles the team as teammates were divided, and some were jailed for their decisions.

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War by Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen--Winston Churchill first among them--the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe's central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.

D-Day by Stephen E. Ambrose

It is the young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s that this book is about. The literature they read as youngsters was anti-war and cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers and heroes. None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not handgrenades; shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Describes the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima on six survivors of the atomic blast.

The Good War by Studs Terkel

In "The Good War" Terkel presents the good, the bad, and the ugly memories of World War II from a perspective of forty years of after the events. No matter how gruesome the memories are, relatively few of the interviewees said they would have been better off without the experience. It was a central and formative experience in their lives. Although 400,000 Americans perished, the United States itself was not attacked again after Pearl Harbor, the economy grew, and there was a new sense of world power that invigorated the country. Some women and African Americans experienced new freedoms in the post war society, but good life after World War II was tarnished by the threat of nuclear war.

Bridge to the Sun by Bruce Henderson

One of the last, great untold stories of World War II--kept hidden for decades--even after most of the World War II records were declassified in 1972, many of the files remained untouched in various archives--a gripping true tale of courage and adventure from Bruce Henderson, master storyteller, historian, and New York Times best-selling author of Sons and Soldiers--the saga of the Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater, in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, with their families back home in America, under U.S. Executive Order 9066, held behind barbed wire in government internment camps.

The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz

Tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 threatened to tear apart the wartime alliance among Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin just as victory was close at hand. Katz uncovers the dramatic story of the three young women who were chosen by their fathers to travel with them to Yalta. Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill, and Kathleen Harriman were each bound by fierce family loyalty, political savvy, and intertwined romances that powerfully colored these crucial days. Situated in the political maelstrom that marked the transition to a post- war world, their relationships were tested and strengthened by the history they witnessed and the future they crafted together.

Avenue of Spies by Alex Kershaw

The best-selling author of The Liberator brings to life the incredible true story of an American doctor in Paris, and his heroic espionage efforts during the Second World War. The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris's hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son Phillip at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high. Just down the road at Number 31 was the 'mad sadist' Theodor Dannecker, an Eichmann protege charged with deporting French Jews to concentration camps. And Number 84 housed the Parisian headquarters of the Gestapo, run by the most effective spy hunter in Nazi Germany. From his office at the American Hospital, itself an epicenter of Allied and Axis intrigue, Jackson smuggled fallen Allied fighter pilots safely out of France, a job complicated by the hospital director's close ties to collaborationist Vichy. After witnessing the brutal round-up of his Jewish friends, Jackson invited Liberation to officially operate out of his home at Number 11--but the noose soon began to tighten. When his secret life was discovered by his Nazi neighbors, he and his family were forced to undertake a journey into the dark heart of the war-torn continent from which there was little chance of return.

Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose

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.

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Relates the story of a U.S. airman who survived when his bomber crashed into the sea during World War II, spent forty-seven days adrift in the ocean before being rescued by the Japanese Navy, and was held as a prisoner until the end of the war.

Madame Fourcade's Secret War by Lynne Olson

In 1941 a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization--the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country's conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group's name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah's Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, 'even a lion would hesitate to bite.' No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence--including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day--as Alliance. The Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade's own lover and many of her key spies. Although Fourcade, the mother of two young children, moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape--once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell--and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her. Now, in this dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many.

Dutch Girl by Robert Matzen

Near the end of 1939, ten-year-old Audrey Hepburn flew from boarding school in England into the Netherlands, which would soon become a war zone. What she experienced in five years of Nazi occupation has never been explored until now. Dutch Girl sets the story straight, revealing the Nazi past of Audrey's parents and how their daughter dealt with this information. The book examines her career as an acclaimed young ballerina, her involvement with the Dutch Resistance, an active role tending wounded, and dark months in the line of fire as the end drew near for the Nazi regime.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone

In 1916, a young Quaker schoolteacher and poetry scholar named Elizebeth Smith was hired by an eccentric tycoon to find the secret messages he believed were embedded in Shakespeare's plays. She moved to the tycoon's lavish estate outside of Chicago expecting to spend her days poring through old books. But the rich man's close ties to the U.S. government, and the urgencies of war, quickly transformed Elizebeth's mission. She soon learned to apply her skills to an exciting new venture: codebreaking -- the solving of secret messages without knowledge of the key. Working alongside her on the estate was William Friedman, a Jewish scientist who would become her husband and lifelong codebreaking partner. Elizebeth and William were in many ways the Adam and Eve of the National Security Agency, the U.S. institution that monitors and intercepts foreign communications to glean intelligence. In this book, journalist Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman who played an integral role in our nation's history -- from the Great War to the Cold War. He traces Elizebeth's developing career through World War I, Prohibition, and the struggle against fascism. She helped catch gangsters and smugglers, exposed a Nazi spy ring in South America, and fought a clandestine battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German operatives to conceal their communications. And through it all, she served as muse to her husband, a master of puzzles, who astonished friends and foes alike. Inside an army vault in Washington, he worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma -- and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life. Fagone unveils America's codebreaking history through the prism of one remarkable woman's life, bringing into focus the events and personalities that shaped the modern intelligence community.

The Sisters of Auschwitz by Roxane van Iperen

Relates the story of sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper of Amsterdam, who joined the Dutch resistance and created a clandestine safehouse in the woods, which became an important Jewish hiding place and underground center, before being captured by the Nazis and put on the last train to Auschwitz along with Anne Frank and her family.