WW2 book recommendations

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer

I will respectfully disagree. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is probably my favorite book on the subject, and a good way to get a comprehensive picture of the war in Europe. But, of course, it's all a matter of opinion.

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A big negative to William Shirer's book. It was pretty much the first encompassing work on the Third Reich which is why it is still so well known, but Shirer was not a historian and did not write with detached, historical prose.

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Meh. Bowden is similar today as he is a journalist first and a historian second. The book has flaws, but it is a good starting point.

I've read WWII books in the hundreds and Shirer's book is fine.

I don't know if it is still available, but the Time Life series my dad got me as a kid is fabulous (although anachronistic - it was a great blend of charts, pictures and text - a "multimedia" experience in book form) and more hefty than ASOIAF ( ).

For a book with an LSU connection - long time LSU History professor Stanley Hilton wrote: "Hitler's Secret War in South America."

I took a 4000 level class on World War 2 with Dr. Hilton and it was excellent.

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I don't know if it is still available, but the Time Life series my dad got me as a kid is fabulous

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Got mine on Craigslist. Definitely can find them on Ebay. My only issue is you are definitely going to have to read those at home because you aren't taking those big arse books out and about with you.

Just finished Killing Patton

It's much broader than just Patton though, encompasses quite a bit of later war history

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My only issue is you are definitely going to have to read those at home because you aren't taking those big arse books out and about with you.

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Yeah - you have to dedicate half a bookshelf to them - like 40 coffee table books.

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Have you read Hett's book on this? I think his Hitler/Nazi books, overall, are excellent. I haven't read the Reichstag one yet, though.

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I have not. There's actually a pretty interesting, relatively short, write up on the Reichstag Fire by Sefton Delmer, who you may recognize from British propaganda lore, who was in Berlin at the time and arrived on scene as an international observer/correspondent of sorts. I don't remember exactly what his official role was in Berlin at the time. It's accessible online though.

Martin Gilbert's book on WWII is one of the better comprehensive books I've seen. I agree that Rise and Fall by Shrier is great. As stated, it may be dated but the man was there in the thick of it and that alone makes it a great read. I enjoyed the condensed version of Churchill's WWII memoirs but remember, Churchill said history would be kind to him because he intended to write it, and he did. If you are looking for something more specific, I would recommend The Wrong Stuff by Truman Smith about his war experiences as a B-17 pilot.

Patton
Helmet for my pillow

Check out "The Nazi Hunter" by Alan Levy. Its the story of Simon Wiesenthal, who went through the concentration camp system and lost around 70 family members. After the war he dedicated his life to hunting down some of the major war criminals. It describes his hunt for Adolf Eichman who organized the holocaust, Mengele the doctor known as the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz and some others. It also goes into detail about how all of them escaped from Germany. Its a very good read but goes into some pretty awful details of what happened in the camps and the experiments that Mengele did. There was one part where Franz Stangl who was a commondant described a burial pit that the bodies on the bottom began to liquify which caused the bodies on the top to begin to spill over and roll down the sides of the pit. Its gruesome but it really gives you an idea of how crazy these people really were.