Finding the best ww11 books suitable for your needs isnt easy. With hundreds of choices can distract you. Knowing whats bad and whats good can be something of a minefield. In this article, weve done the hard work for you.
Reviews
1. Fly Boys - A True Story of Courage
Description
This Edition: A True Story of Courage is an extraordinary of Navy and Marine airmen on a remote Pacific island is sent to bomb Japanese communication towers. They were all shot down. One was rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine. The others were captured by the Japanese soldiers and held prisoner. Then they disappeared. This is their story.2. The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
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Nal CaliberDescription
The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War IIwhen the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia...During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planeswithout tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and backwithout getting shot down themselves.
Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II.
Amazing [and] riveting.James Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers
3. Eyewitness to World War II: Unforgettable Stories and Photographs From History's Greatest Conflict
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National Geographic SocietyDescription
The unforgettable story of World War II is told through the words of those who lived itAmericas greatest generationboth on the battlefield and the home front. Personal writings create a dramatic tapestry of wartime experience, and recollections of Roosevelt, Hitler, and Patton, as well as letters composed by soldiers at battle and diaries of women serving in the military at home, present an absorbing narrative that tells the entire history of the war from several perspectives. Hundreds of images capture fateful moments of triumph and defeat that defined the era, including rare photographs and artifacts, many never-before-seen from private collections that are placed in context with more famous photographs from the period. More than 20 authoritative National Geographic maps detail military movements and decisive battles in the European and Pacific theaters of war. These incredible, first-person stories, amazing moments of heroism, compelling imagery, and illuminating maps bring the entire history of World War II to life in vivid detail.4. World War II: The Definitive Visual History
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A comprehensive guide to every facet of World War IIEvents presented chronologically
Includes maps, uniforms, weapons, timelines, and features on life on the Home Front
Seller SKU: 201600013658
Smithsonian World War II The Definitive Visual History
Description
World War II: The Definitive Visual History is a comprehensive, authoritative, yet accessible guide to the people, politics, events, and lasting effects of World War II.Perhaps the most complex, frightening, and destructive event in global history, the Second World War saw the heights of human courage and the depth of human degradation. World War II presents a complete overview of the war, including the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, fascism, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and the D-Day landings. This book also looks at the enduring effects of World War II during succeeding decades.
Expanded with an all-new guide to battlefield and memorial sites and repackaged to honor the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, World War II: The Definitive Visual History covers key military figures, pivotal battles, political profiles, and strategies, as well as features on everyday life on the Home Front as ordinary citizens did their best to aid the war effort. Gallery spreads feature collections of uniforms, weapons, and other equipment. Maps, timelines, and side panels offer an inviting variety of entry point to the huge wealth of information.
5. My Three Years With Eisenhower: The Personal Diary of Captain Harry C. Butcher, USNR, Naval Aide to General Eisenhower, 1942 to 1945
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Photos, maps, First Edition.Description
My Three Years with Eisenhower could have been written only by the man who lived with Dwight D. Eisenhower day and night; who acted as his friend and confidant; whose duties ranged from opening the General's car door to handling such ticklish jobs as the battle between General Patton and Sergeant Bill Mauldin; who saw Dwight Eisenhower, in his intimate day by day life, develop from a relatively unknown staff officer to the Commander of the greatest military operation in all history. Captain Harry Butcher served for three years as naval aide to General Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. As he wrote in his introduction, "I want to make it clear to the reader that this effort is my responsibility and not General Eisenhower's. Yet I like to think that, although I wrote the book, General Eisenhower lived it." General Eisenhower did indeed live it. So did Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry Hopkins, Bernard Montgomery, and General George Marshall and dozens of others of the English and American leaders who bore in their minds and in their hearts the terrible responsibility of planning and executing the war against Axis Europe. For this book is a new kind of history, a backstage account of the movements of the most important actors in the greatest drama ever played. It is a unique combination of intense human interest and grand strategy, providing countless intimate glimpses of the key members of the Allied family, their relations with each other, their private and hitherto unpublished views on the greatest questions of the era, their human failings and their essential greatness.6. Tomorrow is Another Day