World War 2 Books

Hitler has a reputation as the incarnation of evil. But, as British historian Michael Burleigh points out in selecting the best books on the German dictator, Hitler was a bizarre and strangely empty character who never did a proper day's work in his life, as well as a raving fantasist on to whom Germans were able to project their longings.

In the 20th century, Germany suffered defeat in two world wars and withstood two kinds of dictatorship. Yet today it is Europe's strongest economy. Hester Vaizey, fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and author of Born in the GDR, selects five brilliant books on a tumultuous century.

Churchill hailed the Allied victory at the Battle of El Alamein as "the end of the beginning" for Hitler in World War II. But in that very same speech, he downplayed its significance. Historian Simon Ball separates clichés from facts and chooses the best of the vast number of books written about El Alamein, the Desert War and World War II in general.

Postwar Europe was a scene of both physical and moral destruction. Keith Lowe, author of the award-winning Savage Continent, recommends essential reading for understanding the sheer scale of suffering, dislocation and fighting after the war was over.

For the anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, Five Books editor Sophie Roell takes a personal tour of books about World War II and the Holocaust, and tells the story of how these events affected members of her family living across the continent.

The historian and author of The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind, Daniel Pick, tells us what we can learn from attempts to use psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to understand Nazism.

In the world wars of the twentieth century, naval warfare has often been given a secondary role. But as naval historian Nicholas Rodger explains, the protagonists who thought like that lost. Here, he chooses five books that explain the military role and development of navies over the course of the 20th century.

The historian and author chooses five books on de Gaulle and the Resistance. He says the British tried to veto de Gaulle’s famous 1940 speech from London calling on the French to stand up to German occupation

From the tyranny of Franco in Spain to the silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, Carmen Callil (1938-2022), author of Bad Faith, recommends books on some darker aspects of European and French history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Steve Darlow, author of nine books on military aviation, discusses his favourite books on pilots during the Second World War - a time when 800 Allied airmen were lynched