World War 2 Book Collection

 

Our extensive World War 2 Book Collection covers both the European and Pacific war theatres from 1939-1945, including the aftermath and the prelude to war.

 

Front Cover, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison E. Salisbury, New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad

The Third Reich siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. Nearly three million people endured it; just under half of them died.

 

Front Cover (Dustjacket) of A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan, 1974.

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan (1974)

A Bridge Too Far is the masterly chronicle of a daring and grandiose operation that ended in bitter defeat for the Allies. The cast of characters includes Dutch civilians, British and American planners, commanders, and soldiers.

 

Front Cover, Abandon Ship!: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Navy's Greatest Sea Disaster by Richard F. Newcomb, 2001.

Abandon Ship! Saga of the USS Indianapolis

In twelve minutes, some 300 men went down with her. More than 900 others spent four horrific days and five nights in the ocean with no water to drink, savaged by a pitiless sun and swarms of sharks.

 

Front Cover, Barrage: The Guns in Action by Ian V. Hogg, Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II, Weapons Book, No. 18, 1970.

Barrage: The Guns in Action

Imagine, if you can, this routine going on for two, four, six or more hours, with the paint blistering on the gun barrels and the exhausted gunners trying to snatch a bite to eat or a few minutes sleep.

 

Front Cover, Battle: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge by John Toland, 1959.

Battle: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge

The author has devoted years to studying memoirs, interviewing veterans and consulting military documents, both German and American. He also has revisited the old battlefields in Belgium and Luxembourg, to tell the whole story.

 

Front Cover, Battle of the Ruhr Pocket by Charles Whiting. Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. Battle Book, No. 21. New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1970/1971, #02195-9.

Battle of the Ruhr Pocket

From headquarters staff conferences to tank turrets to frontline foxholes on both sides of the fines, here are the sounds, sights, smell, and feel of the desperate battle that arose from Eisenhower’s surprise abandonment of the race for Berlin.

 

Front Cover of the Time Life Book Battle For Scandinavia, included in their World War II Series.

Battles For Scandinavia

For the Germans, the long Norwegian coast afforded sheltered waters from which Britain and British shipping might be attacked. The airfields of Denmark provided a steppingstone to Norway.

 

Front Cover, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer, 1941.

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

A day to day record of events that happened before his eyes, such as he was in Vienna when the German Forces took over Austria, he covered the Sudetenland fighting in 1938 and watched the sellout of Czechoslovakia at Godesberg, Berlin and Munich.

 

Front Cover, Bilder Vi Ikke Må Glemme (Photos We Must Not Forget) by Hans Heiberg and Ulf Johns, 1946.

Bilder Vi Ikke Må Glemme (Photographs of German Occupation of Norway)

The book consists of a rich selection of photographs and facsimiles from the years of occupation, collected by Ulf Johns (1920-2007) and Hans Heiberg (1904-1978) after the liberation from the German occupation in 1945.

 

Front Cover, Bir Hakim: Desert Citadel, Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century, World War II Battle Book, No. 23, 02405-2.

Bir Hakim: Desert Citadel

The first major units to come in were those from French West Africa who made their way across the desert to join the Eight Army in Egypt.

 

Front Cover: Bloody Ridge and Beyond: A World War II Marine's Memoir of Edson's Raiders in the Pacific by Marlin "Whitey" Groft and Larry Alexander, New York: Berkley Caliber, 2014.

Bloody Ridge and Beyond: A World War II Marine's Memoir of Edson's Raiders in the Pacific

Bloody Ridge and Beyond is the story of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, which showed courage and valor in the face of overwhelming numbers, as told by Marlin Groft. a man who was a member of this incredible fighting force.

 

Front Cover, Bomber: Events Relating to the Last Flight of an R.A.F. Over Germany by Len Deighton, 1970.

Bomber: Events Relating to the Last Flight of an R.A.F. Over Germany

"Bomber" follows the progress of an Allied air raid through a period of 24 hours in the summer of 1943. It portrays all the participants in a terrifying drama, in the air and on the ground, in Britain and Germany.

 

Front Cover, Closing The Ring, The Second World War by Winston Churchill, 1951.

Closing the Ring: The Second World War - Volume Five by Winston Churchill - 1951

Closing the Ring: The Second World War Volume Five How Germany was Isolated and Assailed on All Sides. Winston S. Churchill writes about the drive to victory between June 1943 and July 1944.

 

Front Cover, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William L. Shirer, 1969.

Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940

A detailed description of the events leading to the outbreak of the Second World War, the battle for Frame and the reasons why France lost when it clearly had superiority in numbers and quality of weapons over Germany.

 

Front Cover, Comes the Comrade! by Alexandra Orme, 1950.

Comes the Comrade!

The Russians made their appearance there just before Christmas in 1945, and until Easter of that year Mora was in the restless rear area of a theater of operations, filled with tired and dirty and muddy Russians, all sorts of Russians.

 

Das Boot - The Boat by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Translated from the German by Denver and Helen Lindley, 1976.

Das Boot, The Boat: Terror Under the Sea

Follows the patrols, waits, and attacks, through the crucial fall and winter of 1941, of the German U-boat U-96, Type UA VII-C and its crew, as they endure their shadowy, isolated, and claustrophobic inner and outer worlds.

 

Front Cover, Day of Infamy by Walter Lord, 1970.

Day of Infamy: The Story of Pearl Harbor

Day of Infamy is Walter Lord's gripping, vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The reader accompanies Admiral Nagumo's task force as it sweeps toward Hawaii.

 

Front Cover, Duel of Eagles: The R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain by Peter Townsend, 1972.

Duel of Eagles : The R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain

A stirring account of the Battle of Britain by Group Captain Peter Townsend. Group Captain Peter Townsend, himself a Battle of Britain pilot, traces the background to the conflict to the long days of 1940.

 

Front Cover, The Fall of Berlin By Marshal Vasili I. Chuikov, Translated from the Russian by Ruth Kisch, 1969.

The Fall of Berlin

The last battle of Hitler's Germany is recreated here in all its power and intensity by the Russian commander who led his victorious army from Stalingrad to Berlin to storm the battered capital of the German Third Reich.

 

Front Cover, For Those I Loved: The Story of Hope and Survival in World War II, by Martin Gray With Max Gallo, 1971.

For Those I Loved: The Story of Hope and Survival in World War II

The flames of war's inhumanity ravaged martin gray's life when he was only fourteen; by raw will he crawled out of the devastation and built a strong personal fortress.

 

Front Cover, The German Navy in World War II by Edward P. Von der Porten, 1969.

The German Navy in World War II

The book describes the secret building programs that contravened Versailles' Treaty and the struggles over a policy that determined the new Fleet's size and composition when war broke out.

 

Front Cover, Grey Wolf, Grey Sea: Aboard the German Submarine U-124 by E.B. Gasaway, 1970.

Grey Wolf, Grey Sea: Aboard the German Submarine U-124

This is the story of the German submarine U-124 and her celebrated commander, Kapitanleutnant Jochen Mohr. In her short life, Mohr's U-124 sank 49 ships for a total of 226,949 tons to become the third most successful submarine in WW2.

 

Front Cover, The Hinge of Fate, by Winston S. Churchill, 1950.

The Hinge of Fate - Volume IV of Churchill's Dramatic History of World War II

In the first half of The Hinge of Fate, Churchill describes the fearful period in which the Germans threaten to overwhelm the Red Army, Rommel dominates the war in the desert, and Singapore falls to the Japanese.

 

Front Cover, History of World War II, Armed Services Memorial Edition by Francis Trevelyan Miller, 1945.

History of World War II - Armed Services Memorial Edition

102 chapters and a separate chronology of the war and replica of the surrender documents signed aboard the U.SS Missouri by both the Japanese and General MacArthur, and Chronology of the War

 

Front Cover, Holocaust: A Novel of Survival and Triumph By Gerald Green, 1978.

The Holocaust : A Novel of Survival and Triumph

Basis of the acclaimed 1979 television mini-series weaving the odyssey of Holocaust victims, taking the reader (and then the viewer) with documentary force through the darkest and most terrible events of the century.

 

Front Cover, KL Auschwitz Documentary Photographs of the German death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Warszawa: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1980.

KL Auschwitz: Documentary Photographs - 1980

The State Museum in Oświęcim thus releases a five-language version of its album containing documentary photographs portraying the most grandiose German death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

 

Front Cover, Making Waves: Navy Women of World War II

Making Waves: Navy Women of World War II

The photography team, headed by legendary photographer Edward Steichen, captured these heroic women at work, rest, and play. All the photos are from the National Archives and most have not been previously published.

 

Front Cover, Me 109: Willy Messerschmitt's Peerless Fighter. Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II. Weapons Book, No. 4 by Martin Caldin, 1968.

ME 109: Willy Messerschmitt's Peerless Fighter

The Me-109 took to the air in 1935, and at war's end it could still fly and fight on even terms with the best fighters produced by its opponents.

 

Front Cover, Memoirs from the War Years by Arne Fjellbu, Translated by L. A. Vigness, 1947.

Memoirs from the War Years

The author was Bishop of Nidaros, Norway who kept a journal of his observations during the occupation of Norway by the Germans during World War II, covering the period from April 9, 1940, to May 8, 1945.

 

Front Page, The Memoirs Of A Merchant Marine During WW2.1939-1945 By F.I. Dutch Eylders, 1999.

The Memoirs Of A Merchant Marine During WWII 1939-1945

Privately published book of the memoirs of a Merchant Marine, F. L. "Dutch" Eylders, who kept a diary of his experiences during World War II.

 

Front Cover, Military Leaders of World War II by Walter Oleksy, 1994.

Military Leaders of World War II

This book profiles the lives and achievements of ten American aviators, generals, and admirals, including Claire Lee Chenault, Chester W. Nimitz, Omar Bradley, Jacqueline Cochran, and George S. Patton.

 

Front Cover, Norge Under Okkupasjonen (Norway Under Occupation) by Chr. A. R. Christensen, 1964.

Norge Under Okkupasjonen (Norway Under German Occupation)

A brilliant documentary book that deals with the occupation until the liberation, the background for the assault on Norway, the campaign in 1940, and the conditions for the civilian population.

 

Front Cover, Norway 1940-45: The Resistance Movement by Olav Riste and Berit Nökleby, 1970.

Norway 1940-45: The Resistance Movement

The aim of the authors—both of whom are historians working on related topics—has been to provide a concise survey based on existing studies and aimed at non-Norwegian readers with a serious interest in the subject.

 

Front Cover, Norway 1940 by François Kersaudy, 1987.

Norway 1940

Looks at Britain and France's betrayal of Norway during World War II, and portrays the strength of Norway's King Haakon VII, whose honorable leadership united the nation in an attempt to defend itself from the invasion of Hitler's troops.

 

Front Cover, Norway and the Second World War by Johs. Andenæs, O. Riste, and M. Skodvin, 1966.

Norway and the Second World War

The German invasion of Norway in 1940 opened a crucial chapter of Norwegian history. During the five years that followed, the fate of this nation on the outskirts of Europe was firmly interlocked with the gigantic struggle that raged in Europe and beyond.

 

Front Cover, Not Me! The World War II Memoir of a Reluctant Rifleman by Alexander H. Hadden, 1999.

Not Me! The World War II Memoir of a Reluctant Rifleman

What happens when an Ivy League preppy is suddenly dumped from a comfortable college environment into World War II combat as an infantry rifleman? The revelations of Alexander Hadden of the ghastliness of infantry life and not that of military romanticism.

 

Front Cover, Pearl Harbor Recalled: New Images of the Day of Infamy, Paintings by Tom Freeman; Text by James P. Delgado, 1991.

Pearl Harbor Recalled: New Images of the Day of Infamy

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this book presents top-quality reproductions of thirty-five paintings created by Tom Freeman to commemorate the event with supporting text.

 

Front Cover, Running the Gauntlet: How Three Giant Liners Carried a Million Men to War, 1942-1945 by Alister Satchell, 2001.

Running the Gauntlet: How Three Giant Liners Carried a Million Men to War, 1942-1945

The use of the three great Cunard liners Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and Aquitania as fast transatlantic troop transports was one of the great high-risk operations of the Second World War, yet it was vital to the build-up of U.S. troops

 

Front Cover: Scandinavian Misadventure: The Campaign In Norway - 1940 by Maurice Harvey

Scandinavian Misadventure: The Campaign In Norway - 1940

The conflict in Norway between April and June of 1940 was the first occasion in the history of warfare that all three Services had been engaged in a totally joint operation.

 

Front Cover, T-34 Russian Armor - Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II. Weapons Book No. 21 by Douglas Orgill, 1971.

T-34 Russian Armor

Some have claimed the T-34 was the best tank of WWII. It was, in the very least, a revolution in tank development. Book covers the devlopment, tactics, and WWII combat history of the T-34 tank as well as the German response to it.

 

Front Cover, Ten Days to D-Day by David Stafford, 2005.

Ten Days to D-Day

Ten days before the largest operation of World War II was launched, it was still one of the century’s best-kept secrets—thanks to countless ordinary people participating in one of history’s most remarkable moments.

 

Front Cover, The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. Translated from the French by Lily Emmet, 1967/1972.

The Forgotten Soldier

Enlisting in the German Army in the fall of 1942, Sajcr takes the reader through his wartime experiences as a member, first, of a Luftwaffe training unit, then a support unit, and finally, as a member of the elite Panzer Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland.

 

Front Cover, The Last Battle: The Battle for Berlin - April 16, 1945 by Cornelius Ryan, 1966.

The Last Battle: The Battle for Berlin

The Last Battle is the story of three weeks in which Berlin, gutted, smoldering, terrorized, yet still miraculously alive, was the focal point of millions of lives.

 

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