940.53-940.54: World War II in Europe (2023)

The following list contains books, published in the last 5 years, that discuss the European theater of World War II. Works in this list will feature battles, campaigns, and personal narratives set in eastern and western Europe as well as Scandinavia, Russia, and northern Africa between 1941 and 1945.

Updated June 9, 2023
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1

All the frequent troubles of our days : the true story of the American woman at the heart of the German resistance to Hitler
Donner, Rebecca
Paper Book
The INSTANT New York Times Bestseller Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award  Winner of the Chautauqua Prize Finalist for the Los...

2

The allies : Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the unlikely alliance that won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paper Book
Best-selling author Winston Groom tells the complex story of how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin--the three iconic and vastly different Allied leaders--aligned to win World War II and created a new world order. By the end of World War II, 59...

3

Big week : the biggest air battle of World War II
Holland, James
Paper Book
'James Holland is a master' BBC History It was to be the battle to end the air war once and for all . . . During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive...

4

Bloodlands : Europe between Hitler and Stalin
Snyder, Timothy.
Paper Book
* In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in a zone of death between Berlin and Moscow. * These were the bloodlands - today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, western Russia and the eastern...

5

Safe passage
Cook, Ida.
Paper Book
Ida and Louise Cook were two decidedly ordinary women who lived quiet lives in the London suburbs, but throughout the 1930s the sisters rescued dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. This book is a memoir of their lives.

6

Britain at Bay : the epic story of the Second World War, 1938-1941
Allport, Alan
Paper Book
A sweeping, groundbreaking epic that combines military with social history, to illuminate the ways in which Great Britain and its people were permanently transformed by the Second World War. Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In...

7

Brothers in arms : one legendary tank regiment's bloody war from D-Day to VE-Day
Holland, James
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of Normandy '44 and Sicily '43, a brilliant new history of the last days of the war 'Seldom is war so vividly described...An assault on the senses...Painful to read, impossible to put down' Gerard DeGroot, The Times ...

8

The commanders : the leadership journeys of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel
Clark, Lloyd
Paper Book
From an acclaimed military historian, the interlocking lives of three of the most important and consequential generals in World War II Born in the two decades prior to World War I, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel became among the most recognized and successful...

9

The correspondents : six women writers on the front lines of World War II
Mackrell, Judith
Paper Book
The riveting, untold history of a group of heroic women reporters who revolutionized the narrative of World War II--from Martha Gellhorn, who out-scooped her husband, Ernest Hemingway, to Lee Miller, a Vogue cover model turned war correspondent. "Thrilling from the...

10

D-Day girls : the spies who armed the resistance, sabotaged the Nazis, and helped win World War II
Rose, Sarah
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II "Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and...

11

The diary keepers : World War II in the Netherlands, as written by the people who lived through it
Siegal, Nina
Paper Book
A riveting look at the story of World War II and the Holocaust through the diaries of Dutch citizens, firsthand accounts of ordinary people living through extraordinary times Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written...

12

Dünkirchen 1940: The German View of Dunkirk
Kershaw, Robert
Paper Book
'Kershaw's book is a welcome rebalancing; a thoughtful, well-researched and well-written contribution to a narrative that has long been too one-sided and too mired in national mythology.' - The Times The British evacuation from the beaches of the small French port town...

13

Eight days at Yalta : how Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin shaped the post-war world
Preston, Diana
Paper Book
Meticulously researched and vividly written, Eight Days at Yalta is a remarkable work of intense historical drama.In the last winter of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin arrived in the Crimean resort of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast and...

14

Eight days in May : the final collapse of the Third Reich
Ullrich, Volker
Paper Book
In a bunker deep below Berlin's Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945--Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer's suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second...

15

The escape artist : the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world
Freedland, Jonathan
Paper Book
THE NEW BOOK THE TRAITORS CIRCLE COMING SOON FROM JONATHAN FREEDLAND Shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Waterstones Book of the Year Shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize Longlisted...

16

Every man a hero : a memoir of D-Day, the first wave at Omaha Beach, and a world at war
Lambert, Ray
Paper Book
The New York Times Bestseller | Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award  Omaha Beach legend Ray Lambert's unforgettable firsthand account of D-Day  "Lambert landed on [Omaha Beach] as a 23-year-old Army medic. ... As...

17

Eyewitness to World War II : unforgettable stories from history's greatest conflict
Kagan, Neil
Paper Book
The unforgettable story of World War II is told through the words of those who lived it-America's greatest generation-both 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...

18

The first wave : the D-Day warriors who led the way to victory in World War II
Kershaw, Alex
Paper Book
Beginning in the pre-dawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows ten men attempting to carry out D-Day's most critical missions. Their actions would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe. The ten make a charismatic, unforgettable cast. They include the first...

19

A game of birds and wolves : the secret game that won the war
Parkin, Simon
Paper Book

20

The girls who stepped out of line : untold stories of the women who changed the course of World War II
Eder, Mari K.
Paper Book
For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII--in and out of uniform--for theirs...

21

A history of the Second World War in 100 maps
Black, Jeremy
Paper Book
  The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the systematic recording and processing of geographical and topographical...

22

Hitler's secret army : a hidden history of spies, saboteurs, and traitors in World War II
Tate, Tim
Paper Book
This dramatic exposé of Allied subterfuge and betrayal uncovers the treachery of undercover fascists and American Nazi spy rings during the height of World War II.  Between 1939 and 1945, more than seventy Allied men and women were convicted--mostly in secret trials--of...

23

A house in the mountains : the women who liberated Italy from fascism
Moorehead, Caroline
Paper Book
'Moorehead paints a wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the women of the Italian Resistance.an excellent book. She depicts a tragic fate that is timeless, of dreams forged in adversity, shattered by collisions with practical politics' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES A...

24

In the garden of the righteous : the heroes who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust
Hurowitz, Richard
Paper Book
"In the Garden of the Righteous brilliantly describes how in the midst of the brutality of the Holocaust and the collaboration, acquiescence and passivity of millions, there were people who risked their lives to save others out of a sense of shared humanity. This book is more timely...

25

Information hunters : when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in World War II Europe
Peiss, Kathy Lee
Paper Book
While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring...

26

The island of extraordinary captives
Parkin, Simon
Paper Book
'Extraordinary yet previously untold true story . . . meticulously researched . . . it's also taut, compelling, and impossible to put down' Daily Express The police came for Peter Fleischmann in the early hours. It reminded the teenager of the Gestapo's moonlit roundups...

27

The King's war
Logue, Mark
Paper Book
The broadcast that George VI made to the nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 - which formed the climax of the multi Oscar-winning film The King's Speech - was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the...

28

Last call at the Hotel Imperial : the reporters who took on a world at war
Cohen, Deborah
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE * A prize-winning historian's "effervescent" (The New Yorker) account of a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism ...

29

The last hill : the epic story of a ranger battalion and the battle that defined WWII
Drury, Bob
Paper Book
Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's The Last Hill is the incredible untold story of one Ranger battalion's heroism and courage in World War II. They were known as "Rudder's Rangers," the most elite and experienced attack unit in the United States Army. In December 1944, Lt. Col....

30

The last million : Europe's displaced persons from World War to Cold War
Nasaw, David
Paper Book
After WWII, millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave labourers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany. Soldiers attempted to repatriate them, but after exhaustive efforts there remained over a million displaced persons who had no home to which to return. The...

31

Last witnesses : unchildlike stories
Aleksievich, Svetlana
Paper Book
Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by The Times and Telegraph 'Astonishing. . . Like the great Russian novels, these testimonials ring with emotional truth' - Caroline Moorehead, Guardian Extraordinary stories about what it was like...

32

The liberation of Paris : how Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz saved the City of Light
Smith, Jean Edward
Paper Book
Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the "rousing" (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II--a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction...

33

The nine : the true story of a band of women who survived the worst of Nazi Germany
Strauss, Gwen
Paper Book
"[A] narrative of unfathomable courage... Ms. Strauss does her readers--and her subjects--a worthy service by returning to this appalling history of the courage of women caught up in a time of rapacity and war." --Wall Street Journal "Utterly gripping." --...

34

Endell Street : the trailblazing women who ran World War One's most remarkable military hospital
Moore, Wendy
Paper Book
The forgotten and inspiring story of a London hospital during the First World War which was staffed entirely by women.

35

Normandy '44 : D-Day and the battle for France : a new history
Holland, James
Paper Book
'A superb account of the invasion that deserves immense praise. To convey the human drama of Normandy requires great knowledge and sensitivity. Holland has both in spades' The Times Renowned World War Two historian James Holland presents an entirely new...

36

Secret pigeon service : Operation Columba, Resistance and the struggle to liberate Europe
Corera, Gordon
Paper Book
Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of MI14(d) and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. 'This is an amazing story' Simon Mayo, BBC Radio 2 Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in...

37

Operation Pedestal : the fleet that battled to Malta, 1942
Hastings, Max
Paper Book
Renowned historian Max Hastings recreates one of the most thrilling events of World War II: Operation Pedestal, the British action to save its troops from starvation on Malta--an action-packed tale of courage, fortitude, loss, and triumph against all odds. In 1940,...

38

Pegasus Bridge : June 6, 1944
Ambrose, Stephen E.
Paper Book
In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account of it by...

39

First to fight : the Polish War 1939
Moorhouse, Roger
Paper Book
'This deeply researched, very well-written and penetrating book will be the standard work on the subject for many years to come' - Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill- Walking with DestinyThe Second World War began on 1 September 1939, when German tanks, trucks and infantry...

40

The pope at war : the secret history of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
Kertzer, David I.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The most important book ever written about the Catholic Church and its conduct during World War II."--Daniel Silva "Kertzer brings all of his usual detective and narrative skills to [The Pope at War] . . . the most comprehensive account...

41

The princess spy : the true story of World War II spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones
Loftis, Larry
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER "As exciting as any spy novel" (Daily News, New York), The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS's most daring...

42

Prisoners of the castle : an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz, the Nazis' fortress prison
Macintyre, Ben
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The "entertaining [and] often-moving account" (The Wall Street Journal) of the remarkable POWs whose relentlessly creative attempts to escape a notorious Nazi prison embodied the spirit of resistance against fascism, from the author of The Spy and...

43

The ravine: a family, a photograph, a holocaust massacre revealed
Lower, Wendy
Paper Book
A strikingly original book about a terrible photograph - an exceptionally rare image documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family in Ukraine. A Times Book of the Year'A very rare kind of picture... To the murdered others, this book is an act of restitution'...

44

Resistance : the underground war in Europe, 1939-1945
Kochanski, Halik
Paper Book
A NEW YORKER BOOK OF THE YEAR 'The best book about the subject I have ever read' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'Halik Kochanski's Resistance reads less like a work of history and more like a chronicle of a partisan war foretold ... a primer...

45

Sheer misery : soldiers in battle in WWII
Roberts, Mary Louise
Paper Book
Marching across occupied France in 1944, American GI Leroy Stewart had neither death nor glory on his mind: he was worried about his underwear, which was engaged in a relentless crawl of its own. Similar complaints of physical discomfort pervade infantrymen's memories of the European theater,...

46

Sicily '43 : the first assault on fortress Europe
Holland, James
Paper Book
A major new history of one of World War II's most crucial campaigns--the first Allied attack on European soil--by the acclaimed author of Normandy '44 and a rising star in military history On July 10, 1943, the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted took place, larger even...

47

Spearhead : an American tank gunner, his enemy, and a collision of lives in World War II
Makos, Adam
Paper Book
From the author of the bestselling A Higher Call comes the remarkable story of an unsung hero of World War II.

48

Stalin's war : a new history of World War II
McMeekin, Sean
Paper Book
A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin--not Hitler--was the animating force of World War II in this major new history. World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But...

49

Surviving Katyn : Stalin's Polish massacre and the search for truth
Rogoyska, Jane
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 'A gripping reconstruction... utterly compelling reading.' Adam Zamoyski 'This is a grim story, thoroughly researched and brilliantly told.' Geoffrey Alderman, Times Higher Education ...

50

Taking Berlin : the bloody race to defeat the Third Reich
Dugard, Martin
Paper Book
From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, comes a nonfiction thriller about the race between the Allies and Soviets to conquer the heart of Nazi Germany. "Gripping, popular history at its page-turning best."--Alex...

51

Taking Paris : the epic battle for the city of lights
Dugard, Martin
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From Martin Dugard, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series with Bill O'Reilly, comes the spellbinding story of the Allied liberation of Paris from the grip of the Nazis during World War II "Taking Paris does...

52

Three days at the brink : FDR's daring gamble to win World War II
Baier, Bret
Paper Book
The Instant New York Times Bestseller "I could not put this extraordinary book down. Three Days at the Brink is a masterpiece: elegantly written, brilliantly conceived, and impeccably researched. This book not only sparkles but is destined to be a classic!" --Jay Winik,...

53

Three ordinary girls : the remarkable story of three Dutch teenagers who became spies, saboteurs, Nazi assassins--and WWII heroes
Brady, Tim
Paper Book
Recruited as teenagers, Hannie Schaft, and Dutch sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen fulfilled their harrowing missions as spies, saboteurs, and Nazi assassins with remarkable courage, but their stories have remained largely unknown. Smart, fiercely political, devoted solely to the cause, Hannie,...

54

X troop : the secret Jewish commandos of World War Two
Garrett, Leah
Paper Book
WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain's most secretive special-forces unit--but whose story has gone untold until now." --Wall Street Journal "Brilliantly researched,...

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