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

Big week : the biggest air battle of World War II
Holland, James
Paper Book
During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial...

2

Bloodlands : Europe between Hitler and Stalin
Snyder, Timothy
Paper Book
From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century.   Americans...

3

The bravest voices : a memoir of two sisters' heroism during the Nazi era
Cook, Ida
Paper Book
This timeless memoir documents two sisters' bravery leading up to WWII -- a singular historical account that shines a light on one of humanity's darkest hours. Ida and Louise Cook are two ordinary Englishwomen, seemingly destined never to stray from their quiet London suburb...

4

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 comes the untold story of the Sherwood Rangers It took a certain type of courage to serve in a tank in World War Two. Encased in steel, surrounded by highly explosive shells, a big and slow-moving target, every...

5

The escape artist : the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world
Freedland, John
Paper Book
'Awe inspiring, exciting and poignant, this is a thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research: Freedland has given Rudolf Vrba his rightful place in history - and in the process written a book that I couldn't put down' Simon Sebag...

6

A game of birds and wolves : the secret game that revolutionised the war
Parkin, Simon
Paper Book
'Compelling' Sunday Times 'A triumph' Daily Mirror 'Gripping' Jonathan Dimbleby 1941. The Battle of the Atlantic is a disaster. Thousands of supply ships ferrying vital food and fuel from North America to Britain are being...

7

A house in the mountains : the women who liberated Italy from fascism
Moorehead, Caroline
Paper Book
"Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope." --Wall Street Journal The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet--the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against...

8

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...

9

The last million : Europe's displaced persons from World War to Cold War
Nasaw, David
Paper Book
From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII In May 1945, after German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, millions of concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and...

10

Wo hai shi xiang ni, ma ma = Last witnesses
Aleksievich, Svetlana
Paper Book
Simplified Chinese edition of Last witnesses. The 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Svetlana Alexievich is the first journalist to win the honor. Nobel Committee called her work "a monument to suffering and courage in our time." "Last witnesses" is a heartbreaking oral account of the children...

11

The Nazi conspiracy : the secret plot to kill Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin
Meltzer, Brad
Paper Book

12

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." --...

13

Operation pedestal : the fleet that battled to Malta 1942
Hastings, Max
Paper Book
The Sunday Times bestseller 'One of the most dramatic forgotten chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max Hastings' DAILY MAIL In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people...

14

Colditz : prisoners of the castle
Macintyre, Ben
Paper Book
Colditz Castle- a forbidding Gothic tower on a hill in Nazi Germany. You may have heard about the prisoners and their daring and desperate attempts to escape, but that's only part of the real story. In Colditz- Prisoners of the Castle, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us...

15

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'...

16

Sicily '43 : the first assault on fortress Europe
Holland, James
Paper Book
'James Holland is the best of the new generation of WW2 historians.' Sebastian Faulks 'Holland's skill lies in bringing these warriors to life with vivid prose.' The TimesShortlisted for the 2021 British Army Military Book of the Year _______________________...

17

X troop : the secret Jewish commandos who helped defeat the Nazis
Garrett, Leah
Paper Book
During WW2, a group of Jewish refugees (intellectuals, writers, artists and athletes - most from Germany and Austria) escaped to Britain and were interned as 'enemy aliens'. In 1942, they were selected and trained to form a special unit of commandoes who would be sent back into Europe to play a...

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