Five for Friday 35: World War 2 Memoirs

Thanks to the influence of Max Hastings' Inferno, my WW2 reading has been sprinkled with more first-person narratives. Recently, I read these five books as a group (presented here in alphabetical order):

• And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway Breaking the Secrets by Edwin T. Layton, Roger Pineau, and John Costello. Layton, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer stationed in Hawaii, provides a front row seat to much of the decision-making prior to and after the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese. I found the narrative weighed down by Layton's apologetics with regards to the faultfinding and fingerpointing that occurred for decades after the Pearl Harbor attack. For those interested in that subject, on the other hand, this is a critically important source on that topic.
• Going Solo by Roald Dahl. Author Roald Dahl's little memoir of his days as a British fighter pilot in the opening years of World War 2. A quick and entertaining read.
• In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann. Starting the war as a private in the infantry, Biderman spent the entire war on Germany's Eastern Front. He was captured in 1945 and spent several years in Soviet labor camps until returning before returning home to Germany. 
• Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II by George MacDonald Fraser. Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, writes about his time as a British infantryman in Burma. Funny and heartbreaking, it is considered by many to be a classic WW2 memoir. It is interesting to me that Fraser is able to express his understandable lifelong dislike of the Japanese while Gottlob Herbert Biderman and Saburo Sakai are silent with regards to their post-war feelings about their former enemies...perhaps expressing this is a privilege of the victors.
• Samurai! by Saburo Sakai: Memoirs of a Japanese fighter ace. It is actually a composite of Saburo Sakai's original memoirs and his interviews with journalist Fred Saito. Interesting and surprisingly even-handed.

Additional World War 2 Book posts:
My Favorite World War 2 Books
My Latest World War 2 Reads
More World War 2 Books
Even More World War 2 Books
Yet More World War 2 Books
A Stack of World War 2 Books

My Latest World War 2 Reads

Buy It and Read It!

I was going to post the following five books as a "Five for Friday" blog post. Then I realized there are six books on the list. Oops. This post is a follow-up to my Favorite World War 2 Books post from this past March. These are in alphabetical order:

• The Battle of Midway by Craig Symonds. A decent and readable history of the Battle of Midway. This book is part of the Oxford University Press series, Pivotal Moments in American History. I am about halfway through the Pivotal Moments series. Most have been very good.
• Bougainville, 1943-1945: The Forgotten Campaign by Harry Gailey. Apart from Pearl Harbor, Midway, Iwo Jima, and two atomic bombs, you would think nothing happened in the Pacific in WW2, at least based on the history section of your local book store. This book does a great job telling the story of Bougainville, one of the stepping stone island battles of the Pacific. It is notable that a fair amount of the combat involved African-American troops.
• Inferno: A World at War, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings. I have read about 100 books on WW2 over the course of my life. Inferno is in my top 5 of all time. I am a big Max Hastings fan but I went into this book a bit skeptical, with doubts as to how interesting or different yet another book on the whole war could be. Hastings doesn't aim for completeness. Instead, he aims to get it what it felt like for the participants, particularly the lower ranks, the civilians caught in combat, and those on the home front. Using the stories of the non-famous, he weaves a story that is heart-wrenching, horrifying and, at times, uplifting. This powerful narrative is coupled with Hastings unparalleled ability for critical analysis. Hastings created a book unlike any other that I have read.
• Japanese Destroyer Captain: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway-The Great Naval Battles as Seen Through Japanese Eyes by Capt. Tameichi Hara. This book was recommended to me by Mark Langsdorf and it is excellent.I enjoyed every page. The Japanese Navy had some excellent mid-level officers, Hara being a prime example. They also had excellent gunnery and airplane pilots. The U.S. Navy made huge leaps and bounds during 1942-45 in numbers of ships, planes, technology, skill, and command. Japan regressed in all these areas during the same time period and Hara recounts what this was like while on board a series of destroyers.
• A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II by Richard Snow. Snow combines a simple history of the Battle for the Atlantic with the narrative of his father's time on a destroyer escort in that same battle. I actually listened to this book while driving on a work-related trip. It was a nice "listen."
• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin. She won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, although she was later embroiled in controversy over plagiarism, which included this book. Apart from that, there is a reason this book won the Pulitzer. The book is a look at the U.S. home front during World War 2, looking through the lens of the Roosevelts. It is not a biography and it is not simply a history. It is a different sort of book, but I really enjoyed it and recommend it.

My "To Read" list continues to grow (you can see what it looked like back in March here, at the bottom of the post).

My Favorite World War 2 Books

I am a big time history buff. My favorite topics include ancient Greece, Medieval (particularly Byzantium), the Reformation, Central Asia, and the 20th Century (particularly cultural history and also science). But WW2 has always been the big draw...maybe it was having two uncles in the war. Anyway, I have read a fair amount of WW2 history over the years. The following is not meant to be a bibliography or reading list--there are some holes in my list (nothing on southeast Asia, the Balkans, or small unit tactics for example). Here is simply an annotated list of some of my favorites, in alphabetical order:

• Armageddon: The Battle for Germany by Max Hastings. Max Hastings writes books around which I could build a library. He thinks deeply and critically. He writes clearly and interestingly. His Retribution, Overlord, Bomber Command, and Das Reich are all excellent. I also liked The Korean War. His Inferno is on my To Read List.
• An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson. This book, the first volume in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, was a Pulitzer Prize winner in History. It is an awesome book. Volume 2, The Day of Battle, is listed below and volume 3, The Guns at Last Light, is due in May 2013.
• The Battle of Kursk by David Glantz and Jonathan House. Glantz is my favorite historian of the Eastern Front and this is my favorite of Glantz's books.
• The Battle of Leyte Gulf: 23-26 October 1944 by Thomas J. Cutler. Simply a well-written book. I'd like to read C. Vann Woodward's The Battle for Leyte Gulf, as I have read some of his non-military history (e.g. the history of Jim Crow laws).
• Battle: The Story of the Bulge by John Toland. This is still the most compelling retelling of the Battle of the Bulge. Toland has penned a number of excellent books on WW2, including The Last 100 Days, The Rising Sun, and a biography of Hitler. His Infamy is a bit more controversial.
• Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer. A first person account of an American journalist in Berlin during the pre-WW2 Nazi regime and the first two years of the European portion of the conflict.
• A Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Battle of World War II by Cornelius Ryan. "Greatest Battle" is quite an overstatement, but this is my favorite of Cornelius Ryan's WW2 books. This was also made into a movie and, like Lord of the Rings, I am not sure how the movie makes sense to someone who hasn't read the book. Ryan's The Longest Day is a classic and The Last Battle is a decent read.
• D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor: There are so many books on D-Day, it was hard to select my favorite. However, in the end, Beevor's masterpiece wins for me. I would include Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy, Ryan's The Longest Day, D'Este's Decision in Normandy, and Hastings' Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy are all top notch. I guess I shouldn't leave out Stephen Ambrose when it comes to D-Day (author of Band of Brothers)--my favorite Ambrose book is Pegasus Bridge (I did enjoy BoB, BTW).
• The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson. The second volume in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy reaches the same bar as An Army At Dawn (listed above).
• Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940-1943 by Alan Moorehead. A classic military history trilogy in one a one-volume edition.
• Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank. A powerful and detailed account of the fall of Japan, based on recently declassified documents. Lots of good analysis surrounded by an excellent narrative. Hastings Retribution covers much of the same ground and is also very good. Frank's Guadalcanal is also excellent.
• Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan by Ronald Spector. My favorite overview of America's war in the Pacific against Japan. Spector creates a lot of context by detailing pre-war plans and doctrines of both Japan and the U.S. He manages to do all this and give a good account of the military engagements without creating a multi-volume monster. Toland's The Rising Sun is also very good.
• Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific by Eric Bergerud. This is a fantastic book on a topic that gets little coverage in pop history books. I had yet read the companion volume, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (another To Read item).
• Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David Kennedy. This book is part of The Oxford History of the United States, a series that will ultimately comprise 12 volumes. I try to get one of these books for Christmas or my birthday every year. They are incredible and Kennedy's contribution is equal to its peers.
• Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis. A classic. I read this in junior high school and it piqued my interest in history of all kinds, not just military history. I think Frank's Guadalcanal is the definitive history of WW2 on this little island, but Tragaskis work is near and dear to me.
• Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer. I wasn't sure if I wanted to include this book or not. Speer somehow managed to escape a death sentence at the Nuremburg Trials, getting only a 20 year prison sentence despite his role in the use of slave/forced labor as Minister of Armaments. It is an important book and I came away with a much better understanding of the Nazi's rise to power and the unsettling mix of the ordinary and the diabolical. Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil provides some exegesis (to use a big fancy word) in some sort of weird way...in the sense that evil is less obvious and alien that we might suppose.
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. This is a big weighty tomb but it lured me in and wouldn't let me go until I finished it. Rhodes did an extraordinary amount of research and it shows, but his fine storytelling makes this work. Who knew the Soviets had their fingers in all of this? (really their eyes and ears). I had to read Rhodes sequel of a sort right away, Dark Sun, on the making of the hydrogen bomb (not to be confused with the D&D setting of the same name*).
• Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman. My wife and I read this for our "house book club" (just her and I) at her suggestion. Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father's Holocaust experience in graphic novel form. It was compelling and gut-wrenching, all the more powerful because of the graphic rendition of the story. It also had its funny moments.
• Miracle at Midway by Gordon Prange. Midway and Stalingrad are considered the turning point battles of WW2. Prange's work is my favorite Midway book. His account of the attack on Pearl Harbor, At Dawn We Slept, is also very good (and balanced).
• Ortono: Canada's Epic World War II Battle by Mark Zuehlke. I am not sure how I ended up with this book in my library, but it is a good one and not easy to find. It covers the Battle of Ortono, in Italy, where the Canadians squared off against the Germans. Zuehlke does an nice job of telling the story of this little-known battle.
• The Second World War by John Keegan. This book, boys and girls, is my favoritist of the favorites. I have worn out one copy and my current copy looks like it went through a cycle in the washing machine. Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy is also quite good. This makes up for his book, The Iraq War, which I found to be abysmal. His annotated list of 50 recommended books on WW2 is worth the price of the book.
• Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1933-1945 by David Kahn. Since the declassifying of Ultra in 1974 there has been an explosion of books on WW2 codes and codebreaking. I admit to being a junkie. Kahn's book, Seizing the Enigma, is still my favorite. The highlight of my trip to The Spy Museum in Washington D.C. (a daddy/daughter day trip...her idea) was seeing an actual German Enigma machine. Someday before I die (it will have to be, come to think about it), I want to plow through Kahn's 1200 page monster, The Codebreakers.
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor. Beevor is one of my favorite WW2 authors and this is one of his best. His book, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, is listed above. I also liked The Fall of Berlin 1945.
• Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943  by Joel Hayward. A part of the epic battle that gets lost in the shuffle. I really enjoyed Hayward's history and analysis.
• To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942-1944 by Stephen McFarland. An offering from the Smithsonian History of Aviation series. I consider it the best in the series. Hastings' Bomber Command is the more influential book on the topic and focuses more specifically on the role of Great Britain's strategic bombing in WW2, its value, and its cost to both GB and Germany.
• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands. This is the only biography on my list, although there is a lot of good stuff on political and military leaders that I could have included. Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time and David McCullough's Truman are both very good bios of U.S. Presidents for the period in question.
• The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War by Samuel Eliot Morison. "Short" seems a bit inaccurate when looking at this massive tome, unless you know that it is a condension of a 15 volume work by the same author. Morison is an excellent scholar and an amazing writer. This is good stuff.
• When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption by Wesley Adamczyk. My wife and I read this for our "in house" book club (just she and I). A memoir of Poland and the Eastern front from the perspective of a child. We found this book to be horrifying yet ultimately uplifting and full of hope in the face of unspeakable violence and deprivation.
• With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. John Keegan states that this is the single best memoir to come out of WW2. I concur.
• A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II by Gerhard Weinberg. This book is a big fella, devoting a lot of pages to covering the full sweep of WW2. It is probably the most complete history of WW2 that I have read, yet I plowed through it without trouble because it is so well-written.

My World War 2 To Read List

• The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) by Craig Symonds
• Black Cat Raiders of WW II by Richard C. Knott
• The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe (Liberation Trilogy: Volume 3) by Rick Atkinson
• Heigegger and Nazism by Victor Farias
• The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto by Nehemia Polen
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
• Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings
• Kasserine Pass by Martin Blumenson
• Kursk: The Air Battle, July 1943 by Christer Bergstrom
• The Second World War by Antony Beevor
• Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Barbara Tuchman
• To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942 by David Glantz and Jonathan House
• Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific by Eric Bergerud
• Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup
• A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, A Diary by Anonymous

And when I retire (or win PowerBall) I will finally read Morison's 15 volume work on the U.S. Navy in WW2 and Winston Churchill's classic 6 volume history of WW2.