(Part 3) Best wwii biographies according to redditors

My two favorite WWII memoirs that I recommend to everyone interested in WWII history:

Always Faithful: A memoir of the marine dogs of WWII - The story of the US Marine Corps war dogs from training to battle on Guam as told by the commander of the Third Dog Platoon. This book is all about the loyalty, companionship, heroism, and immeasurable value of the war dogs on the battlefield, most of which were ordinary family pets who were "volunteered" by their owners to help with the war effort.

"With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - If you haven't read this one, it's an essential pick and a no-brainer. The HBO series "The Pacific" was based partly on this book. A view of joining the US Marine Corp in late 1943, training, and deployment to Peleliu and Okinawa as told from the perspective of a young grunt.

I agree, i have read the book cover to cover at least 5 times, it has so much value.

Davids book is here


I can also suggest these:

Cpl. Forrest Guth: 'E' Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division

Biggest Brother : The Life of Major Dick Winters, The Man Who Led the Band of Brothers

Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy

Brothers In Battle, Best of Friends (By William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward "Babe" Heffron)

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters


and anything else by Steven E Ambrose is fantastic , especially citizen soliders and wild blue.

I think we are basically in agreement, and I acknowledge my hyperbole and oversimplification regarding the inner thoughts of Sir Arthur Harris.

My statistic on bombing accuracy comes from late '42/early '43 - before the advent of things like the AN/APS-15 and the P-51D.

This is interesting reading for all kinds of reasons.

I'll check out "Tail End Charlies" - always room for another good book on the WWII air war.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Into the Teeth of the Tiger

This is written by Don Lopez, the first director of the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Dude loved the P-40 Warhawk and hated the early versions of the P-51 - really interesting chapter on that. Also an interesting look at the war on mainland China.

Dumb But Lucky by a P-51 pilot who started flying combat over Italy/the Med in 1944.

The Mighty Eighth blends a lot of first hand accounts/vignettes with some basic history. Reminded me a little of Mark Baker's book "Nam" in format - but probably more accurate.

Baa Baa Blacksheep I'm a former US Marine, so if I don't recommend this one I go to the brig for six months.

Fire In The Sky This is about the air war in the Pacific. It was absolutely shocking to read about the maintenance practices of the Japanese detailed herein. I guarantee you'll be smacking your forehead in exasperation at how utterly grabasstic the IJAAF was about fixing broken airplanes.

I've read a bunch more (including some more scholarly books), and am very interested in any recommendations you may have.

Great book on the subject of removing crewman and repairing tanks during WW2.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XUAETO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

Well, I picked wikipedia over some other write ups simply because it is a lot more restrained about the events of his life. Some reports state that the training jump height back in the 60's was 3,500 feet, but i wanted to back it off to the modern height cause reality gets really unbelievable at times.

Also understand that the 2 grenades thing happening when he was 17 and had been in the Marines for about 2 and a half years already. The guy died in 2008 to leukemia.

Also talking to my coworker who used to be a paramedic in Washington, she stated that she went on 3 skydiving calls where the chute failed and the person splatted. 2 of them the guy got up and walked away unharmed.

Edit: He Wrote a Book

Bomber crews had it especially bad in WWII. If they survived getting shot down and were able to bail out and get a good parachute, then they had to survive the descent without getting shot by German fighters. If they got on the ground alive, then they had to hope to not be captured by the German population who would regularly beat and/or execute them for bombing their country. If they were lucky they were captured by the army and sent to a prison camp (which were not pretty towards the end of the war, by the way).

The really amazing thing is that some chaplains would volunteer to go on bombing missions and intentionally bail out over enemy lines so they could be captured and get sent to the prison camps to be with the POWs. A truly selfless thing to do.

If you're interested in learning more there are plenty of books on Amazon written by B-17 crews over Europe. There's The Wrong Stuff which is an easy read and on Kindle, and also Masters of the Air which is more like an authoritative text book and a fascinating read (also on Kindle).

As just one example you may want to read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_W._Barrett

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_P._Crandall

give this book a read would also be good idea

http://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Brother-Major-Winters-Brothers/dp/0451215109

spending some time here - http://www.medalofhonor.com/ wouldn't be a bad idea either.

War is an unfortunate neccisity. Thankfully there are folks willing to fight for concepts and not conquests.

Ah sorry. Eric "Winkle" Brown. Wings On My Sleeve.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wings-My-Sleeve-Worlds-Greatest/dp/0753822091

I found Parachute Infantry to be the most compelling and revealing. Unfortunately, Band of Brothers appears to be further from the truth than most people imagine after reading that one.

Also check out "The Wrong Stuff: The Adventures and Misadventures of an 8th Air Force Aviator". LOVED that book.

THIS BOOK is an excellent version of events.

[unrelated to the link] My grandfather flew 25 missions on B17s later on in the war and still said it was madness. Nowhere near as bad as losses, but he went up against the early jets and said there was no way to fight them. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror and fury.

Yes! And his book is a very interesting read: Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers"

Reading his own works would be a good place to start

Start with Infantry Attacks and The Rommel Papers

You can also read With Rommel in the Desert which was written by one of his batmen.

From the other side The Desert War Is a good account by what we would now call an imbedded journalist with the British Empire's 8th Army.

There have been quite a few threads about Rommel both here and on r/badhistory where there's generally a "Good guy Rommel" anti-circlejerk attitude. This thread being but one of many. I'll copy over my comment from that thread

> The Good Guy Rommel thing goes back to ww2 itself. It suited both the Nazis and the western allies to create a myth about Rommel. For the Nazis, it was an obvious propaganda op and the western allies saw in him a reason to explain their failings. Sure, it nothing to do with your rubbish commanders and bad tanks, its all because of GGR!

> After the war its necessary to rehabilitate Germany as an ally of the west, so we create the Clean Heer myth with GGR as its poster boy and dump all the bad stuff on the SS.

Overall, its important to remember that Rommel was a Nazi General. He was very fortunate to have earned his reputation fighting in theatres in which military law and civilisation were not completely abandoned (France) or in North Africa, where there were no untermensch or juden to be persecuted and exterminated.

If he had been sent to the east, there is no reason to suppose that he would not have become involved in war crimes to same extent as other generals such as Manstein.

I just finished the book "Combat Crew" which is about a crew in the 381st. It was an excellent read if you are into those sorts of books.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Combat-Crew-Missions-Europe-Journal-ebook/dp/B006UHBLGY

Death Traps by Belton Cooper
Ignoring all his opinions (about Pershings) and only focusing on his experience as a maintenance officer, Cooper actually offers some very interesting technical details about Sherman tanks.

Troop Leader: A Tank Commander's Story by Bill Bellamy
Bill Bellamy was the famous Cromwell commander who jumped a canal in Holland with his tank. His book also offered a lot of insight into how a platoon commander led his men in WW2, how he communicated with his subordinates and what it looks like looking through the periscope of a tank.

Tank Commander : From the Fall of France to the Defeat of Germany - The Memoirs of Bill Close
If you want to learn anything about how it feels sitting inside most of St. Gloriana's tanks, this is your go-to book.

One of my favorites on the US side is Thunderbolt! by Robert Johnson. If you're interested in the China-Burma theater (or want to start learning) I'd recommend Into the Teeth of the Tiger and God is My Copilot.
Bader's book mentioned by /u/thebroadwayflyer is a biography and not an autobigraphy, for what it's worth. If you're not 100% set on autobiographies then Bader's Reach for the Sky and Robert Tuck's Fly For Your Life are good. One RAF autobiography I enjoyed was To War in a Stringbag by a pilot who flew Swordfish during some big and important events during the war.

Do you mean beyond the James Bradley book, the movie is based upon?

I recommend you pickup David Webster's Parachute Infantry if you haven't.

In my formative years - Ender's Game, Starship Troopers

In my late 30s: Boyd, by Robert Coram

The book was the window into understanding Boyd's essay, Destruction and Creation

And Sterling Mace's book.

I'm Ron Burgundy?

Cheapest thing I have is The Railway Man Kindle Edition for $9.99

I'm new around here and still havent wrapped my head around how all this works. I don't know anybody yet so I picked giggidywarlock cause they just gifted two people. This is the only $10 item they have.

And the recent book by Peleliu and Okinawa veteran (and reditor) Sterling Mace, Battle Ground Pacific.

It's an excellent read, refreshingly honest. It's interesting to compare his war (as a rifle/B.A.R.man) with that of Sledge (mortar man). There's a really poignant section about Marine Hayney, the WW1 vet in Mace's book that also gets mentioned in Sledge's book.

Any opinion on Malarkey's co-authored work?

http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Company-Soldier-Legendary-Sergeant-ebook/dp/B00125OKYY/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1EFJH69XC2BF452QJ4J0

Not exactly a Nazi "leader", as such, but Hitler's photographer Heinrich Hoffman wrote the book "Hitler Was My Friend".

I've just finished it. I wouldn't recommend it as a serious historical work, but it's interesting nonetheless. One thing that struck me about it is that he only mentions Speer in passing, meriting about one sentence in the whole book. I expected Hitler's arty intimates to have been more involved with each other.

BTW I loved Speer's memoirs too, it's probably the most interesting book on the subject I've ever read.

Flyboys by James Bradley

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q80T1Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

Check out this book if you're in to WW2 air combat: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q80T1Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Really, really good.

Good luck finding it at a book store. Here is one at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Flew-Fuhrer-Greenhill-Military-Paperback/dp/1853672637

This one looks good, maybe I'll get it next: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1908476877/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YB4JP3P4EHV1XPSP9VQ9&dpPl=1&dpID=518c0O9gJWL

I Flew for the Führer is a first hand account from a German pilot.

Patton clip referring to different book

Maybe. The first and second picture are the same picture but scanned differently. Couldn't find any more than these three. As far as I know they are taken from this book. First time I saw these was on cracked (see #10)

In WW2 some combat dogs outranked their handlers, and if you want a first hand narrative about WW2 combat dogs in the pacific, Always Faithful by William Putney is a really great read.

I'm shocked that nobody has mention Wings On My Sleeve by Captain Eric Brown. He was the greatest pilot that ever lived.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0753822091?keywords=wings%20on%20my%20sleeve%20by%20eric%20winkle%20brown&qid=1457703610&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Flags of our Fathers

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Both books moved me to tears while reading, and clung to my mind for weeks after.

Two (OK, three) come to mind:

Railway Man, by Eric Lomax

Railway Man, on Amazon

An American captured by the Japanese in (I think) Indonesia during WWII, and forced with other prisoners to build a railroad, and survive a Death March. He's also tortured for information. The story of his sheer survival is fascinating, but what's really amazing was the surprising forgiveness that emerges.

The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz

The Long Walk, on GoodReads for a change

"The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India." It's also quite moving.

Finally, a more recently written WWII tale (no, I don't have a thing for war stories - these are the ones that occur to me) during the Siege of Stalingrad:

The City of Thieves, by David Benioff (the screenwriter).

City of Thieves
It's really really good!

It's still in copyright, so you'd have to go with one of the paid book services.... Or find it with a less legal service.

http://www.amazon.com/Railway-Man-Searing-Brutality-Forgiveness/dp/0393334988

Probably the only history book I've read, it's that good.

Boyd

You should read his book, Indestructible.

He also survived an assassination attempt by a hit man hired by his ex wife.