Classrooms across the globe have touched on the subject of the Second World War in varying capacities, but the sheer depth and horrors of the six-year fight between the Axis and the Allied countries are difficult to cover at school alone.
We learn about it as children, but naturally, we’re spared some of the most gruesome details. While some individuals may then go on to study history in more depth at a higher educational level, or even in a personal capacity, many are left with the remnants of a highly complicated story which often feels half-told.
Some children at school today still have the benefit of first-hand stories told by grandparents and great-grandparents alike, but our storytellers won’t be around forever to ensure their personal tales of collective suffering may continue to be circulated.
How exactly does someone like Adolf Hitler rise to power? How did this then result in the deadliest war in history? What are some of the stories of those personally affected? What was it like being on the front line of some of the most horrific battles in WWII?
These are just some of the many, spiralling questions that tend to run through the minds of those looking to gain further insight into one of our darkest periods of global history.
We’ve curated a selection of some of the best books about the Second World War to read this year. From memoirs and biographies to historical deep dives into the war’s most brutal battles, keep scrolling to learn something new.
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
In The Escape Artist, Freedland recounts the fascinating and gut-wrenching story of two Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz who managed to escape the infamous World War II death camp and warn the world of its horrors.
In 1944, Rudolf Vrba and Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever to escape Auschwitz and, in this Baillie Gifford-nominated retelling of their story, Freedland at once illustrates this true tale of heroism, endurance and survival, while educating us on the reality of the Nazi regime.
Buy now £20.00, Waterstones
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
The inspiration behind Nolan’s Oscar-snagging film, American Prometheus delves into the psyche of physicist and polymath J. Robert Oppenheimer in a manner remarkably comparable to a Stephen King novel.
The page-turning thriller is a meticulous account of the life and career of the man who invented the atomic bomb. As Christopher Nolan puts it, the 600-page feat is “a riveting account of one of history's most essential and paradoxical figures.”
Buy now £9.98, Amazon
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
It is the most famous diary in the world, written by a teenager who died mere weeks before the liberation of the concentration camp in which she was imprisoned in 1945. And yet, Anne Frank's diary remains a bestseller, with more than 35 million copies sold worldwide.
The famous account vividly describes the horrors of living under Hitler's regime, secreted behind a false bookcase in the back of a Dutch warehouse. Edited by her father Otto and Miriam Pressler, the diary remains a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
Buy now £8.25, Amazon
If This Is a Man/The Truce by Primo Levi
Primo Levi was an Italian chemist and writer who spent eleven months imprisoned at Monowitz, which was one of the three main camps within the Auschwitz complex. When he arrived at the concentration camp, he was one of 650 Italian Jews. When the camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 18, 1945, he was one of 20 who left the camp alive.
It’s difficult to put into words the power of Levi’s gentle, steadfast prose as he attempts to make sense of his experience. It’s an account of the entire spectrum of emotions a singular man can feel in an unbearably gruesome, violent and bleak situation – from an intense desire to survive to complete apathy and everything in between.
This new edition of Primo Levi’s classic, devastating account of the Holocaust includes an introduction by David Baddiel.
Buy now £12.99, Waterstones
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
Stalingrad became the centre of a gruesome battle between the Soviet Union and Axis allies which lasted between August 23, 1942, and February 2, 1943.
In this award-winning piece of non-fiction about the battle which would go on to have an irrevocable effect on Hitler’s territorial ambitions in Europe, Beevor delivers an honest, scholarly book with the immense emotional depth and narrative skill of a novelist.
Buy now £11.23, Amazon
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert Chandler
Deemed impossibly dangerous and likened to a nuclear bomb by the KGB, Grossman’s Life and Fate was completed in 1960, when Stalin was still alive, and published in 1980 after being smuggled into the West. It offers a sweeping, panoramic look at Soviet life during the Second World War as the battle of Stalingrad loomed over citizens’ heads.
Though the novel is technically a fictional story of the family of a Soviet physicist, Viktor Shtrum, the story’s protagonist reflects Grossman himself in many ways and was based on a real-life Soviet nuclear physicist named Lev Yakovlevich Shtrum.
Buy now £11.25, Amazon
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Another piece of gripping historical fiction based around a real story, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is about a polyglot, Slovakian Jewish prisoner named Lale Sokolov who is transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon the discovery that he could speak multiple languages, German officers put Sokolov to work as a Tätowierer. Morris constructs a brilliantly researched and beautiful narrative about the very real Sokolov’s horrifying experiences and unwavering hope.
Buy now £11.95, Amazon
Hitler by Ian Kershaw
Originally a critically acclaimed two-volume biography, Kershaw’s Hitler is now available as one abridged text. With immense attention to detail, Kershaw traces how exactly an embittered art student from Austria became the architect of the murder of millions of individuals, global destruction and terror.
Buy now £18.99, Waterstones
Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front by Gunter K. Koschorrek
Günter Koschorrek, a German soldier who fought on the Eastern front during WWII, wrote his forbidden diary on any scraps of paper he could find in and around the battlefield before sewing the pages into the lining of his greatcoat.
His writing was subsequently lost for around 40 years until Koschorrek was reunited with his daughter in America. It offers a remarkable account of the quotidian experience of a soldier fighting on the wrong side of history.
Buy now £12.45, Amazon
The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany by Richard J. Evans
In book one of three in Evans’ History of the Third Reich trilogy, the author offers a compelling cultural, political and sociological view of how the Nazis seized power in Germany and beyond.
Evans gives us an intricately detailed look into the violent economic disaster and polarization at the heart of Germany prior to Hitler’s one-party state.
Buy now £16.99, Waterstones
Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich by Harald Jähner, translated by Shaun Whiteside
A panoramic look at how Germans rebuilt their lives following the horrors of World War II by Berlin-based journalist Harald Jähner, Aftermath offers a fascinating glimpse into how the country and its citizens began to reckon with the atrocities committed during Hitler’s rule.
Buy now £8.50, Amazon
World War Two: A Short History by Norman Stone
For those interested in learning the story of World War II from beginning to end but haven’t got the attention span which most contemporary hardbacks require, Norman Stone has got you covered. This incredibly fast-paced, sub-200-page snappy history of the world’s deadliest conflict will have you gripped.
Buy now £10.99, Waterstones
