What is everyone reading on WW2?

[JeroenPollentier]

John Toland's Battle: The story of the Bulge

[JeroenPollentier]

John Toland's Battle: The story of the Bulge

I'm also re-reading John Toland's Hitler biography at the moment. Once again I realize how well-written Toland's is (even better than Joachim Fest's) and, with respect, how tedious Ian Kershaw's biography is.

Hastings’s is very good, as is Manchester’s. I haven’t read any other Churchill biographies yet.

Hastings' Churchill bio arrived in the mail yesterday. As soon as I've finished reading the two Toland books mentioned above, I will finally pick up the story of Churchill where William Manchester left off.

[Attrition]

Re-reading The Battle Of Britain: Dowding and the First Victory, 1940 (2000) by John Ray; a breath of fresh air, which shows that Fighter Command had been thinking about fighter formations and other tactics since about 1938, including the evolution of thinking about squadrons versus wings. It's a good compliment to Baughen's The RAF in the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain: A Reappraisal of Army and Air Policy 1938-1940 (2016) who points out that the difference between Park and Leigh-Mallory on bigger formations has been much exaggerated.

[Sheldrake]

British Way and Purpose -the literature which documented the British official approach to current affairs from 1943 onwards
http://www.stephenmcnair.uk/index.php/t ... d-purpose/
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/British-Way- ... yTEALw_wcB

Warning. This is material seriously woke and well to the left of anything proposed by American Democrats or British Socialists.

[Attrition]

Could anyone be more right than US Democrats or British socialists?

I've just braved the virus shield to take delivery of Hitler's Northern War: The Luftwaffe's Ill-Fated Campaign 1940-1945 (2001) by Adam Claasen. That University Press of Kansas has published some excellent work these last couple of decades.

[ajax]

Just received Soldiers of the Leibstandarte by Thomas Fischer.

[Ken S.]

"The Night of the New Moon" - Laurens van der Post
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490 ... e_New_Moon

"The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger A Nazi Diplomat And A Murder In Paris" - Jonathan Kirsch
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161 ... -grynszpan

"Destination Berchtesgaden: The Story of the United States Seventh Army in World War II" - John Frayn Turner & Robert Jackson.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199 ... chtesgaden

[Hans1906]

I try to read again:

Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden from the year 1961.

I found a copy of the former GDR first edition on a north german flea market decades ago.

1,- german Mark was the asked price, a large and in detail book, forgot the book in the bookshelves
for many years, and read the book later...

Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden
Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Verni ... chen_Juden

Hans

[Sheldrake]

I am reading "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George McDonald Fraser. It is an infantryman's view of the fighting in Burma in 1945. Fraser wrote the Flashman series of novels later in life.

Just been reading this and the follow ups The General Danced at Dawn , Maclauslan in the Rough and The Sheikh and the Dustbin are all set in 1946-48 in North Africa and the Middle East.
I have been studying a University of Exeter short online course on controversies of the British Empire. These were all written by a witness to the last decades on the British Empire.

[Attrition]

I read the later books after reading QSoH too. I liked the story about the bruiser who was always being bailed out of trouble, because he's carried a wounded German out of the desert, despite him dying on the way.

[Ken S.]

"Up Front" - Bill Mauldin

[Attrition]

Gunners in Normandy: The History of the Royal Artillery in North-west Europe, January 1942 to August 1944, Baldwin and Townend (2020). A thoroughgoing treatment of Anglo-Canadian artillery in Normandy. I've dipped into a few chapters, particularly Greenline and Pomegranate. The authors won't win any prizes as prose stylists and the copy editing leaves something to be desired but the book provides lots of information that fleshes out Hart's Colossal Cracks.

Oh and the maps are colour photos, a bit small but the relief is picked out very well.

[Sheldrake]

Piers Brandon: The Dark Valley, A Panorama of the 1930s.
A great review of the years leading up to the Second World War. A recommendation from James Holland. A brilliant and thought provoking read
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Valley-Pa ... 103&sr=8-1


I am not really enjoying Jon Fennel's book on Morale. He is hugely arrogant and ambitious in that he is trying to do for WW2 what Gary Sheffield has done for WW1. It is good to read a book focusing on morale but his knowledge of how armies work is woefully lacking. If it wasn't an e-book I would have hurled it into the corner on several occasions. The British were not masters of combined arms tactics because there are paragraphs in FSR 1935 that says they are a good thing.
However, I did learn about the New Zealand Furlough "Mutiny". New Zealand allowed soldiers who had served in the Middle east for a long time a furlough at home. Only around 15% returned. The criticism of Freyberg's sensitivity to casualties at Cassino may have reflected a manpower crisis.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Peopl ... =8-1-fkmr0

[Ken S.]

"Panzer Commander" by Hans von Luck

[aurelien wolff]

currently reading the last aero journal ,the article on the avenger is quite interesting