Best WWII Historical Fiction
Top 10 Best WWII Historical Fiction
: Lilac Girls, Salt to the Sea, Schindler's List, The Invisible Bridge, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, Secrets of a Charmed Life, The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II, A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust
| Author | Martha Hall Kelly |
| ISBN | 1101883073 |
Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this debut novel reveals a story of love, redemption, and secrets that were hidden for decades.
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world...
| Author | Ruta Sepetys |
| ISBN | 0399160302 |
World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom, many with something to hide. Among them are Joana, Emilia, and Florian, whose paths converge en route to the ship that promises salvation, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Forced by circumstance...
| Author | Thomas Keneally |
| ISBN | 0340606517 |
In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland...
| Author | Julie Orringer |
| ISBN | 0307713547 |
A grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war.
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the...
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
| Author | Laura Hillenbrand |
| ISBN | 1400064163 |
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.
On a May afternoon in 1943,...
| Author | Susan Meissner |
| ISBN | 0451419928 |
She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back. But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it was all she really wanted to see…
Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager...
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
| Author | Gregory A. Freeman |
| ISBN | 0451222121 |
I'm very biased about this book because my dad, Joseph Peter Hoffman, was one of the forgotten 500. I'm so appreciative to Gregory Freeman for bringing this event to a potentially large audience. My father never spoke much about his experience, but we would hear more about it from the more vocal crew members...
A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
| Author | Caroline Moorehead |
| ISBN | 0061650706 |
They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The...
The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
| Author | Corrie ten Boom |
| ISBN | 0553256696 |
At one time Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a story to tell. For the first fifty years of her life nothing at all out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her spinster sister and their elderly father in the tiny...
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a "J." Soon, Edith was taken away to a labor camp, and though she convinced Nazi officials to spare her mother, when she returned home, her mother had...
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
| Author | Eugene B. Sledge |
| ISBN | 0195067142 |
In his own book, Wartime, Paul Fussell called With the Old Breed "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." John Keegan referred to it in The Second World War as "one of the most arresting documents in war literature." And Studs Terkel was so fascinated with the story he interviewed its author for...
The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin
| Author | Cornelius Ryan |
| ISBN | 0684803291 |
The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler's Third Reich.
The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat...
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
| Author | Eric Metaxas |
| ISBN | 1595551387 |
As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer--a pastor and author, known as much for such spiritual...
Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
| Author | Dick Winters |
| ISBN | 0425208133 |
They were called Easy Company—but their mission was never easy.
Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered 150% casualties while liberating Europe—an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters was their commander—"the best combat leader in World War II" to his men....
Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal
| Author | James D. Hornfischer |
With The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts, James D. Hornfischer created essential and enduring narratives about America’s World War II Navy, works of unique immediacy distinguished by rich portraits of ordinary men in extremis and exclusive new information. Now he does the same...
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President...
| Author | Iris Chang |
| ISBN | 0140277447 |
In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians.
This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured...
| Author | Georgia Hunter |
| ISBN | 0399563083 |
It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland....
| Author | James Clavell |
| ISBN | 0385333765 |
The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses,...
| Author | Kurt Vonnegut |
| ISBN | 0385333846 |
There are some terrible reviews of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly awful sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.
This is usually based on the following quote.
"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I...
| Author | Nicholas Monsarrat |
| ISBN | 1580800467 |
“[T]hat was the way the war was going; the individual had to retreat or submerge, the simple unfeeling pair of hands must come to the fore. The emphasis was now on the tireless machine of war; men were parts of this machine, and so they must remain, till they fulfilled their function or wore out. If, in...
Six-year-old Gretl Schmidt is on a train bound for Auschwitz. Jakób Kowalski is planting a bomb on the tracks.
As World War II draws to a close, Jakób fights with the Polish resistance against the crushing forces of Germany and Russia. They intend to destroy a German troop transport, but...
