The 10 Best World War II Books, Ranked
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Fought between 1939 and 1945 by most accounts (though it’s not quite that neat by all accounts, since some pre-1939 conflicts bled into this overall war), World War II came pretty close to the middle of the 20th century, and defined so much of it overall. There was fallout from the Great War, later dubbed World War I, and some other factors that led up to war breaking out on a global scale, and then after 1945, the effects of it were still felt in so many ways (not limited to the idea of a Third World War of a nuclear variety being possible, but that is still pressing).
There’s naturally a ton of media about World War II, some of it even made during the war itself (see Casablanca for probably the best example, at least on the cinema front), but the focus here is on books. These books all concern the Second World War in one way or another, and can count themselves among the best World War II books/novels ever made (with a combination of non-fiction and fiction below).
10 'The Second World War' (2012)
You'd hope a book with a title as broad as The Second World War would be comprehensive, so it’s a relief to note that, yes, The Second World War (2012) really is. If you're burned out on World War II documentaries for whatever reason, but also want something that covers almost everything within the entire lengthy and complicated conflict, then you more or less get that here.
Though that does ultimately mean that certain things are passed over rather fast, and it also might be the case that if you're already well-read on World War II, you won’t get a ton of new information, insight, or analysis. Still, it’s got that promisingly broad title, and The Second World War encompasses a lot, all the while covering so many different events in an easily readable fashion (in terms of readability; not readable regarding the content, which is necessarily heavy and distressing throughout).
9 'The Nightingale' (2015)
The most recent book here, The Nightingale is still hard to overlook, or not mention. It’s about the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War, with the narrative centering on a pair of sisters trying to make it through the whole ordeal. That makes it a work of historical fiction, taking a real-life event during World War II and mostly being about a pair of fictional characters.
It’s done well, and it also stands out for being a female-centered book about World War II, given the central focus on a pair of sisters. The Nightingale is also one of the most popular Second World War-related books in recent memory, with the large amount of success and sales being a key factor in why there’s been talk, for a while now, of adapting the story to film.
8 'Maus' (1991)
A graphic novel, but a novel/book nonetheless, Maus is an autobiographical work by Art Spiegelman, much of it being about the experience of his father during World War II as a Jewish man who survived life in a concentration camp. Or, more specifically, it’s about Spiegelman trying to unpack his family history through his father, since the task of writing what became Maus is itself part of the narrative.
On top of all that, its art makes different groups of people different anthropomorphic animals, but it’s otherwise incredibly grounded and not in any way a work of fantasy. It’s one of those rare books that’ll likely never get any kind of adaptation, owing to Spiegelman’s wishes, and that’s maybe for the best, since it’s such a personal work and one that’s hard to imagine existing in any format outside its graphic novel form.
7 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' (1960)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich benefits from being written by someone who was in Germany and therefore able to witness firsthand at least the rise of the Third Reich. William L. Shirer was the author, and he was a journalist living in Germany throughout much of the 1930s, up to around the time when war broke out, with him leaving in 1940 when he feared for his safety.
The stuff here that’s not a firsthand account on Shirer’s part is interesting, though, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich certainly feels comprehensive in covering the life of Adolf Hitler, with a particular focus on the era of the Third Reich (of course), which lasted from 1933 until 1945 (the war’s end). It’s dense and maybe not perfect, especially by modern standards, but it’s still remarkable for how detailed it gets and how well it’s structured overall.
6 'Man's Search for Meaning' (1946)
Primarily a book about psychology, Man's Search for Meaning does also function as an account of the Holocaust from the perspective of Viktor E. Frankl, who survived life in a series of concentration camps during World War II. Frankl was a psychiatrist, and so he looks at the experience of living in such conditions through a psychological/philosophical lens, all the while avoiding making the book too much of an account strictly of his experiences.
It’s a starting point for the ideas Frankl wants to explore, and there’s an undeniable applicability to what Man's Search for Meaning contains beyond the bounds of most books that are technically about World War II. It does all that within a fairly short time, too, since Man's Search for Meaning is ultimately a brief read (not the same as an easy one, considering the heaviness of the material here, but you can get a lot out of this within a surprisingly brief amount of time spent reading it).
5 'Slaughterhouse-Five' (1969)
Though it’s a pretty short book, Slaughterhouse-Five is rather hard to sum up, and it’s going for a lot all at once, genre-wise and thematically. A good chunk of it concerns the bombing of Dresden, which author Kurt Vonnegut actually experienced firsthand as a soldier during World War II, but there’s also time travel thrown into the mix, or sci-fi elements more generally, and parts of it are funny… kind of? Or at least satirical.
Not quoting from Wikipedia here, necessarily, but the page for Slaughterhouse-Five begins by calling the novel "semi-autobiographic science fiction," and there aren’t too many works of literature (or works of fiction, more generally) that can be categorized as such. Slaughterhouse-Five is an unsurprisingly fascinating read that also demands to be re-read, and that’s not hard to do, thanks to the book being so good and the page count being on the lower end of things.
4 'The Diary of a Young Girl' (1947)
Sometimes referred to as The Diary of Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl is just that: a series of diary entries made by Anne Frank, who wrote across a period of about two years, from her 13th birthday to not long after her 15th. It was written during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, with much of it covering Anne Frank’s time spent hiding with her family, and the writing itself concluding abruptly when they (minus her father, Otto Frank) were found.
It’s perhaps one of the most widely-read books that relates to World War II in some way, plainly capturing one person’s account of trying to live through the whole conflict as a persecuted individual. Everything that could be said about The Diary of a Young Girl has already been said, time and again. It’s a vital work from a historical perspective, it’s remarkable that someone so young wrote it, and it’s also undeniably tragic what happened to its author, who was estimated to have died not long before the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.
3 'Catch-22' (1961)
A little like Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22 is famously about how weird, despair-filled, and almost comically absurd war can be, but without the sci-fi elements of that other novel and also with a bit more of a focus on humor. It’s a very dark comedy, though, and the humor's certainly of a surreal nature, too, all of it getting quite exhausting at a point, while at the same time, that does feel a bit like the point.
It’s got a great hook/premise, though, exploring the notion that anyone who wants to exit the war must be sensible, and so they can’t request a check for insanity as a way to get out, since doing that demonstrates their sanity. And then lots of other messiness happens, all of it being episodic but ultimately coherent in its own strange way (in a manner that film/TV adaptations haven’t quite been able to capture).
2 'The Winds of War' (1971)
The Winds of War is a massive novel, and yet it’s hard to talk about it without also acknowledging that it’s just one half of an overall story that continued with War and Remembrance. If you want, consider them both worthy of taking up this spot, since they function as one grand family saga that spans World War II quite comprehensively, including the lead-up to it (or at least the lead-up to the United States’ involvement in the conflict).
Both books also stand out as particularly great pieces of historical fiction, since the broad events here really happened, but many (albeit not all) of the characters are fictional. You do need to devote a lot of time to reading something like The Winds of War, and then even more time to (the even longer) War and Remembrance, but it’s an ultimately worthwhile endeavor.
The Winds of War
- Release Date
- 1983 - 1983-00-00
- Network
- ABC
Cast
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Robert MitchumVictor 'Pug' Henry -
Ali MacGrawNatalie Jastrow
1 'Gravity's Rainbow' (1973)
It’s surprising how well-known Gravity’s Rainbow is, considering how it’s also remarkably impenetrable and overwhelmingly dense (not to mention incredibly confronting and even disgusting in parts), but maybe all that works in its favor, to some extent. It’s a defining post-modern novel, and also so very difficult to summarize, beyond saying that it’s largely set during the final stages of World War II, and also, there’s a lot of talk about – and paranoia surrounding – V-2 rockets.
Parts of Gravity’s Rainbow are thrilling, yet much of it’s also overwhelming, which is something that can be said about a great many Thomas Pynchon novels.
Characters come in and out of the novel, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of them, and you can try and piece together every single bizarre episode, or just go with the flow and appreciate what you can. Maybe parts of Gravity’s Rainbow are thrilling, yet much of it’s also overwhelming, which is something that can be said about a great many Thomas Pynchon novels. But for capturing the madness of war, and for also being unforgettable (for better or worse)… you can’t really fault Gravity’s Rainbow on those fronts.
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