Buck Sexton
Ok internet: I need the best history books (nonfiction) ever written about World War II. Let’s see what you’ve got⬇️
Book mentions in this thread
Win at All Costs
by Matt Hart
Game of Shadows meets Shoe Dog in this explosive behind-the-scenes look that reveals for the first time the unsettling details of Nike's secret running program--the Nike Oregon Project. In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file--a 4.7-megabyte PDF named "Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . ." He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for the Texas Medical Board, part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and cheating by Nike-sponsored runners, including some of the world's best athletes. The information Hart received was part of an unfolding story of deception which began when Steve Magness, an assistant to Salazar, broke the omertà--the Mafia-like code of silence about performance-enhancing drugs among those involved--and alerted the USADA. He was soon followed by Olympians Adam and Kara Goucher who risked their careers to become whistleblowers on their former Nike running family in Beaverton, Oregon. Combining sports drama and business exposé, Win at All Costs tells the full story of Nike's running program, uncovering a corporate win-at-all-costs culture. Hart calls for an above-board, clean sport that allows athletes to test themselves against the best and truly measure how good they are. His is a cautionary tale for America's next generation of athletes, and a wake-up call for sports fans, opening their eyes to the reality that rigged competition is widespread and systemic.Votes: 6
Shattered Sword
by Jonathan Parshall
Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange s bestselling "Miracle at Midway," Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Unlike previous accounts, "Shattered Sword" makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida s "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan," an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. The authors examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading WWII naval historian John Lundstrom, "Shattered Sword" will become an indispensable part of any military buff s library. Winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and cited by "Proceedings" as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005."Ask!
by Mark Victor Hansen
Your dreams become your destiny when you learn the secret art of asking! Most people have beautiful dreams deep inside—the things they would like to have, the relationships they’d love to enjoy, and the wellness and well-being that would help them express their best, in every way. But often those dreams lie buried inside us. Hidden by fear or unworthiness or a lack of awareness of what could be. Asking is the only language to which the Universe can deliver a solution, understanding, illumination, or plan. There are three distinct channels through which we can ask: Ask Yourself Ask Others Ask God You were born with a destiny. Your job is to discover it. Once you begin to practice the art and science of asking to discover your destiny and start to move toward it, you can manifest innumerable blessings for yourself and others. This isn’t a complicated process; in fact, it’s a simple gift that lies dormant within you. Once you learn to access that gift, everything changes for the better. Ask! will help you access your hidden dreams and reveal them to be recognized and fulfilled in miraculous ways. You matter. The world needs you to find your destiny and live it. This book is your guide. Start crossing the bridge to your destiny today!German Generals Talk
by Basil H. Hart
The German Generals who survived Hitler's Reich talk over World War II with Capt. Liddell Hart, noted British miltary strategist and writer. They speak as professional soldiers to a man they know and respect. For the first time, answers are revealed to many questions raised during the war. Was Hitler the genius of strategy he seemed to be at first? Why did his Generals never overthrow him? Why did Hitler allow the Dunkirk evacuation? Current interest, of course, focuses on the German Generals' opinion of the Red Army as a fighting force. What did the Russians look like from the German side? How did we look? And what are the advantages and disadvantages under which dictator-controlled armies fight? In vivid, non-technical language, Capt. Liddell Hart reports these interviews and evaluates the vital military lessons of World War II.Votes: 3
The Greatest Generation
by Tom Brokaw
Focuses on the generation of Americans who were born in the 1920s, came of age during the Depression, fought in World War II, and came home to build a new America during the postwar era.Beneath a Scarlet Sky
by Mark Sullivan
Soon to be a major television event from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland. Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the USA Today and #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours. Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager--obsessed with music, food, and girls--but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino's parents force him to enlist as a German soldier--a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler's left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich's most mysterious and powerful commanders. Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share. Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.Votes: 2
The Guns at Last Light
by Rick Atkinson
Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.The Fighting Bunch
by Chris DeRose
In The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution, New York Times bestselling author Chris DeRose reveals the true, never-before-told story of the men who brought their overseas combat experience to wage war against a corrupt political machine in their Tennessee hometown. For ten long years, the citizens of McMinn County, Tennessee lived under a regime as dictatorial as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. First elected sheriff in 1936, wealthy industrialist Paul Cantrell rose to political prominence in the Democratic Party through fraudulent means, culminating in becoming a state senator in 1942. High taxes and racketeering funded his schemes. Deputies who served only themselves enforced his laws. Cantrell stole every election that decade through ballot box seizures and secret vote counts that ensured his victory. Anyone who questioned the results were threatened, arrested, and fined. In September of 1945, Bill White returned home to Athens, Tennessee, “The Friendly City,” after more than two years in the Marine Corps, a soldier in the Guadalcanal Campaign that turned the tide of the war. He was one of 3500 men from McMinn County who served in Europe and in the Pacific theater fighting fascist tyranny only to discover their families and friends living under a similar authoritarian rule in the United States. To restore true democracy, McMinn’s veterans formed the nonpartisan GI ticket to oppose Cantrell’s machine in the next election. But Cantrell wasn’t about to let a group of “kids” usurp his control. On Election Day, August 1, 1946, deputies took the ballot box to the jail in Athens, violently assaulting anyone who dared to stop them. White and his fellow GIs, men who fought and survived action in the Bulge and Normandy, armed themselves and laid siege to the prison, demanding the ballot box. For more than six hours, gunfire and dynamite blasts rocked the community until the deputies surrendered. With an official and legitimate vote count, the GIs won the election. For the past seven decades, the participants of the “Battle of Ballots and Bullets” and their families kept silent about that conflict. Now in The Fighting Bunch, after years of research, including exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses, archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the seminal—yet untold—events in American election history.In The Garden of Beasts
by Erik Larson
Berlin,1933. William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered academic from Chicago, has to his own and everyone else's surprise, become America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany, in a year that proves to be a turning point in history. Dodd and his family, notably his vivacious daughter, Martha, observe at first-hand the many changes - some subtle, some disturbing, and some horrifically violent - that signal Hitler's consolidation of power. Dodd has little choice but to associate with key figures in the Nazi party, his increasingly concerned cables make little impact on an indifferent U.S. State Department, while Martha is drawn to the Nazis and their vision of a 'New Germany' and has a succession of affairs with senior party players, including first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as the year darkens, Dodd and his daughter find their lives transformed and any last illusion they might have about Hitler are shattered by the violence of the 'Night of the Long Knives' in the summer of 1934 that established him as supreme dictator. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the times, and with brilliant portraits of Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and Himmler amongst others, Erik Larson's new book sheds unique light on events as they unfold, resulting in an unforgettable, addictively readable work of narrative history.