What are some good books on WW2 history?

[Dida]

Please make 1-3 suggestions each for the European and Pacific/Asia theaters of the war. I would like to get a few books on WW2 history

 

[Shekwan]

Screw books. World at War.

Laurence Olivier's voice is so calm and soothing depsite the fact it invariably describes mass murder and some of the other worst elements of human nature the world has ever seen.

 

[cardgame]

The Great Patriotic War - How The CCCP Saved Mankind is an excellent and unbiased source that you should start with.

 

[Reiser]

Masters of the Air, by Donald Miller, is a good book about the 8th Air Force in Europe.
I also have Armchair Reader: World War II, published by Allen Orso, which has a lot of small topics explained. For example, it has a topic of combat medics, some spies and great soldiers, and the Japanese balloon bombs...a very wide range.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The Great Patriotic War - How The CCCP Saved Mankind is an excellent and unbiased source that you should start with.

I think the best book on the Eastern Front is When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler by David Glantz. If anyone has to choose only a single book about it, this is the one. Its essentially his two tomes, Stumbling Colossus and Colossus Reborn, shoved into one ~400 page book. A true masterpiece of military history.

 

[BananaLee]

To be honest, you can fart in a bookstore and the WW2 books will come tumbling down. Every man and his dog has written on the war so most of them end up writing the same old stuff.

Collations from credible publishers (Oxford, Cambridge and such like) are always safe bets.

 

[Serutan]

Europe : The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin by John Erickson - a really
in depth military and political look at the Russian Front from (mostly) the Soviet
perspective, especially as it looks at pre-war events starting with the purges.

From Moscow to Stalingrad and From Stalingrad to Berlin by Earle Ziemke
covers the Russian front (mostly) from the German perspective.

 

[Lord Baal]

Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War is a food read, though focused on the German nation rather than the war itself. Other than that pretty much what BananaLee said. There's a tonne of books out there, but good ones are few and far between.

 

[Scarlet Lux]

Stalin's Folly was a very informative read regarding the days leading up to June 22, 1941 (from a Soviet perspective). It also covers the next 11 days of the war. I found the book very informative.

 

[Harvin87]

The rise and fall of the third reich --- its the classic one.