“It’s the historian’s job to remind us that events, now in the past, were once in the uncertain future,” says Arthur Herman, and that’s surely true of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when 160,000 Allied soldiers and 24,000 airborne troops hit the fields and beaches of Nazi-occupied Normandy, with no guarantee any would return alive. Herman, the historian and author of the new “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II,” says Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was so unsure of victory, he wrote out a resignation letter, just in case. In today’s risk-averse age, Herman says, “D-Day reminds us that the biggest gains, including freedom itself, come with risks just as big. Avoid the one, never see the other.” Here are his top WWII books.
Masters and Commanders
by Andrew Roberts
A magnificently researched, superbly written account of how the US and UK’s top civilian and military leaders — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gen. George Marshall and Britain’s Sir Alan Brooke — overcame mutual suspicions and conflicting priorities to win the war in Europe.
Fighter Squadron at Guadalcanal
by Max Brand
Brilliant evocation of the handful of heroes who helped turn the tide of the most decisive land battle of the Pacific war. Brand, a famed cowboy writer, gave it all up to become a war correspondent. He based this on his own interviews with the Marine pilots; he himself was killed in Italy in 1943. The pages seem to snap by like pistol shots.
Roll Me Over
by Raymond Gantter
First-rate, firsthand reminiscence of what fighting in post-D-Day France was really like; there’s an alarming vignette of the shock and remorse Gantter experienced after shooting his first German soldier in battle. It was so shocking to its first readers that they advised Gantter to forgo publishing it; his wife released it after his death.
Halsey’s Typhoon
by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
The story of the 1944 storm that swept through Adm. William “Bull” Halsey’s fleet, killing 790 sailors, sinking three destroyers and destroying 150 aircraft. A reminder of the dangers our soldiers, sailors, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard risk to keep this country safe, even when they’re not engaged in combat.