Company Commander – Charles B. MacDonald, 1947 ★★★½

Bullets and Boredom on the Western Front

The day-to-day experience of leading an American infantry company into the heart of Germany and beyond is given real feeling as well as facts in this first-person World War II memoir. What it lacks in taut adventure it makes up for in authenticity.

Charles B. MacDonald testifies to the grim nature of war in many forms, including a night retreat under bombardment and advancing into enemy flak positions. Boredom and terror were frequent companions; so too was death.

The time we spend with MacDonald and his company are in places that don’t get much attention in histories of the war. But calling it rear-echelon duty isn’t right, either. They had more than enough to do.

Das Reich – Max Hastings, 1981 ★★½

When Evil Got Taken Too Far

Can the end justify the means even when those means are wholly evil? Leaving aside moral, philosophical, and theological quibbles, can one look at wholesale murder from the perspective of getting something done and call it wrong simply on the basis of logic?

Yes, you can. Take the actions of a German SS armored division who, in order to cow rebellious French civilians en route to Normandy in June 1944, committed two massacres and numerous atrocities to gain a clear road to the front line.

This they did, proving in an immediate way the efficacy of terror as a tool of war, but also the limitations of same, for reasons explained by Max Hastings in this 1981 account of the division’s bloody march.

The Odessa File – Frederick Forsyth, 1972 ★★★★

The Humane One

Introducing his first three novels in a 1980 omnibus edition, Frederick Forsyth called The Odessa File “the humane one,” to distinguish it from the pure craft of his debut and a nastier tone in his third novel.

More than 40 years later, I don’t think anyone has summed up Odessa File nearly as well. It is a very humane sort of thriller, all the more involving and exciting for that.

Take one modern fellow trying to right a terrible wrong, throw in a terror plot that realistically threatens an entire nation, and incorporate a knowledge of politics, bureaucracy, and automotive mechanics, and you have another Forsyth winner, but with more than a bit of heart this time.

Journey’s End – R. C. Sherriff, 1928 ★★★★

Where Poppies Blow

War is hell. A hell of a bore, for one thing. Imagine endless days sitting in a trench somewhere while the rain and muck and rats have at you, trying to think of anything to take your mind off the prospect of sudden, violent death. Maybe even getting numb from it after awhile.

World War I had a reputation for that, on account of the long-static lines of the Western Front and the work of writers who survived, men on both sides including R. C. Sherriff, who ten years after getting wounded in combat wrote a play about both the dying and the waiting.

With Rommel In The Desert – Heinz Werner Schmidt, 1951 ★★½

Running with the Fox

During its brief lifespan, victory and defeat were close companions for the German Afrika Korps. Experiencing both firsthand was one young officer who would fight on the front lines and ride in a staff car with the unit’s legendary commander, Erwin Rommel, a. k. a. the Desert Fox.

As a memoir, With Rommel In The Desert offers color and a fair amount of candor, but is a loss when it comes to context or depth. If you grew up like me watching World War II movies or TV shows like “The Rat Patrol,” this is engaging if somewhat breezy and episodic.

Despite the title, Rommel is a background figure most of the time.

The Bunker: The History Of The Reich Chancellery Group – James P. O'Donnell, 1978 ★★★½

The Finality of Evil

Adolf Hitler wasn’t one for back-up plans. If he couldn’t conquer the world, he’d just as soon die in a stagnant hole with anyone he could pull down with him. The Bunker is an absorbing account of Hitler’s last days as seen by those who shared it with him in his Fuhrerbunker.

Author James P. O’Donnell, a Harvard man who liked to tout his classical education, pulls out a Nietzsche quote: “Many men die too late and some die too soon. Few manage to depart at just the right time.”

The Proud Tower – Barbara Tuchman, 1966 ★★

Arranging the Deck Chairs

Did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand cause World War I? Was it rather another assassination which took place hours before the war began, that of French socialist Jean Jaurès?

Or perhaps one too many feisty tone poems by Richard Strauss?

Maybe if the post-Victorian British weren’t so snooty and class-conscious, or the Americans had just heeded their anti-imperialist Speaker of the House, circumstances would have been different and mankind would have avoided one of its greatest calamities. Somehow.

The Zimmermann Telegram – Barbara Tuchman, 1958 ★★★

A Man, a Plan, a Telegram

The plan seemed perfect in its simplicity: Take out a prospective enemy in the middle of a global war without moving a single soldier or ship. What could go wrong?

For Imperial Germany in 1916, quite a lot. For the prospective enemy was the United States, the conflict World War I, and the plan used would prove just the lever to move a peace-loving American president to join in the carnage as an ally of Germany’s foes.

The Abandonment Of The Jews: America And The Holocaust, 1941-1945 – David S. Wyman, 1984 ★★★

The Cavalry Took Its Time

On Sunday, August 20, 1944, 127 American heavy bombers flew over Upper Silesia in western Poland, dropping 1,336 500-pound high-explosive bombs on synthetic-oil plants fueling Germany’s war against Russia. They left alone another Nazi operation just five miles away, a murder complex at Auschwitz.

A targeted operation against Auschwitz that day could have saved tens of thousands, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, arrested in Holland earlier that same month and transported to Auschwitz in September. Instead, then and later, Americans ignored the opportunity to strike a blow for humanity, particularly Jews. According to David Wyman, this callousness characterized American strategy throughout World War II.

The Guns Of August – Barbara Tuchman, 1962 ★★★½

The Best-Laid Plans

Barbara Tuchman didn’t quite catapult history books into events, but she moved that ball forward in a big way. For several decades her heavy tomes about medieval warfare and Chinese diplomacy were best-sellers people lugged to the beach.

None had the impact of The Guns Of August, her 1962 account of the first month of World War I. It won the next year’s non-fiction Pulitzer and achieved legend status during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy was said to quote from it often, tasking staff to read it as war with Russia loomed.