Book picks similar to
Himmler's War by Robert Conroy


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Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying


Roald Dahl - 1945
    In these spine-tingling tales of battles in the sky - and in the psyche - he draws on his own experiences and those of his friends and colleagues to convey the bizarre reality of a pilot's existence. From the nervy jollity of life in the Ops room and the Mess in 'Death of an Old Old Man' to the nightmarish horror of being shot down in 'A Piece of Cake', or the infectious madness of war in 'Someone Like You', these stories capture with chilling clarity the experience of living with the daily possibility of extinction.--back cover

The War in 2020


Ralph Peters - 1991
    Their only hope is America's Seventh Cavalry, who plunge into the horrors of war in the new millennium. "The military counterpart of Orwell's 1984. . . . is not for the fainthearted. . . ".--New York Times Book Review.

The Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War


David Downing - 1980
    Based on authentic history and real possibilities, this book plays out the dramatic consequences of opportunities taken and examines the grotesque possibilities of a Third Reich triumphant. On September 30th, 1941, the Germans fight their way into the ruins of Moscow, and the Soviet Union collapses. Although Russian resistance continues, German ambition multiplies after this signal victory and offensives are launched in Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Hitler's armies, assured of success, make their leader's dreams reality, and Allied hopes of victory seem to be hopelessly doomed.

The Plum Tree


Ellen Marie Wiseman - 2012
    “Bloom where you’re planted,” is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out. Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake.

The Buntline Special


Mike Resnick - 2010
    Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization


Tim Lebbon - 2017
    Pictures and Legendary Pictures. When a scientific expedition to an uncharted island awakens titanic forces of nature, a mission of discovery becomes an explosive war between monster and man. Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman and John C. Reilly star in a thrilling and original new adventure that reveals the untold story of how Kong became King.

The Kommandant's Girl


Pam Jenoff - 2007
    Within days Emma's husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city's decrepit, moldering Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob's Catholic aunt, Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile. Emma's already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety—and her marriage vows—in order to help Jacob's cause. As the atrocities of war intensify, so does Emma's relationship with the Kommandant, building to a climax that will risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves.

The Spirit Ring


Lois McMaster Bujold - 1992
    Thur dreams of escaping the mines of Bruinwald. A betrayal at a banquet plunges Thur and Fiametta into a struggle against men who would use vile magic for vile ends.

Yellow Blue Tibia


Adam Roberts - 2009
    With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away—and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together—Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.

War of the Rats


David L. Robbins - 1999
    The outcome is pivotal. If Hitler's forces are not stopped, Russia will fall. And with it, the world....German soldiers call the battle Rattenkrieg, War of the Rats. The combat is horrific, as soldiers die in the smoking cellars and trenches of a ruined city. Through this twisted carnage stalk two men—one Russian, one German—each the top sniper in his respective army. These two marksmen are equally matched in both skill and tenacity. Each man has his own mission: to find his counterpart—and kill him. But an American woman trapped in Russia complicates this extraordinary duel. Joining the Russian sniper's cadre, she soon becomes one of his most talented assassins—and perhaps his greatest weakness. Based on a true story, this is the harrowing tale of two adversaries enmeshed in their own private war—and whose fortunes will help decide the fate of the world.

Glide Path


Arthur C. Clarke - 1963
    Clarke was in charge of the first radar 'talk-down' equipment, the Ground Controlled Approach, during its experimental trials. His novel GLIDE PATH is based on this work

Garden of Beasts


Jeffery Deaver - 2004
    But when a hit goes wrong and Schumann is nabbed, he’s offered a stark choice: kill Reinhard Ernst, the man behind Hitler’s rearmament scheme, and walk free forever—or be sent to Sing-Sing and the electric chair.The instant Paul sets foot in Berlin his mission becomes a deadly cat-and-mouse chase, with danger and betrayal lurking at every turn. For the next forty-eight hours, as the city prepares for the coming summer Olympics, Schumann stalks Ernst, while a dogged criminal police officer and the entire Third Reich security apparatus search frantically for the American. Packed with fascinating period detail and featuring a cast of perfectly realized local characters, Olympic athletes, and senior Nazi officials—some real, some fictional—Garden of Beasts dishes up breathtaking action, a wrenching look at Nazi-era Berlin, and a series of stunning plot twists. It is classic Deaver. (And there is also a slight Lincoln Rhyme connection for the discerning reader to find.)

Legacies


L.E. Modesitt Jr. - 2002
    Corus today is a world of contending countries, of struggling humans, strange animals and elusive supernatural creatures. Though much has been forgotten, it is still a place of magical powers, and of a few people who are Talented enough to use them.Even as a child, Alucius showed very strong Talent. He was warned never to reveal it, lest others seek to exploit it. But as he grows to young manhood, Alucius must serve in the Militia like his father before him. When his country is invaded by the slave armies of the Matrial, immortal ruler of a nearby land, Alucius is captured and magically enslaved.A time of changes has come upon all of the world of Corus. If the evil surrounding the Matrial is not ended, those changes will not be happy ones. Alucius and his Talent have a central role to play.

The Plot Against America


Philip Roth - 2004
    In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.(back cover)

The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45


Władysław Szpilman - 1946
    It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent