Looking for books on WWII... but ...

July 27, 2012 8:26 AM

Can you recommend a contemporary WWII narrative, in english, but written by non-anglo-american authors?

I am interested in reading more about WWII. In particular I am wondering if there are any contemporary books that cover the whole (or at least big parts of) WWII ... but written by people who are neither from Britain nor North America (US, Canada).

The reason is that I am interested in trying to get that alternate perspective that the traditional western sources may not have. For instance any books by soviet, japanese or german sources.

Bonus points if they are currently in print, that can be found at a Barnes & Noble or Chapters.

Thank you in advance

posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey to society & culture (14 answers total)

I assume that you're ok with foreign language histories that have been translated by British / North American authors? If so, you could consider some of the works of Vasily Grossman, one of the more prolific journalists in the Red Army. Life and Fate is a fictional story based on his experiences (in some ways using the cloak of fiction to allow a shield of deniability to some of the ghastlier aspects of that conflict), whereas The Writer At War is a translation and compilation of Grossman's notebooks.
posted by bl1nk at 8:34 AM on July 27, 2012

are you looking for historical analyses, or personal accounts of experience?

On the personal account side, what I immediately thought of was a memoir - Micschling, Second Degree that I read several years ago, about living as a child in Germany during the war and being actively involved in the Hitler Youth. It's a strong portrayal of the German civilian experience.
posted by jb at 8:34 AM on July 27, 2012

>I assume that you're ok with foreign language histories that have been translated by British / North American authors?

yes :) I only know english
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 8:40 AM on July 27, 2012

>are you looking for historical analyses, or personal accounts of experience?

either one. But I find first-person accounts can be more enriching than dry analyses.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 8:43 AM on July 27, 2012

The Last Brother came out last year and was very well-reviewed. Its author is Mauritian-French.
posted by jabes at 8:53 AM on July 27, 2012

There are a multitude of Holocaust memoirs written in English by European Jews, including Night, I Have Lived A Thousand Years, Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, and many others.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:56 AM on July 27, 2012

Tereska Torres fictionalized her experience as one of the Free French in Women's Barracks(set in London). I attended a women's pulp series last year and was told by the moderator that her wartime diaries will be published in the near future.
posted by brujita at 9:02 AM on July 27, 2012

Searched around Google Books and here are a handful of interesting-looking ones I found.

• Force 136: Story of a WWII Resistance Fighter by Chong Tee Tan and Chongzhi Chen, 1995
• Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II by James C. McNaughton, 2006
• Guarded By Angels: Memoir of a Dutch Youth in WWII by Alard B. Ages, 2007
• The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World edited by Tadeusz Piotrowski, 2007
• Freedom fighters of India edited by Lion M. G. Agrawal, 2008

Lots more where those came from, I'm sure I only skimmed the surface.
posted by XMLicious at 9:12 AM on July 27, 2012

We Die Alone is the story of a Norwegian commando escaping from Nazis.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:22 AM on July 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Eugenio Corti (still alive) wrote Few Returned, an account of his time on the Russian Front. Also Last Soldiers of the King. He later expanded these into the novel The Red Horse. (Ignore that lone one star. Amazon readers like it. As do others.)

Whole bunch of German memoirs listed on Amazon. And Italian.
posted by BWA at 9:58 AM on July 27, 2012

Oh, and I just read a review of Joachim Fest's Not Me: Memoirs of a German Childhood this morning. Not yet available in the US, but looks worth reading.
posted by BWA at 6:50 AM on July 28, 2012

The time of our lives by Martine Rouchaud is memoirs of a girl who was a refugee (it's a remarkably happy story) in France.
Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrac is a personal account of working in the French Resistance (she's known for a raid to rescue her husband while she was pregnant).
Without Vodka: Adventures in Wartime Russia by Aleksander Topolski is about being in the Polish Army and Russian prisons. " "But it's not for our brains to ponder these things," Topolski heard someone say along the way, mouthing an old Russian saying, "Without vodka you can't figure it out.""
This goes well with Courier from Warsaw by Ian Nowak, of a Polish man who worked in the Resistence and basically did daring escapes regularly to carry information.
The Bicycle Runner by G. Franco Romagnoli is about being a teenager in Rome during WWII.
China to Me by Emily Hahn is anglo -- but an account of living in China in the 1930's and then in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation.
I read a lot in this area, these are just my favorite books, the best written accounts of life in these times and places.
(I tried to use Amazon links for the more available, Google books for the less so, but I doubt whether any of these would just be on the shelves at a bookstore. Sorry.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:24 AM on July 28, 2012

When you say Anglo-American, do you include, say the Japanese-American or Japanese-Canadian experiences during the war? Because internment and special units and translation were all fairly different from other American and Canadian experiences during the war. (Though most of what I've read in this area are fictionalized accounts of real experiences, or compilations of sources.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:28 AM on July 28, 2012

>When you say Anglo-American, do you include, say the Japanese-American or Japanese-Canadian experiences during the war?


I guess what I'm trying to avoid is, a british or american scholar pontificating about WWII and what occurred before, during & after the conflict. Perhaps I exaggerate but most North American libraries and bookstores are chock-full of books like that.

I'd like to hear other viewpoints and exeriences, either scholarly or direct first person accounts, from people in other nations, for newer perspectives.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 4:13 AM on July 30, 2012