LibGuides: War Literature & Perspectives: World War II

About The War

World War II was the largest and deadliest war in history, involving more than 30 countries with around 50-85 million deaths, the majority being civilian casualties. Sparked by the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, the war dragged on for six years until the Allies defeated the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy in 1945. Battles were fought on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The United States joined the Allies in 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The rest of the Allies primarily consisted of the United Kingdom, France, China, Poland, and the Soviet Union. After the war ended, the United Nations was established to maintain international peace, security, and cooperation.

The National WWII Museum Website
Learn about the American experience in WWII.
World War II: In Depth | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Learn about World War II and the Holocaust.

Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac
Call Number: PZ 7 .B82816 Co 2005
ISBN: 0803729219
Publication Date: 2005-03-17
Throughout World War II, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. This deeply affecting novel honors all of those young men who dared to serve, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz; Ruth Gruener; Jack Gruener
Call Number: PZ 7.G77224 Pri 2013
ISBN: 9780545459013
Publication Date: 2013-03-01
As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek Gruener is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut; Mark Vonnegut (Introduction by)
Call Number: PS 3572 .O5 A85 2008
ISBN: 9780399155086
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Written with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II-a piece that is as timely today as it was then-to a painfully funny story about three privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war; to a darker and more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
Call Number: PF BLUM THO
ISBN: 0156031663
Publication Date: 2005-05-02
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Call Number: PS 3558 .A4763 N55 2015
ISBN: 9781466850606
Publication Date: 2015-02-03
The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University

The Flamboya Tree by Clara Olink Kelly
Call Number: D 811.5 .K447 2002
ISBN: 0375506217
Publication Date: 2002-04-09
As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four-year-old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. The family was forced to move to a Japanese concentration camp, where for nearly four years they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from the prison guards. Clara credits her mother with their survival.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Call Number: D 805 .J3 Z364 2010
ISBN: 9781400064168
Publication Date: 2010-11-16
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
* This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library at Goodwin University
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; Susan Massotty (Translator); Otto H. Frank (Editor); Mirjam Pressler (Editor)
ISBN: 0385473788
Publication Date: 1995-02-01
In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
* This book is available at East Hartford Public Library (linked below)

East Hartford Public Library