Recommendations for a good European-centric book on WWII?

[Flaxbee]

I know there are many books out, and am hoping for a few recommendations from DUers. I'm not looking for books (yet) about the US's role, but more about Germany, the rest of Europe, and Russia/USSR.

Thanks in advance for any input. :hi:

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Calvocoressi and Wint.

Total War; Causes and Courses of the Second World War, Vol. I (on Europe...)

[flowomo]

2. One of THE classics...

And maybe the best one on Russia's experience:

http://www.amazon.com/Russia-War-1941-1945-Alexander-Werth/dp/0786707224/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289756180&sr=1-1

I re-read this last summer. It is an amazing "insider's" look at the brutality and heroism on the Eastern Front. He was there.

[soryang]

3. Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction

An economic history of the emergence of the new economic order during the thirties; how it evolved to serve the war maching; how slave labor and genocide were integrated into the war machine.

The role of the depression and the international debt of Germany in giving rise to Nazi rule is detailed along with the effects of those insurmontable debts on the financial and military elites. There were the adverse effects of currency devaluations on Germany's exports and its conflicting need to pay off the reparations for WWI and the debts undertaken to service those debts to France and England. The latter in turn had to service war debts to the US. Germany simply decided to rearm, to repudiate its debts and to embark on a conquest of Eurasia, a reckless course with foreseeable consequences.

The global traders and financiers capitulated to the far right, Nazis and militarists who elected brute force in lieu of international cooperation.

An interesting thesis is that while the Nazis paid lip service to job creation programs to get into office, they abandoned anything but propaganda on this point in March 1933, shortly after Hitler became Chancellor. All extraordinary financial efforts went into the military.

Here is a passage in The Wages of Destruction that describes the dilemna of a nation preparing for war. There is a window of preparation and then when achieved, what next?

"...New factories would need to be brought into production in the shortest possible time. And the question would have to be faced of what was to be done with this capacity, once the targets for accelerated build up had been met. If the plants were to be maintained at war readiness, the ordnance office would need to issue huge follow-on orders for equipment that went far beyond the peace time needs of the armed forces. If the Reich wished to escape these costs, it would have to undertake an extremely difficult process of conversion to civilian activity. It would be surprising if this could be accomplished without serious unemployment. And even if it were successful, a conversion to civilian production would leave Germany unready to actually resupply its enormous army in case of war. As Fromm put it: 'Shortly after completion of the rearmament phase the Wehrmacht must be employed, otherwise there must be a reduction in demands or in the level of war readiness.' Before the army therefore embarked on this breakneck expansion, the political leadership needed to answer the question: was there 'a firm intention of employing the Wehrmacht at a date already fixed'?

The question of war and peace was now unavoidable. The gigantic machinery of mobilization could not be kept spinning indefinitely. If there was no intention of using the army at a predetermined point, then the whole rationale for rearmament at the pace envisioned in the summer of 1936 had to be questioned. Given the scale of resources required, means and ends could no longer be separated. War now had to be contemplated not as an option, but as a logical consequence of the preparations being made."

[McCamy Taylor]

4. "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."

[Adsos Letter]

5. Two come to mind:

To Lose a Battle: France 1940 by Sir Alistair Horne

and

The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin by Cornelius Ryan

[MountainLaurel]

6. Reading "The 900 Days" now

About the siege of Leningrad.