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14 World War II Book Reviews for Summer 2025

By Christopher Miskimon Full Reviews

Leyte Gulf: A New History of the World’s Largest Sea Battle (Mark Stille, Osprey Books, Oxford UK, 2025, 320 pp., Read more

WWII

Italian Convoy Intercepted

By Glenn Barnett

By April 1941, Great Britain had been at war for 19 months. Although nurtured and nourished by her empire, she took all the body blows from an increasingly vicious enemy. Read more

WWII

Vera Lynn

By Alan Davidge

Another concert in a hospital ward for more British soldiers–this time for wounded from the front line near Kohima, brought down to Dimapur for treatment. Read more

WWII

Daylight Mission to Bremen

By Joseph M. Horodyski

The average American airman in World War II faced some tough challenges. Products of the Great Depression, roughly 50 percent of those who fought the war came from rural America. Read more

WWII

Operation Nordwind: The Last Offensive

By David H. Lippman

Snow and biting cold covered American foxholes in the Vosges and the Alsace plain as GI wristwatches ticked down the last hours of December 31, 1944, awaiting the German attack. Read more

WWII

Marine Lieutenant George Cannon

By Edward F. Murphy

Marine Lieutenant George Cannon flinched instinctively as a barrage of shells erupted short of the sandy beach with a violent roar, sending columns of water and sand soaring into the air. Read more

A mannequin wearing the uniform of a technical sergeant in the American 359th Infantry Regiment mans the equipment in the Hoffmann Museum’s “radio corner.”

WWII

Luxembourg’s Hoffman Museum

By Raymond E. Bell, Jr.

You won’t find the familiar little triangular signs, “Warnung Minen!” hanging on barbed wire today in Western Europe, with one exception. Read more

WWII

Admiral William F. Halsey had never seen such destruction. Making matters worse, the harm had been inflicted on his beloved Navy inside one of its strongholds—the Pacific bastion of Pearl Harbor. Read more

WWII

Himmler’s Capture

During the last days of the Third Reich and the immediate aftermath of World War II in Europe, the Allied hunt for the high-ranking Nazis closest to the Führer was vigorous. Read more

WWII

Night Battle: The Barroom Brawl Off Guadalcanal

By David Alan Johnson

November 13, 1942, was a Friday, which sailors aboard the cruiser USS San Francisco noted with anxiety. Read more

Red Army scouts report the findings of a recent foray to locate the Germans in the northern Caucasus. The Germans were not uniformed against the harsh Russian winter and suffered tremendous casualties as a result.

WWII

Russian Commanders: Marshal Semyon M. Budenny

By Blaine Taylor

At 8 am on the cold, blustery morning of November 7, 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Russian Communist Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, a dashing lone horseman galloped out of the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin onto snow-covered Red Square. Read more

Dressed in traditional garb, a lone Chinese man seeks the protection of a sandbag barricade in the International Settlement of Shanghai on August 12, 1937. Adjacent to the civilian are a British soldier and two American Marines who have donned their helmets. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

WWII

A Memorable Marine Mascot

By Eric Niderost

Soochow was a mongrel dog with a remarkable gift for self-preservation. A homeless stray, he attached himself to some U.S. Read more

WWII

Garand’s Wonder Weapon

By Michael D. Hull

A variety of outstanding weapons and pieces of equipment affected the course of World War II for both the Allies and the Axis powers. Read more

The island of Guernsey is oddly patrolled by two British bobbies and a German sentry. The Channel Islands were the only British territory to endure occupation by the Nazis during World War II.

WWII

Secret Agent Man: The Story of Eddie Chapman

By Peter Kross

Nations have often pressed unsavory characters and criminals into service during wartime, rationalizing that such action is in the best interest of the country during extraordinary times. Read more

WWII

Were P-47 Thunderbolt Aircraft Really Formidable Fighter-Bombers?

By Sam McGowan

Since the end of World War II, the aviation press has made the North American P-51 Mustang into the superstar Allied fighter of the war. Read more

A camouflaged half-track playing the role of a tank destroyer pauses in the blistering desert heat of the American West during maneuvers. Desert training in the United States was intended to prepare American soldiers for the hardships of combat in North Africa.

WWII

Company B’s Tunisian Adventure

By Christopher Miskimon

For the United States Army, the long road to Germany began in the mountainous deserts of Tunisia in mid-November 1942. Read more

WWII

Any Bonds Today?

By Herb Kugel

One of the most unusual baseball games ever played was a three- way game in New York City between the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read more

WWII

Hans Scholl

By Kevin Seabrooke

For anyone in Germany who openly opposed Adolf Hitler or the policies of the Nazi party there were three likely outcomes—prison, concentration camp, or execution. Read more

A Navy corpsman gives a drink of water to a wounded Marine on the island of Guam in the Pacific. In addition to the thousands of casualties treated by U.S. Army medical personnel, the U.S. Navy also trained many for the war effort. (All photos: National Archives)

WWII

The U.S. Army Medical Corps: Caring for the Casualties in World War II

By Glenn Barnett

For centuries wounded soldiers of every nation were responsible for much of their own care. Medical attention was primitive and often not a high priority for military planners beyond the officer corps. Read more

Some of the thousands of prisoners taken during the spring offensive of the Allied Fifth Army in Italy in 1945 gaze from behind a temporary enclosure of barbed wire. These were some of the lucky ones, as German casualties mounted during the last days of the war. (All photos: National Archives)

WWII

In the Shadow of Sunrise: The Secret Surrender of Italy

By Dennis Whitehead

On the morning of Friday, April 13, 1945, three men gathered at a table in L’Espadon of the Ritz Paris over a breakfast of coffee and croissants. Read more

WWII

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