The best books of untold stories from World War II

Not just another book on World War II—Sailor’s Heart by Martin Campbell is a story that has not been told before. It is the fictionalized (but heavily and exhaustively researched) story of three Royal Navy sailors who experienced traumas that rendered them unable to go on. Campbell says the condition “sailor’s heart” is the loss of interest in the battle and then the will to fight or the will to live.” With no end to the war in sight, the men are sentenced to an undefined period of rehabilitation in a Royal Navy hospital that has anything but the men’s best interests at heart. Their plight and struggle to survive are palpable and gripping.

Florence Finch’s story is astonishing—in part for what this woman did to help save American prisoners of war in the Philippines during World War II. Finch received the Medal of Freedom, our highest civilian award, and has had a Coast Guard headquarters building named for her. Still, had it not been for Mrazek who discovered her story and wrote this book, relying in part on her actual correspondence, her family’s memories, and the historical accounts of the Massacre of Manila, we would not know Finch.

Martin Goldsmith has penned the story of his father and mother who were talented musicians in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. They met by chance and were invited to play for the Kulturbund, an all Jewish orchestra that was allowed to exist while it was convenient to the Nazi’s. When disbanded, the members were sent to concentration camps. Goldsmith’s parents escaped to America, but carried with them the burden of relatives left behind and the guilt of having played into the Nazi’s propaganda efforts. 

Larsen never fails to entertain and educate while bringing his reader's surprising stories. Here he takes up the story of William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered professor from Chicago who was appointed as ambassador to Germany by Roosevelt in the days before the Second World War. It was an inappropriate appointment and Dodd stumbles, failing to appreciate the signs of coming troubles. The same can be said for his daughter Martha who accompanies her father to Germany and is enamored by life in the nightclubs and salons of the fascist society. Both come to sit across a table from Hitler and fall under his spell as did the German people—at least for a period. 

I heard Shattuck speak about her book at the National World War II Museum. The story is based on her grandmother’s life in post-war Germany. It took Shattuck seven years to research and write. The women in the title are three widows with connections to the men who plotted the failed assassination attempt on Hitler. The women, wives, mothers, and lovers, some weak, some strong, join forces to try to survive the war’s aftermath, living together in a crumbling Bavarian castle. It was a book I could not put down.