Fans pick 100 books like Castles of Steel

When war erupted in August 1914, Germany stationed two ships, battlecruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau in the Mediterranean to reinforce the fleets of her allies, Italy and Austria-Hungary. Together they planned to overwhelm outmatched British and French vessels and clear the way for an Italian invasion of southern France. In a shocking development, however, Italy remained neutral, Austria-Hungary’s lesser squadrons remained in port, and Goeben and Breslau were forced to flee from British pursuers. In an exciting chase – somewhat of a story twist on the Royal Navy’s hunt and sinking of Hitler’s battleship Bismarck in May 1941 – British ships failed this time and the German escapees fled through the Dardanelles to Istanbul, joined the navy of the Ottoman Empire, and facilitated Turkey’s entry to the war on Germany’s side.     

Readers will find Hewitt’s book a fascinating read. Along with the stories of five German ocean liners converted into armed merchant cruisers (AMCs) for raiding enemy commerce, especially the most successful of them, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which destroyed twenty-six vessels totaling nearly 100,000 tons, he also relates the dramatic raiding campaigns of German warships like light cruisers Karlsruhe and Emden, which bagged thirty-two merchantmen (over 140,000 tons). Other chapters cover the Goeben episode (described above) as well as the victory of Graf Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron at Coronel and its tragic demise at the Falklands – Germany lost two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and later a third light cruiser. 

If the Age of the Dreadnoughts fires your imagination, this book certainly fired mine. It is the most authoritative book written on the Battle of Jutland and the British Naval Command in WWI.

Beyond a mere recounting of who commanded and what ships were involved, this book takes a deep dive into the naval strategy of the time, how and why ships were built, and how they were sailed and fought, down to tactical details that end up determining decisive battle outcomes that changed the naval history of WWI.

Learn everything from orders of battle, ship handling, and turn by decisive turn in the swirling battle that defined an era at sea—Jutland. Gordon let me shovel in the historical coal to support my books, one that also touched on an alternate outcome of the battle of Jutland. 

Also published by the Naval Institute Press, Goldrick’s work smashes the widely held view that the German navy, allegedly so demoralized by its lesser losses at Jutland – but casualties that included flagship battlecruiser Lützow – that it never ventured to sea again. On the contrary, the German fleet, emboldened by inflicting much greater losses on the British, set to sea again in August 1916 reinforced with two new 15-inch-gun battleships. Even stronger in April 1918, it went out again, this time with Lützow’s replacement, Hindenburg. Jutland-like engagements almost occurred, but interesting circumstances prevented the two fleets from missing one another and another slugfest. Goldrick also details operations in the Baltic Sea as well as many other aspects of North Sea warfare after Jutland (e.g. mining campaigns) left out of other works.  

This is the best book out there to introduce the reader to the 1944 Normandy Campaign. 

Clash of Arms examines how the Western Allies improved their battlefield combat effectiveness in order to defeat the forces of the Third Reich and break out of the Normandy bridgehead.

Critically, Hart also examines the German way of war and how the Germans stubbornly sought to adapt in the face of Allied superiority. Packed with detail and superb analysis, this book examines in detail the military campaign of each army within the Normandy bridgehead.

This is a new and interesting exploration of the reasons behind the disastrous Second World War Anglo-Canadian Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942.

O’Keefe investigates newly available British archival material to reveal the designs British naval intelligence had on the port of Dieppe and how the resulting raid revolved around the capture of a highly important German Enigma encryption device and codebooks. 

These materials were desperately needed to produce ULTRA intelligence, vital for Allied efforts in the Battle of the Atlantic. 

The majority of books written about the German U-boat naval campaign in the Second World War focus on the Battle of the Atlantic.

A new approach by Lawrence Paterson challenges this narrative and makes the argument that the German U-boat Wolfpacks fought a truly global naval campaign, one that occurred during the entire wartime period 1939-1945.

Paterson also makes the argument that the operations by the U-Boats were not separate from the activities of other German service branches, but in concert with them to attain larger strategic goals.

He concludes that the ultimate failure of the U-Boats was due to this overreaching global strategy, combined with the impact of overpowering Allied anti-submarine warfare resources directed against them.

This book is an excellent summary of the WWII Eastern Front battles from July to November 1944 near Warsaw, Poland, through the lens of the Germans defending the front there, specifically the IV. SS-Panzerkorps, an armored (tank) corps consisting of two Waffen-SS Panzer Divisions (The Waffen-SS being the military arm of the Nazi Party in wartime Germany).

Author Douglas E. Nash’s analysis is excellent, and his experience as a retired US Army armored officer allows him to provides insights few others can regarding Eastern Front combat in 1944.

On top of this, his German language skills allowed him to carry out a higher degree of historical research than other books on the Eastern Front, utilizing primary German wartime documents to delve into events.

This book provides the reader with a clear understanding of how the June 1944 Russian Operation Bagration offensive was stopped by desperately fighting German units attempting to… show more.

This is the book that got me into naval history and made me want to be a naval historian.

Bennett was a serving officer in the RN and the son of a naval officer. He writes with pace, experience, and clarity about the major naval encounters of the First World War. It is a book that would be a good primer for anyone wanting to start the WW1 at sea journey. I purchased it in a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge and never looked back.

Professor Lambert is the doyen of present-day naval historians.

In this book he tells the story of an incomparably great strategist and historian, Julian Corbett, whose pre-war views on naval strategy were well constructed and sought by men such as Admiral Jacky Fisher, the founder of the modern navy. Unfortunately, Corbett’s ideas were catastrophically ignored in 1914 but shaped Britain’s success in the Second World War and beyond.