Fans pick 100 books like Every Man Dies Alone

Grossman consciously attempted to write the War and Peace of the Second World War, and in this panoramic masterpiece, he pulled it off. Like War and Peace, the book focuses both on the travails of a single family and the broader sweep of history, as we witness events from the perspective of persecuted Jewish scientists, soldiers (both Soviet and German), partisans, peasants, and generals.

This is an intensely personal work – Grossman covered the battle of Stalingrad for the Soviet press and knew his subject matter firsthand. Writing it was also an extremely courageous act. The KGB confiscated the manuscript and Grossman never lived to see the book published.

This book is nonfiction, so it’s about real people rather than fictional characters. I love this book because it gives a descriptive perspective on what was happening and what was going on in Nazi-occupied Germany and Poland during World War II, and the horrors of the concentration camps (mainly Auschwitz) that were built and used to kill everyone the nazis hated for whatever insane reasons they had.

I’ve always had an almost alarming interest in World War II. It was my favorite lesson from the history classes I’ve taken, and this book really put some of the evil things that were done during that time into perspective.

I encountered this book backward. As a teenager growing up at the end of the US war in Vietnam, I read the Mad magazine spoof of the movie version long before I saw the movie itself, and then I read the novel. I focused on the antiwar theme and the concern of the bomber crew to get home without getting shot down.

The novel was based on Heller’s wartime experience, but I hardly realized it was about bombing Italy until I discovered the papers one of his crewmates had donated to Cornell University. I learned how many of the episodes were based on real incidents, including the only time the novel focuses on Italian civilians—when the crew objects to destroying an Italian Alpine village of no military significance. 

Heck’s plain-spoken memoir of his indoctrination into Nazism as a young boy and his time in the Hitler Youth and the German military is powerful and honest. Long after he’d left Germany as an adult, Heck continued to grapple with his own complicity in the regime and his fervent beliefs in its goals. The Hitler Youth was particularly adept at tapping into young boys’ yearning to be heroes. Heck explains the lingering effects of his indoctrination, noting that, “Despite our monstrous sacrifice and the appalling misuse of our idealism, there will always be the memory of unsurpassed power, the intoxication of fanfares and flags proclaiming our new age.” This was a fascinating read for me personally, given the similarities between Heck’s experiences and those of my father, and it was an invaluable resource as I wrote my own novel. 

Grigory Baklanov (born Grigory Friedman) belonged to the generation of soldiers that faced the full brunt of the German attack on the Soviet Union and of whom only 3% survived. Forever Nineteen (trans. Antonina Bouis) is a tribute to the men who remained forever young; as the author elucidates in the introduction to the novel’s American edition, “I wanted them to come alive when I wrote this book, I wanted people living now to care about them as friends, as family, as brothers.” Baklanov had attained international renown with his 1959 novel The Foothold [An Inch of Land], which appeared in 36 countries. His portrayal of the war is more personal than Grossman’s and has a different angle: rather than depicting famous battles, he is concerned with ordinary soldiers’ lives, which can be cut short at any moment. (Disclosure: Grigory Baklanov is my father.)

In this devastating collection, Böll explores the emotional aftershocks of war. German soldiers grapple with the desire to flee, to understand what they’ve lost in the fighting, and to make even fleeting connections with each other and the civilians they meet in the bombed out cities and towns. In “Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We…” a wounded soldier only gradually comes to realize the extent of his injuries. The weight of the war works its way through all the stories in one way or another, even when the narrators don’t expressly refer to combat or the regime.

An epistolary novel written as a letter from an elderly German man explaining his time as a soldier on the Eastern Front to his grandson. The novel has both the immediacy of a wartime narrative and the introspection of a memoir. “Eat now, sleep now, march now, follow your leader — that’s what they’d demanded of us; we’d followed, and they’d led us into disaster,” the narrator says as he describes his own predicament, but it serves to explain the horrors of the regime as a whole. It resonated for me personally, highlighting the silence and shame that surrounds the experiences of so many Germans who were young adults during WW2. Starritt is half-Scottish and half-German, and We Germans was inspired in part by his grandfather’s time on the Eastern Front. The novel was the recipient of the Dayton Peace Prize.

Another epistolary novel, this time about a Hitler Youth boy who finds himself working as Hitler’s personal artist. Through a strange series of events, young Tobias Koertig must prowl the streets of Berlin, draw pictures of the devastation from the Allied air raids and bring the drawings back to Hitler as he cowers in his bunker. Tobias is desperately in love with Zenzi, a young Jewish girl he’s known since his childhood. Part love story, part war story, the novel is dark, strange, and often funny, affirming the beauty and unpredictability of life under even the most terrible circumstances. I had a hard time putting this book down.

Solingen, Germany, 1940: Here begins the story of 7-year old Lilly and 12-year old Günter whose lives spiral out of control as the war escalates, bombs begin to rain and people die. A sweeping family saga of love, betrayal, and PTSD similar to the one I witnessed as well.

Even after years of studying the Holocaust, I remain overwhelmed by the enormity of the horrors, and there are still times when I find my faith in humanity wavering and all I can think to ask in anger and confusion is “Why?” I know I’m not alone. Peter Hayes’s masterful book is the result of an entire career centered on asking that very question.  The outcome is an incredibly readable, insightful, and thought-provoking account of the Holocaust that doesn’t shy away from answering the big questions. After reading it, one might still ask “why,” but it won’t be out of frustration, anger, and confusion, but rather out of a desire to keep learning more about one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of humanity.