Slitherine

Gents,
pls drop me some names of the best 'western' WWII authors. I'd like to 'triangulate' what they write vs the point of view of contemporary ex-USSR writers.
Thanks!

Vorskl wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 1:15 am Gents,
pls drop me some names of the best 'western' WWII authors. I'd like to 'triangulate' what they write vs the point of view of contemporary ex-USSR writers.
Thanks!

I'll give you two off the top of my head. John Keegan and Stephen Ambrose. I'm not saying that they are necessarily "the best," but they are well-known and were both historians. Most other military books that I remember/read are not by any one particular author that I can remember. (I don't read much military history anymore and most of what I did was decades ago so I can't comment on authors from this century.)

Vorskl wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 1:15 am Gents,
pls drop me some names of the best 'western' WWII authors. I'd like to 'triangulate' what they write vs the point of view of contemporary ex-USSR writers.
Thanks!

In the US, David Glantz is regarded as an expert on the Red Army, he has helped change the view amongst American military circles from the Cold War view of the Red Army in WWII from the "won the war due to sheer numbers" to a much more fair and deserved understanding of the achievements of the Red Army. He would be a good start, in fact he has probably digested a lot of the same post-Soviet works you have.

Vorskl wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 1:15 am Gents,
pls drop me some names of the best 'western' WWII authors. I'd like to 'triangulate' what they write vs the point of view of contemporary ex-USSR writers.
Thanks!

Robert Citino is also another good one; he specializes writing about the operational level of war, and in the Prussian-German military. He is an expert on the Wehrmacht, acknowledging the strengths of World War Two Germany's military, without the anti-Soviet bias that often accompanied American works in the Cold War era.

Keegan was my recommendation, too, but I'm in the same boat as adiekmann in that I haven't read serious modern military history in a long time.

Do you have any Soviet, Russian, or 'eastern' authors who you recommend, Vorskl?

This thread is a great idea.

It's a little pre-WW2, but with the SCW DLC I think it's in the right vein. I really appreciated "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas.

Norman Davies - especially if you want to compare the viewpoints from the perspective of the USSR versus the eastern European countries that later became a part of the Soviet sphere of influence (written by a British person, so as neutral as possible).

Sönke Neitzel - excellent German historian, when it comes to level of research done for his works I'd say it's hard to find people who do more and better.

Antony Beevor - a bit on the novelist side, but it makes him much easier to read.

Steven Zaloga - if you need info on tanks, checking his works seems like the default way to do so.

Best WW2 book i've seen is "The Struggle for Europe" by Chester Wilmot.
He wrote it in 1952 and he had access to many documents and quotes by military personnel on both sides etc.

Rick Atkinson, he did 3 books following allies from North Africa -> Italy -> Western Europe. I bought the first one and enjoyed it and ended up reading the trilogy. I am no historian so cant judge how historical precise it was but it was a good read for a few months

Reg. 'Eastern' authors: following the USSR collapse, Russia kept the Soviet war archives. It opened up most of them only in 2008 (and closed again in march 2021). Hence any book written prior to that year will be based either on german sources or soviet (but not always compete ones).

About the authors. Soviet books I wont even open unless you're interested in the military fantasy. There are a few contemporary Russian authors who has books published in English:
Valeriy Zamulin - #1 expert in the Kursk battle. He's mythbusting the legend about the 'largest tank battle' at Prokhorovka
Svetlana Gerasimova #1 expert in the Rzhev battles
Alexey Isaev - the leading GPW expert, a well-rounded specialist. He's present in a lot of Youtube interviews - some are translated in English + see if you can make sense of auto-translated subscripts.
Egor Kobyakov - #1 expert in the city battle of Stalingrad. In his articles he shows with very detailed maps how that battle developed day by day https://warspot.net/users/201-egor-kobyakov