The best
Military Historical Fiction:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of Military Historical Fiction by number of unique Reddit comments:
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Military Historical Fiction:
The ending scene is based off a real event where a shot up tank was found surrounded by dozens of dead German soldiers. Except the tank gunner was alive.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148
​
Unit cohesion and discipline routinely break down in war, especially 1945 Germany where most German units would've been surrounded and cut off from retreat so you would have isolated battalions who would keep fighting or mass surrender if you are lucky.
During the Korean war American units routinely fought isolated actions separated from assistance. Its one of the main learning curves of that war they had to grapple with.
Lowest bidder. All fun aside, if you come across a soldier or retired guy and have a dozen hours of free time, ask them about the bad design choices of military hardware. Pretty common that things that wouldn't pass as safe for vehicles/equipment in the civilian world are allowed to exist in the military. There's a book about it for WW2 era stuff. Nothing has really changed.
Hell, the Humvee was a known death trap for over a decade before the body count in Iraq forced the military to try to retrofit them.
Read Death Traps, by Belton Cooper.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148
He was an armor maintenance officer with 3rd AD in WWII.
Strongest recommendation for Matterhorn (by Karl Marlantes)… a story of Marines and their struggle/hardships during a combat op in Vietnam. Written by a Marine Vietnam vet, and doesn’t mince words about the hardships the Enlisted endured.
https://www.amazon.com/Matterhorn-Novel-Vietnam-Karl-Marlantes/dp/0802145310
It’s my favorite Marine Corps story concerning Vietnam. “There it is…”
>Way to build a strawman, says everything that needs to be known regarding the rest of your post.
Of course I'm going to include the single most famous example of good read but bad history. And you're just going to ignore the memoirs that have widly influenced our understanding of the war?
Books are valid sources but they are not gospel and some of them can be fake or so narrow in scope as to be false. Just because it hits the printers doesn't mean it's automatically better than everything else and should be scrutinized and independently verified like anything else.
Despite this being a repost with no source or credit to the picture, the description is not accurate, the SS - 501st HPB has never seen combat in western Europe, but on the Eastern Front and the North African Campaign
Also, around Stavelot (Francorchamps) was the location of the famous massive German fuel dump, held as an absolute secret until the allied units found out about as a result of the rapid advance to cut the German supplies short. What the Germans really did not want, was to draw attention to that area and to keep the intel hidden, which means that combat was far away from there at La Gleize and its surroundings.
I highly recommend "Gates of Fire" by Steven Pressfield. Historical fiction about a Helot who was at the battle of Thermopylae, and captured by Xerxes forces while near death. Remarkable insight to the daily life and infighting amongst the city states from the perspective of a lower class citizen.
City of Thieves by David Benioff https://www.amazon.com/City-Thieves-Novel-David-Benioff/dp/0452295297
"During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya.
Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake..."
There’s an excellent historical fiction book about a soldier in Alexander the Great’s army in Afghanistan called <em>The Afghan Campaign</em>
The reality is, before 9/11, in the rural areas especially, many people lived and fought little different than their ancestors had 2000+ years ago when Alexander the Great invaded.
City of Thieves by David Benioff
https://www.amazon.com/City-Thieves-Novel-David-Benioff/dp/0452295297
(From the blurb:)
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake...
By the way if you're at all interested in the subject, Michael Shaara wrote some wonderful novelizations of some of the major battles and campaigns and they read like a novel. The most famous of his works is the second book of a 3 book series, but it stands just fine on its own: https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Angels-Classic-Novel-Trilogy/dp/0345348109
When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq first started I read a few Mil-blogs, often written by Veterans who were turning to journalism as a second career and were embedded with troops. One of the mil-blog had a post about books mentioning a Colonel who had a reading list he encouraged his staff to read, one of the book was Gates of Fire which I decided to read.
It's a fictional account of the battle of Thermopylae and the training of the troops who later fought in it. One thing I recall was that the strength of the Spartans lay largely in the discipline and their Phalanx formation.
The Phalanx had troops stand very close together with each Spartan's shield covering part of themselves and part of the person next to them, allowing both to use their spear. Because of this the most important gear the Spartan had was not his spear but his shield because without it the man next to him would not be covered and that uncovered person would not cover the person next to him and the whole Phalanx falls apart. It was their discipline and their willingness to protect the person next to them which made the Spartan's Phalanx so effective.
Anyway it was a pretty good book and I've gifted it to others in the past. You might enjoy it.
Really good book on Afghanistan by Stephen Pressfield The Afghan Campaign: A Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767922387/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_RWBHTQA4160TYNHS3JDQ the fact that this was during the times of Alexander should be the first clue
Always nice to see people doing stuff like this, good on you!
My favourite show is Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It's safe to assume most people have heard of it, but take a look at the Wikipedia page for it here
The reason it's my favourite show is simple... it's hilarious. Almost every joke lands, and all of the characters are well written and thought out. They also tackle heavy subject matter, although not often, and they handle the situations very well.
Bonus answer! My favourite book is one I read on my honeymoon in July, called City of Thieves. It takes place during WW2 in Leningrad during the Nazi attack / starving of the city as the backdrop. It's a short novel about two unrelated characters who are up for execution that are pulled together to find a dozen eggs for a Colonel to bake his daughter a wedding cake. It's funny, adventurous, a good buddy story, and also a great coming of age story. Highly recommend it!
I read a book recently called Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II.
It's quite a good read. The author was actually involved in putting together the super pershing.
the last podcast that i could find which had post malone in it was this one from june 9th
last time i watched it was when it aired 3 months ago so i don't recall anything about documentaries but i know that he recommended the book slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut which i have since bought on amazon kindle but haven't had time to read.
Lots of good stuff out there. You might look at
- Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground"
- Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire"
Logistics:
Death traps: Survival of an American Armored Division in WWII by Belton Cooper
A must read for any Ordnance guy who wants some pride in their branch. Its an autobiographical account written by Belton Cooper, a Maintenance Officer during the advance towards Berlin across western europe. Great read of WW2 on the ground tactics, cool stories of a WW2 Loggie Officer (which may seem hard to believe, but seriously some cool shit), and some takes on tank warfare from a maintenance perspective. Cooper gets really critical of eisenhower though on not implementing the pershing tank sooner.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148
I can't verify the historical accuracy of the little details, but The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield is a fictional account of Alexander the Great's invasion of Afghanistan in 300 BC, as told from the perspective of a common soldier.
Maybe not exactly what you'd expect or what you're looking for, but the first book I thought of was "Matterhorn" by Karl Marlantes (http://www.amazon.com/Matterhorn-Novel-Vietnam-Karl-Marlantes/dp/0802145310/). It's a war novel about the Vietnam War but it's not your typical story of courage and honor. Sure, there are some incredible moments of courage in it, and many of the characters are honorable, but on the whole it's much more about the futility of war and life and it's definitely about questioning. I listened to the audiobook which made it really engrossing.
Runners Up: 1. "The Road" by Cormack McCarthy (bleak post-apocalypse novel); 2. "To Destroy You is No Loss" by JoAn D. Criddle (horrific story about the Cambodian civil war; really, really makes you question the meaning of life and the "fairness" of it all); 3. / 4. "The Worthing Saga" or "Teason" by Orson Scott Card (if you're looking for science fiction, either of these will be mind expanding. They're both really strange novels, but in the best way -- they make you think)
I just finished reading Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. Before, I had no interest in Vietnam, especially not being American. Now I do. He's the reason I just ordered a copy of your book. I hope it's good!
<em>Matterhorn</em> by Karl Marlantes.
Not a war book, but probably of interest: <em>Escape from Camp 14</em> by Blaine Hardin.
There are some really great historic fiction novels out there.
Anything by Steven Pressfield, such as Gates of Fire
He explores historical events from the eyes of everyman protagonists who are there to see it unfold, to hear the famous quotes spoken in context. It's a great way to learn some history without being bored to tears.
The Silver Pigs is a detective novel set in ancient Rome. Another cool way to learn some of the culture in a fun way.
Thanks for the response! Wasn't at my library unfortunately, but one of my coworkers finished All the Light We Cannot See today, and I started it up. Really good pacing and I'm not bored! I also did manage to pick up volume 1 of Louis L'Amour's collection of short stories from the library this morning, and man is he a good storyteller.
In the book Death Traps, it's mentioned that it was typical for the Germans to not stop firing on a tank until it was on fire. This was Vs the Americans anyways.
So it could be a tank from an actual battle.