(Part 2) Best products from r/ww2

Loved this one but it does focus mainly on the Pacific theater.

This is most likely the book you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/Colditz-Story-P-R-Reid/dp/0760346518

The escape attempt you are describing was a French officer that tried to escape from Colditz Castle. The author Pat Reid was a British Army officer.

https://www.amazon.com/Football-Helmet-Display-Black-Acrylic/dp/B017A6HDDI

It was a football helmet display case that I bought off Amazon.

The Pacific War 1941 - 1945 by John Costello would be a good candidate for your interest towards the Pacific Theater.

The Mediterranean era died with the discovery of America; the Atlantic era is now at the height of its development and must soon exhaust the resources at its command; the Pacific era, destined to be the greatest of all, is just at its dawn.

• President Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
  
  The first couple of chapters will bring you up to speed on the growing influences of Japan and the US from the late 1800s into the early 1900s at opposite ends of the Pacific. The book generally focuses on the military command structures of Japan and the US (it also brings up Chinese, Australian and British roles) as well as major political figures from any given nation and their influences on the conflict. Coming in at 650+ pages I'd give the book a 5/5 for being a one-volume account of the conflict and you can pick it up for around $5 in the Amazon used section. (see link above)

Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie.

I haven't read any myself, but the only one that comes to mind is The Infantry's Armor by Harry Yeide. I used some of it for research and reference when I was writing up a unit history of my grandfather's WWII Pacific-based amphibian tank battalion.

Maybe this is interesting for you https://www.amazon.com/German-Army-Eastern-Front-Experiences/dp/1473861748

The book "Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941" by Daniel Todman might be of interest in how Britain (fortunately) sought to involve the United States in World War II. It also helps understand how Britain influenced American industrialists who were working closely with the New Deal administration. http://amzn.to/2iZsd7t

Hope this helps, Timothy

I thoroughly enjoy and recommend both The Tank War by Mark Urban and Tank Action by David Render and Stuart Tootal (the former being the man who's story the book tells).

Both are accounts of British tank warfare through WW2, the second giving a much more human look of a young officers thrust into the war on the 7th of June 1944, but the former is a concise history of the 5th Royal Tank Regiment's journey from before the war all the way to the very end. Both fantastic.

Just got one on Tank Destroyer Units.
tank destroyers

For a higher calling. It's not just about the encounter but about the life of both the German and U.S flight crew leading up to and in the war.

"Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail—a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber in the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II. This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives collided in the skies that day—the American—2nd Lieutenant Charlie Brown, a former farm boy from West Virginia who came to captain a B-17—and the German—2nd Lieutenant Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria who sought to avoid fighting in World War II.

A Higher Call follows both Charlie and Franz’s harrowing missions. Charlie would face takeoffs in English fog over the flaming wreckage of his buddies’ planes, flak bursts so close they would light his cockpit, and packs of enemy fighters that would circle his plane like sharks. Franz would face sandstorms in the desert, a crash alone at sea, and the spectacle of 1,000 bombers each with eleven guns, waiting for his attack. Ultimately, Charlie and Franz would stare across the frozen skies at one another. What happened between them, the American 8th Air Force would later classify as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search for one another, a last mission that could change their lives forever."

and

Unbroken as all too often, the book is a thousand times better than the movie. Same for this book it doesn't just talk about the incident and what happened after but there's some really interesting contextualization that helps you empathize with the characters.

"On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will."

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If you at all like aviation you'll love either of these books.