Reddit mentions of The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

Not really... there are a ton of accounts of the war, both from soldiers and from civilians. Go to your local library and have a look around. The Russians were amazing in the war and don't get nearly enough credit, at least as far as I was taught in America.

Here's my favorite quote of all the documents I've read about WW2, spoken by a Red Army soldier from Kirghizia during the siege of Stalingrad:

>The city is tired, the house is tired, the stones are tired. We are not tired.

This was when Hitler was literally trying to destroy the city--not just capture it, or overtake it, but destroy it. Entirely. He ordered that every man in the city be killed (this was literally his exact order), and the women "deported", most likely to death camps. His primary reason for such destruction at the cost of millions of men's lives, including his own soldiers? The city's name.

Here's the quote of a German corporal writing home to his father about Russians in Stalingrad:

>Father, it's impossible to describe what is happening here. Everyone in Stalingrad who still possesses a head and hands, women as well as men, carries on fighting.

The true horrors of WW2 occurred on the Eastern front. But, the Pacific front was perhaps filled with the most disgusting, sadistic moments--especially if you include the 2nd Sino-Japanese war (Japanese occupation of mainland Asia, specifically China, where the Rape of Nanking happened). The Bataan Death March alone stands as a record of how terrible the Japanese military was.

Here's a (truncated) quote from Lester Tenney, an American soldier who was in the Death March, taken from the book The Story of World War II by Donald L. Miller, a book mostly comprised of quotations from people who experienced the war. The previous two quotes were also quoted in this book. Here's one of Tenney's stories (he tells quite a few about the march):

>On that fifth day of the march, I witnessed one of the most sadistic and inhumane incidents of the entire march... the guard ordered us to stand up and start walking. One of the men had a very bad case of malaria... When ordered to stand up, he could not do it. Without a minute's hesitation, the guard hit him over the head with the butt of his gun, knocked him down, then called for two nearby prisoners to dig a hole to bury the fallen prisoner. The two men started digging, and when the hole was about a foot deep, the guard ordered the two men to place the sick man in the hole and bury him alive. The two men shook their heads; they could not do that...

>Without warning... the guard shot the bigger of the two prisoners. He then pulled two more men from the line and ordered them to dig another hole to bury the murdered man... They dug the second hole, placed the two bodies in the holes, and threw dirt over them. The first man, still alive, started screaming as the dirt was thrown on him..."

He goes on to tell stories about decapitation, random killings, and even an officer on a horse who rides along the line swinging his sword in an attempt to decapitate random prisoners--including nearly killing Tenney himself. All of this, however, is nothing compared to the Japanese in mainland Asia, but I don't have anything on hand to quote from.

This is the kind of stuff that really should be read, and the kind of stories that must be told, because there's no way to say "war is bad" without describing, in detail, why. It's like telling a toddler not to touch a hot stove... without knowing the truth of the feeling, it can't be understood.

If you want to read more about life in the war, check out "The Good War" by Studs Terkel, which is entirely comprised of interviews with survivors of the war, families of soldiers, regular civilians during the war, etc. Gives a great portrait of every aspect of life during that time, not just the battles themselves. It doesn't give enough about the Eastern front, however, which is disappointing to me.

If you're curious about how absolutely ludicrous the Eastern front, notably the Russians, were, check out Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale. Absolutely fascinating. Also, listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series about it. Really well presented and, though long, never boring. It's free on iTunes, under the podcast listings.

edit - Spelling, grammar, etc.

edit 2 - Forgot to mention that if you don't like non-fiction and haven't read All Quiet On The Western Front, this is basically a story designed to "stop war" by telling of its atrocities. Though I think it's technically fiction, the author was in the war (WWI in this case, and on the German side) and bases the story on his own/the others soldiers he served with's experiences. The scene where the narrator returns home on leave made me cry my eyes out. Short book but very powerful.

Fun tidbit, I always assumed the term jail bate was some modern internet slang until I read The Good War a collection of stories from WW2 and one guy used the term 'jail bate' so it dates back to at least the 40s.

That.

Also if you're interested, there is a really interesting read on this particular subject in Studs Turkel's: The Good War. Which is mandatory reading for WWII enthusiasts IMO. It is simply a collection of first hand accounts of the period from the POV of soldiers, red cross employees, rosey-the-rivettors, etc. Fascinating.

Towards the end there is a transcript of a conversation with one of the physicists from the Manhattan Project whose job it was to interview Nazi Scientists on their atomic projects.

You might be surprised about how liberals- even those who experienced discrimination and setbacks- responded to the chance to whoop nazi ass. Check out Studs Terkel's "The Good War." It's the book World War Z's format is based on, a bunch of stories told by people who were in the war.

I think your observations about "the greatest generation" and Reddit's reaction to them ignore the fact that that phrase is only used in reference to the war. Seriously, outside of that we call them "old people."

I can give you a short list of personal favorites, books that I consider both informative and extremely interesting / entertaining to read. As you'll see I prefer memoirs and eyewitness accounts to sweeping historical overviews of the war.

With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge. Personal memoir of the author's experience as a marine machine gunner in the Pacific war, specifically the campaigns on Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge is a marvelous writer with prose I'd describe as "Hemingwayesque", a real compliment. Grueling, appalling, human, his account does a great job of sketching in the personalities of his fellow marines.

"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel. This is the book that World War Z is aping, but the actual book is a far more gripping read. Terkel sat down for personal interviews with 121 survivors of the war, Germans, Japanese, British, Canadian as well as American.

Band Of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose. Now made famous by the TV series, the story of E Company's recruitment, training and ultimate combat experience during and after the Normandy invasion is as intense and eye-opening as it sounds.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, Leo Marks. Marks was a cryptographer working in London for the SOE (special operations executive, the group responsible for running much of "The Resistance" throughout occupied Europe, North Africa and Asia). He's a very funny guy, a self-professed coward, but the book portrays his deeply heartfelt concern for the well-being of the agents he was sending behind enemy lines. His codes, and methods of transmitting them, could be the only thing saving them from capture by the Gestapo. All too often, they weren't enough. "If you brief an agent on the Tuesday and three days later his eyes are taken out with a fork, it hastens the aging process," he writes.

Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor. When you start to read about the Eastern Front, you realize that much of the conventional western perspective of WWII in Europe is based on the comparatively minor engagements in Italy and France. France lost 350,000 civilians to the war, The Soviet Union lost 15-20 million. Considered purely from the POV of total casualties and total armed forces committed, WWII was primarily an engagement between Germany and the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe, with a number of smaller actions in the western countries. Anyhow, the story of the brutal, grinding siege of Stalingrad, the point where the German tide definitively turned, is a must-read.

Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell. This is Orwell's personal account of his service fighting on the Republican side against fascists during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-37. Basically, this was the war before the war, as described by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Incidentally Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is a fairly accurate, very powerful portrayal of a different view of the same war.

>The Allies were in bad shape before 1941 even with America bankrolling nearly the entire pre-41 Allied effort on credit (34.1 billion in goods went entirely unpaid for), completely neutralizing your bullshit attempt at revisionist history.

" There is a perception that lend-lease aid was offered by the US out of the goodness of its heart. However, this version does not hold up upon closer inspection. First of all, this was because of something called “reverse lend-lease.” Even before the Second World War had ended, other nations began sending Washington essential raw materials valued at nearly 20% of the materials and weapons the US had shipped overseas. "

" And that was indeed the case, as lend-lease proved to be an inexhaustible source of wealth for many American corporations. In fact, the United States was the only country in the anti-Hitler coalition to reap significant economic dividends from the war. "

https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-americas-was-providing-military-aid-to-the-ussr-while-also-supporting-nazi-germany/5449378

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> By the time the US joined Europe had been getting it's ass kicked for nearly a decade, with Germany occupying demilitarized zones as early as 1936 in the Rhineland, and forcefully annexing Austria in 1938.

These were non-militaristic takeovers, meaning that Europe was not getting their ass kicked. Has the USA been getting their ass kicked since Russia took over Crimea? I would say in no way shape or form, but the situation is the same. Land that at one point belonged to "country A" with a population that is ethnically from "country A" being taken back by that country with a non-military takeover.

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> By 1945, the UK was spending 52% of it's GDP on the war effort, whereas the United States was spending 79% of GDP on the war effort. In 1945, the UK GDP was hovering around 10 billion dollars. The US GDP in 1945 was appx 2.33 trillion.

No one is saying that the US did not spend a lot of money on WW2, after all the saying is "WW2 was won with British intelligence, US steel, and Russian blood" however, " There’s a reason that Americans often refer to WWII as “the good war,” as evidenced, for example, in the title of the book by the famous American historian Studs Terkel: The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984). With unabashed cynicism he quoted, “While the rest of the world came out bruised and scarred and nearly destroyed, we came out with the most unbelievable machinery, tools, manpower, money … The war was fun for America. I’m not talking about the poor souls who lost sons and daughters. But for the rest of us the war was a hell of a good time.”

Just because the US spent a lot of money on WW2 does not mean that it was for nothing.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-americas-was-providing-military-aid-to-the-ussr-while-also-supporting-nazi-germany/5449378

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Saying the Americans saved the world is completely ignoring the rest of the Allies involved in the war. The US could not have won WW2 without the help of the allies. 6 of the top 10 bloodiest battles in history took place between the Germans and the Russians in WW2

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/deadliest-battles-in-human-history.html

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While obviously D-Day was an important point in the war, but Russia had been asking the US, British and Canadians to open up a second front for 2 years prior to D-day. It was not until the Russians already had the Germans retreating that a second front was finally opened up on the West. In fact, the Russians took Berlin by themselves because the rest of the Allies had not advanced far enough compared to the Russians.

https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/06/06/how_the_ussr_aided_d-day_35805

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Not everyone in the US felt the same way about the Nazi's either. Ford played a large part in the war effort for Nazi's. "Ford vehicles were crucial to the revolutionary Nazi military strategy of blitzkrieg. Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army as of 1942, roughly one-third were Ford-made. " "While Ford Motor enthusiastically worked for the Reich, the company initially resisted calls from President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill to increase war production for the Allies."

"In 1938 Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest Nazi honour that could be given to a non-German."

https://www.thenation.com/article/ford-and-fuhrer/

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Obviously the US played a large role in WW2, I am not saying that they didnt, but the narrative that the US was the savior is definitely not an educated take on the entirety of WW2.

The Good War by Studs Terkel. It's an oral history. My favorite WWII book.

This book is actually based on Oral History of World War II, which in itself is an awesome book if you can find it.

A collection of stories just like this was required reading when I was in college at Michigan State.

The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

http://www.amazon.com/Good-War-Oral-History-World/dp/1565843436

Had to take a tear break every once in a while between chapters.

Thanks to you & your Grandma.

An Oral History of World War 2, hence the full title of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

The Good War by Studs Terkel


http://www.amazon.com/Good-War-Oral-History-World/dp/1565843436/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1449096298&sr=8-3&keywords=Terkel

>Yes!! Stories told by people that were there! Amazing! I added it to my wishlist!

If you like this one (really good suggestion, btw!), then you might also like The Good War: An Oral History of World War II which is a collection of oral experiences during the war with vastly different perspectives.

I don't have five but this really changed how i viewed WW2.
Really opened my eyes how everyday people thought of the war.


http://smile.amazon.com/Good-War-Oral-History-World/dp/1565843436/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1412093019&sr=8-3&keywords=studs+terkel

I highly recommend "The Good War" if you haven't already read it. It's an oral history from a wide selection of people. It's actually what World War Z (the book, not the movie) was based on, conceptually.