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Home / Historical Periods / World War II

War

World War II

1939–1945 CE

World War II began in Europe in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland, though war in Asia had already been under way. The Axis powers fought the Allies across Europe, North Africa, the Atlantic, Asia and the Pacific. The conflict involved blitzkrieg, strategic bombing, occupation, genocide, amphibious invasion, intelligence work and nuclear weapons.

Its significance is global and structural: empires weakened, borders shifted, civilian populations became central targets and the United States and Soviet Union emerged as superpowers. The war also generated immense personal narratives of displacement, resistance, captivity and survival. It is one of the strongest anchor categories for both literary historical fiction and commercial series fiction.

World War II fiction has a very large reading audience, from Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life to Robert Harris, Alan Furst, Herman Wouk, Kristin Hannah and Ken Follett. Series and thrillers often use occupied Europe, intelligence work, resistance networks, codebreaking, naval war and family survival as their core material. These entries should therefore support both literary novels and high-conversion series pages for wartime, espionage, Holocaust, home-front and military fiction.

Related people for World War II

Adolf Hitler1889–1945 Alan Turing1912–1954 Archibald Clark Kerr1882–1951 Benito Mussolini1883–1945 Bernard Montgomery1887–1976 Charles de Gaulle1890–1970 Colin Gubbins1896–1976 Eleanor Rooseveltborn 1960 Erwin Rommel1891–1944 Eva Braun1912–1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945 George VI1895–1952 Haile Selassie1892–1975 Harry S. Truman1884–1972 Heinrich Himmler1900–1945 Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener1850–1916 Jomo Kenyatta1893–1978 Joseph Chamberlain1836–1914 Joseph Goebbels1897–1945 Joseph McCarthy1908–1957 Joseph Stalin1878–1953 Karl Brandt1904–1948 Kim Il Sung1890–1969 Luisa Casati1881–1957 Lyudmila Pavlichenko1916–1974 Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948 Mao Zedong1893–1976 Margaret Thatcher1925–2013 Menelik II1844–1913 Neville Chamberlain1869–1940 Otto von Bismarck1815–1898 Paul Kruger1825–1904 Prince George, Duke of Kent1902–1942 Prince Philipp of Hesse1896–1980 Reinhard Heydrich1904–1942 Ulysses S. Grantborn 1946 Victoria1819–1901 W. Averell Harriman1891–1986 Wernher von Braun1912–1977 William E. Fairbairn1885–1960 William Randolph Hearst1863–1951 Winston Churchill1874–1965

Series

Series about World War II (4 series)

Combined Operations in Order

by Griff Hosker 12 books 4.4

Combined Operations follows Tom Harsker and a commando unit through the Second World War and into Korea. The series begins with Britain under pressure in 1940 and moves through raids, occupied Europe, Dieppe, Sicily, D-Day, the Scheldt and the final advance into Germany before shifting to the Korean…

Rifleman in Order

by Griff Hosker 2 books 4.5

Rifleman follows John Sharratt from wartime loss and conscription into the British Army during the Second World War. The sequence moves from the Blitz and training into the North African desert, where ordinary infantry experience the pressure of modern war, retreat, endurance and battle against Rommel’s forces.

The Warsaw Quartet in Order

by Douglas Jackson 4 books 4.5

The Warsaw Quartet follows Jan Kalisz, a former senior Polish investigator forced to work for the German criminal police after the occupation of Warsaw. Secretly serving the Polish resistance, Kalisz investigates murders that the occupying authorities value according to the nationality and usefulness of the victims, while concealing…

Books

30 Best Novels About World War II

Bestselling authors first, then star rating.

Non Fiction

67 Non-Fiction Books About World War II

Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.