Books like An iron wind by Peter Fritzsche

In the closing months of World War II, an American bomber squadron off Italy becomes the stage for humor and horror as pilot Yossarian battles absurd regulations and the threat of death.

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

Jeannette Walls' memoir chronicles her turbulent childhood in a dysfunctional, itinerant family, detailing poverty, alcoholism, and homelessness across the United States as she seeks stability and personal growth.

Sisters Vianne and Isabelle are pulled into the turmoil of World War II, each forging a path of courage and resistance against the Nazi occupation of France.

Children of Dune follows twins Leto and Ghanima Atreides, heirs to the fallen Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, as they navigate prophetic powers, political intrigue, and a struggling Empire ruled by their aunt Alia on Arrakis.

When a ten‑year‑old Sarah is seized in the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv’ roundup, her friend Julia, a journalist two decades later, discovers that the past still haunts their families and forces her to confront her own identity in post‑war France.

During World War II in Warsaw, the Zabinskis run the city’s zoo while secretly aiding the resistance to rescue Jews from the ghetto.

xi, 483 pages ; 21 cm

A sweeping collection of firsthand testimonies that reveals how ordinary Germans—soldiers, teachers, housewives, and others—experienced and shaped the Second World War.

Robert Gerwarth examines how the violence that erupted after World War I—pogroms, mass expulsions, and paramilitary clashes—shaped 20th‑century Europe and set the stage for fascism.

Hitler's Empire constituted the largest, most brutal and most ambitious reshaping of the continent ever attempted in Europe's history. Liberalism and democracy were swept aside, as Germany aimed to turn itself into the most powerful state on the continent, and to compel everyone else to recognize its mastery. Europe's future was to lie in a new racial order based on the uprooting, resettlement and extermination of millions of people. Hitler's Empire charts the landscape of the Nazi imperial imagination - from those economists who dreamed of turning Europe into a huge market for German business, to Hitler's own plans for new trans-continental motorways passing over the ethnically cleansed Russian steppe, and earnest in-house SS discussions of political theory, dictatorship and the rule of law.Above all, this chilling account shows too what happened as these ideas met reality. After their early battlefield triumphs, the sheer bankruptcy of the Nazis' political vision for Europe became all too clear: their allies bailed out, their New Order collapsed in military failure, and they left behind a continent corrupted by collaboration, impoverished by looting and exploitation, and grieving the victims of total war and genocide.

Description from Syndetics.com

Why did ordinary Germans vote for Hitler? In this dramatically plotted book, organized around crucial turning points in 1914, 1918, and 1933, Peter Fritzsche explains why the Nazis were so popular and what was behind the political choice made by the German people. - Back cover.

"What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until--finally--renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments of Occupation, with the Swastika flying from the Eiffel Tower and pet dogs abandoned howling on the streets, glamour was ever present. French women wore lipstick. Why? It was women more than men who came face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis--perhaps selling them their clothes or travelling alongside them on the Metro, where a German soldier had priority over seats. By looking at a wide range of individuals from collaborators to resisters, actresses and prostitutes to teachers and writers, Anne Sebba shows that women made life-and-death decisions every day, and often did whatever they needed to survive. Her fascinating cast of characters includes both native Parisian women and those living in Paris temporarily--American women and Nazi wives, spies, mothers, mistresses, and fashion and jewellery designers. Some women, like the heiress Béatrice de Camondo or novelist Irène Némirovsky, converted to Catholicism; others like lesbian racing driver Violette Morris embraced the Nazi philosophy; only a handful, like Coco Chanel, retreated to the Ritz with a German lover. A young medical student, Anne Spoerry, gave lethal injections to camp inmates one minute but was also known to have saved the lives of Jews. But this is not just a book about wartime. In enthralling detail Sebba explores the aftershock of the Second World War and the choices demanded. How did the women who survived to see the Liberation of Paris come to terms with their actions and those of others? Although politics lies at its heart, Les Parisiennes is a fascinating account of the lives of people of the city and, specifically, in this most feminine of cities, its women and young girls"--Publisher's website.