Kolibri [she/her]

World War 1

While it’s difficult to separate the history of the state and the history of the war during total wars, the more strictly military books will be placed here regardless of the state, while books more on the domestic and economic conditions during the wars will be in their respective national sections. Same goes for the World War 2 section. I might change my mind on how to categorize these books as more literature comes in.

Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie (1991). This guy might be a lib, but he talks a lot about the  naval history of WW1, which is a significant niche.

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie (2003). See above.
The Great Class War 1914-1918 by Jacques R. Pauwels (2014).
Lawrence of Arabia’s War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI by Neil Faulkner (2016).

World War 2

These books focus on general history:

The Second World War: A Marxist History by Chris Bambery (2014).

These books focus on the Eastern Front:

The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective by Carroll Kakel (2011).
The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler’s ‘Indian Wars’ in the ‘Wild East’ by Carroll Kakel (2013).
The Italian War on the Eastern Front, 1941–1943: Operations, Myths and Memories by Matteo Scianna (2019).

David Glantz wrote all about the Eastern Front:

Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941
Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941
To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942
Armageddon in Stalingrad: September - November 1942
Endgame at Stalingrad: Book One: November 1942
Endgame at Stalingrad: Book Two: December 1942–-February 1943
After Stalingrad: The Red Army’s Winter Offensive, 1942-1943
The Battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler