The most recommended books about the Gestapo

This was my father’s favourite book, and the teenage me agreed. It’s the greatest prolonged chase story ever written. An English tourist takes a pot shot at Hitler and is hunted all the way to the West Country in England, where he digs himself into the bank of an unused country lane, cornered like a fox. I lived in Devon at the time, and knew those huge high banks along the sides of ancient tree-covered lanes, and I and the village kids built ourselves exactly the same sort of hideaway, dug into a bank in the woods and invisible from above.

Some wartime memoirs are fascinating because they detail the lives of ordinary women in extraordinary times. But Nancy Wake was never ordinary. Brave, beautiful, and bull-headed, this feisty Australian worked undercover for the British Secret Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France, leading French resistance fighters in sabotage missions against the Nazis. Nicknamed ‘The White Mouse’ by the Gestapo, Nancy was a key player in the Resistance, earning herself a clutch of medals after the war, including France’s Legion d’Honneur. There are plenty of biographies about this remarkable woman, but I recommend this, because it’s in her own words, and to me, that’s what makes it a special read.

As I was compiling this list, a memory of this book came to mind. I’ve read so many novels on the Holocaust and had other titles I was planning to recommend, yet I kept coming back to this book. I distinctly remembered where I was when I read it... in my childhood bedroom... and the fact that I finished it in one sitting. I vaguely recalled the plot, but the impression it left on me was so strong that I found myself researching the book once more. I was surprised to discover it was published in 1996 when I was 22 years old, since I thought I was younger when I read it. But as I reread the novel (again in one sitting), it was definitely the book from my memories.

The story is told from the point-of-view of a young girl named Korinna, who is a member of the… show more.

Pauline Baer de Perignon doesn’t hold anything back – she puts her ego aside as she shares her secret ambitions, doubts and insecurities, triumphs and frustrations on her mission to uncover a distressing chapter in her family’s history. The rhythm and pace are indicative of a book translated from the French - a slow-moving train rather than a speeding locomotive, but that just enhanced the feeling of accompanying the author on her passionate yet painful quest in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

This book is written about my uncle Bob Allen. He was a career RAF officer, not easy to know, quite distant and intimidating, and he had a secret.

This is a true story that lay deliberately hidden for fifty years until unearthed on his death by the author. I say deliberately because of the need – common-felt amongst survivors of war – to remain tight-lipped. Even when his hand-written memoirs were discovered, they had been written in the third person. But this is the story of an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary times. He joined the RAF aged nineteen, was flying a Hurricane in dogfights that year, saw action in West Africa, in Normandy at D-Day, was shot down, presumed killed and captured by the SS. Interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Stalag-Luft 3. In 1945, he suffered one of the infamous winter marches on which many POWs… show more.

I greatly admire how this book subverts the traditional form of biography in a way that perfectly suits the subject.

Mildred Harnack, the author’s great-great-aunt, was an astoundingly brave young woman from Wisconsin who, starting in the early 1930s, had a central role in Berlin’s homegrown opposition to the Nazis and was eventually beheaded on orders from Hitler.

Drawing on diaries, letters, photographs, interviews, and declassified intelligence documents, Donner tells an extraordinarily intimate story that reads like a literary novel and has the pace of a thriller.

Despite the title, this is not so much a story of one woman, but a portrait of several individual Jews and Poles caught in the Nazi web during WWII. 

Each chapter is a finely drawn sketch of a single individual tested by fate and circumstance. The author captures how each of these characters responds to his or her plight in ways that are rarely predictable. I was particularly impressed by how the author displays a broad knowledge of national and political movements which he incorporates into the stories.

This provides a nuanced backdrop to the personal struggles experienced by each of his meticulously crafted characters.

I don’t often read historical thrillers, but the WWII setting covering both the Nazi occupation of Paris and the Vichy regime drew me in. I love books that use real events as the plot background, and this era intrigues me. 

I became invested in the main character’s plight. His difficult choices made me fear not only for him but also for the mission. It’s a classic story of betrayal, and I love the complex relationships, the struggle for power and control both by the enemy and also between the resistance groups, and the overall fight for justice and freedom.

These elements made it a deep, satisfying read for me. This is my kind of book: a deeply complex and gripping story. I confess I skimmed the graphic violence, but otherwise, I couldn’t put it down.

Louis Malle was one of the first film directors to demythologise de Gaulle’s spin that most of France was engaged in resistance to the Nazis. Lacombe Lucien was set in the Lot, Malle’s adoptive home, and he asked for the help of Modiano, Nobel Literary prize winner, to write the screenplay.

Lucien, too young to join the fierce if small Lot Resistance, dropped accidentally into the hands of the Gestapo instead, and through them met and fell for the cultured Jewish Parisienne, France Horn. A strange pairing of young people whose different lives had been interrupted by war, they fled both the Gestapo and the Resistance, hiding from a troubled world in the wilds of the causse, where Lucien, the peasant boy, was in his element. There they blissfully awaited the inevitable.

Ariel Lawhon is one of my favorite authors. I will read anything she writes, and this novel is one of her best. Not many people have heard of Nancy Wake, but she was an Australian expatriate living in Paris during the years preceding World War II. I, for one, am glad she’s finally getting her due, for her story is one of those “I can hardly believe this really happened” tales. Nancy Wake started out as a reporter, but when Germany invaded France she joined the Resistance and smuggled people and documents across the border. The Nazis nicknamed her “The White Mouse” and put a bounty on her head, forcing her to flee France. Any ordinary person would have called it a day. But not Nancy Wake. She returned to France as Hélène under the aegis of England’s Special Operations Executives. Her cleverness and courage are guaranteed to thrill… show more.