I just finished Tom Holland's "Rubicon" and I'm looking for something a little more modern before I dive into the immediate events after with "Dynasty." The two things I'm really wanting to learn more about right now are both WW2 related:
-The Eastern Front: from what I know, both the major powers here were particularly brutal in their treatment of each other on this front. I think I'm more interested in seeing this from a military perspective of tactics and strategies, but I also don't want to lose the human experience of the soldiers and civilians in the top-down view of the events since that is what tends to keep me hooked.
-Valkyrie: this is one of my favorite conspiracies in history and I'd like to know more about the players and possibly the previous assassination attempts against Hitler.
Also, while not necessary I'm hoping for a book with an audiobook version I can get on Audible. I spend a lot of my time on the road and like to listen when I don't have the time to read.
Thanks, /r/AskHistorians.
There is a substantial booklist at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/wwii - the section on the Eastern Front looks to have a few promising titles.
Zhukov's memoirs are a good read, but need to be taken with a grain of salt.
While the broad strokes of them are true, there was significant infighting amongst the Red Army generals at the time, and many of them had slammed or downplayed Zhukov in their own memoirs, rightly or wrongly. He used his to take a little revenge.
Also if you want a view from the tippy top of the USSR, Khrushchev and Molotov's memoirs are also good, although they are again to be taken with a grain of salt. Khrushchev's are seen to be somewhat self-aggrandizing, for one, but offer a fascinating picture of the inside of Soviet bureaucracy, especially a personal view of Stalin.
Both cover more than WW2, but they do cover WW2 in some depth.
Stalin' General by Roberts was a very good book about Zhukov and the East.
I'd recommend both 'Stalingrad' and 'Berlin: The Downfall 1945' by Antony Beevor. I'm using both in my undergraduate work and I think reading both would give you a rounded and impartial view of the brutality committed by both sides. He covers the civilian, and the soldiers experiences alongside the usual military tactics and strategy.
I find Beevor's work strong because he is a military historian and not, like Max Hastings for example, a journalist writing military history.