Multi-Volume History of World War 2

by AvKon193

Anyone have any recommendations for a multi-volume history of WWII? Preferably one that covers the pacific theater in detail since that’s the area I’m most interested in

OhGodMoreRoadRash

There are several that you may find of interest, depending on your interest level, specific interests, and the level of detail you desire.

Samuel E. Morison’s History of United States Naval Operations in World War II is a great primer, though dated and unavailable online. The current opinion on it is that while it’s dated and possesses some bias toward certain figures it’s invaluable as a groundwork and primer on US naval operations during the war. Once you come across a topic that interests you, it’s recommended that you obtain or consult a more recent and comprehensive work on that specific topic. It’s also quite readable. New complete sets can be purchased from the Naval Institute Press (I believe they also sell individual volumes) and used sets and individual volumes are easily found on eBay. This is the Navy’s official history of operations for the war.

The Marine Corps produced a five-volume set that comprises their official history, along with somewhere around a dozen or so monographs that explicitly cover individual engagements. All of these can be found online at https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/index.html. Marines.mil also has pdf copies. They are extremely informative and in my opinion are doubly valuable for their comprehensive terrain studies of each island that Marine elements fought on. Their drawback is that their coverage of Marine aviators is somewhat limited, and covered in Robert Sherrod’s History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II, which does not appear to be available online. It should be easy to find a used copy, however, to augment the Corps-produced official history. It’s worth noting that Sherrod’s book is considered (at least by me) to be an official unofficial companion to the official history, as he was contracted to write it.

The Army’s comprehensive official history includes an entire subsection dedicated to the war in the Pacific. All eleven volumes can be found here at https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/ww2-ap.html, with the entire history and it’s subsections here at https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usaww2.html. The official history also covers operations in the CBI, which can be accessed by clicking on the “The China-Burma-India” tab found at the second link. The Green Books, as this series is called, remains incredibly comprehensive and is the best catchall source for day-to-day actions and overviews of planning. It occasionally becomes dated and individual engagements are sometimes better served by more recent and comprehensive works on those events, but it remains a staple of understanding the army’s actions and tracing the war that it fought.

There are also several multi-volume sets unaffiliated with the services. Ian Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy is highly acclaimed, with its third volume releasing later this year. William C. McGee has produced a useful three volume set entitled Amphibious Operations in the South Pacific, which covers the development of American amphibious warfare and the equipment utilized, its application in the Solomons, and the logistical efforts necessary to project amphibious forces across the Pacific. John Lundstrom has written three books that cover the naval and naval air war in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor through the end of 1942, and while I don’t believe they are a true “set” in the traditional sense of the word, they are outstanding. They include The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941-June 1942, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway, and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Clay Blair, a noted historian and former submariner, wrote a two-volume history of American submarine operations in the Pacific entitled Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan. Finally, there are two new multi-volume projects in the works. John C. McManus has released Volume I of a two volume work on the Army in the Pacific; the first book is entitled Fire and Fortitude, and covers 1941-1943, providing much insight into the ground war in New Guinea. Finally, Richard B. Frank is working on a trilogy that will cover not only the Pacific War of 1941-45 but also the Second Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937 and eventually resulted in the outbreak of the Pacific War of 1941-45. This trilogy will cover, as Frank I believe aptly renames it, the entirety of the Asia-Pacific War and will show how both wars came to be and how they turned into one. The first volume of this trilogy is called Tower of Skulls, and it covers 1937- May of 1942.

I hope all this helps!