The best World War 2 love stories

Though this is a novel rather than nonfiction, it takes readers into the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris and weaves a powerful love story of two sisters, Isabelle and Vianne, in wartime.

Vianne is forced to take a German Commander into her home for lodging as her husband is being kept in a Nazi prison. Isabelle meets a young partisan who believes that the French people can wage war against the Nazis from within France.

The settings are beautifully handled, and the characters are well-rounded. The book vividly brings to life the horrors of war: starvation, death, and the Holocaust. Based on research Hannah conducted into the French Resistance, it has the feeling of a true story. But it is a beautifully crafted fiction about endurance, resistance, and love. 

I loved this novel set in wartime France. Again, it tells the story of two women.

American, Virginia d’Albert-Lake, is being urged by her husband and family to return to the United States so she can be safe from danger in war-ravaged France. But Virginia has no desire to leave her husband Philippe and their friends. She knows she belongs in her adopted country of France. Nineteen-year-old Brit Violette is fluent in French, having spent half her life in France, and she ends up joining the British secret agent network, SOE.

I loved the ways these two women’s lives, told in alternating chapters, were intertwined. I had tears in my eyes as the story came to a tragic end, as both women were imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. 

I loved this book because of the power of the story and the beautifully rendered characters. Though not a World War 2 book but a love story set in the American South, it covers many of the same themes, like oppression and resistance.

The central characters, Ellen and William Craft, were powerfully realized. I followed their journey from slavery to freedom with breathless anticipation as Ellen disguised herself as a wealthy white woman and William as her slave.

I cheered at the end when the Crafts fled to Canada en route to Liverpool, England, where they toured on the lecture circuit and were formally educated on how to read and write. They continued to speak out against slavery and celebrated its ending in America in the 1860s.

I was captivated by this powerful novel, which tells the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France.

I especially liked the way Doerr weaves scientific and philosophical references to light, to seeing, and not seeing into the story. I loved the two main characters, Parisian Marie-Laure, who has been blind since she was six years old, and a German orphan called Werner, who is a member of the Hitler Youth.

I was especially gripped by Marie and her father, Daniel’s escape from Paris ahead of the German invasion, and the scenes in which Daniel makes a scale model of their neighborhood in Paris to help young Marie Laure learn her way around, repeating the project in Saint-Malo, where they have taken refuge. 

I was gripped from page one by this true story of two young lovers in Auschwitz.

Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia are trapped inside a waking nightmare, yet nevertheless discover a love that sustained them through history’s darkest hour. I followed their survival beneath the ash-choked skies of Auschwitz with heart-wrenching amazement and was especially moved by how they were protected by their fellow inmates, proving that even in the midst of unimaginable horrors, humanity survives.

I also found the ending of the story deeply satisfying, as, having left the camp, the lovers make plans to meet again, though they are unable to imagine how long their reunion will take or how many lives they will live before they finally come together.