Leo Kessler books

Non-Fiction

Otto Stahl Reading Order

Rebel Reading Order

Rommel Reading Order

SS Wotan Reading Order

Sea Wolves Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Stormtroop Edelweiss Reading Order

Stuka Squadron Reading Order

Submarine Reading Order

The Black Cossacks Reading Order

Leo Kessler was a prolific author of World War II military fiction and non-fiction, with 100 books published between 1974 and 2014. His longest-running series, SS Wotan, accounts for nearly half his output with 44 books, following a fictional SS unit from the early war years through to the fall of Berlin and beyond. The series started with SS Panzer Battalion and Claws of Steel in 1974 and continued with new installments for more than three decades, with Some Desperate Glory closing it out in 2014.

Kessler wrote several other military series set during the Second World War. The Stormtroop Edelweiss books (nine titles, 1977-1984) follow a mountain warfare unit, while the Stuka Squadron series covers Luftwaffe dive-bomber crews across four books. The Black Cossacks, Submarine, Sea Wolves, and Rebel series each explore different theaters and branches of the war. The Otto Stahl series adds a more personal angle, following a single character through six books published in the early 1980s.

His standalone titles include both fiction and historical non-fiction. Kommando: Hitler’s Special Forces in the Second World War and S.S. Peiper: Life and Death of Jochen Peiper sit alongside novels like The Hitler Werewolf Murders and Murder at Colditz. Kessler also wrote Yorkshire at War, a regional history of the home front. Across four decades of publishing, his focus never wandered far from the battlefields and espionage of the 1939-1945 era.