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Russia at War, 1941–1945
- A History
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 38 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's summary
In 1941, Russian-born British journalist Alexander Werth observed the unfolding of the Soviet-German conflict with his own eyes. What followed was the widely acclaimed book, Russia at War, first printed in 1964. At once a history of facts, a collection of interviews, and a document of the human condition, Russia at War is a stunning, modern classic that chronicles the savagery and struggles on Russian soil during the most incredible military conflict in modern history.
As a behind-the-scenes eyewitness to the pivotal, shattering events as they occurred, Werth chronicles with vivid detail the hardships of everyday citizens, massive military operations, and the political movements toward diplomacy as the world tried to reckon with what they had created. Despite its sheer historical scope, Werth tells the story of a country at war in startlingly human terms, drawing from his daily interviews and conversations with generals, soldiers, peasants, and other working class civilians. The result is a unique and expansive work with immeasurable breadth and depth, built on lucid and engaging prose, that captures every aspect of a terrible moment in human history.
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An interesting set of introductions.
- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
By: Scott Lewis
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The Hidden History of the Boston Tea Party
- By: Adam Jortner, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Adam Jortner
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Original Recording
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The history of the Boston Tea Party is a hidden one. Why? Since it was a clandestine operation, all sorts of rumors and legends grew up around the event—many collected decades after the American Revolution had ended. At its core, however, the night of December 16, 1773, when colonials dumped tea from British ships into Boston Harbor, was more than a fight over tea and taxes. It was a struggle over the very nature of democracy and self-governance.
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How nuanced this event actually was
- By Cody T. on 12-17-23
By: Adam Jortner, and others
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Made in America
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.
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Bryson Not Reading Makes For a Rare Fail
- By John on 02-28-14
By: Bill Bryson
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Deputy Mayor Putin
- By: Maeve McQuillan
- Narrated by: Fiona Shaw, Gwilym Lee
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Original Recording
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How did a once faceless bureaucrat, a man whose own wife said he was born under the sign of the vampire, become the idealized face of Russian manhood and its authoritarian leader? Deputy Mayor Putin examines the man behind the myth. We will explore how Putin’s formative years shaped and drove him and how the supporting cast of characters he gathered along the way helped him get to the Kremlin’s inner sanctum.
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Interesting
- By T J on 03-02-24
By: Maeve McQuillan
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The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled the largest military force in recorded history and that cost the lives of more than twenty-five million Soviet soldiers and civilians, was the decisive factor for securing an Allied victory. Now with access to the wealth of film archives and interview material from Russia used to produce the ten-hour television documentary Russia's War, Richard Overy tackles the many persuasive questions surrounding this conflict.
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Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.
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Prit Buttar retraces the ebb and flow of the various battles and campaigns fought throughout the Ukraine and Romania in 1944. January and February saw Army Group South encircled in the Korsun Pocket. Although many of the encircled troops did escape, in part due to Soviet intelligence and command failures, the Red Army would endeavour to not make the same mistakes again. Indeed, in the coming months the Red Army would demonstrate an ability to learn and improve, reinventing itself as a war-winning machine, demonstrated clearly in its success in the Iasi-Kishinev operation.
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Exceptional
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Germany's winter campaign of 1941-1942 has commonly been seen as its "first defeat". In Retreat from Moscow, David Stahel argues that, in fact, it was its first strategic success in the east. Though the Red Army managed to push the Wehrmacht back from Moscow, the Germans lost far fewer men (one to six), frustrated their enemy's strategic plan, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative.
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Nothing new on the Eastern front basically!
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At a huge cost, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad ultimately endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation. Throughout the siege, Soviet forces tried to break the German lines and restore contact with the garrison. To Besiege a City charts the first of these offensives which began in January 1942 and was followed by repeated assaults.
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An outstanding addition to his WWII Eastern Front Collection
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Meat Grinder
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The fighting between the German and Russian armies in the Rzhev Salient during World War II was so grisly, so murderous, and saw such vast losses that the troops called the campaign 'The Meat Grinder'. Though millions of men would fight and die there, the Rzhev Salient does not have the name recognition of Leningrad or Moscow. It has been largely ignored by Western historians – until now.
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Zzzzzzzzz
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When Titans Clashed
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Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.
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The largest conflict in human history
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Prit Buttar retraces the ebb and flow of the various battles and campaigns fought throughout the Ukraine and Romania in 1944. January and February saw Army Group South encircled in the Korsun Pocket. Although many of the encircled troops did escape, in part due to Soviet intelligence and command failures, the Red Army would endeavour to not make the same mistakes again. Indeed, in the coming months the Red Army would demonstrate an ability to learn and improve, reinventing itself as a war-winning machine, demonstrated clearly in its success in the Iasi-Kishinev operation.
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Exceptional
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Retreat from Moscow
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Germany's winter campaign of 1941-1942 has commonly been seen as its "first defeat". In Retreat from Moscow, David Stahel argues that, in fact, it was its first strategic success in the east. Though the Red Army managed to push the Wehrmacht back from Moscow, the Germans lost far fewer men (one to six), frustrated their enemy's strategic plan, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative.
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Nothing new on the Eastern front basically!
- By philippe jacob on 03-28-20
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To Besiege a City
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At a huge cost, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad ultimately endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation. Throughout the siege, Soviet forces tried to break the German lines and restore contact with the garrison. To Besiege a City charts the first of these offensives which began in January 1942 and was followed by repeated assaults.
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An outstanding addition to his WWII Eastern Front Collection
- By Rodney W. Schmisseur on 10-04-23
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Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942
- Schwerpunkt
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Robert Forczyk's incisive study offers fresh insight into how the two most powerful mechanized armies of WWII developed their tactics and weaponry during the early years of the Russo-German War. He uses German, Russian, and English sources to provide the first comprehensive overview and analysis of armored warfare from the German and Soviet perspectives.
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A Great work on tank warfare
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Stalin's War
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World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east.
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Sean McMeekin Does It Again!
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Russia
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Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky’s Red Army and the single-minded Communist dictatorship under Lenin.
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Not Enough Context
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War on the Eastern Front
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Dawn on Sunday, June 22, 1941 saw the opening onslaughts of Operation Barbarossa as German forces stormed forward into the Soviet Union. Few of them were to survive the five long years of bitter struggle. A posting to the Eastern Front during the Second World War was rightly regarded with dread by the German soldiers. They saw epic battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and yet it was a daily war of attrition which ultimately proved fatal for Hitler's ambition and the German military machine.
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A Must Read for WW2 Buffs
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By: James Lucas, and others
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Enemy at the Gates
- The Battle for Stalingrad
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On August 5, 1942, giant pillars of dust rose over the Russian steppe, marking the advance of the 6th Army, an elite German combat unit dispatched by Hitler to capture the industrial city of Stalingrad and press on to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. The Germans were supremely confident; in three years, they had not suffered a single defeat. The Luftwaffe had already bombed the city into ruins. German soldiers hoped to complete their mission and be home in time for Christmas.
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An Unforgettable and Haunting Read
- By Jean on 02-03-16
By: William Craig
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Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
- By: David Stahel
- Narrated by: Stewart Crank
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Using archival records, in this book, David Stahel presents a history of Germany's summer campaign from the perspective of the two largest and most powerful Panzer groups on the Eastern front. Stahel's research provides a fundamental reassessment of Germany's war against the Soviet Union, highlighting the prodigious internal problems of the vital Panzer forces and revealing that their demise in the earliest phase of the war undermined the whole German invasion.
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Best book on Operation Barbarossa so far
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By: David Stahel
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Retribution
- The Soviet Reconquest of Central Ukraine, 1943-44
- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 17 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers to bring their story to life, the narrative follows on from On A Knife's Edge, which described the encirclement and destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the offensives and counter-offensives that followed throughout the winter of 1942-43.
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Solid, substantial military storytelling
- By Rodney W. Schmisseur on 12-21-19
By: Prit Buttar
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Ivan's War
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Of the 30 million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, 8 million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan - as the ordinary Russian soldier was called-remain a mystery. We know something about how the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.
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Bird's eye view of the Eastern Front in WW2.
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-16-20
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Stalingrad
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Tantor Audio presents the complete audio version of the long awaited one-volume campaign history from the leading experts of the decisive clash of Nazi and Soviet forces at Stalingrad. Stalingrad is an abridged edition of the five-volume Stalingrad Trilogy.
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An incredible story made mind-numbingly tedious
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By: David M. Glantz, and others
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The End
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From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did.
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Engrossing yet horrifying
- By Liz on 10-14-11
By: Ian Kershaw
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On a Knife’s Edge
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- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
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- Unabridged
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The battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II. The German capture of the city, their encirclement by Soviet forces shortly afterwards, and the hard-fought but futile attempts to relieve them, saw bitter attritional fighting and extremes of human misery inflicted on both sides. In this title, a renowned expert on warfare on the Eastern Front reveals the often-overlooked German counteroffensive post-Stalingrad, and how it prevented the whole Axis front line from collapsing.
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Best of its kind!
- By Max on 02-10-20
By: Prit Buttar
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From the Realm of a Dying Sun, Volume 1
- IV. SS-Panzerkorps and the Battles for Warsaw, July - November 1944
- By: Douglas E. Nash Sr.
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 28 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The histories of the first three SS corps are well known - the actions of I, II, and III (Germanic) SS-Panzerkorps and their subordinate divisions, including the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, Hitlerjugend, Hohenstaufen, Frundsberg, and Nordland divisions, have been thoroughly documented and publicized. Overlooked in this pantheon is another SS corps that never fought in the west or in Berlin but one that participated in many of the key battles fought on the Eastern Front during the last year of the war - the IV SS-Panzerkorps.
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Excellent top to bottom
- By Anonymous User on 11-01-20
What listeners say about Russia at War, 1941–1945
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- KB
- 04-21-23
Eye opener
Detailed, balanced eye witness account and thorough analysis from someone who lived in Russia through the war.
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- Robert S.
- 06-01-23
Mass
You would only say Mass if your from Mass. you from Mass would know this.
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- Mike From Mesa
- 09-11-23
A very different view of the Russian Front
This is a unique and eye opening look at the Russian Front of the European Theater in World War 2. Alexander Worth was a naturalized British citizen, but was born in Russia and hence spoke Russian like a native. This gave him the unique ability among western journalists to speak with ordinary Russian citizens as well as members of the Soviet government and his reporting was thus more complete and more accurate than those of western journalists who mostly only spoke with those whose job it was to talk to journalists. This book is thus a very different history of the Russian Front in World War 2.
While the book is perhaps the most interesting of all of the books I have read on the Russian Front of World War 2 it does have some drawbacks. One is that the book itself was written in the 1960s and the author was not privy to information that became public after that time, and so some of the author's assumptions and conclusions are wrong. One example is that we now know that Stalin knew all about the US/British effort to build the Atomic Bomb and thus his reaction to the news when Truman told him was not due to his belief that it was not really anything new. A second is that the author sometimes seems to take the government statements at their face value rather than questioning them, although in general he is skeptical of many of the Soviet government's public statements. More such examples exist in the book. Still, as a look at what the average Russian citizen believed and what the Soviet government said, this book is unrivaled in all of the books about the Russian war against Nazi Germany that I have read. It should not be missed by anyone interested in the Eastern Front in World War 2.
The narration by Derek Perkins is absolutely spot on and made the book a pleasure to listen to.
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- Edison T. Liu
- 10-16-22
Timeless historical study
That this book was written in the 1964 by an individual who lived amongst the Russians during the great Patriotic War is especially poignant. It provides first hand experiences from a well informed observer fluent in Russian, as well as interpretations untarnished by current biases from anti-Putin sentiments to woke political correctness. The narrative was clear and captivating and the content was almost scholarly in detail. The narrator was superb and was obviously linguistically adept. It was a pleasure to listen to and will be one of the few books I will read again.
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- BTS
- 07-10-23
Well written and eye-opening, from someone who was there
There have been a few details that have been filled in since the end of the Cold War, but it still holds up extremely well. Werth was actually there, spoke with many important generals while the war was raging and saw all the famous battlegrounds while they were still smoldering.
Obviously, he was shown many more of the red army’s victories and German atrocities than the soviets’ blunders and setbacks. Still, he was able to fill in the suppressed details in the two decades since and combines his memory and contemporary reporting with an excellent historical overview of that massive war. He alternates between eyewitness accounts and the grand scale of the war: political, economic and military, yet still makes time for several well-chosen deep-dives on the war’s most harrowing and pivotal moments, such as Leningrad and Stalingrad (these chapters are almost small books by themselves).
This is an excellent introduction to the subject. It is the biggest story Americans know nothing about. Stalin was a monster, but as a result we’ve gotten the impression that there was something morally ambiguous about the war in the east. There was not. This is the story of people who steadfastly refused to be annihilated by people who wanted to exterminate them. 20 million people died, and the nazis were worn down to certain defeat before Allies even landed in France, due to the incredible, desperate actions by the USSR. I’d say a bunch of stuff about politics and selective memory but I’m honestly not sure the American national security state ever even thought this was a bad thing.
Interestingly, the Russians liberated the first Nazi extermination camp in *August* 1944. A western correspondent (Werth) was there to report on it. The BBC never ran the story. The Brits didn’t believe their own Russia correspondent (or chose to stay silent).
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- Jason Wilkerson
- 06-09-23
One of the better WW2 books following the Eastern Front. if you enjoy this I suggest any book by author Prit Buttar
One of the better WW2 books following the Eastern Front. if you enjoy this I suggest any book by author Prit Buttar.
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- Nicholas Robinson
- 02-28-22
Simply Astonishing
For any serious student of World War II history these days, it's hard to find any original content, especially on the War in the East. The same hoary anecdotes about Stalin ("Lenin gave us this great country and we f•••ed it up" etc.) are repeated ad infinitum, often just with different words; it's like watching documentaries about Stalingrad where you've seen the same clips literally countless times ("Oh no, here comes the guy wearing coconuts on his feet!")—the same stories, the same framings, the same characters and the same histories.
Obviously, there are some standouts, especially on the Russian angle—Beevor's "Stalingrad" and "Ivan's War" by Catherine Merridale are two incredible examples—but most of the rest, to one degree or another, are similar and repetitive.
There are the histories for military types, which run down battalion numbers and tank designations ("Kirponos's 4th Army 3rd Battalion's impressive stand on the Maeda escarpment's western salient, with Yeremenko's 4th Division 2nd Guard's Army's 1,500 Mark IV self-propelled 54mm howitzers were seen at 7:23 pm on January the 23rd, 1942 by blah blah blah blah blah blah") and then there are the man-in-the-street human interest stories and then there are the mechanical treatises of just the fax, ma'am, but a book that takes all this and stands it on its head is hard to come by.
Werth actually takes us *into Stalingrad three days after the surrender and to within ten feet of von Paulus himself* in the **first person** . . . you just can't get more direct than that.
By being perfectly bilingual (trilingual if you count German, oh, and French) he was allowed unprecedented access to most of the major front lines of the war (Leningrad, in the middle of the siege . . . Kharkov, four days after the liberation, Stalingrad, Moscow, and on, and on, and on) and then to many of the personalities (Stafford Cripps, Clark-Kerr, Molotov, etc. etc.) and then at length with German prisoners of war (in German!) as well as all the Russian/Ukrainian citizens themselves, speaking with their voices and then re-speaking in English, so that you have translations that are so authentic it sounds as if the speakers were actually speaking English, not Russian—and they were, in Werth's mind!
But all this, this rich, tapestry-like-detailed history would have all been for naught if the narrator had been, like so, so many narrators of WWII histories, with their myriad places and persons' names mangled atrociously; I could name a dozen right off the top of my head right now where you just stop and *groan* as you hear "Yamamoto" pronounced "Yamomota" and "Ordzhonikidze" as "Ordikidz." You get the picture!
But Derek Perkins is an astonishing narrator; perhaps the best narrator I have ever heard of any audiobook I have ever heard—and I have been listening to audiobooks every single day of my life since 2016.
Perhaps only one of the Churchill books' narrators came close, but Perkins nails every single accent there is in this book. His pronunciation of "Yeremenko" is bizarre; not even recognizable as the same name, but I went and checked—Perkins was correct!
It's obvious he has studied every single non-English word down to the tiniest syllable and worked them out carefully before committing them to tape. Further, his pitch, rhythm and pauses are exquisitely good.
The combination puts this book—and I'm only halfway through it! In the top five of any book—audio or otherwise—about the two world wars and probably THE top audiobook about World War II that I have ever listened to.
I knew Werth was around—I just never ran across any of his books as audiobooks before.
I would have given this book ten stars if they had been available.
(A little personal bio: I'm a 64-year-old American, now Canadian, born in India and lived there for ten years, educated at British public (private) schools for six years and lived in Africa (5 years) Japan (five years) California, France and now Montreal; speak Japanese and French fluently, German passably and used to speak Hindustani at a native level.
(Father was a radio operator in B-24s over Europe and flew 26 missions, later moved to Pan American and then The U.N.)
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- Bulldogs
- 12-28-23
Still Fresh.
I learned much about RUSSIA & SOVIET wartime history. The material collected from the every day people of that time is precious.
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- Chris Hummel
- 11-03-22
Essential, If Imperfect
Werth's extensive work, based on both his own war time experience and observations as a journalist during the war (and until 1948) alongside extensive research and interviews inform this vibrant treatment of the conflict. Brilliantly combining both a wide-ranging, big picture narrative (especially strong on diplomatic and Communist Party matters) with a series of "close-ups" of individual incidents, battles and personalities, often witnessed at the time, worth pulls together a colorful and detailed picture of the Soviet Union at war. Werth, born in pre-Bolshevik Russia and a fluent Russian speaker, seemed remarkably skilled at getting unusual and highly human answers from figures high and low.
Most of the book's imperfections and shortcoming are a product of the time it was written and published (the late 1950s and early 60s, the Kruschev Era) and Werth's own highly personal perspective. The Soviet archives were not then opened, leaving out much supporting and sometimes corrective materials and Werth is also at pains to contrast the official Soviet war history of the post-Stalin era with both what was said at the time and what actually happened. Thus the Katyn Massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets (which some reviewers suggest Werth doubted, believing it was the Germans, which I did not find him concluding here) was fully settled by and official apology from the USSR to Poland in the late 1980s. While Werth shows no love for Stalin or Beria, the work is generally free of direct and detailed indictments of them also, and while Werth's work by no means follows the party line, it's often non-critical tone seems out of place today. If anything, though, one of his lasting contributions is to humanize not just the generals and political leaders but the ordinary citizens of the then Soviet Union. They people are (as they should be) the heroes of the piece--and rather tragic ones at that. Werth's own desire for peace for the people of the Soviet Union and a reduction in their suffering--which the country's surviving war generation, he convincingly argues, largely shared--was not to be. Indeed, Werth's son (a respected Eastern European historian) seems to hint that the crushing of the Prague Spring of 1968 by Russian forces may have contributed to the depression leading to his father's suicide. Since Werth's work left me liking both him and his hard-pressed ordinary heroes, it was hard not to feel a sense of loss in subsequent Russian history.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-23-22
TImeless masterpiece
I was stunned when I read that it was written in the sixties; It feels truly timeless.
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