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Normandy '44
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While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler's mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers, but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stalemate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage - hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. This book describes the catastrophe that followed, in a unique look at the war from the losing side.
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should have included Rommel in the title...
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On a Knife’s Edge
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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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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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Fighting the Great War at Sea
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1 out of 5 stars
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dull, Dull, DULL
- By Anonymous User on 01-13-20
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The Germans in Normandy
- By: Richard Hargreaves
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 8
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8
While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler's mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers, but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stalemate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage - hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. This book describes the catastrophe that followed, in a unique look at the war from the losing side.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Good if you're not familiar
- By D. MacLeod on 12-05-19
-
Countdown to D-Day
- The German Perspective
- By: Peter Margaritis
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 28 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness. His superior, theater commander, crusty old Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had led the Reich to victory in the early years of the war, is now fed up with the whole Nazi regime. He lives comfortably in a plush villa in a quiet Paris suburb, waiting for the inevitable Allied invasion that will bring about their final defeat.
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3 out of 5 stars
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should have included Rommel in the title...
- By jacob on 10-24-19
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Battleground Prussia
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- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
The terrible months between the arrival of the Red Army on German soil and the final collapse of Hitler's regime were like no other in the Second World War. The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished. From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this book recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike.
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4 out of 5 stars
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WW II Battleground Ignored by Western Historians
- By AJC on 12-16-19
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On a Knife’s Edge
- The Ukraine, November 1942-March 1943
- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 22 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11
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.
-
Retreat from Moscow
- A New History of Germany’s Winter Campaign, 1941-1942
- By: David Stahel
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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.
-
Fighting the Great War at Sea
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- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4 out of 5 stars 6
This radical new book concentrates on the way in which each side tried to use or deny the sea to the other, and in so doing describes rapid wartime changes not only in ship and weapons technology but also in the way naval warfare was envisaged and fought. Melding strategic, technical, and tactical aspects, Friedman approaches World War I from a fresh perspective and demonstrates how its perceived lessons dominated the way navies prepared for World War II.
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1 out of 5 stars
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dull, Dull, DULL
- By Anonymous User on 01-13-20
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MiG Alley
- The US Air Force in Korea, 1950-53
- By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 11
Of the many myths that emerged following the end of the Korean War, the prevailing one in the West was that of the absolute supremacy of US Air Force pilots and aircraft over their Soviet-supplied opponents. The claims of the 10:1 victory-loss ratio achieved by the US Air Force fighter pilots flying the North American F-86 Sabre against their communist adversaries, amongst other such fabrications, went unchallenged until the end of the Cold War, when Soviet records of the conflict were finally opened. From that point onwards, a very different story began to emerge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Lorne on 11-27-19
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Case White
- The Invasion of Poland 1939
- By: Robert Forczyk
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
The German invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, designated as Fall Weiss (Case White), was the event that sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The campaign has widely been described as a textbook example of Blitzkrieg, but it was actually a fairly conventional campaign as the Wehrmacht was still learning how to use its new Panzers and dive-bombers. The Polish military is often misrepresented as hopelessly obsolete and outclassed by the Wehrmacht, yet in fact it was well-equipped with modern weapons and armor.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Surprise
- By Gordon R. Flygare on 11-24-19
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Eagle Against the Sun
- The American War With Japan
- By: Ronald H. Spector
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 23 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story5 out of 5 stars 34
Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.
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Fire and Fortitude
- The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 24 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
John C. McManus, one of our most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes listeners from Pearl Harbor - a rude awakening for a military woefully unprepared for war - to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sharpens Focus on Army’s Role in Pacific War
- By Mommala on 10-25-19
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Hunt the Bismarck
- The Pursuit of Germany’s Most Famous Battleship
- By: Angus Konstam
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story5 out of 5 stars 16
Bismarck entered service in the summer of 1940. She was well-armed, with eight 15-inch guns as well as a powerful array of lighter weapons, while her armored protection earned her the reputation of being unsinkable. This claim was finally put to the test in May 1941, when she sortied into the Atlantic and fought the legendary battle of the Denmark Strait, destroying HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. Bismarck was now loose in the North Atlantic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A fresh look at a well known story!
- By Donald Hill on 10-26-19
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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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Overall5 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story5 out of 5 stars 13
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Solid, substantial military storytelling
- By Rodney W. Schmisseur on 12-21-19
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The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943
- The War in the West, Book 2
- By: James Holland
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 24 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story5 out of 5 stars 73
By June 1941, Germany's war machine looked to be unstoppable. The Nazi blitzkrieg had taken Poland, France, and Holland with shocking speed. The Luftwaffe had bombed London, while German U-boats wrought havoc on Allied shipping on the Atlantic. And yet, as James Holland shows at the start of The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943 - the second volume in his magisterial narrative of World War II in the West - cracks were already appearing in Germany's apparent invincibility.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb, thorough, professional historian
- By R. A. Smith on 12-20-17
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Tank Action
- An Armoured Troop Commander's War 1944-45
- By: Captain David Render, Stuart Tootal
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story5 out of 5 stars 18
In 1944, David Render was a 19-year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank commanders became casualties, his ability to emerge unscathed from countless combat engagements earned him the nickname of the 'Inevitable Mr Render'.
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5 out of 5 stars
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It Doesn't Get Any Better!
- By Michael A. Barnacascel on 12-24-19
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Saipan
- The Battle that Doomed Japan in World War II
- By: James H. Hallas
- Narrated by: Tim Dixon
- Length: 22 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2
The story of the Battle of Saipan has it all. Marines at war: on Pacific beaches, in hellish volcanic landscapes in places like Purple Heart Ridge, Death Valley, and Hell's Pocket, under a commander known as "Howlin' Mad." Naval combat: carriers battling carriers from afar, fighters downing Japanese aircraft, submarines sinking carriers. Marine-army rivalry. Fanatical Japanese defense and resistance. A turning point of the Pacific War. James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler of the battle has done.
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In Mortal Combat
- Korea, 1950-1953
- By: John Toland
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
In this brilliant narrative of America's first limited war, Toland lets both the events and the participants speak for themselves, employing scrupulous archival research and interviews as the bases for the drama and accuracy of his writing. In Mortal Combat reveals Mao's prediction of the date and place of MacArthur's Inchon landing, Russia's indifference to the war, Mao's secret leadership of the North Korean military, and the true nature of both sides' treatment and repatriation of POWs.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Slightly disappointed
- By Patrick on 09-02-19
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Between Giants
- The Battle for the Baltics in World War II
- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
During World War II, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia found themselves trapped between the giants of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Over the course of the war, these states were repeatedly occupied by different forces, and local government organizations and individuals were forced to choose between supporting the occupying forces or forming partisan units to resist their occupation. Devastated during the German invasion, these states then became the site of some of the most vicious fighting during the Soviet counterattack and push towards Berlin.
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How Carriers Fought
- Carrier Operations in WWII
- By: Lars Celander
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4 out of 5 stars 21
In November 1921, the first purpose-built aircraft carrier was launched by the Japanese, followed a year later by the launch of the British Hermes. The conversion of battle cruisers into aircraft carriers after World War I required the consideration of issues including handling aircraft on the flight deck and the techniques of attacking enemy ships, and the evolution of carrier operations was ongoing when World War II broke out.
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3 out of 5 stars
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How Carriers Fought
- By Amazon Custome. Billy on 01-11-20
Publisher's Summary
D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west - the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear in his definitive history, many parts of the OVERLORD campaign, as it was known, are still shrouded in myth and assumed knowledge.
Drawing freshly on widespread archives and on the testimonies of eye-witnesses, Holland relates the extraordinary planning that made Allied victory in France possible; indeed, the story of how hundreds of thousands of men, and mountains of materiel, were transported across the English Channel, is as dramatic a human achievement as any battlefield exploit. The brutal landings on the five beaches and subsequent battles across the plains and through the lanes and hedgerows of Normandy - a campaign that, in terms of daily casualties, was worse than any in World War I - come vividly to life in conferences where the strategic decisions of Eisenhower, Rommel, Montgomery, and other commanders were made, and through the memories of paratrooper Lieutenant Dick Winters of Easy Company, British corporal and tanker Reg Spittles, Thunderbolt pilot Archie Maltbie, German ordnance officer Hans Heinze, French resistance leader Robert Leblanc, and many others.
For both sides, the challenges were enormous. The Allies confronted a disciplined German army stretched to its limit, which nonetheless caused tactics to be adjusted on the fly. Ultimately ingenuity, determination, and immense materiel strength - delivered with operational brilliance - made the difference. A stirring narrative by a pre-eminent historian, Normandy ‘44 offers important new perspective on one of history’s most dramatic military engagements and is an invaluable addition to the literature of war.
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jason
- 11-04-19
Excellent in every way a must listen
Never boring but still very detailed with so many interesting personal stories while still maintaining the story of the bigger picture. So many books are great at either the bigger picture or the everyday grind of the military personal but this book does such a great job of both and from both sides axis and allied and adds so many other intangibles it keeps you listening. Seriously I would not be surprised if this book ends up a classic.
The narrator is soft spoken and it took me a couple chapters to adjust to it but after that I really grew to appreciate it and the narrator does a great job of the voice acting with the different regional accents when necessary.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JOHN DAVIS
- 11-26-19
outstanding in every way
Magnificent research, writing, and narration. It is the most personal of the many recent books written about the 1939-1945 War in Europe. One can only hope that the final chapter from August 1944 to May 1945 is forthcoming. It is meticulous in its research, beautifully written and the narrator deserves a position in the hall of fame.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Todd Reed
- 01-16-20
Great insight
Great inclusion of peoples stories. What I like best was his exploration into stats and details like how many cars per person before the war and all these other factors that made a difference in the war.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Allan Schneider
- 11-28-19
Great Book and excellent story. Narration is awful
Book is a great read , detailed , interesting and shows the decision process extremely well. The discussion and consideration technology and the development of the overall strategy again very well done. Highly recommend this book.
The narration is awful. The reader shows us he can verbally be very expressive and emotive , but he does not understand when the appropriate moment to use those skills. He loves his own voice so much that he use music like tones merely to hear himself and mostly when it is superfluous . The tonal additions are distracting and off putting. Let the book tell the story. Over dramatizing the narrative is not needed - but it seems to me this point is wasted on the narrator . He loves his tonal emphasis , breathy pronunication and added emionality way too much .