-
The Last Million
- Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Categories: History, Americas
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $38.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Agent Sonya
- Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her.
-
-
A celebration of communism
- By Rodney on 10-17-20
By: Ben Macintyre
-
The Quiet Americans
- Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA.
-
-
A Tragedy for One
- By Amazon Customer on 09-23-20
By: Scott Anderson
-
Fallout
- The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
- By: Lesley M.M. Blume
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast.
-
-
Required reading (listening, too)!
- By Michael Griffin on 08-13-20
-
Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.
-
-
When He Was Good
- By Pierre Tristam on 04-11-21
By: Blake Bailey
-
Poland 1939
- The Outbreak of World War II
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrated by: Roger Moorhouse
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.
-
-
Well read and most interesting
- By L. Ford Ballard, Jr. on 09-25-20
By: Roger Moorhouse
-
The World Turned Upside Down
- A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
- By: Yang Jisheng, Stacy Mosher - translator, Guo Jian - translator
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People's Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong's ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union's "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This 10-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation's economy.
By: Yang Jisheng, and others
-
Agent Sonya
- Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her.
-
-
A celebration of communism
- By Rodney on 10-17-20
By: Ben Macintyre
-
The Quiet Americans
- Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA.
-
-
A Tragedy for One
- By Amazon Customer on 09-23-20
By: Scott Anderson
-
Fallout
- The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
- By: Lesley M.M. Blume
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast.
-
-
Required reading (listening, too)!
- By Michael Griffin on 08-13-20
-
Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.
-
-
When He Was Good
- By Pierre Tristam on 04-11-21
By: Blake Bailey
-
Poland 1939
- The Outbreak of World War II
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrated by: Roger Moorhouse
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.
-
-
Well read and most interesting
- By L. Ford Ballard, Jr. on 09-25-20
By: Roger Moorhouse
-
The World Turned Upside Down
- A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
- By: Yang Jisheng, Stacy Mosher - translator, Guo Jian - translator
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People's Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong's ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union's "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This 10-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation's economy.
By: Yang Jisheng, and others
-
Hitler
- Downfall: 1939-1945
- By: Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase - translator
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 29 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 comes a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures.
-
-
Had to return because of narration
- By Thomas C on 03-26-21
By: Volker Ullrich, and others
-
The Ratline
- The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive
- By: Philippe Sands
- Narrated by: Philippe Sands, Katja Riemann, Stephen Fry
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon Wiesenthal, on the run for three years, from 1945 to 1948. Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wächter's extraordinary, shocking story.
-
-
Breathless
- By Amazon Customer on 03-24-21
By: Philippe Sands
-
The Ravine
- A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed
- By: Wendy Lower
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A single photograph - an exceptionally rare “action shot” documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family - drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholar.
By: Wendy Lower
-
The Committed
- A Novel
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Francois Chau
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.
-
-
Clever, Ironic, Repetitive
- By AuntGert on 03-05-21
-
War: How Conflict Shaped Us
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war - organized violence - comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.
-
-
Outstanding Exploration of War and Mankind
- By Aaron Sadino on 10-07-20
-
JFK
- Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 29 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, 35th president.
-
-
Great book
- By Amazon Customer on 09-28-20
By: Fredrik Logevall
-
Abe
- Abraham Lincoln in His Times
- By: David S. Reynolds
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 33 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.
-
-
Spectacular research and performance.
- By Doug Overmyer on 11-22-20
-
Calhoun
- American Heretic
- By: Robert Elder
- Narrated by: Rick Perez
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition", which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union - and arguably set the nation on course for civil war. The strain of radical politics he developed has found expression once again in the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right.
-
-
Good Bio
- By steve thomas on 04-03-21
By: Robert Elder
-
Bugsy Siegel
- The Dark Side of the American Dream (Jewish Lives Series)
- By: Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.
-
The Nine Lives of Pakistan
- Dispatches from a Precarious State
- By: Declan Walsh
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis....
-
-
good book, strange narration
- By Jake Boyd on 03-01-21
By: Declan Walsh
-
The Historians
- A Thrilling Novel of Conspiracy and Intrigue During World War II
- By: Cecilia Ekbäck
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1943 and Sweden’s neutrality in the war is under pressure. Laura Dahlgren, the bright, young right-hand of the chief negotiator to Germany, is privy to these tensions, even as she tries to keep her head down in the mounting fray. However, when Laura’s best friend from university, Britta, is discovered murdered in cold blood, Laura is determined to find the killer.
-
-
Misleading "history"
- By Catherine on 03-30-21
By: Cecilia Ekbäck
-
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
- The Cyberweapons Arms Race
- By: Nicole Perlroth
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 19 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine). For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world’s dominant hoarder of zero days.
-
-
Decent story, cringeworthy narration and editing
- By since1968 on 02-13-21
By: Nicole Perlroth
Publisher's Summary
From best-selling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII.
In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict did not cease with the German capitulation. Millions of lost and homeless concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators in flight from the Red Army overwhelmed Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate refugees and attempted to repatriate them. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained more than a million displaced persons left behind in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to which to return. The Last Million would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, temporary homelands in exile divided by nationality, with their own police forces, churches and synagogues, schools, newspapers, theaters, and infirmaries. The international community could not agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of debate and inaction, the International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany.
In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept refugees for resettlement, finally passed a displaced-persons bill. With Cold War fears supplanting memories of World War II atrocities, the bill granted the vast majority of visas to those who were reliably anti-Communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators and war criminals, while severely limiting the entry of Jews, who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the controversial partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors able to leave their displaced-persons camps in Germany.
A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping yet until now largely hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness. By 1952, the Last Million were scattered around the world. As they crossed from their broken past into an unknowable future, they carried with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and, with profound contemporary resonance, shows us that it is our history as well.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Last Million
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dr. Bill- Northern NJ-USA
- 09-23-20
NEVER- EVER-FORGET!
As a third generation American with a post graduate degree- I had no idea of the extent of the devastation and PTSD that existed. This very thorough work should be required reading-and education- in all High Schools throughout the USA!
May their memories indeed be a true Blessing! With the current rise of Anti-Semetic attacks-let us all pray this will NEVER happen AGAIN!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michasel J. Ellman
- 03-30-21
Detailed But Riveting
This is a highly riveting but extremely detailed account of the last million refugees left in Europe. The details make you anxious to know what happens next. We follow the twists and turns leading to the immigration of most Jews to Israel; and we see how thousands of war criminals were able to immigrate to other countries leaving their criminal pasts behind them. The narrator added to the enjoyment of the book.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- david fazio
- 02-09-21
Must read for those who study the WW's in Europe
this is hard story to get your head around but one that must be understood. Nothing was or is black and white. 4 stars because Ford lost the 76 election not 72. You wonder about other editing errors.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- anonymous
- 02-07-21
Well worth read to those interested in history.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. It appears to be well researched and written. It amazed me that after all the suffering the Jews went through in Europe that no country really wanted them. And many countries willingly took in former Nazi collaborators and murderers without really looking into their past thoroughly or just turning a blind eye. Other DP’s were taken advantage of with low paying jobs and back breaking work in their new host countries.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 12-27-20
Somber Aftermath
The Last Million is a mostly disheartening history of the treatment of the million or so displaced persons in Europe after World War II. The Jewish DPs wanted to leave Europe, hoping to reach Israel or any other country outside Europe that would take them. The non-Jewish DPs wanted to go anywhere but their homelands, where they were afraid of imprisonment (or worse) as Nazi collaborators (or worse). David Nasaw brings this little-known time to life, moving from the background of the DP situation to the populating of the DP camps to the ethnic conflicts that resulted in delays in resettlement. A good portion of the book tells of the political fights in the US, where Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups lobbied for increased immigration of their people while key conservatives in Congress worked to keep out those they feared might be Communists. While the story is disturbing, the history is lively, insightful and compelling. I am glad I listened.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ray spruill
- 11-11-20
The Truth Never Dies
A sad yet vital part of world history that has been often denied, manipulated or rewritten. Here it’s told in an accurate, strait forward account, that many nations attempted to cover up, overlook or just ignore.