27 Best Germany, History Books
Germany, History is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Germany, History audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 27 Germany, History audiobooks below.
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White Knights in the Black Orchestra
- By: Tom Dunkel
- Narrator: Jamie Renell
- Length: 15 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 11, 2022
- Language: English
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4.33(33 ratings)
4.33(33 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDThey were a small group of conspirators who risked their lives by plotting relentlessly to obstruct and destroy the Third Reich from within. The Gestapo nicknamed this shadowy confederation of traitors the “Black Orchestra.” This isThey were a small group of conspirators who risked their lives by plotting relentlessly to obstruct and destroy the Third Reich from within. The Gestapo nicknamed this shadowy confederation of traitors the “Black Orchestra.” This is their tension-filled story.
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As the “Final Solution” unfolds, a loose network of German military officers, diplomats, politicians, and civilians are doing everything in their power to undermine the Third Reich from the inside: reporting troop movements to the Allies, feeding disinformation to the Nazi high command, plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and more. The Gestapo nicknames this shadowy confederation of traitors the “Black Orchestra.” Its players include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident Lutheran pastor, and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a staff attorney at the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.
In this tension-filled narrative, Tom Dunkel traces the perilous movements of these “white knights” as they and their families face constant danger of being exposed and executed. Some act out of moral outrage and patriotism. Some want to atone for their own Nazi sins. When their treasonous activities are finally discovered, Hitler’s SS and the Gestapo are hell-bent on taking bloody revenge as the end of the war rapidly approaches and lives hang in the balance.
White Knights in the Black Orchestra is a tautly written, meticulously reported account of men and women heroically resisting Hitler’s ruthless regime. It packs the punch of the best espionage thrillers, but the cat-and-mouse drama and plot twists are grounded firmly in fact. This is a stirring story of people willing to risk all by doing the right thing in a country gone mad, a story that may prompt readers to ask themselves “What would I have done?” -
Berlin Diary
- By: William L. Shirer
- Narrator: Tom Weiner
- Length: 15 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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4.33(4072 ratings)
4.33(4072 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.95 USDBy the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is the private, personal, utterly revealing journal of aBy the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is the private, personal, utterly revealing journal of a great foreign correspondent.
CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany.
Shirer was the only Western correspondent in Vienna on March 11, 1938, when the German troops marched in and took over Austria, and he alone reported the surrender by France to Germany on June 22, 1940, even before the Germans reported it. The whole time, Shirer kept a record of events, many of which could not be publicly reported because of censorship by the Germans. In December 1940, Shirer learned that the Germans were building a case against him for espionage, an offense punishable by death. Fortunately, Shirer escaped and was able to take most of his diary with him.
Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, and the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter at the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done—a pure act of journalistic witness.
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The Bastard Brigade
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrator: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 14 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: July 09, 2019
- Language: English
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4.3(1738 ratings)
4.3(1738 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDFrom New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb. Scientists have always kept secrets. ButFrom New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb.
Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely have the secrets been as vital as they were during World War II. In the middle of building an atomic bomb, the leaders of the Manhattan Project were alarmed to learn that Nazi Germany was far outpacing the Allies in nuclear weapons research. Hitler, with just a few pounds of uranium, would have the capability to reverse the entire D-Day operation and conquer Europe. So they assembled a rough and motley crew of geniuses — dubbed the Alsos Mission — and sent them careening into Axis territory to spy on, sabotage, and even assassinate members of Nazi Germany’s feared Uranium Club.The details of the mission rival the finest spy thriller, but what makes this story sing is the incredible cast of characters — both heroes and rogues alike — including:- Moe Berg, the major league catcher who abandoned the game for a career as a multilingual international spy; the strangest fellow to ever play professional baseball.
- Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist credited as the discoverer of quantum mechanics; a key contributor to the Nazi’s atomic bomb project and the primary target of the Alsos mission.
- Colonel Boris Pash, a high school science teacher and veteran of the Russian Revolution who fled the Soviet Union with a deep disdain for Communists and who later led the Alsos mission.
- Joe Kennedy Jr., the charismatic, thrill-seeking older brother of JFK whose need for adventure led him to volunteer for the most dangerous missions the Navy had to offer.
- Samuel Goudsmit, a washed-up physics prodigy who spent his life hunting Nazi scientists — and his parents, who had been swept into a concentration camp — across the globe.
- Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, a physics Nobel-Prize winning power couple who used their unassuming status as scientists to become active members of the resistance.
Thrust into the dark world of international espionage, these scientists and soldiers played a vital and largely untold role in turning back one of the darkest tides in human history. -
Never in Finer Company
- By: Edward G. Lengel
- Narrator: James Lurie
- Length: 10 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 18, 2018
- Language: English
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4.26(125 ratings)
4.26(125 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDUncover the larger-than-life story of World War I’s “Lost Battalion” and the men who survived the ordeal, triumphed in battle, and fought the demons that lingered. In the first week of October, 1918, six hundred men attacked intoUncover the larger-than-life story of World War I’s “Lost Battalion” and the men who survived the ordeal, triumphed in battle, and fought the demons that lingered.
In the first week of October, 1918, six hundred men attacked into Europe’s forbidding Argonne Forest. Against all odds, they surged through enemy lines–alone. They were soon surrounded and besieged. As they ran out of ammunition, water, and food, the doughboys withstood constant bombardment and relentless enemy assaults. Seven days later, only 194 soldiers from the original unit walked out of the forest. The stand of the US Army’s “Lost Battalion” remains an unprecedented display of heroism under fire.
Never in Finer Company tells the stories of four men whose lives were forever changed by the ordeal: Major Charles Whittlesey, a lawyer dedicated to serving his men at any cost; Captain George McMurtry, a New York stockbroker who becomes a tower of strength under fire; Corporal Alvin York, a country farmer whose famous exploits help rescue his beleaguered comrades; and Damon Runyon, an intrepid newspaper man who interviews the survivors and weaves their experiences into the American epic. Emerging from the patriotic frenzy that sent young men “over there,” each of these four men trod a unique path to the October days that engulfed them–and continued to haunt them as they struggled to find peace.
Uplifting and compelling, Never in Finer Company is a deeply moving and dramatic story on an epic scale. ... Read more -
A Woman in Berlin
- By: Anonymous
- Narrator: Isabel Keating
- Length: 10 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: May 16, 2017
- Language: English
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4.26(239 ratings)
4.26(239 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. “With bald honesty and brutalA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. “With bald honesty and brutal lyricism” (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. “Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject–the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.A Woman in Berlin stands as “one of the essential books for understanding war and life” (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).
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The Europeans
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 21 hours 39 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.25(346 ratings)
4.25(346 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDFrom the “master of historical narrative” (Financial Times), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work—the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture The nineteenth century in Europe was the first age ofFrom the “master of historical narrative” (Financial Times), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work—the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture
The nineteenth century in Europe was the first age of cultural globalization—an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming national barriers and creating a truly pan-European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, people across the continent were reading the same books, looking at the same art, and attending the same opera performances.
Acclaimed historian Orlando Figes moves from Parisian salons to German spa towns to Russian country houses, exploring the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the book’s center is an intimate love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot; and her husband Louis Viardot, a connoisseur and political activist. Their passionate, ambitious lives caught up an astonishing array of artists and princes, poets, composers, and impresarios—Delacroix, Chopin, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among them.
As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization’s great advances have come when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Surprising, beautifully written, spanning a continent and a century, The Europeans offers the first international history of European culture—and a compelling argument for the benefits of cosmopolitanism.
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The Arms of Krupp
- By: William Manchester
- Narrator: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 48 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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4.23(1280 ratings)
4.23(1280 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDIn this narrative of extraordinary richness, depth, and authority, America’s preeminent biographer/historian explored the German national character as no other writer has done. The Arms of Krupp brings to life Europe’s wealthiest, mostIn this narrative of extraordinary richness, depth, and authority, America’s preeminent biographer/historian explored the German national character as no other writer has done.
The Arms of Krupp brings to life Europe’s wealthiest, most powerful family, a four-hundred-year German dynasty that developed the world’s most technologically advanced weapons, from cannons to submarines to anti-aircraft guns; provided arms to generations of German leaders, including the kaiser and Hitler; operated private concentration camps during the Nazi era; survived conviction at Nuremberg; and wielded enormous influence on the course of world events.
William Manchester’s galvanizing account of the rise and fall of the Krupp dynasty is history as it should be written–alive with all its terrifying power.
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The Unfathomable Ascent
- By: Peter Ross Range
- Narrator: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 13 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 11, 2020
- Language: English
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4.21(101 ratings)
4.21(101 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe chilling and little-known story of Adolf Hitler’s eight-year march to the pinnacle of German politics.On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. TheThe chilling and little-known story of Adolf Hitler’s eight-year march to the pinnacle of German politics.... Read more
On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an improbable political journey that came close to faltering on many occasions, his march to power had finally succeeded.While the path of Hitler’s rise has been told in books covering larger portions of his life, no previous work has focused solely on his eight-year climb to rule: 1925-1933. Renowned author Peter Ross Range brings this period back to startling life with a narrative history that describes brushes with power, quests for revenge, nonstop electioneering, American-style campaign tactics, and-for Hitler-moments of gloating triumph followed by abject humiliation.
Indeed, this is the tale of a high-school dropout’s climb from the infamy of a failed coup to the highest office in Europe’s largest country. It is a saga of personal growth and lavish living, a melodrama rife with love affairs and even suicide attempts. But it is also the definitive account of Hitler’s unrelenting struggle for control over his raucous movement, as he fought off challenges, built and bullied coalitions, quelled internecine feuds and neutralized his enemies-all culminating in the creation of the Third Reich and the western world’s descent into darkness. One of the most dramatic and important stories in world history, Hitler’s ascent spans Germany’s wobbly recovery from World War I through years of growing prosperity and, finally, into crippling depression.
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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
- By: William L. Shirer
- Narrator: Grover Gardner
- Length: 57 hours 11 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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4.19(115889 ratings)
4.19(115889 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0039.95 USDSince its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offersSince its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.
Now, years after the end of World War II, it may seem incredible that our most valued institutions, and way of life, were threatened by the menace that Hitler and the Third Reich represented. Shirer’s description of events and the cast of characters who played such pivotal roles in defining the course Europe was to take is unforgettable.
Benefiting from his many years as a reporter, and thus a personal observer of the rise of Nazi Germany, and availing himself of some of the 485 tons of documents from the German Foreign Office, as well as countless other diaries, phone transcriptions, and other written records meticulously kept at every level by the Germans, Shirer has put together a brutally objective account of how Hitler wrested political control of Germany, and planned and executed his six-year quest to dominate the world, only to see Germany go down in flames.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a vast, richly rewarding experience for anyone who wants to come to grips with the mysterious question of how this menace to civilization ever came into being, much less was sustained for as long as it was. The answer, unfortunately, is that most of Germany, for a whole host of reasons, embraced Nazism and the fanaticism that Hitler engendered.
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Where Divers Dare
- By: Randall Peffer
- Narrator: Randall Peffer
- Length: 9 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: June 03, 2016
- Language: English
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4.15(131 ratings)
4.15(131 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDIn the tradition of Shadow Divers, the story of the courageous men who dived on the last sunken U-Boat off the Eastern Seaboard. On April 16, 1944, the tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedud and sunk by the U-550. In return the sub was sent to theIn the tradition of Shadow Divers, the story of the courageous men who dived on the last sunken U-Boat off the Eastern Seaboard. On April 16, 1944, the tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedud and sunk by the U-550. In return the sub was sent to the bottom by three destroyer escorts which were guarding the convoy. For more than sixty years the location of the u-boat’s wreck eluded divers. In 2012, a team found it. This was the last undiscovered U-boat in diveable waters off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, more than three hundred feet below the surface, nearly one hundred feet deeper than the sub in Shadow Divers. This is the story of their twenty year quest to find the “Holy Grail” of deep sea diving and the tenacious efforts to dive on this treacherous wreck.
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Hitler’s American Gamble
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrator: Damian Lynch
- Length: 16 hours 31 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: November 16, 2021
- Language: English
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4.12(227 ratings)
4.12(227 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0038.99 USDA riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United StatesBy early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. NaziA riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States
By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked–and the United States remained at peace.
Hitler’s American Gamble recounts the five days that upended everything: December 7 to 11. Tracing developments in real time and backed by deep archival research, historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show how Hitler’s intervention was not the inexplicable decision of a man so bloodthirsty that he forgot all strategy, but a calculated risk that can only be understood in a truly global context. This book reveals how December 11, not Pearl Harbor, was the real watershed that created a world war and transformed international history.
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Hitler
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrator: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 29 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.12(227 ratings)
4.12(227 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDFrom a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph HitlerHitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator’s main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s,... Read moreFrom a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph HitlerHitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator’s main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary. The war against the Jews was driven both by his anxiety about combatting the supposed forces of international plutocracy and by a broader desire to maintain the domestic cohesion he thought necessary for survival on the international scene.A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War. -
Berlin 1961
- By: Frederick Kempe
- Narrator: Frederick Kempe
- Length: 19 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: May 17, 2011
- Language: English
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4.11(1436 ratings)
4.11(1436 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.99 USDA former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, theA former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, the United States and the Soviet Union stand nose to nose, with the possibility of nuclear war just one misstep away.
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The Lighthouse of Stalingrad
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrator: Kris Dyer
- Length: 13 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4(82 ratings)
4(82 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA thrilling, vivid, and “compelling” (Wall Street Journal) account of the epic siege during one of World War II’s most important battles, told by the brilliant British editor-turned-historian and author of Checkpoint Charlie.To theA thrilling, vivid, and “compelling” (Wall Street Journal) account of the epic siege during one of World War II’s most important battles, told by the brilliant British editor-turned-historian and author of Checkpoint Charlie.
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To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II were sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ hard-won victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the Volga River. To Russians, it is a pivotal landmark of their nation’s losses, with more than two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded, or captured during the bitter fighting from September 1942 to February 1943. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal, relentless house-to-house fighting.
Within this life-and-death struggle, Soviet war correspondents lauded the fight for a key strategic building in the heart of the city, “Pavlov’s House,” which was situated on the frontline and codenamed “The Lighthouse.” The legend grew of a small garrison of Russian soldiers from the 13th Guards Rifle Division holding out against the Germans of the Sixth Army, which had battled its way to the very center of Stalingrad. A report about the battle in a local Red Army newspaper would soon grow and be repeated on Moscow radio and in countless national newspapers. By the end of the war, the legend would gather further momentum and inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities.
This story has become a pillar of the Stalingrad legend and one that can now be told accurately. Written with “impressive skill and relish” (Sunday Times), The Lighthouse of Stalingrad sheds new light on this iconic battle through the prism of the two units who fought for the very heart of the city itself. Iain MacGregor traveled to both German and Russian archives to unearth previously unpublished testimonies by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. His “utterly riveting” (Alex Kershaw) narrative lays to rest the questions as to the identity of the real heroes of this epic battle for one of the city’s most famous buildings and provides authoritative answers as to how the battle finally ended and influenced the conclusion of the siege of Stalingrad. -
Nazi Terror
- By: Eric A. Johnson
- Narrator: Edward Lewis
- Length: 17 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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3.99(913 ratings)
3.99(913 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.95 USDWho were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables whileWho were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while they were happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans? Eric A. Johnson answers these questions as he explores the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.
Based on years of research in Gestapo archives as well as extensive interviews with perpetrators and victims, Nazi Terror settles many nagging questions about who was responsible for what, who knew what, and when they knew it. It is the most fine-grained portrait we may ever have of the mechanism of terror in a dictatorship.
Destined to become the classic study of terror in the Nazi dictatorship, and the benchmark for the next generation of Nazi and Holocaust scholarship, Nazi Terror tackles the central aspect of the Nazi dictatorship head on by focusing on the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.
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The Trial of Adolf Hitler
- By: David King
- Narrator: Jeff Harding
- Length: 12 hours 12 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: June 20, 2017
- Language: English
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3.94(131 ratings)
3.94(131 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDFebruary 26, 1924 was the first day of the greatly anticipated high treason trial that would galvanize Germany – but few in the courtroom that morning anticipated that the leading defendant, General Erich Ludendorff, whose risky offensivesFebruary 26, 1924 was the first day of the greatly anticipated high treason trial that would galvanize Germany – but few in the courtroom that morning anticipated that the leading defendant, General Erich Ludendorff, whose risky offensives during World War I doomed Germany to defeat, would soon be eclipsed by the private first class at his side, Adolf Hitler. Hitler was charged with treason after unsuccessfully trying to seize power in the notorious Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923. Before the trial, Hitler was only a minor, if ambitious, local party leader. Yet, once the proceedings began, his days of relative obscurity were over. Including never-before-published sources, this richly informed, day-by-day account shows how Hitler metamorphosed into a mesmerizing demagogue and used his trial as a stage for Nazi propaganda. Chilling in the hypothetical questions it raises, The Trial of Adolf Hitler illuminates our understanding of Hitler’s path to power.
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Four Girls From Berlin
- By: Marianne Meyerhoff
- Narrator: Jilly Bond
- Length: 8 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: July 14, 2020
- Language: English
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3.9(133 ratings)
3.9(133 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDA pair of silver Regency candlesticks. Pieces of well-worn family jewelry. More than a thousand documents, letters, and photographs. Lotte Meyerhoff’s best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard these and other treasuredA pair of silver Regency candlesticks. Pieces of well-worn family jewelry. More than a thousand documents, letters, and photographs. Lotte Meyerhoff’s best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard these and other treasured heirlooms and mementos from her family and return them to her after the war. The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends Ilonka, Erica, and Ursula as they lived under the shadow of Hitler in Berlin. Written by Lotte’s daughter, Marianne, this powerful memoir celebrates the unseverable bonds of friendship and a rich family legacy the Holocaust could not destroy.
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The Plots Against Hitler
- By: Danny Orbach
- Narrator: John Telfer
- Length: 13 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: October 25, 2016
- Language: English
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3.89(112 ratings)
3.89(112 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDIn 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. A year later, all parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler’s dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely clutch ofIn 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. A year later, all parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler’s dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely clutch of conspirators emerged – soldiers, schoolteachers, politicians, diplomats, theologians, even a carpenter – who would try repeatedly to end the Fuhrer’s genocidal reign. This dramatic and deeply researched book tells the full story of those noble, ingenious, and doomed efforts. This is history at its most suspenseful, as we witness secret midnight meetings, crises of conscience, fierce debates among old friends about whether and how to dismantle Nazism, and the various plots themselves being devised and executed.
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The Pity of War
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrator: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 21 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 23, 2020
- Language: English
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3.86(2346 ratings)
3.86(2346 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDFrom a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War IThe Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England’s fault. According to Niall Ferguson, EnglandFrom a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I
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The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England’s fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.
That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War. -
Let Me Go
- By: Helga Schneider
- Narrator: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 4 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
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3.85(1468 ratings)
3.85(1468 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDHelga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, thirty years later, she learned the shocking reason why. Helga’s mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard inHelga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, thirty years later, she learned the shocking reason why.
Helga’s mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was in charge of a “correction” unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.
Nearly thirty more years would pass before their second and final reunion, an emotional encounter in Vienna where her ailing mother, then eighty-seven and unrepentant about her past, was living in a nursing home. Let Me Go is the extraordinary account of that meeting and of their conversation, which powerfully evokes the misery of obligation colliding with the inescapable horror of what her mother has done.
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Hitler’s Secret Army
- By: Tim Tate
- Narrator: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: September 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.78(35 ratings)
3.78(35 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDBetween 1939 and 1945, more than seventy Allied men and women were convicted–mostly in secret trials–of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial onBetween 1939 and 1945, more than seventy Allied men and women were convicted–mostly in secret trials–of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents, and attempting to cause disaffection amongst Allied troops. Four of these traitors were sentenced to death; two were executed; most received lengthy prison sentences or were interned throughout the war. Hundreds of official files, released piecemeal between 2002 and 2017, reveal the truth about the Allied men and women who formed these spy rings. Most were ardent fascists, willingly betraying their own country in the hope and anticipation of a German victory. Several were part of international espionage rings based in the United States. And some were even more dangerous.
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The Death of Hitler
- By: Jean-Christophe Brisard
- Narrator: Peter Noble
- Length: 10 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 04, 2018
- Language: English
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3.71(158 ratings)
3.71(158 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDOn April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker as the Red Army closed in on Berlin. Within four days the Soviets had recovered his body. But the truth about what the Russian secret services found was hidden from history, when, threeOn April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker as the Red Army closed in on Berlin. Within four days the Soviets had recovered his body. But the truth about what the Russian secret services found was hidden from history, when, three months later, Stalin officially declared to Truman and Churchill that Hitler was still alive and had escaped abroad. Reckless rumors about what really happened to Hitler began to spread like wildfire and, even today, they have not been put to rest. Until now.
In 2017, after two years of painstaking negotiations with the Russian authorities, award-winning investigative journalists Jean-Christophe Brisard and Lana Parshina gained access to confidential Soviet files that finally revealed the truth behind the incredible hunt for Hitler’s body.
Their investigation includes new eyewitness accounts of Hitler’s final days, exclusive photographic evidence and interrogation records, and exhaustive research into the power struggle that ensued between Soviet, British, and American intelligence services. And for the first time since the end of World War II, official, cutting-edge forensic tests have been completed on the human remains recovered from the bunker graves–a piece of skull with traces of a lethal bullet, a fragment of bone, and teeth.
In The Death of Hitler — written as thrillingly as any spy novel–Brisard and Parshina debunk all previous conspiracy theories about the death of the Fuhrer. With breathtaking precision and immediacy they penetrate one of the most powerful and controversial secret services to take readers inside Hitler’s bunker in its last hours–and solve the most notorious cold case in history.
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Hitler’s Furies
- By: Wendy Lower
- Narrator: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.54(3556 ratings)
3.54(3556 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDWendy Lower’s stunning account of the role of German women on the Eastern Front–not only as plunderers and direct witnesses but as actual killers–powerfully revises history. Many young nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives sawWendy Lower’s stunning account of the role of German women on the Eastern Front–not only as plunderers and direct witnesses but as actual killers–powerfully revises history. Many young nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives saw the emerging Nazi empire as a kind of “Wild East” of opportunity, yet they could not have imagined what they would do there. Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork on the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviews with German witnesses, presents compelling evidence that these women went on “shopping sprees” and romantic outings to the Jewish ghettos of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, and that they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also taking part in the shooting of Jews. And Lower uncovers the stories of SS wives–with children of their own–whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Hitler’s Furies will challenge our deepest beliefs using evidence hidden for seventy years: women can be just as brutal as men.
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Double Crossed
- By: Matthew Avery Sutton
- Narrator: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 12 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 24, 2019
- Language: English
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3.48(79 ratings)
3.48(79 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the allied victory in World War II What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought “Wild” Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team ofThe untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the allied victory in World War II
What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought “Wild” Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team of religious activists for the Office of Strategic Services. They entered into a world of lies, deception, and murder, confident that their nefarious deeds would eventually help them expand the kingdom of God.In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine. Working for eternal rewards rather than temporal spoils, these loyal secret soldiers proved willing to sacrifice and even to die for Franklin Roosevelt’s crusade for global freedom of religion. Chosen for their intelligence, powers of persuasion, and ability to seamlessly blend into different environments, Donovan’s recruits included people like John Birch, who led guerilla attacks against the Japanese, William Eddy, who laid the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa, and Stewart Herman, who dropped lone-wolf agents into Nazi Germany. After securing victory, those who survived helped establish the CIA, ensuring that religion continued to influence American foreign policy.Surprising and absorbing at every turn, Double Crossed is the untold story of World War II espionage and a profound account of the compromises and doubts that war forces on those who wage it.... Read more -
The Zookeepers’ War
- By: J.W. Mohnhaupt
- Narrator: Jacques Roy
- Length: 6 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.44(372 ratings)
3.44(372 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDThe unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall. “The liveliness of Mohnhaupt’s storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter makeThe unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall.
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“The liveliness of Mohnhaupt’s storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter make this book well worth a read.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, East Berlin and its zoo were spacious and lush, socialist utopias where everything was perfectly planned… and then rarely completed.
Berlin’s two zoos in East and West quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race–rather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, they competed to have the most pandas and hippos. Soon, state funds were being diverted toward giving these new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates were talking about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And eventually politicians on both side of the Wall became convinced that if their zoo proved to be inferior, that would mean their country’s whole ideology was too.
A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies, and an animal-mad city in which zookeeping became a way of continuing politics by other means. -
A Special Mission
- By: Dan Kurzman
- Narrator: George Wilson
- Length: 9 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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3.3(114 ratings)
3.3(114 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.95 USDIn September 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome and ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler’s chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap (and perhaps kill) Pope Pius XII.In September 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome and ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler’s chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap (and perhaps kill) Pope Pius XII. At the same time, plans were being made to deport Rome’s Jews to Auschwitz. Wolff began playing a dangerous game: stalling Hitler’s plot against the pope, whom he hoped would save him from the noose in case Germany lost the war. To save Pius, Wolff and fellow conspirators blackmailed him into silence when the Jews were rounded up, hoping that Hitler would rescind his order.
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In Time of War
- By: Pierce O’Donnell
- Narrator: Raymond Todd
- Length: 14 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDIt’s a true story that reads like gripping fiction: in 1942, eight German terrorists landed by submarine on American shores on a sabotage mission devised by Hitler. When one of them, a hapless US citizen, betrayed the mission to the FBI,It’s a true story that reads like gripping fiction: in 1942, eight German terrorists landed by submarine on American shores on a sabotage mission devised by Hitler. When one of them, a hapless US citizen, betrayed the mission to the FBI, Roosevelt appointed a special military tribunal to authorize the death penalty omitting proper legal procedure. Army Colonel Kenneth Royall, a respected lawyer charged with defending the saboteurs, courageously fought the lost cause for the saboteurs’ Constitutional rights.
More than sixty years later, George W. Bush, in the wake of 9/11, cited Roosevelt’s act as a precedent for indefinitely imprisoning US citizens and suspected “enemy combatants” without charge. O’Donnell illustrates the parallels between then and now, offering a cautionary tale of the danger of unchecked executive power in a time of crisis.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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