Military Audiobooks | History

The Halbe, 1945: Eyewitness Accounts from Hell's Cauldron

In April 1945, German troops withdrawing from the Seelow Heights were encircled by the Soviet Army near the small town of Halbe, south-east of Berlin. Rather than surrender, their orders were to attempt to break out, westward, and join up with the German twelfth Army. A brutal battle ensued, with an estimated 30,000 German and 20,000 Russian soldiers killed, along with thousands of civilians. This collection of first-hand accounts tells the story of the battle and its aftermath from the German perspective. It is an eclectic mix, containing the recollections of ordinary soldiers, SS-men and men of the Panzer Divisions, as well as civilians caught up in the battle as they attempted to flee ahead of the advancing armies. It brings to life the grim realities of this one-sided engagement, revealing the brutal vengeance of the Soviets and the desperation to escape the slaughter. Translated into English for the first time, this is an important insight into this devastating and little-known aspect of World War II history.

Eberhard Baumgart (Author), Bruce Mann (Narrator)

Audiobook

And the Rest Is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies

Foreword by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center A real-life adventure story told by a New York Times bestselling author and war correspondent who reveals how he became a hostage, an arms dealer, and an Israeli spy. And the Rest Is History takes readers on a traveling circus from Paris to Beirut, Baghdad, and beyond, introducing them to spies and terrorists, arms dealers and crooks, and along the way reveals a few surprises about the secret underbelly of recent history you won’t find in WikiLeaks. This book pinpoints precisely when the era of “fake news” actually began in America, and will change the way you think about journalism and journalists. It includes: • riveting testimony of the author’s torture and born-again experience as a hostage in a Beirut cellar; • unusual insight into the beginnings of the Iran–Contra scandal; • eyewitness reporting from the battlefields of the Middle East; • the inside scoop on Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs; • astonishing stories of French government dirty tricks, the intelligence underworld, Israeli hostage negotiations, and the real-life escapades of a Soviet sleeper agent. And the Rest Is History is a reporter’s journey from Left-Bank leftist to born-again Christian conservative. But most of all it’s a rollicking good read full of unusual characters, places, and events you will never hear about on the evening news.

Kenneth R. Timmerman (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

Audiobook

Devil Dogs: First In, Last Out – King Company from Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan

From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. The ‘Devil Dogs’ of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 – the first US ground offensive of the war – and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the ‘Green Hell’ of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as ‘thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.’ Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history – and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the colour, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war. Saul David’s previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021.

Saul David (Author), Adam James (Narrator)

Audiobook

From Bluegrass to Blue Water: Lessons in Farm Philosophy and Navy Leadership

The philosophy found in this work is the product of a childhood on a tobacco and cattle farm in central Kentucky, education at various schools, and a three-decade career in the US Navy while simultaneously contributing as a husband, father, and grandfather. The remainder of this book will be separated into phases reflective of the major changes in my life: the farm, schooling, and a navy career continuum from junior officer through flag officer. The lessons learned in earlier phases were often exported and applied later. The ever-increasing levels of responsibility served to teach new lessons.

John Palmer (Author), Chris Monteiro (Narrator)

Audiobook

Im Rausch: Russlands Krieg

Arkadi Babtschenko kennt als ehemaliger Soldat die russische Armee aus ihrem Innersten; als kritischer, verfolgter Autor lebt er seit Jahren in der Ukraine und im Exil. Mit dieser einzigartigen Binnensicht beider Seiten schreibt er über die Situation seit 2014, wie niemand sonst es vermag – leidenschaftlich persönlich, stilistisch brillant und mit größter Kenntnis: Da sind die staatsnahen Medien, die mit Trash und Nationalkitsch einen «russischen Infantilismus» heranzüchten, ohne Würde und Scham. Die russischen Siegestage, die nur die Vergangenheit feiern – keine Zukunft. Diese wird, in Gestalt unzähliger toter Soldaten, doppelt totgeschwiegen. Babtschenko schreibt über Putins Verblendung, die ganz Russland ergriffen hat, über konkrete Schwächen in Material und Strategie und leitet daraus, von Anfang an, verblüffend genaue Vorhersagen ab. Vom 24. Februar 2022 an verdichten sich seine Texte in ein einzigartiges Tagebuch über den russischen Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine, den entscheidenden Konflikt der Gegenwart, der die Welt jetzt schon tiefgreifend verändert hat; es wirft Licht auf die Ereignisse und schildert sie mit einer sprachlichen Verve, die ihresgleichen sucht, klarsichtig und doch mit größter Nähe.-

Arkadi Babtschenko (Author), Omid-Paul Eftekhari (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Shot: The Harrowing Journey of a Marine in the War on Terror

Sergeant Bill Bee’s brush with death was broadcast on TV screens and published in newspapers around the world, but behind the cloud of dirt caused by a Taliban sniper bullet is a story of heroism, tragedy, and fighting an invisible war. Sergeant Bill Bee is the Marine in one of the defining images from the War on Terror. He responded to gunfire without protective gear when a Taliban sniper shot hit a sandbank just a few inches from his head in Garmsir, Helmand Province. When his world plunged into darkness, he thought his luck had run out. But he somehow survived, and his brush with death on May 18, 2008, was captured by a Reuters photographer. The images were broadcast around the world and became an iconic display of bravery at a time when support for the war in Afghanistan was low. People remember the reckless Marine who risked his life, but the story of the man reeling behind that cloud of dusk is one of an invisible war he is still fighting to this day.

Bill Bee, Wills Robinson (Author), Michael Braun (Narrator)

Audiobook

Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph ‘A story that grabs from the get-go – the moments in which the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation come alive as they would if this were the very best fiction’ Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday ‘The most gripping narrative of the crisis… frightening but hopelessly addictive’ Gerald DeGroot, Times The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned. Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers. To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Max Hastings (Author), John Hopkins (Narrator)

Audiobook

God, Family, Country: A Memoir

Country music icon, army veteran, father, outdoorsman—Craig Morgan shares all aspects of his life, revealing stories even his most avid fans don’t know. Written with Jim DeFelice, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller American Sniper In 1989, as US news outlets declared an end to Operation Just Cause, Craig Morgan was part of an elite group of military operatives jumping into the jungle along the Panamanian border on a covert operation. Fans know the country music star from his hit songs and acclaimed albums, but there’s a lot more to him—a soldier who worked with the CIA in Panama, an undercover agent who fought sex traffickers in Thailand, and a dedicated family man who lives the values he sings. Craig details these many facets of his life and more in God, Family, Country. An on-stage appearance with his father’s band at age ten may have planted the seeds for life as a country star, but first he trained as a paratrooper in the army. After earning numerous distinctions, his path to sergeant major was all but assured. Then came a momentous decision: he left the active military to pursue music. With unwavering support from his wife and a pack of part-time jobs, he toughed out the lean years and achieved his first big success with the poignant ballad “Almost Home.” Other hits soon followed, from party songs like “Redneck Yacht Club” to the soul-rending “The Father, My Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Born from the anguish of his son Jerry’s passing, the song’s tribute has consoled and inspired millions across the world. Duty to country has been a constant throughout his life and globe-spanning career. In 2006, as “That’s What I Love about Sunday” topped country radio charts, Craig was riding in a convoy of Humvees in Iraq. An avid outdoorsman, a former sheriff’s deputy who’s still a member of the auxiliary, and always a husband and father first, Craig Morgan will inspire you with his life lived by the deepest values: God, family, country.

Craig Morgan, Jim DeFelice (Author), Jim DeFelice (Narrator)

Audiobook

Born Under a Lucky Star: A Red Army Soldier's Recollections of the Eastern Front of World War II

As a Russian recruit in World War II, Ivan Makarov witnessed General Chuikov pull out his pistol and shoot their regimental commander as a traitor. That was on his first day at the front. Thrown into an open field to face German tanks and artillery fire, with only rifles and machine guns to defend themselves with, almost 2,000 men of his regiment were wiped out in only six days at the Eastern Front. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty. In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front. He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers' lives. He simply wanted to serve his country. It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered throughout World War II, from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory in 1945. These recollections he dared not put on paper until 1992.

Ivan Philippovich Makarov (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Audiobook

Boris Johnson: Portrait of a Troublemaker at Number 10

'Entertaining...essential...peppered with brilliant observations' Tim Shipman, Sunday Times Andrew Gimson, whose previous book Boris is the essential read on Johnson's earlier career, returns with a penetrating and entertaining new account of Boris Johnson's turbulent time as prime minister, from the highs of a landslide election victory to the lows of his car-crash resignation. In Boris Johnson: The Rise and Fall of a Troublemaker at Number 10, Gimson sets out to discover how a man dismissed as a liar, charlatan and tasteless joke was able, despite being written off more frequently than any other British politician of the twenty-first century, to become prime minister. During his ascent, Johnson benefited from being regarded as a clown, for this meant his opponents failed to take him seriously, while his supporters delighted in his ability to shock and enrage the Establishment. He even changed the language of politics; a new word, 'cakeism', entered the English lexicon to describe his implausible but seductive claim during the Brexit negotiations that it was possible to have one's cake and eat it. In a series of brilliant vignettes, Gimson sheds light on the parts played by sex, greed, boredom and low seriousness in Johnson's rise and fall, describes how Partygate fatally imperilled his prime ministership, and places him in a line of Tory adventurers stretching back to Benjamin Disraeli: disreputable figures who often blew themselves up, but who also could display an astonishing ability to connect with the British public. What kind of a person is Johnson? What kind of a country would dream of making him its prime minister? And why did he fall? Nobody has got closer than Gimson to finding out the answers.

Andrew Gimson (Author), Andrew Gimson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

Diana Oestreich, a combat medic in the Army National Guard, enlisted like both her parents before her. But when she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe, she was confronted with a choice she never thought she'd have to make. Torn between God's call to love her enemy and her country's command to be willing to kill, Diana chose to wage peace in a place of war. For the remainder of her tour of duty, Diana sought to be a peacemaker-leading to an unlikely and beautiful friendship with an Iraqi family. A beautiful and gut-wrenching memoir, Waging Peace exposes the false divide between loving our country and living out our faith's call to love our enemies-whether we perceive our enemy as the neighbor with an opposing political viewpoint, the clerk wearing a head-covering, or the refugee from a war-torn country. By showing that us-versus-them is a false choice, this book will inspire each of us to choose love over fear.

Diana Oestreich (Author), Sarah Welborn (Narrator)

Audiobook

Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power

A riveting exploration of the brilliant, combative, and controversial “Father of the Nuclear Navy” Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899–1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. As important as the transition from sail to steam, his development of nuclear-propelled submarines and ships transformed naval power and Cold War strategy. They still influence world affairs today. His disdain for naval regulations, indifference to the chain of command, and harsh, insulting language earned him enemies in the navy, but his achievements won him powerful friends in Congress and the White House. A Jew born in a Polish shtetl, Rickover ultimately became the longest-serving US military officer in history. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

Marc Wortman (Author), Paul Bellantoni (Narrator)

Audiobook

Military Audiobooks in History