Discover the Best Audio Stories in History, Military

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Title: Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft

Author: Peter Westwick

Narrator: David De Vries

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Release date: May 4, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.33 of Total 6

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen US aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. To the Iraqi air defenses, the planes seemed to come from nowhere. Each aircraft was more than sixty feet in length and with a wingspan of forty feet, yet its radar footprint was the size of a ball bearing. Here was the first extensive combat application of Stealth technology. And it was devastating. Radar has been in use since the 1930s and was essential to the Allies in World War II, when American investment in radar exceeded that in the Manhattan Project. The atom bomb ended the war, conventional wisdom has it, but radar won it. That experience also raised a question: could a plane be developed that was invisible to radar? That question, and the seemingly impossible feat of physics and engineering behind it, took on increasing urgency during the Cold War. Combining nail-biting narrative, incisive explanation of the science and technology involved, and indelible portraits of unforgettable characters, Stealth immerses readers in the story of an innovation with revolutionary implications for modern warfare.

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Title: Stalin's War: A New History of World War II

Author: Sean McMeekin

Narrator: Kevin Stillwell

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 24 hours 56 minutes

Release date: April 20, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.11 of Total 54

Ratings of Narrator: 4.57 of Total 7

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin—not Hitler—was the animating force of World War II in this major new history. World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war.   Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary.   McMeekin also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed the Red Army.   This unreciprocated American generosity gave Stalin’s armies the mobile striking power to conquer most of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism.   A groundbreaking reassessment of the Second World War, Stalin’s War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the current world order.

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Title: Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War

Author: Jonathan Dimbleby

Narrator: Jonathan Dimbleby

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 22 hours 39 minutes

Release date: April 15, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 2 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941, aimed at nothing less than a war of extermination to annihilate Soviet communism, liquidate the Jews and create Lebensraum for the German master race. But it led to the destruction of the Third Reich, and was cataclysmic for Germany with millions of men killed, wounded or registered as missing in action. It was this colossal mistake -- rather than any action in Western Europe -- that lost Hitler the Second World War. Drawing on hitherto unseen archival material, including previously untranslated Russian sources, Jonathan Dimbleby puts Barbarossa in its proper place in history for the first time. From its origins in the ashes of the First World War to its impact on post-war Europe, and covering the military, political and diplomatic story from all sides, he paints a full and vivid picture of this monumental campaign whose full nature and impact has remained unexplored. At the heart of the narrative, written in Dimbleby's usual gripping style, are compelling descriptions of the leaders who made the crucial decisions, of the men and women who fought on the front lines, of the soldiers who committed heinous crimes on an unparalleled scale and of those who were killed when the Holocaust began. Hitler's fatal gamble had the most terrifying of consequences. Written with authority and humanity, Barbarossa is a masterwork that transforms our understanding of the Second World War and of the twentieth century. © Jonathan Dimbleby 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

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Title: Stalin as Revolutionary 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality

Author: Robert C. Tucker

Narrator: Paul Woodson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 19 hours 19 minutes

Release date: April 13, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

The first of two biographical volumes, Professor Robert C. Tucker covers Stalin's life from his first revolutionary years until the end of the 1920s. This important period of his life is the key to understanding how a dictator is formed and how his cruel totalitarian regime was born. With an in-depth analysis of Stalin's personality and beliefs—set against a historical examination of Soviet society—this captivating book helps us to understand how and why Stalinism occurred. Examining the events that led up to one of the 20th century's most devastating spectacles, Stalin as Revolutionary is an intelligent and informative take on this terrifying political figure.

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Title: Eve of Destruction: The inside story of our dangerous nuclear world

Author: John Hughes-Wilson

Narrator: Saul Reichlin

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 50 minutes

Release date: April 8, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

US President Harry Truman evidently understood the terrifying power of atomic weaponry, but no one could have realised its full potential when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those military attacks, along with the disasters at the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear reactors, might come to mind at the mention of nuclear destruction, but the majority of the events recorded in this book are entirely unknown to most people. This book records the facts - many of them still shrouded in secrecy - which show a worrying truth: we have teetered precariously on the brink of Armageddon far more frequently than the general public realises. Since that first and last atomic war in 1945, there have been a terrifying number of nuclear accidents and mishaps, from the careless or accidental to the genuinely intentional and only narrowly averted. Despite the catastrophic nature of any nuclear conflict, we have come to the very borders of such a situation eight times since the 1960s. These were potential conflicts, but there have been other accidents, such as the reactor meltdown at the nuclear generating plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979, or the 'Palomares Incident' in 1966, when a USAF B-52 bomber crashed after a mid-air collision, dropping four hydrogen bombs on Spanish soil . . . Eve of Destruction is a warning from history - recent history. It is a call to sit up and listen, and to take note of the very real danger of nuclear catastrophe. It is a timely and important book because, after all, the future of our planet has to concern us all.

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Title: Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777

Author: Michael Harris

Narrator: Eric Jason Martin

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 17 hours 30 minutes

Release date: April 6, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

Long overshadowed by the stunning American victory at Saratoga, the complex British campaign that defeated George Washington's colonial army and led to the capture of the capital city of Philadelphia was one of the most important military events of the war. Michael C. Harris's impressive Brandywine is the first full-length study of this pivotal engagement in many years. Though the bitter fighting around Brandywine Creek drove the Americans from the field, their heroic defensive stand saved Washington's army from destruction and proved that the nascent Continental foot soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with their foe. Although more combat would follow, Philadelphia fell to Gen. Sir William Howe's British legions on September 26, 1777. Harris's Brandywine is the first complete study to merge the strategic, political, and tactical history of this complex operation and important set-piece battle into a single compelling account. More than a decade in the making, his sweeping prose relies almost exclusively upon original archival research and his personal knowledge of the terrain. Told largely through the words of those who fought there, Brandywine will take its place as one of the most important military studies of the American Revolution ever written.

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Title: Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan

Author: Shrabani Basu

Narrator: Shiromi Arserio

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 36 minutes

Release date: March 30, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances. Shrabani Basu tells the moving story of Noor's life from her birth in Moscow—where her father was a Sufi preacher—to her capture by the Germans. Noor was one of only three women SOE awarded the George Cross and, under torture, revealed nothing but her name—but not her real name, nor her code name, just the name she used to register at SOE: Nora Baker. Kept in solitary confinement, chained between hand and feet, and unable to walk upright, Noor existed on bowls of soup made from potato peelings. Ten months after she was captured, she was taken to Dachau and, on September 13, 1944, she was shot. Her last word was 'Liberte.'

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Title: The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917

Author: Philip Zelikow

Narrator: Philip Zelikow

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 13 hours 14 minutes

Release date: March 16, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

This revealing historical examination looks at the pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War, when all sides—Germany, Britain, and America—believed the war could have been concluded and changed the course of history.​   Two years into the most terrible conflict the world had ever known, the warring powers faced a crisis. There were no good military options. Money, men, and supplies were running short on all sides. The German chancellor secretly sought President Woodrow Wilson's mediation to end the war, just as British ministers and France's president also concluded that the time was right. The Road Less Traveled describes how tantalizingly close these far-sighted statesmen came to ending the war, saving millions of lives, and avoiding the total war that dimmed hopes for a better world.   Theirs was a secret battle that is only now becoming fully understood, a story of civic courage, awful responsibility, and how some leaders rose to the occasion while others shrank from it or chased other ambitions. "Peace is on the floor waiting to be picked up!" pleaded the German ambassador to the United States. This book explains both the strategies and fumbles of people facing a great crossroads of history.   The Road Less Traveled reveals one of the last great mysteries of the Great War: that it simply never should have lasted so long or cost so much.

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Title: Return to Victory: MacArthur's Epic Liberation of the Philippines

Author: James P. Duffy

Narrator: Aaron Abano

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

Release date: March 16, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

General Douglas MacArthur's bloody campaign to defeat die-hard Japanese forces and liberate the Philippines   “I shall return,” General Douglas MacArthur promised the Filipino people following the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines in spring 1942. The people there believed MacArthur’s vow—and even Americans were stirred by his dramatic pledge. Now, two and half years later, MacArthur was ready to fulfill his promise--the liberation of the Philippines was about to begin.   It would not be an easy campaign. The more than 7,000 islands of the Philippine archipelago were the key to taking down the Japanese Empire—and the Imperial forces were prepared to sacrifice every man and every ship to prevent MacArthur from regaining control of them.   Covering both the strategic and tactical aspects of the campaign through the participation of its soldiers, sailors, and airmen, as well as its commanders, James P. Duffy leads readers through a vivid account of the nearly year-long, bloody campaign to defeat over a quarter million die-hard Japanese defenders in the Pacific theater. Return to Victory is a wide-ranging, dramatic and stirring account of MacArthur’s epic liberation of the Philippines.

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Title: Lutzen: Great Battles

Author: Peter H. Wilson

Narrator: Julian Elfer

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Release date: March 9, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) was Europe's most destructive conflict prior to the two world wars. Two of European history's greatest generals faced each other at Lutzen in November 1632, mid-way through this terrible war. Neither achieved his objective. Albrecht von Wallenstein withdrew his battered imperial army at nightfall, unaware that his opponent, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had died a few hours earlier. The indecisive military outcome found an immediate echo in image and print, and became the object of political and historical disputes. Swedish propaganda swiftly fostered the lasting image of the king's sacrifice for the Protestant cause against the specter of Catholic Habsburg 'universal monarchy.' The standard assumption that the king had 'met his death in the hour of victory' became integral to how Gustavus Adolphus's contribution to modern warfare has been remembered, even celebrated, while the study of Lutzen's wider legacy shows how such events are constantly rewritten as elements of propaganda, religious and national identity, and professional military culture. This book is the first to combine analysis of the battle itself with an assessment of its cultural, political, and military legacy, and the first to incorporate recent archaeological research within a reappraisal of the events and their significance.