Discover the Best Audio Stories in History, Military

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/482733 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Opium War

Author: Brian Inglis

Narrator: Nigel Patterson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 17 minutes

Release date: March 9, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

1839. Trade is the stalwart of the British Empire. China threatens Britain's Opium trade. Britain and China go to war. When Britain sent troops to compel the Chinese to accept imports of opium, they opened what is argued to be one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Empire. How did the situation arise? How did opium exports become so crucial to the British economy? How did the British come to be as addicted to opium revenue as the Chinese were to the drug itself? Brian Inglis gives the answers to these and other questions in this meticulously researched study of The Opium War. Shocking, shaming, but fascinating throughout.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/460662 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Western Front: A History of the First World War

Author: Nick Lloyd

Narrator: Mark Elstob

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 20 hours 41 minutes

Release date: March 4, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. In the annals of military history, the Western Front stands as an enduring symbol of the folly and futility of war. However, The Western Front, by bestselling military historian Nick Lloyd, reveals that the story is not, as so many assume, one of pointlessness and stupidity. Rather, it is an epic triumph against the odds. With a cast of hundreds and a huge canvas of places and events, Lloyd tells the whole tale, revealing what happened in France and Belgium between August 1914 and November 1918 from the perspective of all the main combatants - including French, British, Belgian, US and, most importantly, German forces. Drawing upon the latest scholarship on the war, wrongly overlooked first-person accounts, and archival material from every angle, Lloyd examines the most decisive campaigns of the Great War and explains the achievements that have been too long obscured by legends of mud, blood and futility. Far from being an arena of static, stale attrition - and despite mistakes and wrong turns along the way - the Western Front was a 'cauldron of war' that saw unprecedented innovation, adaptation and tactical development. Lloyd conveys the visceral assault of the battlefield, and skilfully moves the focus in and out, giving both the bigger picture and telling detail. He recreates the decision-making and experiences of the war as it was at the time as well as with hindsight, and in doing so redefines our understanding of this crucial theatre in this monumental tragedy. © Nick Lloyd 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/466823 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Secret and Special

Author: Will Davies

Narrator: Steve Shanahan

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 54 minutes

Release date: March 2, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to 'obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories.' In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, In Broken Bay near Sydney, at Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the 'House on the Hill' in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin. From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies. The first operation was Jaywick in September 1943. Led by a 28 year old officer from the Gordon Highlanders, Captain Ivan Lyon. Using an old Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait this captured vessel was re-fitted and provisioned for a voyage from Australia to just south of Singapore where it released six commandos in three folding kayaks to attack Japanese shipping in the harbour. They placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships sinking 40,000 tons of shipping. After the successful attack, they paddled south, were picked up by the Krait and successfully returned to Australia. This was followed by Operation Rimau again led by Lyon but this time things went very wrong very early. Identified, they made a fighting withdrawal but all of the raiding party were shot or captured, with the last ten being executed just before the end of the war. Important in Z Special operations were a number of vessels designated 'snake boats'. Four 66' modified trawlers were constructed as well as a range of Asian vessels that allowed their operation in South East Asian areas of operation. One Z Special, the last in PNG, set out on the night of the 11 April 1945. Eight operatives were landed on the Japanese held island of Muschu about five kilometres off the coast near Wewak to determine the status of two 140mm Japanese naval guns that had been placed there. These guns would prove dangerous to planned naval landings at Wewak, and allied command needed to know if these were operational. The operatives were launched in four double folding kayaks from a HTML fast crash boat but the current carried them away from their landing position and the surf capsized their boats. The men swam ashore but both their radio and their signal torches had been destroyed and the men had no way of connecting with the return crash boat. Soon their lost equipment was found by the Japanese and a massive search with 1,000 troops scoured the island. Quite soon seven of the eight men had been captured, killed or died trying to swim to the mainland and only one man, Sergeant 'Mick' Dennis remained. Over the next three days he continued a one man war, fighting off Japanese patrols and living off the land. Unable to do this for long, he took to the dangerous shark and crocodile infested waters and with the aid of a log, paddled to the mainland. Landing on a Japanese controlled beach, he snuck ashore and after further firefights and a difficult journey travelling west, he finally was found by an Australian patrol. Mick Dennis was able to provide valuable information and for his service and bravery, was awarded a Military Medal. During the course of the war, Z Special Unit carried out 81 covert operations in the Southwest Pacific theatre. While the unit was disbanded after the end of the war, many of its techniques would be modified and used by Australian Special Forces to this day.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/460663 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Spymaster of Baghdad: The Untold Story of the Elite Intelligence Cell that Turned the Tide against ISIS

Author: Margaret Coker

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 48 minutes

Release date: February 25, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 3

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. The Spymaster of Baghdad is the gripping story of the top-secret Iraqi intelligence unit that infiltrated the Islamic State. More so than that of any foreign power, the information they gathered turned the tide against the insurgency, paving the way to the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Against the backdrop of the most brutal conflict of recent decades, we chart the spymaster's struggle to develop the unit from scratch in challenging circumstances after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, we follow the fraught relationship of two of his agents, the al-Sudani brothers - one undercover in ISIS for sixteen long months, the other his handler - and we track a disillusioned scientist as she turns bomb-maker, threatening the lives of thousands. With unprecedented access to characters on all sides, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Margaret Coker challenges the conventional view that Western coalition forces defeated ISIS and reveals a page-turning story of unlikely heroes, unbelievable courage and good old-fashioned spycraft. 'Authentic, moving, visceral, chilling, utterly revelatory, truly masterful. A stunning tour de force by an author who has lived every word of it on the ground. A story of our time that absolutely needs to be told' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo © Margaret Coker 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/487099 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Black Tulip: The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace

Author: Erik Schmidt

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

Release date: February 23, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

With over 1,404 wartime missions, Erich Hartmann claimed a staggering 352 airborne kills, and his career contains all the dramas you would expect. There were the frostbitten fighter sweeps over the Eastern Front, drunken forays to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, a decade of imprisonment in the wretched Soviet POW camps, and further military service during the Cold War that ended with conflict and angst. Hartmann was adopted by a network of writers and commentators personally invested in his welfare and reputation. These men, mostly Americans, published elaborate, celebratory stories about Hartmann and his elite fraternity of Luftwaffe pilots. Hartmann's legacy became loftier and more secure, and his complicated service in support of Nazism faded away. A simplified, one-dimensional account of his life has gone unchallenged for almost a generation. Black Tulip locates the ambiguous truth about Hartmann and so much of the German Wehrmacht in general: that many of these men were neither full-blown Nazis nor impeccable knights. They were complex, contradictory, and elusive. This book portrays a complex human rather than the heroic caricature we're used to, and it argues that the tidy, polished hero stories we've inherited about men like Hartmann say as much about those who've crafted them as they do about the heroes themselves.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/465654 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassinsand WWII Heroes

Author: Tim Brady

Narrator: David De Vries

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 0 minutes

Release date: February 23, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.18 of Total 22

Ratings of Narrator: 4.57 of Total 7

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad. Smart, fiercely political, devoted solely to the cause, and 'with nothing to lose but their own lives,' Hannie, Truus, and Freddie took terrifying direct action against Nazi targets. That included sheltering fleeing Jews, political dissidents, and Dutch resisters. They sabotaged bridges and railways, and donned disguises to lead children from probable internment in concentration camps to safehouses. They covertly transported weapons and set military facilities ablaze. And they carried out the assassinations of German soldiers and traitors—on public streets and in private traps—with the courage of veteran guerilla fighters and the cunning of seasoned spies. Tim Brady offers a never-before-seen perspective of the Dutch resistance during the war. Of lives under threat; of how these courageous young women became involved in the underground; and of how their dedication evolved into dangerous, life-threatening missions on behalf of Dutch patriots—regardless of the consequences.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/440197 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The York Patrol: The Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War I's Most Famous Soldier

Author: James Carl Nelson

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 33 minutes

Release date: February 23, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

In the vein of Band of Brothers and American Sniper, a riveting history of Alvin York, the World War I legend who killed two dozen Germans and captured more than 100, detailing York's heroics yet also restoring the unsung heroes of his patrol to their rightful place in history—from renowned World War I historian James Carl Nelson. October 8, 1918 was a banner day for heroes of the American Expeditionary Force. Thirteen men performed heroic deeds that would earn them Medals of Honor. Of this group, one man emerged as the single greatest American hero of the Great War: Alvin Cullum York. A poor young farmer from Tennessee, Sergeant York was said to have single-handedly killed two dozen Germans and captured another 132 of the enemy plus thirty-five machine guns before noon on that fateful Day of Valor.  York would become an American legend, celebrated in magazines, books, and a blockbuster biopic starring Gary Cooper. The film, Sergeant York, told of a hell-raiser from backwoods Tennessee who had a come-to-Jesus moment, then wrestled with his newfound Christian convictions to become one of the greatest heroes the U.S. Army had ever known. It was a great story—but not the whole story. In this absorbing history, James Carl Nelson unspools, for the first time, the complete story of Alvin York and the events that occurred in the Argonne Forest on that day. Nelson gives voice, in particular, to the sixteen “others” who fought beside York. Hailing from big cities and small towns across the U.S. as well as several foreign countries, these soldiers included a patrician Connecticut farmer whose lineage could be traced back to the American Revolution, a poor runaway from Massachusetts who joined the Army under a false name, and a Polish immigrant who enlisted in hopes of expediting his citizenship. The York Patrol shines a long overdue spotlight on these men and York, and pays homage to their bravery and sacrifice.  The York Patrol is a rousing tale of courage, tragedy, and heroism. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/465693 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman

Author: Brian Holden Reid

Narrator: Paul Heitsch

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 24 hours 53 minutes

Release date: February 16, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

In The Scourge of War, preeminent military historian Brian Holden Reid offers a deeply researched life and times account of William Tecumseh Sherman. By examining his childhood and education, his business ventures in California, his antebellum leadership of a military college in Louisiana, and numerous career false starts, Holden Reid shows how unlikely his exceptional Civil War career would seem. He also demonstrates how crucial his family was to his professional path, particularly his wife's intervention during the war. He analyzes Sherman's development as a battlefield commander and especially his crucial friendships with Henry W. Halleck and Ulysses S. Grant. In doing so, he details how Sherman overcame both his weaknesses as a leader and severe depression to mature as a military strategist. After the war, Sherman became a popular figure in the North and the founder of the school for officers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, known as the 'intellectual center of the army.' Holden Reid argues that Sherman was not hostile to the South throughout his life and only in later years gained a reputation as a villain who practiced barbaric destruction, particularly as the neo-Confederate Lost Cause grew and he published one of the first personal accounts of the war.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/442948 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones

Author: Larry Loftis

Narrator: Kate Reading

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 46 minutes

Release date: February 9, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.18 of Total 17

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER “As exciting as any spy novel” (Daily News, New York), The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring World War II spies before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman of No Importance and Code Girls. When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections. “[A] meticulously researched, beautifully crafted work of nonfiction that reads like a James Bond thriller” (Bookreporter), The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a spirited American woman who risked everything to serve her country.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/482720 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present

Author: Donald Stoker

Narrator: Paul Heitsch

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 3 minutes

Release date: February 2, 2021

Genres: Military

Publisher's Summary:

How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political objectives and a vision of what victory means? In this provocative challenge to US policy and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly limited wars. He reveals how ideas on limited war and war in general evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. These ideas, he shows, were flawed and have undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace afterwards. America's leaders have too often taken the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory, leading to the 'forever wars' of today. Why America Loses Wars dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow.