Listen to Popular Titles Audiobooks in History, 20th Century

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Title: The Mariana and Palau Islands Campaign

Subtitle: The History of the Allied Victory That Preceded the Invasion of the Philippines

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Mark Norman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-28-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The powerful forces of the United States Navy (USN), Marine Corps, and Army advanced inexorably against Imperial Japan in 1944. Following massive interdiction of Japanese merchant shipping by American submarines and multiple naval victories, the Americans stood poised to liberate the Philippines, then move on to locations closer to the Japanese home islands.

In early 1944, arguments raged over the best approach to the "strategic triangle" created by Formosa, Luzon, and China. Finally, on March 12th, the Joint Chiefs of Staff - consisting of Admirals William D. Leahy and Ernest J. King, and Generals George C. Marshall and Henry H. "Hap" Arnold - issued a directive picking the next target: "[T]he most feasible approach to the Formosa-Luzon-China area is by way of Marianas-Carolines-Palau-Mindanao area, and that the control of the Marianas-Carolines-Palau area is essential to the projection of our forces into the former area, and their subsequent effective employment therefrom." The Americans' plans focused on three islands near the southern end of a 15-island, north to south aligned island chain: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. These islands, relatively large, offered space for the construction of large air bases within strategic bomber range of Japan itself, as well as closer targets.

The Japanese also recognized the strategic importance of the Mariana Islands, and Saipan in particular, given its location just 1,272 miles from Tokyo itself. This would place the Japanese capital well within the 3,250 mile range of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. With these facts in their possession and the Marianas as one of the Americans' most logical next choices, the Japanese worked to move both reinforcements and materials for new fortifications to the southern Marianas in early 1944.

Nevertheless, deadly USN submarines with determined crews seriously hampered these efforts. On February 29th, the USS Trout (SS-202), a Tambor-class submarine skippered by Lieutenant Commander Albert Clark, sank the transport Sakito Maru on its way to Saipan. This killed 2,420 men on board the ship, including a considerable portion of the IJA 18th Infantry Regiment. The Trout itself perished with all hands, either to depth charges from the destroyer Asashimo or from one of its own Mark XVIII torpedoes running in a circle and hitting it.

Many other transports full of vital war materials went to the bottom as the USN submarines interdicted Japanese ship traffic to the Marianas. Major General Ikeda Keiji complained, "We cannot strengthen the fortifications [...] unless we can get materials suitable for permanent construction. Specifically, unless the units are supplied with cement, steel reinforcements for cement, barbed wire, lumber, etc., [...] no matter how many solders there they can do nothing [...] but sit around with their arms folded, and the situation is unbearable." (Denfeld, 1997, 17).

The USN thus used its submarine superiority, to which the Japanese had no effective counter, to greatly hamper efforts to fortify and reinforce the Marianas. With that, the stage was set for the kind of deadly amphibious operations that would take place not only on the Mariana and Palau Islands but also Iwo Jima and Okinawa after it.

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Title: The Battle of Midway

Subtitle: The Greatest Battles in History

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Ken Teutsch

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-28-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The names of history's most famous battles still ring in our ears today, with their influence immediately understood by all. Marathon lent its name to the world's most famous race, but it also preserved Western civilization during the First Persian War. Saratoga, won by one of the colonists' most renowned war heroes before he became his nation's most vile traitor. Hastings ensured the Normans' success in England and changed the course of British history. Waterloo, which marked the reshaping of the European continent and Napoleon's doom, has now become part of the English lexicon. In Charles River Editors' Greatest Battles in History series, listeners can get caught up to speed on history's greatest battles in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

Although not as well-remembered as D-Day or even the attack at Pearl Harbor that preceded it, the Battle of Midway was one of the most unique and important battles fought during World War II. In fact, the turning point in the Pacific theater took place between June 4-7, 1942, as a Japanese fleet moved a sizable fleet intending to occupy Midway Island and draw the American navy near. Instead, American aircraft flying from three aircraft carriers that had been away from Pearl Harbor in December 1941 got a bearing on the Japanese fleet and sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers, permanently crippling Japan's navy. The Battle of Midway was one of the first major naval battles in history where the enemy fleets never actually saw or came into contact with each other.

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Title: The Katyn Forest Massacre

Subtitle: The History of the Notorious Slaughter of Polish Prisoners by the Soviets During World War II

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Scott Clem

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-28-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

During the late 1930s the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin and the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler reached a secret alliance, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. By the terms of this agreement, the two dictators divided up Eastern Europe between them, and for a time Stalin even sought Axis membership.

Though the alliance forged between the fascist and communist states could not survive their diametrically opposed views, they cooperated long enough to conquer Poland together in 1939. Of course, as most people now know, the invasion of Poland was merely the preface to the Nazi blitzkrieg of most of Western Europe, which would include Denmark, Belgium, and France by the summer of 1940. The resistance put up by these countries is often portrayed as weak, and the narrative is that the British stood alone in 1940 against the Nazi onslaught, defending the British Isles during the Battle of Britain and preventing a potential German invasion.

In particular, the campaign in Poland is remembered as one in which an antiquated Polish army was quickly pummeled by the world's most modern army. Polish lancers charging in a valiant yet idiotic attack against German tanks is the only image from the 1939 Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland remaining in the popular imagination today. Originating as a piece of Nazi propaganda, paradoxically adopted by the Poles as a patriotic myth, the fictional charge obscures the actual events of September 1939. Outnumbered, outgunned, and under-equipped, the Polish army nevertheless inflicted heavy losses on the invading Wehrmacht. In fact, only the unexpected advance of Soviet forces from the east put a quick end to the struggle and saw the Polish republic partitioned again after just 20 years of independence. Nonetheless, the campaign that started World War II was a bloody sign of things to come as the conflict engulfed the globe.

While the Germans performed the lion's share of military action in defeating Poland and reaped the choicest regions for themselves as a consequence the Soviets showed themselves no laggards in establishing tyrannical control over the Polish zone assigned to them by treaty. NKVD death squads, mass deportations, and systematic repression began almost immediately in the Soviet-controlled part of Poland.

The Gestapo applied their own forms of brutality in the German zone of the conquered nation, but the results proved starkly different. A large-scale, well-organized Polish Resistance movement flourished in the German zone, exhibiting high morale and an activist approach that testified to the relatively amateurish nature of the Gestapo repression random violence for intimidation rather than systematic quashing of all independence and defiance.

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Title: The Liberation of Paris

Subtitle: The History of the World War II Campaign that Freed the French Capital from Nazi Germany

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Jim D. Johnston

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-20-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

One of the most famous people in the world came to tour the city of Paris for the first time on June 28, 1940. Over the next three hours, he rode through the city's streets, stopping to tour L'Opéra Paris. He rode down the Champs-Élysées toward the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower, where he had his picture taken. After passing through the Arc de Triomphe, he toured the Pantheon and old medieval churches, though he did not manage to see the Louvre or the Palace of Justice. Heading back to the airport, he told his staff, "It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today." Four years after his tour, Adolf Hitler would order the city's garrison commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, to destroy Paris, warning his subordinate that the city "must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris." Of course, Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than 4 years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940.

By the end of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies had managed to successfully land 170,000 men, with over 75,000 on the British and Canadian beaches, 57,000 on the American beaches, and over 24,000 airborne troops. Thanks to Allied deception, the German army had failed to react to prevent the Allies from making the most of their landings. Just one division, the Hitlerjugend, would arrive the following day. Despite a fearsome and bloody day, the majority of the Allied forces had held their nerve, and most importantly, achieved their objectives. This ensured Operation Overlord was ultimately successful, and victory in Europe would be achieved within less than a year.

Given how the rest of the war played out, it's often forgotten that the British and Americans, after breaking out from their D-Day beachhead on the continent, did not free Paris from its Third Reich garrison. Instead, it was the people of Paris themselves, encouraged by the Allied armies putting the Germans to rout nearby, who retook the city, led by figures from the French Resistance. The revolt that emerged involved many factions, chiefly the followers of Charles de Gaulle, or the "Gaullists", and the communists of the PCF (Parti Communiste Francais, French Communist Party). These factions provided the spearhead and the catalyst sparking the people of Paris into rebellion against their Nazi masters, and the leadership coordinating that uprising and making it a success. Their rivalry and thirst for power spurred them on to outdo each other, but they all sought the same objective: defeat of the foreign occupiers.

The Liberation, once it began, required just one week to complete. Parisians fired the first shots on August 19, even as the Allies remained wary of trying to liberate Paris due to its cultural significance, knowing full well that Hitler could order the city destroyed. Nevertheless, on August 24, 1944, the French 2nd Armored Division began liberating parts of Paris, with overjoyed crowds of Parisians welcoming them, while the other Allies entered the eastern part of the city. General von Choltitz decided not to bomb Paris during a retreat, instead surrendering the city intact on August 25.

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Title: The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

Subtitle: The History of the Occupation of Northeastern China That Presaged World War II

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Colin Fluxman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-06-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Though scarcely mentioned in the world of early 21st century politics, Manchuria represented a key region of Asia during the first half of the 20th century. Once the heartland of the fierce Manchu empire, this northeastern Chinese region's rich natural resources made it a prize for nations in the process of entering the modern age, and three ambitious nations in the midst of such a transformation lay close enough to Manchuria to attempt to claim it: Japan, Russia, and China.

For countries attempting to shake off their feudal past and enter a dynamic era of industrialization, Manchuria's resources presented an irresistible lure. With immense natural resources coupled to economic activity more concentrated than elsewhere in China, this region, abutting Mongolia, Korea, the Yellow Sea, and the Great Wall "accounted for 90 percent of China's oil, 70 percent of its iron, 55 percent of its gold, and 33 percent of its trade. If Shanghai remained China's commercial center, by 1931 Manchuria had become its industrial center." (Paine, 2012, 15).

Thus, it's not altogether surprising that Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 resulted from a long, complex chain of historical events stretching back to the late 19th century. Approximately 380,000 square miles in extent, Manchuria came into Imperial Russia's possession in 1900 due to the Boxer Rebellion in China, but the Russians held it only briefly; their defeat in the Russo-Japanese War shook loose their control from important parts of Manchuria by the end of 1905.

The Japanese gained two important footholds in Manchuria thanks to their victory. One consisted of Port Arthur (renamed Ryojun by the Japanese), an economically and strategically vital harbor city on the Liaodung Peninsula, plus the peninsula itself. The other comprised the South Manchurian Railway, which the Russians gave to the Japanese as a prize of war, in lieu of a cash indemnity. The Japanese subsequently formed the South Manchurian Railway Company, mostly owned by the Japanese Army, and Japanese civilians began investing heavily in Manchuria's lucrative industries. Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs flooded into Manchuria, greatly strengthening Japan's interests in the area. The Japanese Army stepped up their presence in this economically vital region, creating a quasi-independent military force and government known as the Kwantung Army.

Naturally, the Chinese also wanted their portion of the tempting Manchurian feast. Unable to go head to head with the organized, thoroughly militaristic Japanese, they sent some six million emigrant laborers and settlers into the area as a sort of demographic occupation. Nominally Chinese but subject to massive Japanese investment and military infiltration, filled with bandits and rival chieftains, Manchuria hovered on the brink of another conflict in the 1920s.

The Kwantung Army deliberately shoved it over that brink in 1931, and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria is sometimes described as the true beginning of World War II. At the very least, it marked the expansion of Japan's imperial empire, its ongoing friction with China, and what would turn into a Chinese resistance campaign that would last nearly 15 years until the end of World War II.

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Title: The French Resistance

Subtitle: The History of the Opposition Against Nazi Germany's Occupation of France During World War II

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Kevin Kollins

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-01-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Adolf Hitler's self-confident Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure mobile French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, Guderian's panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk.

Not all French people proved willing to surrender to the Nazi invaders, however. While large numbers collaborated working for German or Vichy companies to provide for themselves or their families and some wholeheartedly backed the new regime out of opportunism, fascist conviction, or other motivations, a courageous minority operated in secret to resist their conquerors and the quisling state at Vichy: "De Gaulle described them as being bound together by a taste for risk and adventure [...] national pride sharpened by the suffering of their nation and 'an overwhelming confidence in the strength and cunning of their own plot'. [...] 'With him, it is [...] serving the Resistance and national honour, uncompromisingly demanding,' wrote one. 'With him, we would have to get used to breathing the rarefied air of the summits.'" (Fenby, 2012, 109).

The French Resistance never grew into a single unified organization. Rather, it remained divided in several major and numerous minor factions, each with their own philosophy and agenda. While these factions all shared the same goal opposition to the Germans their Vichy pawns they viewed each other with some suspicion and sometimes cooperated only grudgingly.

During the war years, however, the Resistance kept the spirit of an independent and defiant France smoldering under the surface of Nazi domination, waiting for the opportunity to emerge again, regardless of the precise political beliefs of its members.

Though exaggerated in scope and effectiveness by postwar legends seeking to minimize the widespread (usually involuntary) collaboration among the French people, the Resistance actually embodied a patriotic spirit determined to defeat Nazi totalitarianism and make France once again the nation of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" under the tricolor flag. Despite the faults, foibles, and occasional cruelty or criminality of individual Resistance members, the shared goal of defeating Nazi authoritarianism provided the glue needed to more or less unify the disparate factions. This defining aim also gave the movement resilience to weather the brutal suppression meted out by the Gestapo, the infamous Klaus Barbie, and the Vichy Milice.

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Title: The Battle of Wake Island

Subtitle: The History of the Japanese Invasion Launched in Conjunction with the Attack on Pearl Harbor

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Scott Clem

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 41 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-28-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

All Americans are familiar with the "day that will live in infamy". At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out America's entire naval presence in the Pacific, but one of the aspects of the war most forgotten is that the Japanese simultaneously launched concerted attacks against American targets elsewhere in the Pacific that the same day, including one against the strategically located Wake Island.

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Title: World War II Cryptography

Subtitle: The History of the Efforts to Crack the Secret Codes Used by the Axis and Allies

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Scott Clem

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-24-16

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

World War II stood apart in many ways from every earlier war, not least in the way that it reached to every corner of the planet and involved a noticeable segment of humanity's collective resources. Battles erupted not only on land and the sea's surface as they had for centuries, but also in the ocean depths and the windswept heights of the sky. One of the war's most crucial struggles happened in the realm of the unseen, inside the human mind and amid the invisible flow of radio waves. Every war is a battle of wits as intelligence-gathering, tactics, and strategies clash, from the level of individual action up to the grand, overarching schemes of generals and statesmen. Intelligence took on a freshly urgent aspect in World War II, however, as the fate of offensives, armies, and nations came to hang on the struggle to decrypt vital enemy radio traffic and military communications.

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Title: Capturing the Enigma

Subtitle: The Unsung Heroes of HMS Bulldog

Author: Patrick Spencer

Narrator: Jake Urry

Format: Unabridged

Length: 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-23-16

Publisher: MouseWorks Publishing

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

"The lieutenant descended slowly into the quiet and gloom. As he began to step down into the control room, he was gripped by a feeling of dread. Someone could be down there waiting for him."

Hitler's U-boats rule the North Atlantic and threaten to eliminate the Allied supply lines through meticulously coordinated attacks using Germany's secret weapon: the Enigma. Desperate to turn the tide of the war, British scientists at Bletchley Park work tirelessly to break the codes. But there is a problem. They need the German ciphers and a working Enigma machine. In this gripping story held secret for years, you'll join the crew of HMS Bulldog as they execute a covert WWII mission to seize a functioning Enigma and the ciphers Britain so desperately needs. The bravery of these sailors saved countless lives and crippled German naval operations, eventually giving the Allied forces the victory needed to win the war and end Hitler's reign of terror.

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Title: Dawn of Infamy

Subtitle: A Sunken Ship, a Vanished Crew, and the Final Mystery of Pearl Harbor

Author: Stephen Harding

Narrator: Richard Ferrone

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-22-16

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harding explores the little-known episode of a US cargo ship that mysteriously vanished, along with her crew, hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor, marking the start of a global conflict and sparking one of the most enduring nautical mysteries of the war.

On December 7, 1941, even as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft flew toward Pearl Harbor, a small American cargo ship chartered by the army reported that it was under attack from a submarine halfway between Seattle and Honolulu. After that one cryptic message, the humble lumber carrier Cynthia Olson and her crew vanished without a trace, sparking one of the most enduring nautical mysteries of the war. What happened to the ill-fated ship? What happened to her crew? And was she Japan's first American victim of the Pacific War?

Based on years of research, Dawn of Infamy explores both the military and human aspects of the Cynthia Olson story, bringing to life a complex tale of courage, tenacity, hubris, and arrogance in the opening hours of America's war in the Pacific.

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