Try free for 30 days
-
Passchendaele
- Requiem for Doomed Youth
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $42.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
-
-
A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
-
Kokoda (by Paul Ham)
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was a war without mercy, fought back and forth along 90 miles of river crossings, steep inclines and precipitous descents, with both sides wracked by hunger and disease, and terrified of falling into enemy hands. Defeat was unthinkable: the Australian soldier was fighting for his homeland against an unyielding aggressor; the Japanese ordered to fight to the death in a bid to conquer ‘Greater East Asia’.
-
-
An absolute beauty.
- By Rowey555 on 27-04-2024
-
1914
- The Year The World Ended
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 22 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few years can justly be said to have transformed the earth: 1914 did. In July that year, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain and France were poised to plunge the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems and set the course for the bloodiest century in human history.
-
-
1914
- By Anonymous User on 17-04-2019
-
Monash
- The Outsider Who Won a War
- By: Roland Perry
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 25 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Australian General Sir John Monash changed the way wars were fought and won. When the British and German High Commands of the First World War failed to gain ascendancy after four years of unprecedented human slaughter, Monash used innovative techniques and modern technology to plan and win a succession of major battles that led to the end of the Great War.But Australia's greatest military commander fought as many battles with those on his side as he did with his enemies.
-
-
Very detailed and inspiring
- By Paul Davies on 05-07-2017
-
Vietnam
- The Australian War
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti - war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefi eld, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.
-
-
The best audio book i have ever listen to.
- By Dave on 12-03-2022
-
Hiroshima Nagasaki
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet the bombs were "our least abhorrent choice", American leaders claimed at the time - and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. Ham challenges this view, arguing that the bombings, when Japan was on its knees, were the culmination of a strategic Allied air war on enemy civilians that began in Germany.
-
-
A thoroughly engaging tale of the true story of the atomic bombings of Japan
- By The Nautrual on 06-09-2020
-
The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse
- From the Australian bush to the Battle of Beersheba - an Epic Story of Courage, Resilience and Derring-Do
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Richard Bligh
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons.
-
-
A great story of a great Australian event
- By Russell on 22-02-2024
-
Kokoda (by Paul Ham)
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was a war without mercy, fought back and forth along 90 miles of river crossings, steep inclines and precipitous descents, with both sides wracked by hunger and disease, and terrified of falling into enemy hands. Defeat was unthinkable: the Australian soldier was fighting for his homeland against an unyielding aggressor; the Japanese ordered to fight to the death in a bid to conquer ‘Greater East Asia’.
-
-
An absolute beauty.
- By Rowey555 on 27-04-2024
-
1914
- The Year The World Ended
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 22 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few years can justly be said to have transformed the earth: 1914 did. In July that year, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain and France were poised to plunge the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems and set the course for the bloodiest century in human history.
-
-
1914
- By Anonymous User on 17-04-2019
-
Monash
- The Outsider Who Won a War
- By: Roland Perry
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 25 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Australian General Sir John Monash changed the way wars were fought and won. When the British and German High Commands of the First World War failed to gain ascendancy after four years of unprecedented human slaughter, Monash used innovative techniques and modern technology to plan and win a succession of major battles that led to the end of the Great War.But Australia's greatest military commander fought as many battles with those on his side as he did with his enemies.
-
-
Very detailed and inspiring
- By Paul Davies on 05-07-2017
-
Vietnam
- The Australian War
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti - war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefi eld, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.
-
-
The best audio book i have ever listen to.
- By Dave on 12-03-2022
-
Hiroshima Nagasaki
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet the bombs were "our least abhorrent choice", American leaders claimed at the time - and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. Ham challenges this view, arguing that the bombings, when Japan was on its knees, were the culmination of a strategic Allied air war on enemy civilians that began in Germany.
-
-
A thoroughly engaging tale of the true story of the atomic bombings of Japan
- By The Nautrual on 06-09-2020
-
Retaking Kokoda
- The Battles for Templeton's Crossing, Eora Creek and the Oivi-Gorari Positions
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 16 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarō, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton's Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains.
-
-
get it right.
- By matthew brown on 27-03-2024
-
Somme
- Into the Breach
- By: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 19 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will be hard to ignore during the centennial year. Despite this, this book shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able repeatedly to break through the German front lines.
-
-
Take your time to listen
- By Julian on 06-08-2018
-
Monash's Masterpiece
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes operated together as a coordinated force. Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Peter FitzSimons brings this Allied triumph to life and tells this magnificent story as it should be told.
-
-
Wonderful story.
- By Ian Martin on 08-07-2018
-
Saving Port Moresby
- Fighting at the End of the Kokoda Track
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Powerfully written by Australia's leading military historian, Saving Port Moresby commemorates the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea. Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarō, commanding the South Seas Force, was tasked, after taking Kokoda Plateau in late July, with entering the Owen Stanley Range to capture Port Morseby. After the battles for Deniki and Isurava, his troops were pushing south through the mountains. The Australians under Brigadier Arnold Potts, however, were not in route, but were involved in a determined fighting withdraw.
-
Secret and Special
- By: Will Davies
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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."
-
-
Tuff buggers
- By tlcdc on 20-01-2024
-
Australia's Secret Army
- By: Michael Veitch
- Narrated by: Michael Veitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements. It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do any fighting, nor operate inside enemy-occupied territory.
-
-
Truly engaging
- By Bob Hartley on 26-02-2023
-
The Battle for Isurava
- Fighting on the Kokoda Track in the Heart of the Owen Stanleys
- By: David W. Cameron
- Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of Northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of ‘B’ Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud-covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia’s Thermopylae.
-
-
Battle history well written and read.
- By Anonymous User on 05-09-2022
-
The Battle of Long Tan
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking for Viet Cong soldiers. Then—just when they were least expecting—they found them. Under withering fire, some Diggers perished, some were grievously wounded, the rest fought on, as they remained under sustained attack. For hours these men fought for their lives against the enemy onslaught.
-
-
A reasonable look at an important battle.
- By DGC on 09-12-2022
-
Kokoda (by Peter FitzSimons)
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Lewis FitzGerald
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Australians, Kokoda is the iconic battle of World War II, yet few people know just what happened and just what our troops achieved. Now, best-selling author Peter FitzSimons tells the Kokoda story in a gripping, moving story for all Australians.
-
-
Compulsory listening...we must know this.
- By Phillip on 13-12-2015
-
Bill the Bastard
- The Story of Australia's Greatest War Horse
- By: Roland Perry
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence, and unmatched courage. In performance and character he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man - Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust. Bill the Bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together.
-
-
brilliant book
- By Eric on 17-08-2015
-
The Catalpa Rescue
- The Gripping Story of the Most Dramatic and Successful Prison Break in Australian History
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in history. Boston, 1869. Members of the Clan na Gael - agitators for an Irish republic - hatch a daring plan to free six Irish political prisoners from the most remote gaol on earth, Fremantle Prison in Western Australia. Under the guise of a whale hunt, Captain Anthony sets sail on the Catalpa, risking his life to rescue the men from the prison, known among the inmates as 'a living tomb'.
-
-
How did I not k ow this story?
- By Rob Aughey on 20-08-2019
-
Stubborn Buggers
- The Survivors of the Infamous POW Gaol That Made Changi Look Like Heaven
- By: Tim Bowden
- Narrated by: Tim Bowden
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.
It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.
-
-
A great read
- By Pano on 10-03-2019
Publisher's Summary
From Paul Ham, winner of the NSW Premier's Prize for Australian History, comes the story of ordinary men in the grip of a political and military power struggle that determined their fate and has foreshadowed the destiny of the world for a century.
Information: Passchendaele epitomises everything that was most terrible about the Western Front. The photographs never sleep of this four-month battle, fought from July to November 1917, the worst year of the war: blackened tree stumps rising out of a field of mud, corpses of men and horses drowned in shell holes, terrified soldiers huddled in trenches awaiting the whistle.
The intervening century, the most violent in human history, has not disarmed these pictures of their power to shock. At the very least they ask us, on the 100th anniversary of the battle, to see and to try to understand what happened here. Yes, we commemorate the event. Yes, we adorn our breasts with poppies. But have we seen? Have we understood? Have we dared to reason why? What happened at Passchendaele was the expression of the 'wearing-down war', the war of pure attrition at its most spectacular and ferocious.
Paul Ham's Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately, wiped out. Yet the men never broke: they went over the top, when ordered, again and again and again. And if they fell dead or wounded, they were casualties in the 'normal wastage', as the commanders described them, of attritional war. Only the soldier's friends at the front knew him as a man, with thoughts and feelings. His family back home knew him as a son, husband or brother, before he had enlisted.
By the end of 1917 he was a different creature: his experiences on the Western Front were simply beyond their powers of comprehension. The audiobook tells the story of ordinary men in the grip of a political and military power struggle that determined their fate and has foreshadowed the destiny of the world for a century. Passchendaele lays down a powerful challenge to the idea of war as an inevitable expression of the human will, and examines the culpability of governments and military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation.
Critic Reviews
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about Passchendaele
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David Martinussen
- 24-12-2019
Passchendale: A truly remarkable book
I’ve read many narratives on WWI. ‘Passchendale’ by Paul Ham, in my view, is simply without peer, for its insight and readability.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jordan61
- 22-07-2017
100 years on
Paul Ham is everything Other populist amateur historians and authors are not - accurate, respectful, a defender of truth and fact. In these days of alternative facts and fake gloss he doesn't try and paint over the raw experience to build some portrait of our nation's soldiers as being without fault. Rather he portrays the full panoply of their experience....the lows the triumphs and the impact acts on us all even now 100 years on.
My Great uncle died aged 20 with the Anzac attack on 4 October 1917 first day of the Battle of Broodseinde so dramatically described in this book.
A journey back in time I will not forget
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 02-06-2023
What a waste of human life
They should have hung Haig for murder instead the gave him an Earl. Only good thing was Aussies no longer fought under the British. Oh then there was Singapore. Time for a republic
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John
- 08-12-2016
Faultless
Amazing writing and excellent performance. As an already huge fan of the time period, Ham took my interest to new heights with his insightful and emotional count of those who lived that nightmare. Highly recommended!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 09-01-2017
moving and eyeopening
its difficult to believe that all those men were sent to the most unimaginable slaughter by incompetant, arrogant racists!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lee
- 28-07-2017
Riveting
What a well researched, well presented book. A must read for history buffs. Gives some great insights
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 08-08-2019
A tragic history.
Paul Ham has brilliantly explained the tragedy of the battle from every view point.
A extremely well researched and written balanced history.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!