Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in World War II

Born in the Philippines to an American father and a Filipina mother, George Cooper is one of the few surviving veteran pilots who saw action over such fearsome targets as Rabaul and Wewak. Not just another flag-waving story of air combat, Jayhawk describes the war as it really was - a conflict with far-reaching tentacles that gripped and tore at not only the combatants, but also their families, friends, and the way they lived their lives.

Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) 18 months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fuhrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war.

Telling the rousing story of a Jewish boy who fled persecution and returned to prosecute the Nazi oppressors, Walter Wolff's daughter Nina has reconstructed these events from family lore and her father’s own cache of more than 700 wartime letters and 200 photographs, which he revealed to her shortly before he died.

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" ( Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man.

Patton foi um dos personagens mais famosos e controversos da Segunda Guerra Mundial. General competente e carismático, ficou conhecido pelas suas falas pouco convencionais, como aquela da famosa cena de abertura do filme que leva seu nome. Originário de uma família rica e poderosa (sendo considerado o mais rico oficial do Exército dos eua na sua época), Patton era capaz de falar com a linguagem simples dos soldados. Seu poder de persuasão podia levar a tropa aos maiores sacrifícios, o que fazia dele um comandante amado e odiado ao mesmo tempo.

Né en 1921, Léo Major grandit à Montréal durant la Grande Dépression. Aîné d’une famille nombreuse, il développe une relation conflictuelle avec son père et quitte la maison à 14 ans. Son père lui dit qu’il ne fera jamais rien de bon dans la vie: Léo va lui prouver le contraire. En 1940, il s’enrôle dans le Régiment de la Chaudière. Après un entraînement long et exigeant, il participe au débarquement de Normandie. Dès son arrivée en sol français, il multiplie les actions d’éclat.

August 1939. Flirrende Hitze in Mitteleuropa. Das Korn wird gemäht. Ferienzeit. Es könnten unbeschwerte Tage sein, aber etwas Verstörendes liegt in der Luft. Die einen sagen, ein neuer Krieg stehe bevor. Die anderen schwören, der Frieden sei sicher. In diesem unruhigen August schaut die Welt auf den Obersalzberg. Hier verbringt Adolf Hitler seinen Sommer. Von hier aus wagt er ein riskantes Spiel. Hauke Friederichs erzählt die Geschichte jenes Sommers, in dem die Welt am 1. September 1939 um 4:45 Uhr ins Chaos gestoßen wurde.

Traveling 40,000 miles and inspiring love and despair in equal measure, Lt. Minter Dial's lost Annapolis ring altered the lives of many. The spellbinding account of one man's obsession with a family mystery - and the product of decades of research and inquiries - The Last Ring Home explores author Minter Dial's pursuit of the true story of his namesake, his late grandfather Lt. Minter Dial, USN, a celebrated war hero whose suffering and trauma nearly buried his memory forever.

During World War II, Heinz Drossel saved Soviet prisoners of war and several Jews, including Marianne Hirschfeld. Again and again, he wasn't afraid to risk his own life when others' safety was at risk. Nearly all of Hirschfeld's family members were murdered by Nazis; she survived in hiding - and met Heinz again by coincidence after the war was over. They married in 1946. At that time, starting over was difficult. In the judicial service, Drossel witnessed Nazis continuing with their careers....

Harold Guard became a war correspondent quite by chance, after he had been invalided out of the navy following a submarine accident. Thereafter, working for United Press, he gained a front row seat to many of the most dramatic battles and events of the century. In March 1942 Guard arrived in Australia, having narrowly escaped from Japanese forces invading Singapore and Java. His dispatches from that disastrous front prompted one observer to comment on “the crisis days when everybody except Harold Guard was trying to hush up the real situation.”

With his parting words "I shall return," General Douglas MacArthur sealed the fate of the last American forces on Bataan. Yet one young Army Captain, named Russell Volckmann, refused to surrender. He disappeared into the jungles of north Luzon where he raised a Filipino army of over 22,000 men. For the next three years he led a guerrilla war against the Japanese, killing over 50,000 enemy soldiers. At the same time he established radio contact with MacArthur's HQ in Australia and directed Allied forces to key enemy positions.

In July 1944, the 9,000-man Japanese garrison on the island of Tinian listened warily as the thunder of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, Army and Air Corps, descended on their neighboring island, Saipan, just three miles away. There were 20,000 Japanese troops on Saipan, but the US obliterated the opposition after a horrific all-arms campaign. The sudden silence only indicated it was now Tinian's turn.

A tutt’oggi Hitler e il suo carisma sono circondati da un fascino perverso. In questa nuova biografia politica, Hans-Ulrich Thamer riassume in modo pregnante lo stato della ricerca concentrandosi in particolare sul rapporto tra messinscena e potere, e tra consenso e violenza. L’autore – tra i maggiori esperti del nazionalsocialismo – mostra in modo chiaro e comprensibile come Hitler abbia reagito abilmente alle aspettative della società tedesca facendo diventare il culto del Führer la base stessa della sua politica.