The Somme
The Darkest Hour on the Western Front
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Narrated by:
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Mark Ashby
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By:
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Peter Hart
About this listen
The Somme: these words conjure the image of war rigidly fought by traditional means even when catastrophe clearly loomed. Relying on personal testimonies never before published, this study of those who survived the first day of battle (July 1, 1916) captures this epic conflagration from all angles. Follow the action as soldiers crawl across No Man’s Land in the face of German guns, struggle with the conditions in the trenches, and survey the scene from the air as the RFC tries to control the skies above the battlefield.
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With never-before-revealed firsthand accounts of World War I survivors, this is a comprehensive look at the Battle of Somme, one of the largest of the war, which took place on July 1, 1916. Listeners will be stunned by immediacy of Peter Hart's writing - it vividly evokes the battlefields, the trenches, and the fear of the soldiers fighting in the war. Especially striking are, of course, the personal testimonies of survivors. Mark Ashby's clear-as-a-bell narration adds a bit of calm to this gripping audiobook experience.
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By: Paul Ham
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D-Day
- The Battle for Normandy
- By: Antony Beevor
- Narrated by: Cameron Stewart
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned historian Antony Beevor, the man who "single-handedly transformed the reputation of military history" (The Guardian) presents the first major account in more than 20 years of the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Paris. This is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the French caught up in the fighting.
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A commendable book
- By Michael on 01-19-10
By: Antony Beevor
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The Battle of Arnhem
- The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II
- By: Antony Beevor
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 17, 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the groaning roar of airplane engines. He went out onto his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders, carrying the legendary American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne Division. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept, but could it have ever worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch.
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Fighting a lost war
- By Alec Drumm on 11-03-18
By: Antony Beevor
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On to Victory
- The Canadian Liberation of the Netherlands, March 23 - May 5, 1945
- By: Mark Zuehlke
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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It is remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs," the one that saw the country's liberation from German occupation. But for the soldiers of First Canadian army, who fought their way across the Rhine River and then through Holland and northwest Germany, that spring of 1945 was bittersweet. While the Dutch were being liberated from the grinding boot heel of the Nazis, their freedom was being paid for in Canadian lives lost.
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Confusing at times, narrator impossible
- By Charlotte Ward on 10-05-13
By: Mark Zuehlke
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The Darkest Summer
- Pusan and Inchon 1950: The Battles That Saved South Korea---and the Marines---from Extinction
- By: Bill Sloan
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The outcome of the Korean War was decided in the first three months. The Darkest Summer is the hour-by-hour, casualty-by-casualty story of those months---a period that saw American and UN forces almost driven into the sea by the North Korean invaders, then stage an incredible turn-around that reversed the entire course of the war.
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Great intro to Korea
- By I Ate Your Pug For Lunch and It was Tasty on 01-14-11
By: Bill Sloan
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This Kind of War
- The Classic Korean War History
- By: T. R. Fehrenbach
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 24 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This Kind of War is a monumental study of the conflict that began in June 1950. Successive generations of U.S. military officers have considered this book an indispensable part of their education. T. R. Fehrenbach's narrative brings to life the harrowing and bloody battles that were fought up and down the Korean Peninsula.
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Great narrative, frustrating redundancy
- By Ted on 08-16-10
By: T. R. Fehrenbach
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A Storm in Flanders
- The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
- By: Winston Groom
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Novelist and prizewinning historian Winston Groom's gripping history of the four-year battle for Ypres in Belgian Flanders, the pivotal engagement of World War I that would forever change the way the world fought - and thought about - war. This is Groom's account of what would become the most dreaded place on Earth.
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I love, love, love this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-16-16
By: Winston Groom
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Tobruk
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 23 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks... Eight months later these heroic, gallant, determined 'Rats of Tobruk' were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of Rommel's never-before defeated Afrika Corps.
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Fair dinkum
- By J B Tipton on 11-22-08
By: Peter FitzSimons
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If You Survive
- From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II - One American Officer's Riveting True Story
- By: George Wilson
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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George Wilson has garnered much acclaim for this shattering and enlightening memoir. Detailing his odyssey from July, 1944 until the following summer, If You Survive is a startling first-person account of the final year of World War II. Wilson was the only man from his original company to finish the war. As a Second Lieutenant, he went ashore at Utah Beach after the D-Day invasion amidst burned vehicles, sunken landing craft, and broken fortifications.
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the best story of the war in Europe I've read
- By David on 02-18-17
By: George Wilson
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Nothing new on the Eastern front basically!
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World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.
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A story of personalities
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They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam.
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Politically Neutral??.....Not.
- By Brett on 11-26-12
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The Last Battle
- Victory, Defeat, and the End of World War I
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Much has been made of - and written about - August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four years, the endgame seems to come as a stunning anticlimax. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns simply fell silent. The Last Battle definitively corrects this misperception. As Hart shows, a number of factors precipitated the Armistice.
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Is it over yet?
- By Rick B on 11-17-20
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The Americans at D-Day
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June 6, 1944, was a pivotal moment in the history of World War II. On that day the climactic and decisive phase of the war in Europe began. Those who survived the intense fighting on the Normandy beaches found their lives irreversibly changed. That day ushered in a great change for the United States as well, because on D-day America began its march to the forefront of the Western world. By the end of the Battle of Normandy, almost one out of every two soldiers involved was an American.
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Great Book
- By Byron Sarchet on 01-15-21
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Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
- By: Ian W. Toll
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.
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Astonishingly good.
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-01-12
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What listeners say about The Somme
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J.Brock
- 06-29-19
Unfathomable horror
There is no battle, or rather battles, that compare to the Somme. The death toll is unconscionable on both sides. Peter Hart brings the battle full circle, making the reader feel like a stunned bystander. And with this, taking it in is slightly more possible. Mark Ashby’s narration is spot on, not overly morose, but just right. The Somme is humanity at its worst, best, and somewhere in the middle.
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- Eric Erwin
- 05-22-23
Good history of an important battle
Balanced and well presented, this narrative is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of the words and stories of the combatants- both British and German
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- Jean
- 06-30-14
A fateful day
Peter Hart is the oral historian of Britain’s Imperial War Museum. Hart has written a well research book and has dissected the battle in detail. Hart mixes facts and figures with direct quotations from participants to help establish “the face of battle”. This narrative/analytical backdrop contextualizing the personal experiences makes for dramatic reading of the battle. Because of his job at the War Museum Hart has unrivaled access to relevant source material. The author vividly presents the run up to the “big push” expected to end the war, instead resulted in the disaster of the first day July 1, 1916. The British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, the greatest one day lost in the history of the British Army. Hart does make a point that General Douglas Haig (British Army) wanted to start the 1916 campaign in Belgium but French General Joffre the overall commander insisted on the Somme. The battle lasted for four deadly months.
The British had only a small army as it always relied upon its navy to fight its wars. Prior wars in Europe the British primarily control the ocean and relied on its allies to fight on land. In World War One the British had to quickly build an army so it depended heavily on its colonies to man the army. The 1st Newfoundland Regiment of the Canadian Army was virtually wiped out at Beaumont Hamel on the first day of the battle July 1, 1916. The Canadian army lost 24,713 men at the Somme. Most people have never heard of Delville Wood, but if you mention it in South Africa you will find it is still a place of fame, only 780 out of 3153 men in the South African Regiment survived the battle. A comprehensive study of the battle of the Somme (1916) found that a million combatants were killed/wounded. The British Army learned to fight in the campaign with numerous innovations such as walking artillery fire, and tanks were used for the first time.
The Somme occupies a hallowed place in British memory comparable to Gallipoli for Australians or Gettysburg for Americans, but on a much bigger scale. With just under a half million causalities this was the costliest battle the British Army has ever fought. As I listened to this as an audio book, I used the internet for maps and pictures of the battle of the Somme. I understand the actual book contained many pictures and maps. Mark Ashby did an excellent job narrating the book. This is a must read book for anyone studying the battle of the Somme.
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- JC
- 10-14-21
Amazing Book
I enjoyed the book both for education and it's immersive experience. The authors use of diary entries and down to earth narrative way really made the battle of the somme come to life in a unique way!
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- John
- 08-07-22
Devastated
What an incredible story surrounding the Battle of the Somme. I knew of it from general history but this book really places things into perspective at the lowest levels. Reviewing the aloof nature of the generals, the desperation of the officer corp and the sullen morbid fate in the infantry this was an experience just to read. Will read again but not soon. Got to calm down from the first read before jumping in again. I highly recommend if you are a history buff or retired military.
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- Lucas
- 12-04-22
Simply Brilliant.
This is more than a recount of the battle of The Somme, with exquisite taste the author has used the letters, journals, and official papers of those in the battle to tell the story. These make up the bulk of the book and the authors voice is sparse. Simply brilliantly done. Bravo!
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- Sam Watts
- 03-01-19
Western Front’s bloodiest battle
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this while driving back and forth to work. World War I has captivated my imagination ever since I read the autobiography of Harry Patch, “The Last Tommy”. Peter Hart captures the misery, the horror, and the soldiers perspective of this battle. I highly recommend this book.
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- Travis Dill
- 04-07-20
Unending horror
This book feels like you are listening to someone bashing their head against a brick wall repeatedly hoping to break through.
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- Marie McConkey
- 01-05-18
The human aspect of war
this book does an excellent job of bringing the numbers to life. I would highly recommend it!
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- Bow
- 07-07-16
The Somme kaleidoscope
An intense moment in history layed before you by the world treasure that is Peter Hart.
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