Countdown to D-Day Audiobook By Peter Margaritis cover art

Countdown to D-Day

The German Perspective

 Preview

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

Countdown to D-Day

By: Peter Margaritis
Narrated by: Roger Clark
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $30.09

Buy for $30.09

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness.

His superior, theater commander, crusty old Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had led the Reich to victory in the early years of the war, is now fed up with the whole Nazi regime. He lives comfortably in a plush villa in a quiet Paris suburb, waiting for the inevitable Allied invasion that will bring about their final defeat.

General der Artillerie Erich Marcks, badly injured in Russia, is the corps commander on the ground in Normandy, trying to build up the coastal defenses with woefully inadequate supplies and a shortage of men to fulfill Rommel's demands. Marcks is convinced that the Allies will land in his sector, but no one higher up the chain of command seems interested in what he thinks.

Countdown to D-Day takes a detailed day-to-day journal approach, tracing the daily activities and machinations of the German High Command as they try to prepare for the Allied invasion.

©2019 Peter Margaritis (P)2019 Tantor Europe France Germany Military Military & War Wars & Conflicts Western World War II Western Europe War Imperialism Middle Ages
Unique Perspective • Detailed Account • Excellent Narration • Historical Insight • Comprehensive Coverage
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Enjoyed the book immensely. It is a detailed account of the days leading the the Normandy invasion, delivered in a absorbing manner.
One of the readings you wish would never end.
Highly recommended to military history enthusiasts.

Unexpectedly good !

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found it a good balance of a compelling narrative accompanied by a good level of detail. The pacing was just right and I found myself wanting to listen to just one more episode… excellent narration maked this hard to pause.

Great narrative format well performed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Another rock start performance by Roger Clark, who never stumbles over German words 18 letters in length. Margaritis paints a phenomenal portrait of the inner workings of the Reich leading up to and through the first days of the D-Day invasion. Details abound, without diving too far into the weeds. Bravo!

Incredible

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I definitely enjoyed this book! I wish an editor had tightened it up as many other reviews have mentioned. There were so many repeat lines it was sometimes distracting. But again, it was fantastic at bringing to life the day to day lives of the Germans and comparing/contrasting how inefficient the German command structure was as compared to the Allies. One quickly realizes that neither Rommel or von Rundstedt stood much of a chance against the Allied invasion.

Desperately needed a good editing.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
With a new work on D-Day appearing on a seemingly weekly basis, one can be forgiven for overlooking this gem from Peter Margaritis. But for once, a book's claim of offering a unique perspective on the events leading up to D-Day, is actually accurate.

The vast majority of books on the topic focus either on the Allies' preparation or events from D-Day onwards, and certainly that is where most of the action was. But this work, which focuses on the superhuman efforts that Rommel and his staff undertook to try and put up some sort of defensive front in the months before the invasion, is utterly compelling.

Hopelessly short on everything from staff to equipment, Rommel's tireless - truly tireless, the man barely ever slept - quest to shore up the Western front is an inspiring study of keeping heart in impossible and, ultimately, hopeless circumstances.

Long, detailed and filled to the brim with the kinds of minutiae that make WW2 enthusiasts dizzy with excitement, I heartily recommend this.

An unexpected gem

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Peter Margaritas has a narrative masterpiece with this work. Yes it is dense, and yes it is VERY detailed. But that shouldn't deter anyone with interest in the subject. And yes, it is Rommel-centric to the point of ignoring everyone else. But one has to remember that Rommel was that important to the lead up to D-Day and German command in the most chaotic years of 1943-1944. What Margaritas does so well is detail a German command in complete confusion and under no illusions that the war is winnable. And therefore Hitler and his commanders toggle between euphoria and despair from moment to moment. And all the while the Allied invasion is assured, a plan to assassinate Hitler is underway, involving key persons in all areas of German hierarchy. It's truly a wonder. And Roger Clark is a main reason to listen. He's extraordinary when narrating a work like this. Not many can pull this off. He brings history to life, which is a gift in itself. BRAVO.

Unbelievable Minute Detail

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enthralling. I could not put this book down. A must read for WW2 buffs.

Grrrrrate WW2 history insight.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author, at the very beginning, voices his misgivings about having chosen to tell this story in the present tense. Well, that made my ears snap to attention; because I myself am writing an account of just one of my father's missions as a Radio Operator in a B-24 from Rackheath, Norfolk, England, over the Reich that took place on Christmas Eve, 1944. (Maximum-effort Mission 760)

Yet how *my* tale came to be told that way was not a conscious choice made by an author of military histories—indeed, by a non-author of *nothing*—but merely a bolt from the blue one morning as I was typing away and suddenly, randomly I sat up with a sigh and ditched the entire story I'd been working on for months—written in traditional historical style, in the past tense—and suddenly began typing, quite beyond my conscious control, in the present tense.

On later reflection I realised that this was (had been?) a stroke of genius, because it meant there could be no future in the story; we, the readers, would be confined to knowing only what my dad knew at the time, and anything in his past I could deal with by careful administration of various past tense-forms—had been, was, "apparently having been" and so on.

But I found this format positively STREWN with mines . . . I found out that it was deucedly tricky getting all the participles and clauses where they should be (have been? See what I mean?)

At any rate, it took quite a while for me to adjust to this incredibly novel way of telling a story, but it allowed me to enter my dad's *MIND* and have a direct window into his (imagined) thoughts, which ranged from gibbering terror to sardonic casualness—indeed, the ONLY way I ever could have chosen to write the story.

In this book, though, he seems uncertain; he trips up constantly, and I don't know if it's the narrator slipping into the past when he should be in the present ("Rommel hastily dons his uniform and says his goodbyes to Lucy and Mannfred. His car left that morning at 11:35."

It's jarring, and calls into question his decision to do it in the present. He doesn't have any of the constraints I created for my own story, but nonetheless he has to be juggling several tenses and shades of tenses at all times, a daunting task for any writer, and although I highly respect his decision to do it this way, I also wonder if in his case, he had no idea how tense things could get a ways down the road.

A Case Of The Past: Tense

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great way to really know what happened in Normandy 1944. Rommel changed everything. THANK goodness the top Germans didn't let Rommel have his Way with the tanks. JUST think about it. Had they let Rommel have his Way. I believe D-DAY would have failed or could have been another anzio.

Rommel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Written from the German perspective, particularly that of the brilliant general Erwin Rommel. Book is not ideologically driven but purely from a perspective that we ordinarily do not read.

Unique Perspective on D-Day

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews