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Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front
- American Airmen Behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
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Publisher's summary
At the conference held in Moscow in October 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: The US Air Force would establish bases in Soviet-controlled territory, in order to "shuttle-bomb" the Germans from the Eastern front. Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked at the suggestion of foreign soldiers on Soviet soil. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Flying Fortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltava region in Ukraine.
As Plokhy's book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the nature of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for the same goal, Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched over the operations, shadowing every move. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Indeed, the story of the American bases foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the Grand Alliance and the start of the Cold War.
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- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times best-selling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days.
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Not What I Expected--More What I Needed to Know
- By DanD on 06-25-17
By: Lynne Olson
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From Warsaw with Love
- Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance
- By: John Pomfret
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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From the award-winning and acclaimed author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, From Warsaw with Love tells the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War. In 1990, soon after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who’d battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad.
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Fascinating and well researched
- By wacek szymkowiak on 07-23-24
By: John Pomfret
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Betrayal in Berlin
- The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation
- By: Steve Vogel
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Its code name was “Operation Gold”, a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries.
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Fascinating Book
- By Toni Bowes on 01-11-20
By: Steve Vogel
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Disciples
- The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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They are the most famous and controversial directors the CIA has ever had - Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Disciples is the story of these dynamic agents and their daring espionage and sabotage in wartime Europe under OSS Director Bill Donovan.
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A "Boys in the Boat" for WWII Intrigue
- By Annie M. on 03-21-16
By: Douglas Waller
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Grey Wolf
- The Escape of Adolf Hitler
- By: Simon Dunstan, Gerrard Williams
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No." As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: "We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death." What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence - some recently declassified - that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina.
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Intriguing and Utterly Engrossing!
- By morton on 10-27-11
By: Simon Dunstan, and others
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The Liberation of Paris
- How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz Saved the City of Light
- By: Jean Edward Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Prize-winning and best-selling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the dramatic story of the liberation of Paris during World War II - a triumph that was achieved through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, all racing to save the city from destruction.
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A great story, told with authority
- By An Alexandria music lover on 09-11-19
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Nuclear Folly
- A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
- By: Serhii Plokhy
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground.
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A Must Read
- By Robert from Brookline on 08-22-21
By: Serhii Plokhy
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King of Spies
- The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea
- By: Blaine Harden
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In 1946, Master Sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, then a backwater beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific Command. Though he lacked the pedigree of most US spies - Nichols was a seventh-grade dropout - he quickly metamorphosed from army mechanic to black ops phenomenon.
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Unplayable recording
- By Lin Tin-tin on 10-18-24
By: Blaine Harden
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Eight Days at Yalta
- How Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World
- By: Diana Preston
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the last winter of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin arrived in the Crimean resort of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the conduct of the final stages of the war against Germany, on how a defeated and occupied Germany should be governed, on the constitution of the nascent United Nations, and on spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Greece.
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The book has the best female voice narration.
- By Anonymous User on 10-05-24
By: Diana Preston
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White Malice
- The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa
- By: Susan Williams
- Narrated by: Chanté McCormick
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In White Malice, Susan Williams unearths the covert operations pursued by the CIA from Ghana to the Congo to the UN in an effort to frustrate and deny Africa’s new generation of nationalist leaders. This dramatically upends the conventional belief that the African nations failed to establish effective, democratic states on their own accord. As the old European powers moved out, the US moved in.
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A very good read.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-20-22
By: Susan Williams
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What listeners say about Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Shawna Hanley
- 05-01-24
A good book, not great, but good.
I enjoyed this book, but the story is a bit boring. He did a good job with it.
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