Spying on the Reich
The Cold War Against Hitler
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Narrated by:
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Julian Elfer
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By:
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R. T. Howard
About this listen
Exactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gathering momentum. His name was Adolf Hitler.
From 1933, these spy services watched with growing alarm as they tried to determine what sort of threat Hitler's regime would now pose to the rest of Europe. Despite intense rivalry and mistrust between them, the spy chiefs began to liaise and close ranks against Nazi Germany. At the heart of this loose, informal network were the British and French intelligence services, alongside the Poles and Czechs. Some other countries—Holland, Belgium, and the United States-stood at the periphery.
Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished British, French, German, Danish, and Czech archival sources, Spying on the Reich tells the story of Germany and its rearmament in the 1920s and 1930s; its relations with foreign governments and their intelligence services; and the relations and rivalries between Western governments, seen through the prism of the cooperation, or lack of it, between their spy agencies. Along the way, it addresses some of the most intriguing questions that still perplex historians of the period, such as how and why Britain defended Poland in September 1939, and what alternative policies could have been pursued?
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Story
As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by large segments of the population and firmly supported by the Nazi regime, Hitler is poised to subjugate Europe. Nine years later, his vaunted war machine destroyed, Allied forces sweeping across Germany, Hitler will end his life with a pistol shot to his head.
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Well worn ground
- By Mike From Mesa on 04-06-14
By: Ian Kershaw
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Stalin's War
- A New History of World War II
- By: Sean McMeekin
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 24 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east.
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Sean McMeekin Does It Again!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 04-21-21
By: Sean McMeekin
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1941: The Year Germany Lost the War
- By: Andrew Nagorski
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling historian Andrew Nagorski takes a fresh look at the decisive year 1941, when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.
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Interesting but problematic
- By Thor Olson on 06-14-19
By: Andrew Nagorski
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The Nazi Conspiracy
- The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill
- By: Brad Meltzer, Josh Mensch
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt had a critical goal: a face-to-face sit-down with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This first-ever meeting of the Big Three in Tehran, Iran, would decide some of the most crucial strategic details of the war. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own secret plan took shape—an assassination plot that would’ve changed history.
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Fabulous book!
- By Luke Einfeldt on 01-18-23
By: Brad Meltzer, and others
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The Sword and the Shield
- By: Christopher Andrew, Vasilli Mitrokhin
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 31 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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This book reveals the most complete picture ever of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe. It is based on an extremely top secret archive which details the full extent of its worldwide network. Christopher Andrew is professor of modern and contemporary history and chair of the history department at Cambridge University, a former visiting professor of national security at Harvard, a frequent guest lecturer at other United States universities, and a regular host of BBC radio and TV programs.
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Great book on the history of the KGB
- By Clydene on 05-28-12
By: Christopher Andrew, and others
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An Impeccable Spy
- Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent
- By: Owen Matthews
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union’s most formidable spy.
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Lots of Politics
- By Cynthia on 04-24-20
By: Owen Matthews
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Hitler
- Downfall: 1939-1945
- By: Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase - translator
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 29 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 comes a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures.
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Had to return because of narration
- By Thomas C on 03-26-21
By: Volker Ullrich, and others
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The Abyss
- Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Max Hastings, John Hopkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded.
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Good book, but has some issues
- By Mike From Mesa on 11-10-22
By: Max Hastings
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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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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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1983
- Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink
- By: Taylor Downing
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting, real-life thriller about 1983 - the year tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon. The year 1983 was an extremely dangerous one - more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the United States, President Reagan vastly increased defense spending, described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," and launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the country from incoming missiles.
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Great story, poor narration choices.
- By John Gray on 02-11-19
By: Taylor Downing
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Hitler
- A Global Biography
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary.
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A good biography with a different viewpoint
- By Timothy on 10-10-19
By: Brendan Simms
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Agents of Influence
- A British Campaign, a Canadian Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II
- By: Henry Hemming
- Narrated by: Henry Hemming
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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As World War II raged into its second year, Britain sought a powerful ally to join its cause - but the American public was sharply divided on the subject. The Canadian-born MI6 officer William Stephenson, with his knowledge and influence in North America, was chosen to change their minds by any means necessary.
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Shaken, not stirred.
- By Reeka on 06-21-20
By: Henry Hemming