The Barbed Wire University
The Real Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in the Second World War
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Narrated by:
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Peter Noble
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By:
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Midge Gillies
About this listen
Feature films have created the stereotype of the Second World War prisoner of war. But the reality was much more extraordinary.
POWs staged shows, concerts and sporting fixtures and took up crafts and pastimes using materials they found around them. Men studied, attended lectures, learned languages, sat for qualifications and exams on such a scale that one camp was nicknamed 'The Barbed-Wire University'. And often the years in captivity proved a turning-point in their lives.
Drawing on letters home, diaries and interviews with redoubtable survivors, Midge Gillies re-creates the daily lives of a truly remarkable group of men.
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Story
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape.
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Another chapter of history brought to life by a master
- By Steve on 09-28-22
By: Ben Macintyre
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Leningrad
- The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944
- By: Anna Reid
- Narrated by: Peter Drew
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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On September 8, 1941, 11 weeks after Hitler's brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The German siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation.
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Very Good Look at the History We Were Not Taught
- By Chris Reich on 01-27-14
By: Anna Reid
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Dadland
- By: Keggie Carew
- Narrated by: Pippa Haywood, Robert Bathurst, Tom Golding, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story and get to know who her father really was.
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Superb. Best memoir/history book
- By Readerwith opinions on 11-25-22
By: Keggie Carew
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No Surrender
- A Father, a Son, and an Extraordinary Act of Heroism That Continues to Live on Today
- By: Christopher Edmonds, Douglas Century
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Part contemporary detective story, part World War II historical narrative, No Surrender is the inspiring true story of Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville-born enlistee who risked his life during the final days of World War II to save others from murderous Nazis, and the lasting effects his actions had on thousands of lives - then and now.
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Personal and impactful
- By Rodney on 10-10-19
By: Christopher Edmonds, and others
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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The Nine
- The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
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Soooo good!
- By anne simpson on 09-28-21
By: Gwen Strauss
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Facing the Mountain
- A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
- By: Daniel James Brown
- Narrated by: Louis Ozawa
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil.
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Wow
- By Tbone McCoy on 06-13-21
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A Train Near Magdeburg
- A Teacher's Journey into the Holocaust
- By: Matthew Rozell
- Narrated by: Nick Cracknell
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The Things Our Fathers Saw in the World War II eyewitness history series comes this book, offering the true story behind an iconic photograph taken at the liberation of a death train, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. It's brought to life by the history teacher who discovered it and went on to reunite hundreds of Holocaust survivors with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
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important story
- By Amazon Customer on 04-04-20
By: Matthew Rozell
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For the Glory
- Eric Liddell's Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr
- By: Duncan Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.
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The challenge of a life lived for God's Glory
- By David on 06-30-16
By: Duncan Hamilton
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Hell and Good Company
- The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Christian Coulson
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause--defending democracy from fascism at a time when Europe was darkening toward another world war--and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work.
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Awkward approach to a civil war
- By sabas on 01-17-17
By: Richard Rhodes
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Out of the Gobi
- My Story of China and America
- By: Weijian Shan, Janet Yellen - foreword
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America.
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Must read for anyone!
- By Alice654 on 06-19-19
By: Weijian Shan, and others
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Dutch Girl
- Audrey Hepburn and World War II
- By: Robert Matzen, Luca Dotti - foreword
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was."
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Good story, poor narration
- By sas on 07-09-19
By: Robert Matzen, and others
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The Road to Station X
- From Debutante Ball to Fighter-Plane Factory to Bletchley Park: A Memoir of One Woman’s Journey Through World War Two
- By: Sarah Baring
- Narrated by: Polly Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1938, Sarah Baring was enjoying life as a young debutante. Only a few years later, at the height of World War Two, she was working alongside some of the greatest minds of Britain in their code-breaking operations at Bletchley Park. How did she end up in the top-secret world of cyphers and codes?
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Amazing historical fiction
- By Andrea Gengler on 07-23-22
By: Sarah Baring