The First Soldier
Hitler as Military Leader
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Narrated by:
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P.J. Ochlan
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By:
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Stephen G. Fritz
About this listen
A leading expert reexamines history to offer a stunningly original portrait of Hitler as a competent military commander and strategist.
After Germany's humiliating World War II defeat, numerous German generals published memoirs claiming that their country's brilliant military leadership had been undermined by the Führer's erratic decision making. The author of three highly acclaimed books on the era, Stephen Fritz upends this characterization of Hitler as an ill-informed fantasist and demonstrates the ways in which his strategy was coherent and even competent.
That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany's fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler's tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler's thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy.
©2018 Stephen G. Fritz (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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"Perhaps the best account we have to date of Hitler's military leadership. It shows a scrupulous and imaginative historian at work and will cement Fritz's reputation as one of the leading historians of the military conflicts generated by Hitler's Germany." (Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War)
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America's War for the Greater Middle East
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- By: Andrew J. Bacevich
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro, Andrew J. Bacevich
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.
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A Key to Understanding the US Need for Perp. War
- By Darwin8u on 05-01-16
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The Grand Design
- Strategy and the U.S. Civil War
- By: Donald Stoker
- Narrated by: Thomas Dunn
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in union and southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them - or how they often failed to do so.
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Shoddy
- By Glenn on 12-26-13
By: Donald Stoker
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How Wars End
- Why We Always Fight the Last Battle
- By: Gideon Rose
- Narrated by: Gideon Rose
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1991, the United States Army trounced the Iraqi army in battle only to stumble blindly into postwar turmoil. Then in 2003 the United States did it again. How could this happen? How could the strongest power in modern history fight two wars against the same opponent in just over a decade, win lightning victories both times, and yet still be woefully unprepared for the aftermath? Because Americans always forget the political aspects of war.
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Excellent book
- By Luis on 11-04-10
By: Gideon Rose
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Haig's Enemy
- Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany's War on the Western Front
- By: Jonathan Boff
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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During the First World War, the British army's most consistent German opponent was Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Commanding more than a million men as a General, and then Field Marshal, in the Imperial German Army, he held off the attacks of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French and then Sir Douglas Haig for four long years. But Rupprecht was to lose not only the war, but his son and his throne. In Haig's Enemy, Jonathan Boff explores the tragic tale of Rupprecht's war - the story of a man caught under the wheels of modern industrial warfare.
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Insightful look inside dysfunctional WW1 Germany
- By J.Brock on 11-04-19
By: Jonathan Boff
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Hitler's Soldiers
- The German Army in the Third Reich
- By: Ben H. Shepherd
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 26 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and occupation.
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Thorough and scholarly
- By Mary A. on 03-23-18
By: Ben H. Shepherd
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Strategy
- The Indirect Approach
- By: B.H. Liddell Hart
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibility, surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in World War I) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkreig in World II). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: Just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.
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Wrong Edition
- By Anonymous User on 02-20-20
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Collision of Empires
- The War on the Eastern Front in 1914
- By: Prit Buttar
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 21 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires - Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany - remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War. With the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely expose of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front - a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever.
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Best book non-fiction book ever on the Eastern Front in 1914
- By HistoricalReader on 01-31-18
By: Prit Buttar
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Reconsidering the American Way of War
- US Military Practice from the Revolution to Afghanistan
- By: Antulio Joseph Echevarria
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook challenges several longstanding notions about the American way of war. It examines US military practice (strategic and operational) from the War of Independence to the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to determine what patterns, if any, existed in the way Americans have used military force. Echevarria surveys all major US wars and most every small conflict in the country's military history.
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Excellent overview of complex subject
- By Joe on 11-25-14
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Embers of War
- The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 32 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In this landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam, author Fredrik Logevall taps newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina - and describes how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history.
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Understanding Why We failed the People of Vietnam
- By VA on 03-22-21
By: Fredrik Logevall
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The Vietnam War
- A Concise International History
- By: Mark Atwood Lawrence
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as a "pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic" ( Kirkus Reviews), this wide-ranging volume offers a superb account of a key moment in modern U.S. and world history. Drawing upon the latest research in archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark Lawrence creates an extraordinary, panoramic view of all sides of the war.
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Politically Slanting But Enjoyable Narrative
- By Jonathan Hoyle on 04-11-14
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What listeners say about The First Soldier
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hendrick
- 11-08-23
A Rational View of a Mythologized War
In every war story, the storyteller invariably blames everything on his commander. This transcends nations, ranks, and centuries. The First Soldier turns a critical eye to the testimony of German generals who served under Adolf Hitler, understanding that their testimony would be motivated by self preservation, a desire to save face, and simple ego, and that their fabrications would be accepted at face value because they were useful to the new order they found themselves in. A great deal is revealed about Adolf Hitler's psychology, ideology, and motivations, and the reasons he clashed with his military's high command. As always, the truth is far more complex than the simple fictions that make up pop history.
PJ Ochlan is a wonderful narrator who pronounced German words and names perfectly. I highly recommend this book, perhaps to be read alongside Deathride, which similarly cross examines the postwar myth-making of Russia.
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- Gregory Maus
- 06-30-24
Interesting perspectives of WW2.
It does a decent job of revealing interesting perspectives of WW2, though it did seem to sometimes miss the mark in its characterizations of WW1. The absolute destruction and suffering wrought by the first war played an important role in the 2nd. The causes were also quite different.
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