
The Second World Wars
How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
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Narrated by:
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Bob Souer
About this listen
A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian.
World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya.
The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.
An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars, offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.
©2017 Victor Davis Hanson (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
For over two millennia in the West, familiarity with the literature, philosophy, and values of the Classical World has been synonymous with education itself. The traditions of the Greeks explain why Western Culture’s unique tenets of democracy, capitalism, civil liberty, and constitutional government are now sweeping the globe. Yet the general public in America knows less about its cultural origins than ever before, as Classical education rapidly disappears from our high school and university curricula.
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Required reading
- By Sotiris on 07-28-15
By: Victor Davis Hanson, and others
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Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
- By: Ian W. Toll
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.
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Astonishingly good.
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-01-12
By: Ian W. Toll
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The First World War
- A Complete History
- By: Martin Gilbert
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 33 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would officially end nearly five years later. Unofficially, however, it has never ended: Many of the horrors we live with today are rooted in the First World War. The Great War left millions of civilians and soldiers maimed or dead. It also saw the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare.
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Unbiased true facts of the first world war
- By troy a myers on 07-27-20
By: Martin Gilbert
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The Forgotten Soldier
- By: Guy Sajer
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 21 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When Guy Sajer joins the infantry full of ideals in the summer of 1942, the German army is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that for the foot soldier the glory of military success hides a much harsher reality of hunger, fatigue, and constant deprivation. Posted to the elite Grosse Deutschland division, he enters a violent and remorseless world where all youthful hope is gradually ground down, and all that matters is the brute will to survive.
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A Beautifully Written Heartrending Tragedy
- By Gillian on 03-31-17
By: Guy Sajer
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The Storm of War
- A New History of the Second World War
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 28 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won? Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war - the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism - as never before.
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A very interesting book with some shortcomings.
- By Mike From Mesa on 10-24-11
By: Andrew Roberts
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Incredible Victory
- The Battle of Midway
- By: Walter Lord
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning of June 4, 1942, doom sailed on Midway. Hoping to put itself within striking distance of Hawaii and California, the Japanese navy planned an ambush that would obliterate the remnants of the American Pacific fleet. On paper, the Americans had no chance of winning. They had fewer ships, slower fighters, and almost no battle experience. But because their codebreakers knew what was coming, the American navy was able to prepare an ambush of its own.
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Very informative
- By Jim Walters on 08-27-18
By: Walter Lord
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The Battle of Britain
- Five Months That Changed History; May-October 1940
- By: James Holland
- Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
- Length: 26 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Battle of Britain paints a stirring picture of an extraordinary summer when the fate of the world hung by a thread. Historian James Holland has now written the definitive account of those months based on extensive new research from around the world, including thousands of new interviews with people on both sides of the battle.
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The battle up to The Battle of Britain
- By Chiefkent on 11-07-17
By: James Holland
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Fly For Your Life
- The Story of Spitfire & Hurricane Ace Robert Stanford Tuck
- By: Larry Forrester, S.A. Steele
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Fly For Your Life is the official biography of Royal Air Force (RAF) Ace Robert Stanford Tuck. Thrust into a leadership role amidst the chaos of the Dunkirk evacuation, Tuck would distinguish himself as one of the RAF’s elite officers becoming the first Spitfire Ace. Further challenging times for Tuck would lie ahead in the coming months when Britain was in terrible danger. Nazi Germany was planning an invasion and the fighter pilots of the RAF would be at the forefront of Britain’s defence. In what would become known as the Battle of Britain; Tuck would show relentless commitment, ...
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This book is a great .
- By cynthia on 05-10-25
By: Larry Forrester, and others
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American Heritage History of World War II
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose, C. L. Sulzberger
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In planes and foxholes, in deserts and jungles, on ships and beaches, Ambrose shines a light on the people involved - the leaders, the fighters, the victims. With chapters on the atrocities of the Holocaust and revelations about the secret war of espionage, Ambrose's analysis also offers insight into the events that precipitated the Cold War.
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Excellent overview of WWII
- By Laura Kernen on 11-15-18
By: Stephen E. Ambrose, and others
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Shattered Sword
- The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
- By: Jonathan Parshall, Anthony Tully
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 24 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange's best-selling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida's Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle.
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Shattered Myths - These authors got it right?
- By Ol'BlueEyes on 05-13-19
By: Jonathan Parshall, and others
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The Story of World War II
- By: Donald L. Miller, Henry Steele Commager
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 24 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought - and whose outcome was in greater doubt - than one might imagine. This is the war that Americans on the home front would have read about had they had access to previously censored testimony.
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INCREDIBLE! WELL-RESEARCHED, COMPLETE & UNBIASED!
- By The Louligan on 07-15-14
By: Donald L. Miller, and others
The story behind the story of WW 2
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great commentary on World War II
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Really summarizes a grand war.
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Amazing work
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VDH - Always a Learning Experience
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WW2 a scholarly overview
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Content: Exceptionally comprehensive, well organized, clear, efficient chronological rundown of salient WW2 dates, decisions, actions, and consequences; Key civil and military leaders, their character, competencies and flaws, specified and tersely explained.
Overall: Superb overview all WW2 theaters from beginning of hostilities to end.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Excellent WW2 timeline
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Enlightening book
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Exceptional overview of WW II
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VDH wrote exactly what a student of WWII needs!
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