Special Operations
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Special Operations
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Narrated by:
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Sam Devereaux
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By:
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World History
About this listen
The battle is won, the enemy driven out, and everyone can breathe again. Many field generals thought this - but generals often make mistakes. Throughout World War II, specially trained soldiers made sure that the enemy never rested in peace. Command units struck anywhere and at any time: a German general was kidnapped in the middle of Crete, while commandos liberated Benito Mussolini from his prison on a mountain top. And British units blew up factories in a Norwegian town to deprive Germany of important raw materials. The warring parties also employed trickery, like when the Nazis tried to undermine Britain’s economy with fake bank notes, or when the British planted false documents on the corpse of an "officer" detailing plans for an imminent invasion of Greece.
This issue takes you undercover on some of the war’s most daring missions.
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World History invites you on a fascinating journey to bygone eras, allowing you to explore the greatest events in history. Take a trip back in time - to the frontlines of World War 2, to the Viking raids, and the religious rituals of ancient Egypt. World History is for everyone who would like to know more about the exciting and dramatic events of the past.
©2021 SAGA Egmont (P)2021 SAGA EgmontListeners also enjoyed...
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2 out of 5 stars
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally, Dunkirk makes sense!
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One Minute to Midnight
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 881
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 734
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4 out of 5 stars
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On the verge of annihilation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A WWII Pacific Tale
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On May 24, 1940, Hitler's armies were on the brink of a shattering military victory. Only 10 miles away, 400,000 Allied troops were pinned against the coast of Dunkirk. But just 11 days later, 338,000 men had been successfully evacuated to England. How did it happen? Walter Lord's remarkable account of how "the miracle of Dunkirk" came about is based on hundreds of interviews.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sold On The Miracle Of Dunkirk
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4 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 star History!
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2 out of 5 stars
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engrossing
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3 out of 5 stars
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Kept me somewhat entertained. Forgettable though
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3 out of 5 stars
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 626
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 564
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 562
In the summer of 1942, an extraordinary group of men - among them a dentist, a medical student, a Hollywood star, an archaeologist, a British commando, and even former enemies of the Allies - formed an exceptional unit that would later become the US Navy's Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams.
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2 out of 5 stars
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This story had NOTHING to do with SEALs!
- By Michael "Benny" Benedict on 04-17-21
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Crete 1941
- The Battle and the Resistance
- By: Antony Beevor
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 107
Nazi Germany expected its airborne attack on Crete in 1941 to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. Little did they know that the British, using Ultra intercepts, had already laid a careful trap. It should have been the first German defeat of the war, but a fatal misunderstanding turned the battle around.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engrossing
- By Jean on 02-01-16
By: Antony Beevor
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No Mission Is Impossible
- The Death-Defying Missions of the Israeli Special Forces
- By: Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 143
In No Mission Is Impossible, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal return with the intensely absorbing, fast-paced story of 30 of the boldest missions of the Israeli special forces. Bar-Zohar and Mishal depict in electrifying detail major battles, raids in enemy territory, and death-defying commando missions while also sharing the personal stories of both soldiers and top commanders, revealing their hopes and fears. The stories are often of victories, but sometimes they're of immense failures.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Kept me somewhat entertained. Forgettable though
- By Oliver Nielsen on 05-06-16
By: Michael Bar-Zohar, and others
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The Rise of Germany, 1939-1941
- The War in The West, Volume 1
- By: James Holland
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 27 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 271
For seven decades, our understanding of World War II has been shaped by a standard narrative built on conventional wisdom, propaganda, the dramatic but narrow experiences of soldiers on the ground, and an early generation of historians. For his new history, James Holland has spent over 12 years unearthing new research, recording original testimony, and visiting battlefields and archives that have never before been so accessible.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good Book painfully read
- By richard on 01-21-16
By: James Holland
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The Fleet at Flood Tide
- America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945
- By: James D. Hornfischer
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 23 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,342
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,194
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,189
With its thunderous assault on the Mariana Islands in June 1944, the United States crossed the threshold of total war. In this tour de force of dramatic storytelling, distilled from extensive research in newly discovered primary sources, James D. Hornfischer brings to life the campaign that was the fulcrum of the drive to compel Tokyo to surrender—and that forever changed the art of modern war.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hornfischer's Philosophical Summary Up to VJ Day
- By Hollywood Dave on 01-08-17
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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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 811
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 731
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 725
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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4 out of 5 stars
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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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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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Overall5 out of 5 stars 3,960
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3,534
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Story5 out of 5 stars 3,519
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Astonishingly good.
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-01-12
By: Ian W. Toll
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The Rising Sun
- The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
- By: John Toland
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 41 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,967
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,625
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,620
This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."
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5 out of 5 stars
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A political as well as military history
- By Mike From Mesa on 07-30-15
By: John Toland
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Pearl Harbor
- From Infamy to Greatness
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 273
Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed 20th-century America - Pearl Harbor - based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times best-selling author.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Poorly researched, author loses credibility.
- By booger on 12-23-18
By: Craig Nelson
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The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 615
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 558
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 559
It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Needs a different narrator!!!!
- By Scott on 06-04-16
By: Neal Bascomb
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Tragedy at Dieppe
- Operation Jubilee, August 19, 1942
- By: Mark Zuehlke
- Narrated by: John Wray
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story5 out of 5 stars 24
With its trademark "you are there" style, Mark Zuehlke's 10th Canadian Battle Series volume tells the story of the 1942 Dieppe raid. Nicknamed "The Poor Man's Monte Carlo", Dieppe had no strategic importance, but with the Soviet Union thrown on the ropes by German invasion and America having just entered the war, Britain was under intense pressure to launch a major cross-Channel attack against France. Since 1939, Canadian troops had massed in Britain and trained for the inevitable day of the mass invasion of Europe that would finally occur in 1944.
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5 out of 5 stars
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When To Throw The Book At Someone
- By Nicholas Robinson on 05-12-23
By: Mark Zuehlke
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Target Tokyo
- Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor
- By: James M. Scott
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,148
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,043
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,035
The dramatic account of one of America's most celebrated - and controversial - military campaigns: the Doolittle Raid. In December 1941, as American forces tallied the dead at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered with his senior military counselors to plan an ambitious counterstrike against the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Vengence is Mine, Thus Sayeth Doolittle
- By Jonathan Love on 06-13-16
By: James M. Scott
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A Higher Form of Killing
- Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare
- By: Diana Preston
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
In six weeks during April and May 1915, as World War I escalated, Germany forever altered the way war would be fought. On April 22, at Ypres, German canisters spewed poison gas at French and Canadian soldiers in their trenches; on May 7, the German submarine U-20, without warning, torpedoed the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 civilians; and on May 31, a German Zeppelin began the first aerial bombardment of London and its inhabitants.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Informative
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-23
By: Diana Preston
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,844
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,469
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Story5 out of 5 stars 3,454
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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5 out of 5 stars
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INCREDIBLE! WELL-RESEARCHED, COMPLETE & UNBIASED!
- By The Louligan on 07-15-14
By: Donald L. Miller, and others
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The Last Fighter Pilot
- The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II
- By: Don Brown, Captain Jerry Yellin - foreword, Captain Jerry Yellin - contributor, and others
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 536
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 483
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 481
On the morning of August 15, 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin flew the last combat mission of World War II out of Iwo Jima. Today, Captain Yellin is a sharp, engaging, 93-year-old veteran whose story is brought to life by best-selling author Don Brown.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A history Air War in the South Pacific & Iwo Gima
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-20
By: Don Brown, and others
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The Aleutian Islands Campaign
- The History of Japan's Invasion of Alaska During World War II
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: David Zarbock
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
Fought over bitterly cold flecks of rock and tundra scattered across the remote waters marking the boundary between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean, the Aleutian Islands campaign represented one of the strangest encounters of World War II. Curving southwestward from the southwest coast of Alaska like the tail of a stingray, the rugged, volcanic Aleutians belong to both the United States and Russia.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Read by a robot
- By shurtz on 03-06-19
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Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs
- The Unknown Story of World War II's OSS
- By: Patrick K. O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 550
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 431
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 433
"A revealing look into the intrigue and extraordinary courage of our intelligence gatherers of World War II. A rare combination of suspense thriller and true heroism by a great American writer." (Clive Cussler, New York Times best-selling author)
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book...
- By Nicholas G. on 05-11-05