Taking Berlin

The Bloody Race to Defeat the Third Reich

By: Martin Dugard

Narrated by: Samuel Roukin

From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, comes a nonfiction thriller about the race between the Allies and Soviets to conquer the heart of Nazi Germany.

“Gripping, popular history at its page-turning best.”—Alex Kershaw • “With the precision of a smart bomb, Martin Dugard puts the reader directly into the campaign to destroy Hitler.”—Bill O’Reilly • “Spectacular . . . Taking Berlin is certain to be a massive hit with fans of both history and thrillers alike.”—Mark Greaney, bestselling author of the Gray Man series

Fall, 1944. Paris has been liberated, saved from destruction, but this diversion on the road to Berlin has given the Germans time to regroup. The American and British armies press on from the west, facing the enemy time and again in the Hurtgen Forest, during the Market Garden invasion, and at the Battle of the Bulge, all while American general George Patton and British field marshal Bernard Montgomery vie for supremacy as the Allies’ top battlefield commander.

Meanwhile, the Soviets begin to squeeze Hitler’s crumbling Reich from the east. Led by Generals Zhukov and Konev, the Red Army launches millions of soldiers, backed by tanks, artillery, and warplanes, against the Germans, leaving death and scorched earth in their wake, pushing the Wehrmacht back toward their fatherland. As both the Anglo-American alliance and the Soviets set their sights on claiming the capital city of Nazi Germany, Churchill seeks to ensure Britain’s place in a new world divided by Roosevelt’s America and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

With a sweeping cast of historical figures, Taking Berlin is a pulse-pounding race into the final, desperate months of the Second World War and toward the fiery destruction of the Thousand-Year-Reich, chronicling a moment in history when allies become adversaries.

©2022 Martin Dugard (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Dugard writes with vibrant clarity and verve, bringing history to bold life. . . . Taking Berlin is cinematic in its approach and epic in its scope, while told in a compact 300-plus pages. . . . Another prime destination in this winning series.”—The Valdosta Daily Times

“Dugard's latest engaging history book features a fascinating narrative of intrigue in the waning days of WWII. From the perspectives of both the Allied and Axis powers, Dugard shows how victory often appeared as proximate as agonizing defeat.”—Booklist

“A kaleidoscopic account of the Allies’ campaign to capture Berlin in the final months of WWII . . . Dugard’s terse prose and use of present tense keeps the action humming, and he skillfully mines his subjects’ personal writings. This fast-paced history is well worth the read.”—Publishers Weekly

I was in the 82nd Airborne. I now have a much better grasp of what actually happened.

I love history. The reader can tell that the author did a lot of research. I loved it!!

Great listen that details the Western front of WWII.

The story is very detailed and takes the listener behind the lines with the politicians and military leaders that controlled the Great War.

Insightful!

Hurtgen Forest must have been hell on Earth.
Highly recommend this book to those that try to understand evil.

Excellent book!

Very insightful historical evaluation of many personalities involved in many of the main battles of World War 2.

The ending sucked

Great stuff until the afterwords when the author starts talking about modern politics and reveals his ignorance

Great historical book - highly recommend

Have always enjoyed books by Martin Dugard & this one was one of my favorites. Highly recommend for the details in the book as well as the reading performance. Recommending it to family members as one to listen to or read.

Excellent book

Great listen. Thoroughly enjoyed the detailed history and human experience expressed in this book. Well researched.

absolutely amazing

being a history major, i was skeptical about listening to a book about WWII, scared it would be a repeating tale of numerous other publications. needless to say, this is not like the others.

between Martin’s writing style and Samuel’s narration, it felt like a story, a retelling of history rather than a stuffy textbook.

as for the last ten minutes. bruh- i dunno what those commenters are thinking, saying “author let their own political opinions into the book.”
do y’ins not know how history works? Martin did not write one way or another - it was a simple retelling of facts. that’s how writing history works.
also, “ignore the last 10 minutes”??? y’all sound goofy, it was literally a minute of a recent history report.🥴🥴

anyway, all in all, amazingly done.

An enjoyable book

Taking Berlin is a very good book on the subject. The author does a very good job at bringing the conflict to life through the words of Generals Patton, Gavin and Rommel, journalist Martha Gelhorn (Ernest Hemingway’s wife), Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. The author weaved in the political complexities and concessions made by General Eisenhower. Eisenhower himself comes off as a buffoon more concerned about soothing British egos than victory.

Excellent book

I have read a huge number of the books on this period and found this author and narrator a real pleasure. Broad scale histories can be tedious to some who was raised by veterans of this era and has read all their lives. Presenting information in a new way is a challenge. Great read