War - World War 2

1945: VICTORY IN THE WEST

by Peter Caddick-Adams

read by Peter Noble

running time 25hrs 30mins

March 1945. Allied troops are poised to cross the Rhine and sweep on into Germany. Victory is finally within their grasp. But if they believe this victory can be easily won, they face swift disillusionment. The final 100 days of the Second World War will prove to be bitterly and bloodily fought, village by village, town by town. In Victory in the West 1945 acclaimed military historian Peter Caddick-Adams brings this closing stage of the Allies' fight against Nazi Germany brilliantly to life. He explores the immense challenges they faced in crossing the Rhine on a 300-mile front. Throughout he draws on a vast range of memoirs and personal interviews with survivors to give a vivid sense of what it was like to encounter enemy combatants and civilians face to face. Compulsively readable, this will be the standard work on the closing days of the Second World War for a generation.

633 SQUADRON

by Frederick E Smith

read by Gerald Sanctuary

running time 9hrs

633 Squadron's dangerous war-time mission in Norway.

70 DAYS FOR 70 YEARS: REMEMBER THE PAST TO BUILD THE FUTURE

by Naomi Cowan & Aubrey Hersh, Andrew Shaw

read by Derina Dinkin

running time 11hrs 30mins

A specially published book of 70 inspirational essays written by internationally renowned educator, historians and scholars marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - to be read one a day.

81 DAYS BELOW ZERO

by Brian Murphy

read by Richard Ferrone

running time 8hrs 30mins

1943: Five Army aviators left Alaska's Ladd Field on a routine flight to test their B-24 Liberator in harsh winter conditions. The mission ended in a crash that claimed all but one - Leon Crane. With only a parachute for cover and an old Boy Scout knife in his pocket, Crane found himself alone in subzero temperatures. Crane knew that his chance of survival dropped swiftly with each passing day. This is his story.

AGENT SONYA: LOVER, MOTHER, SOLDIER, SPY

by Ben Macintyre

read by Ben Macintyre

running time 14hrs 14mins

In the quiet Cotswolds village of Great Rollright in 1944, a thin, and unusually elegant, housewife emerged from her cottage to go on her usual bike ride. A devoted mother-of-three, attentive wife and friendly neighbour, Sonya Burton seemed to epitomise rural British domesticity. However, rather than pedalling towards the shops with her ration book, Ursula Kuczynski codename Sonya - was heading for the Oxfordshire countryside to gather scientific secrets from a nuclear physicist. Secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the atomic bomb. In Agent Sonya, Ben Macintyre reveals the astonishing story behind the most important woman spy in history and the huge emotional cost that came with being a mother, a wife, and a secret agent at once.

BANDAGING THE BLITZ

by I D Roberts & Phyll MacDonald-Ross

read by Annie Aldington

running time 9hrs

In 1938, 18-year-old Phyllis Ellsworth sets off from her quiet seaside home for Hackney Hospital in London's bustling East End, where she is to fulfill her dream to train as a nurse. But when Britain declares war on Germany, her eagerness to do good in the world brings her suddenly face to face with death and drama in all its many guises.

CAME THE DAY

by Jean Smith (editor) & Grenville J Davies

read by Bob Rollett

running time 4hrs 15mins

Grenville J Davies, a young man from the Welsh Valleys, relates his experiences when taken Prisoner of War at the beginning of WWII. Held in Stalag and Forced Labour Camps in Poland and Germany, his story is retold from a diary he was able to keep on scraps of paper obtained whilst in camp.

DAD'S WAR

by Howard Reid

read by Colin Burbidge

running time 8hrs 45mins

In Autumn 1943, Ian Reid, an officer in the Black Watch, escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Italy, and began a dangerous journey. Sixty years later his son sets out to follow in his father's footsteps across Italy.

EAGLE DAY: THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

by Richard Collier

read by John Hobday

running time 12hrs 30mins

Drawing on eyewitness accounts from both the RAF and the Luftwaffe, this is a compelling story of history in the making through an intensely fought battle, taking the reader into the heart of the action as told by those who fought and experienced it. The book not only captures the often savage reality of the air battles over the Channel and southern England, but it also traces the true course of the Battle of Britain as it unfolded between August 6th and September 15th, 1940 as the German and British Commanders made their fateful decisions, and Spitfires and Messerschmitts whirled and fought in the skies. It was in these six weeks that the fate of the war, and Britain, were to be decided

FACING THE MOUNTAIN

by Daniel James Brown

read by Louis Ozawa

running time 17hrs 40mins

On December 7th 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor. For many Americans, the surprise attack was a call to arms - but for the soldier sons of Japanese-American immigrant parents, it brought prejudice and scrutiny over where their loyalties lay. In Facing the Mountain, Daniel James Brown tells the unforgettable story of the Japanese-American men who volunteered for the US Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team and displayed incredible courage on the brutal battlefields of Europe. Achieving the impossible in often near-suicidal missions, including rescuing a 'lost battalion' surrounded by Nazis in the French mountains, the 442nd went on to become one of the most decorated units in US history. Yet at the same time, their parents were put in camps and stripped of their livelihoods, and an equally brave battle was being fought in the courtroom back home.

GAME OF SPIES

by Paddy Ashdown

read by Paddy Ashdown

running time 12hrs

The story of a lethal spy triangle with three men at its centre – a ruthless British secret agent, a Gestapo counter-espionage officer and a French Resistance leader. From 1942 until 1944 these three enemies were drawn into a cat and mouse 'game' of espionage and counter espionage in occupied France.

HANNAH GOSLAR REMEMBERS

by Alison Leslie Gold

read by Shirley Hall

running time 3hrs 30mins

Hannah Goslar was a childhood friend of Anne Frank, and here she remembers her own experiences in the war.

I AM FIFTEEN AND I DO NOT WANT TO DIE (X Rated)

by Christine Arnothy

read by Rebekah Germain

running time 9hrs 15mins

This is the compelling and moving narrative of a young girl caught by the tides of marching armies during the siege of Budapest in 1945. Christine Arnothy tells of the terrible experiences encountered by the refugees of Budapest, as the Germans and Russians battled for control. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

JACQUES AND LOTKA: A RESISTANCE STORY

by Aude Yung-de-Prevaux

read by Wendy Denison

running time 6hrs 50mins

In 1966, while browsing in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the author is confronted by an old man who insists she is the daughter of French Resistance heroes, Jacques and Lotka de Prevaux. She had never heard of them but that night her mother confirmed the old man's tale. Gradually she unravelled the lives and ultimate tragedy of her real parents.

KEEPING MUM: A WARTIME CHILDHOOD

by Brian Thompson

read by Brian Thompson

running time 6hrs 14mins

The author describes his childhood in Cambridge and London in the 1940s, where his mother danced the nights away with the Yanks and his father, who was always discouraging to his son, was mostly absent.

LANCASTER TARGET

by Jack Currie

read by Keith Crosby

running time 6hrs 30mins

A former wartime pilot, the author chronicles the daily life and death struggles against flak, night bombers and the weather, yet also captures the spirit of off-duty escapades.

MAIDENS' TRIP

by Emma Smith

read by Angela Holland

running time 7hrs 30mins

In 1943 Emma Smith joined the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to replace the boaters. She set out with two friends on a big adventure, freed from a middle-class background, learning how to handle a pair of 72 foot-long canal boats.

THE NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE

by Susan Dworkin & Edith Hahn Beer

read by Wendy Denison

running time 9hrs 15mins

Edith Hahn, a bright law student in Vienna was also a Jew, but with help she hid her identity from the Gestapo. Under her assumed identity she married a German officer, Werner Vetter, but after the war the marriage broke up. Eventually she moved to England with her daughter, who only found out the extraordinary truth of their survival in 1977.

THE OAKEN HEART

by Margery Allingham

read by Georgina Sutton

running time 9hrs 30mins

Margery Allingham, already a successful crime writer, was living quietly in the Essex village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy (‘Auburn’) when the Second World War broke out. Her house became an Air Raid Wardens’ post and a First Aid centre, and Allingham herself became responsible for 275 East London evacuees in a rural community of just over 600. Commissioned by American publishing friends to recount what life was like, she began The Oaken Heart in the autumn of 1940, when the Battle of Britain gave way to the London Blitz. Bombs fell, even on the Essex countryside, and a German invasion was fully expected. She conceived her work as an honest letter to America. Places were given fictional names but otherwise she told it like it was, whether funny or painful. Unsentimental yet personal and rich in detail, this is an evocative first-hand account of day-to-day realities in a small community upended and terrified of the future – like so many villages of the time.

PATHFINDER CRANSWICK

by Michael Cumming

read by Fred Parker

running time 8hrs

The extraordinary story of one of the RAF's most notable Second World War bomber pilots. Alec Cranswick earned the distinction of having flown the largest number of operations during the Second World War. In 1944, piloting a Lancaster bomber on his 107th bombing operation, Squadron Leader Alec Cranswick failed to return.

QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE

by George Macdonald Fraser

read by Sandy Morison

running time 10hrs 30mins

A factual, and highly personal account of the war in Burma, describing life and death in Nine Section, a small group of hard-bitten and eccentric Cumbrians. Fearsome, sometimes appalling, often funny and always a disturbing reminder of how the world and its attitudes to soldiers and soldiering have changed.

RADAR DAYS

by Gwen Arnold

read by Margaret Hodgson

running time 6hrs 15mins

Born in Bournemouth in the 1920s, Gwen Arnold takes us from her early years in the seaside town to her wartime role as a WAAF radar operator at one of the top-secret radar bases guarding British shores during World War Two.

SAFE PASSAGE

by Ida Cook

read by Grace Dives

running time 9hrs

No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook, two decidedly ordinary women who lived quiet lives in the London suburbs. But throughout the 1930s, the remarkable sisters rescued dozens of Jews facing persecution and death by posing as eccentric opera fans.

THESE WONDERFUL RUMOURS

by May Smith

read by Jane Colgan

running time 17hrs 30mins

A unique and surprising insight into life on the Home Front. Through May Smith's observant, witty and sometimes acerbic diary, we gain a new understanding of how the people of Britain coped with the uncertainty, the heartbreak and the black comedy of life during wartime.

UNBROKEN

by Laura Hillenbrand

read by Edward Herrmann

running time 14hrs

In 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared. But then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

THE VOLUNTEER

by Jack Fairweather

read by David Rintoul

running time 9hrs 45mins

In 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp. The name of the detention centre - Auschwitz. This account of his amazing journey, draws on exclusive family papers and declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp's fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

WADE MCCLUSKY AND THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY

by David Rigby

read by Keith MacKechnie

running time 11hrs 59mins

During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, US Navy dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky proved himself to be one of the greatest pilots and combat leaders in American history, but his story has never been told - until now. It was Wade McClusky who remained calm when the Japanese fleet was not where it was expected to be. It was he who made the counterintuitive choice to then search to the north instead of to the south. It was also McClusky who took the calculated risk of continuing to search even though his bombers were low on fuel and may not have enough to make it back to the Enterprise. This book is the story of exactly the right man being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Wade McClusky was that man and this is his story.

THE YELLOW DUSTER SISTERS

by Susan Kennaway

read by Judy Franklin

running time 9hrs 25mins

Nine-year-old Susie and her sister Gyll live in Watford but, as war breaks out in Europe and the threat of bombing looms, their parents decide to evacuate them to their aunt in Africa. Here they feel abandoned and alone and dream of escaping to England but when they do finally return home they find life has changed.

ZERO NIGHT: THE UNTOLD STORY OF WORLD WAR TWO'S MOST DARING GREAT ESCAPE

by Mark Felton

read by Mike Duffin

running time 9hrs 30mins

Oflag VI-B, Warburg, Germany: On the night of 30 August 1942 - 'Zero Night' - 40 officers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa staged the most audacious mass escape of the Second World War. It was the first 'Great Escape' - but instead of tunnelling, the escapers boldly went over the huge perimeter fences using wooden scaling contraptions. This was the notorious 'Warburg Wire Job' described by fellow prisoner and fighter ace Douglas Bader as 'the most brilliant escape conception of this war' Months of meticulous planning and secret training hung in the balance during three minutes of mayhem as prisoners charged the camp's double perimeter fences. Telling this remarkable story in full for the first time, historian Mark Felton brilliantly evokes the suspense of the escape itself and the adventures of those who eluded the Germans, as well as the courage of the civilians who risked their lives to help them in enemy territory. Fantastically intimate and told with a novelist's eye for drama and detail, this is a rip-roaring adventure story, all the more thrilling for being true.