Audiobooks by Phillips Payson O'brien

The Strategists: A bold revisionist history exploring the impact of WW1 on the decisions of WW2's most important leaders

"Brought to you by Penguin. Churchill. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Roosevelt. Five of the most impactful leaders of WW2, each with their own individualistic and idiosyncratic approach to warfare. But if we want to understand their military strategy, we must first understand the strategist. In THE STRATEGISTS, Professor Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they fought WW2. For example, Churchill's experiences of facing the German Army in France in 1916 made him unwilling to send masses of British soldiers back there in the 1940s, while Hitler's mistakes on the Eastern Front were influenced by his reluctance to accept that conditions had changed since his own time fighting. The implications of the power of leaders remain with us to this day: to truly understand what is happening in Ukraine, for example, requires us to know what has influenced the leaders involved. This is a history in which leaders – and their choices – matter. For better or worse. 'Entirely fresh, brilliantly insightful and utterly compelling ' James Holland © Phillips Payson O'Brien 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024"

Phillips Payson O'brien (Author), Mikhail Sen (Narrator)

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How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II

"World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half of the Axis's equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad, and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did."

Phillips Payson O'brien (Author), Peter Noble (Narrator)

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