Europe Audiobooks | Travel

The Battle of North Cape: The Death Ride of the Scharnhorst, 1943

On 25 December 1943 the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst slipped out Altenfjord in Norway to attack Arctic convoy JW55B which was carrying vital war supplies to the Soviet Union. But British naval intelligence knew of the Scharnhorst's mission before she sailed and the vulnerable convoy was protected by a large Royal Naval force including the battleship Duke of York. In effect the Scharnhorst was sailing into a trap. One of the most compelling naval dramas of the Second World War had begun.

Angus Konstam (Author), Chris Bland (Narrator)

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The Battle of Monte Cassino: The History of the Battle for Rome during World War II

Germany's North African defeat opened up the possibility of taking the war in the west to the European continent for the first time since France's lightning conquest by the Wehrmacht in 1940. The British and Americans debated the merits of landing in France directly in 1943, but they ultimately opted against it. The Soviets railed at the Westerners as “bastards of allies” – conveniently forgetting that they aided and abetted Hitler's violent expansionism in eastern Europe for over a year starting in 1939 – but a 1943 “D-Day” style landing in France might have proven a strategic and logistical impossibility anyway. Thus, in 1943, the theater of Allied operations shifted from North Africa to Europe – Operation Husky, a mixed victory wresting control of Sicily from the Axis. The action also caused Benito Mussolini's downfall, his imprisonment, and subsequent dramatic rescue by the scar-faced Otto Skorzeny – removing significant portions of Italy from the fascist camp, but nevertheless failing to prevent a long Italian campaign. In fact, the lackluster Allied showing on Sicily and the escape of most of the island's garrison encouraged Hitler to alter his plans and defend Italy vigorously. With its rugged mountain ridges, deep valleys, and numerous rivers, Italy contained tens of thousands of natural defensive positions. The Wehrmacht exploited these to the full during the ensuing campaign, bogging down the Anglo-American armies in an endless series of costly, time-consuming engagements. Even the rank and file German soldiers showed a clear awareness of the Italy's strategic significance: “’The Tommies will have to chew their way through us inch by inch,’ a German paratrooper wrote in an unfinished letter found on his corpse at Salerno, ‘and we will surely make hard chewing for them.’” (Hastings, 2011, 408). Indeed, it was a tough slog, and few places were tougher on the Allies than Monte Cassino, which witnessed a series of Allied attacks along the German line that aimed to create a breakthrough to Rome. Ultimately, the attacks would force the Germans into retreat, but not before they had inflicted over 50,000 casualties at a cost of about 20,000 of their own. The battle is perhaps best remembered today for the destruction of a historic abbey that dated back to the 6th century, and the controversial decision to bomb it is still widely debated today, but regardless, Monte Cassino and other operations around Anzio made it possible for the Allies to take Rome on June 4, 1944. 2 days later, the Allies would land at Normandy. The Battle of Monte Cassino: The History of the Battle for Rome during World War II chronicles the crucial 1944 battle.

Charles River Editors (Author), David Zarbock (Narrator)

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The Battle of Lützen: The History and Legacy of Gustavus Adolphus’ Last Battle during the Thirty Yea

The Thirty Years' War was one of the most horrific conflicts in history, and though it is widely viewed as a religious struggle, that was only part of the complicated war. Calvinists and Lutherans did not get along, and both persecuted some of the more radical Anabaptist sects. At the same time, one major motivation behind the war was Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s determination to rule all of the empire and not be just a figurehead. There were struggles between rulers and their estates over power, and Catholic France later entered the war on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs’ power. The Battle of Breitenfeld, fought in September 1631, was the first major Protestant victory and widely considered the crowning achievement of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus’ military career. Through his establishment of communication and supply lines at strategic points across the Baltic Sea, the securing of Protestant alliances, and his use of combined arms, amongst his other trademark techniques, the Swedish forces, against all odds, defeated their rivals. Such was the devastation inflicted upon their opponents that the Count of Tilly, the chief commander of the Catholic League's armies, had no other choice but to retreat. 6,000 or so Catholic soldiers were captured, many of them later incorporated into the Protestant forces. Whatever remained of the survivors vanished into the dark of the night. Gustavus’s triumph at Breitenfeld was a great victory that permanently affected the war, and for a time the Swedes were the most powerful military force in Central Europe, but Gustavus’s life ended slightly more than a year after the battle. On November 16, 1632, the king led a Protestant army of Swedes and German allies against Wallenstein’s army near Lützen in Saxony, and during a hard-fought Protestant victory that forced Wallenstein to retreat, Gustavus was killed while leading a cavalry charge.

Charles River Editors (Author), Kc Wayman (Narrator)

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The Battle of Lepanto: The History of the Decisive Naval Battle between the Ottoman Empire and the H

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity's greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century. Naturally, the Ottoman Empire would also use Constantinople as the capital of its empire after their conquest effectively ended the Byzantine Empire, and thanks to its strategic location, it has been a trading center for years and remains one today under the Turkish name of Istanbul. In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world's most important geopolitical players. It would take repeated efforts by various European coalitions to prevent a complete Ottoman takeover of the continent, and one of the most important battles among those efforts took place in 1571. The Battle of Lepanto is one of the great iconic military clashes of history, ranked with Waterloo, Hastings, Somme and the Battle of Britain. It was the last and largest great battle involving galleys - oared vessels that rammed and boarded enemy vessels - and also the first great naval conflict that effectively used cannons. It was a clash between two great civilizations fighting for supremacy in the world and for control of Europe: the Ottoman Empire and the Christian states of Europe.

Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Hare (Narrator)

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The Battle of Kursk: The History and Legacy of the Biggest Tank Battle of World War II

The vast expanses of southern Russia and the Ukraine provided the Eastern Front arena where the armies of Third Reich dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wrestled lethally for supremacy in 1943. Endless rolling plains – ideal “tank country” – vast forests, sprawling cities, and enormous tracts of agricultural land formed the environment over which millions of men and thousands of the era's most formidable military vehicles fought for their respective overlords and ideologies. The winner could expect to reap very high stakes indeed. If Hitler's Wehrmacht smashed the Red Army, he could no longer hope for a lightning conquest, but the Fuhrer could expect the Soviet strongman to sue for peace on terms advantageous to Germany. If, conversely, the Red Army triumphed, Stalin could continue rallying the Soviet Union and move closer to expelling the loathed “Nemets” invaders from Russian soil – and perhaps carve out a Soviet empire in Central Europe. Asserting that changes in the military leadership style of the two contending dictators explains the outcome of Kursk oversimplifies the actual situation. Logistics, the emergence of a body of experienced junior officers in the Red Army, American Lend-Lease shipments, German production problems, and other issues all contributed to the observed result. However, the overarching factor tying everything together remained the changing approach of each leader to their army. At the start of the war, Hitler gave his commanders considerable initiative while Stalin fatally micromanaged his, and the Germans ripped vast hordes of Soviets to shreds with comparative ease. In late 1942 and moving into 1943, Hitler commenced micromanaging the Wehrmacht, and Stalin adopted a more “hands-off” approach permitting his commanders considerable initiative: “At the heart of the Red Army's lopsided tank losses was an amateurish and self-destructive style of decision imposed by Stalin […] In November 1942 there was a subtle shift in the Red Army, as months of military disasters finally caused Stalin to reduce some of his interference […] and allow quiet professionals such as Vasilevsky, Vatutin and Rokossovsky to prepare proper offensives.” (Forczyk, 2013, 257). Though the Wehrmacht remained too formidable and professional to collapse as readily as the appallingly low-quality Red Army had in 1941 and early 1942, the Red Army slowly got the upper hand and achieved strategic offensive momentum. That the shift occurred at the moment when Hitler hamstrung his generals with his melodramatic obstructionism while Stalin gave his some operational breathing room probably represents no accident. Kursk represented the transitional battle during which the Red Army first demonstrated its new capabilities. The Soviets possessed better commanders than at the start of the war, a numerous soldiery, good-quality equipment (in particular, the T-34 tank), and the beginnings of a professional officer corps. Nevertheless, it required personal, ham-handed intervention by Adolf Hitler to transform Kursk from a probable hard-won Wehrmacht victory into a marginal but highly significant defeat.

Charles River Editors (Author), David Zarbock (Narrator)

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The Battle of Jaffa: The History and Legacy of the Last Battle of the Third Crusade

By 1180, Saladin had consolidated his power in both Egypt and Syria, but he still could not join his two realms because of the obstacle that had once protected his Egyptian realm as a buffer zone: the Crusader States. He now decided to root out the Christian principalities from the Levant, even the Byzantines, though this was not a new goal. He had begun harrying the Crusaders and pushing them back out of Egypt even before he had finished establishing his power there. However, he had also allied with them against other Muslim rivals from time to time. With his triumph over his Muslim rivals complete, he now turned on his erstwhile Christian foes. Attacks on Muslim caravans and other violations of truces by notorious Crusader, Raynald of Chatillon (c.1125-1187), beginning in 1181, gave Saladin the pretext for this change in tack. How much of this new call to jihad in the 12th century was genuine religious fervor for Saladin and his predecessors, and how much was cynical political aggrandizement, remains subject to debate. Either way, the Crusaders had an advantage in this kind of war, despite being decentralized in secular power and relatively weak militarily compared to their Muslim neighbors. Christian religious authority was strongly centralized by the papacy in Rome and the patriarchate in Constantinople. Christian religious authority, older and better organized, also had longevity that Muslim religious authority lacked. Perhaps most importantly, the Christians weren’t warring with each other, whereas the division between the two main Muslim sects, majority Sunnism and minority Shi'ism, played a huge factor in the conquest of Egypt and left the two sides downright hostile towards each other. In comparison, the division between Latin and Greek Christianity was only a century old at the time of the Third Crusade.

Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)

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The Battle of Flodden: The History of the Most Famous Battle Between England and Scotland

The relationship between Scotland and England has always been rocky. For most of their history they have been at loggerheads and frequently at war, and, even after the Act of Union of 1707 which united the two nations, there were at least four Scottish uprisings. Today, the Scottish threat to separate from the post-Brexit UK is well-known. England has historically viewed the northern nation as a threat, and Scotland for its part has feared, with justification, its richer and more powerful neighbor. Famous encounters between the two countries include Falkirk (1298), Bannockburn (1314), Solway Moss (1542), Prestonpans (1745) and Culloden (1746), but the Battle of Flodden, or Flodden Field, fought on September 9, 1513, was the largest and perhaps most spectacular of the clashes between the ancient enemies. It involved the deployment of 56,000 men and vies with the 1461 Battle of Towton during the Wars of the Roses as the largest battle ever fought on British soil. The English had never entirely conquered Scotland, and since Bannockburn they had been unable to claim any degree of control, but it was not until 1328 that they finally acknowledged Scotland's independence. On top of that, the nature of political marriages in England, and Europe in general, tied nations together even as they remained enemies. Indeed, throughout the 16th century, Scottish rulers would be eyed with suspicion by English royals who were fully aware that no shortage of Englishmen considered the Scottish royals the true heirs to England’s throne. Flodden Field would be one of the biggest battles in English and Scottish history, yet the two countries would still be at war a generation later.

Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)

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The Battle of Edgehill: The History and Legacy of the Opening Battle of the English Civil War

The outcome of the English Civil War was no doubt unthinkable to many across Europe before it actually happened, and the Battle of Edgehill represented the first sign that things might not go according to the typical plan. The tiny hamlet of Edgehill sits atop an escarpment in the parish of Ratley and Upton in Warwickshire, England, an unremarkable location in and of itself, like many others in Warwickshire. It attracts a few tourists, some of whom are on the lookout for ghosts. Some claim to hear cries of pain and terror, the clash of swords, cannon fire, and the lament of lost souls. The first report of such phenomena was made shortly before Christmas 1642 when a number of Edgehill inhabitants claimed to have seen two ghostly armies fighting in the sky. So strong and widespread did these claims become that King Charles I sent a commission to investigate. The commissioners supposedly witnessed the apparitions and were able to identify some of the combatants as participants in the Battle of Edgehill, which occurred three months earlier on October 23, 1642. This included Sir Edmund Verney, who lost a hand in the battle and was observed missing an appendage. The apparitions supposedly ended when villagers buried the corpses of soldiers who still lay on the battlefield, but people still claim to hear signs of the celestial battle 370 years later. The enormous upheaval in English society in 1642 may very well have engendered such tales. For the simple villagers, it seemed as if heaven and earth had been rent asunder. After all, the whole concept of divinely ordained kings was that God had created the system and placed a king over England, making the monarch, Charles I of the House of Stuart, God’s viceregent. But that year, the unthinkable happened when the king and Parliament broke with each other, raising their standards of war. The divinely appointed order was broken, and the result was bloodshed, terror, and chaos.

Charles River Editors (Author), Steve Knupp (Narrator)

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The Battle of Castle Itter: The History of World War II’s Strangest Skirmish

The battle for Berlin would technically begin on April 16, 1945, and though it ended in a matter of weeks, it produced some of the war’s most climactic events and had profound implications on the immediate future. By the time the fighting mostly came to an end on May 2, Hitler had already committed suicide and the chain of German surrenders in the field outside of Berlin took off like dominoes. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 7, and news of the final surrender of the Germans was celebrated as Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) on May 8, 1945. One of the most crucial aspects of the final fighting was that while some Germans gave up and others committed suicide, there were others holding out or trying to escape, and that produced one of the war’s most unusual scenes. World War II brought about the creation and breaking of a number of alliances, which meant German and Soviet soldiers coordinated together before bitterly fighting each other after Germany’s invasion of Russia in 1941. Similarly, Italian soldiers began the war fighting the Allies until, in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and Italian soldiers found themselves fighting with the Allies against the Germans. But neither of those situations truly compares to a skirmish fought in early May 1945, which featured Americans and Germans fighting together for the first and only time. And as if that wasn’t unbelievable enough, they were fighting the Waffen-SS. At stake was an Austrian castle that had served as a prison for some of the most senior French prisoners of war, including two former Prime Ministers. The SS had been responsible for guarding the castle, but after the guards abandoned it with the war coming to an end, American and German soldiers who had already surrendered defended the prisoners at the site. Nonetheless, in early May, a Waffen-SS unit was detailed to retake the castle.

Charles River Editors (Author), Jim Johnston (Narrator)

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The Battle of Cape Matapan: The History of the Biggest Naval Battle in the Mediterranean during Worl

Naval combat underwent a significant metamorphosis during World War II. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan launched some of the most powerful battleships ever to sail the world's oceans, yet the conflict witnessed the emergence and triumph of the aircraft carrier as the 20th century's true monarch of the seas. Submarine warfare expanded and developed, while aircraft technology and doctrine experienced several revolutionary changes due to the unforgiving demands of the new combat environment. While many large-scale naval engagements were fought in the Pacific at places like the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Philippines, engagements were rare in Europe. There were flurries of action as the German warships Admiral Graf Spee and Bismarck were hunted and destroyed in 1939 and 1941, and there was a constant battle between surface ships and German U-Boats that lasted throughout the war. But there was only one major naval engagement fought between battle fleets in Europe – at the Battle of Cape Matapan, the British Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy would square off with the Italian Regia Marina in early 1941. Though it was the most decisive naval battle in the Mediterranean, the Battle of Cape Matapan has largely been forgotten today, even as military historians have recognized its significance and some have even compared it with the legendary Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Indeed, the battle shaped the remainder of the war in the Mediterranean, which would prove crucial when the Western Allies would use it to amphibiously invade Sicily in 1943, marking their return to the European continent.

Charles River Editors (Author), Steve Knupp (Narrator)

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The Battle of Britain: Five Months That Changed History; May-October 1940

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. If Britain's defenses collapsed, Hitler would have dominated all of Europe. With France facing defeat and British forces pressed back to the Channel, there were few who believed Britain could survive; but, thanks to a sophisticated defensive system and the combined efforts of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the defiance of a new Prime Minister, Britain refused to give in. From clashes between coastal convoys and Schnellboote in the Channel to astonishing last stands in Flanders, slaughter by U-boats in an icy Atlantic, and dramatic aerial battles over England, The Battle of Britain tells this epic World War II story in a fresh and compelling voice.

James Holland (Author), Shaun Grindell (Narrator)

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The Battle of Britain: A Captivating Guide to One of the Most Critical Battles of World War II

Did you know the Battle of Britain was the first major military campaign fought entirely in the air? In the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitler and his henchman, Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring, began their attempt to clear the skies over England to invade Great Britain. Despite very long odds, the Royal Air Force stood its ground, prevented the German invasion, and helped turn the tide of WWII. The valiant stand of the RAF fighter pilots (known today as “The Few” because of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s famous speech) not only saved England from Hitler but also motivated and inspired the people and leadership of the United States, which sent increasing amounts of weapons and supplies to the United Kingdom. In Captivating History’s The Battle of Britain, you will learn about the following: - The strategy and tactics of air warfare developed between WWI and WWII - How the Germans secretly created the foundations of its WWII air force, the Luftwaffe, in the Soviet Union - How young German men learned to fly even though they had no planes - How the British and Germans developed radar at almost the same time and how British radar was much more effective and better run - The women of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force or WAAFs - How British and German fighters stacked up against each other - How the Germans almost won the battle - The cost born by the British people - Some of the most famous figures from the battle, such as Winston Churchill, Hermann Göring, Hugh Dowding, and many more Scroll up and click the “add to cart” button to begin learning about the Battle of Britain!

Captivating History (Author), Jason Zenobia (Narrator)

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