History France War

Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Deliberately engineered by Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the war succeeded in shattering French supremacy, deposing Napoleon III, and uniting a new German Empire. But it also produced brutal military innovations and a precarious new imbalance of power that together set the stage for the devastating world wars of the next century. In Bismarck’s War, historian Rachel Chrastil chronicles events on the battlefield in full.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a silent and nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Subsequently, an eerie sense of normalcy settled over the City of Light. Many Parisians keenly adapted themselves to the situation - even allied themselves with their Nazi overlords. At the same time, amidst this darkening gloom of German ruthlessness, shortages, and curfews, a resistance arose.

While D-Day is one of the most famous events of the war, it is widely overlooked that about two months after the landings in Normandy, there was a second Allied landing in France. On August 15, 1944, a combined US-French force landed in southern France on the beaches of the Côte d'Azur as part of Operation Dragoon. In just over four weeks of fighting, the Allied landing led to the liberation of most of southern France and to one of the most audacious and successful Allied operations of World War II. What followed remains a controversial part of the end of the war in Europe.

Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives. In the space of just 20 years, from October 1795, when as a young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of insurrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged) battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and Europe. After seizing power in a coup d'état, he ended the corruption and incompetence into which the revolution had descended.

In a definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept Nazi domination of France, Julian Jackson captures this titanic figure as never before. Drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and resources of the recently opened de Gaulle archive, he reveals how this volatile visionary put a broken France back at the center of world affairs.

High up in the mountains of the southern Massif Central in France lie tiny, remote villages united by a long and particular history. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, Freemasons, communists, and, above all, Jews, many of them orphans whose parents had been deported to concentration camps.

The Hundred Years War was a series of conflicts waged between England and France between 1337 and 1453. The war involved several generations of kings on both sides and was fought over a single issue: whether the English had the right to rule the kingdom of France. The Hundred Years War was an important element in the creation of modern Europe and in the definition of the national characters of both England and France. This audiobook tells the story of this long, complex, and fascinating conflict.

France has influenced the course of history in Europe and the world for centuries. Considered one of the world’s most beautiful countries and home to some of the world’s most visited tourist locations, France has enthralled and fascinated the people who’ve discovered that, in many ways, the history of France encompasses both the good and bad in the human character.

Jax, a rogue Clakker, has wreaked havoc upon the Clockmakers' Guild by destroying the Grand Forge. Reborn in the flames, he must begin his life as a free Clakker, but liberation proves its own burden. Berenice, formerly the legendary spymaster of New France, mastermind behind her nation's attempts to undermine the Dutch Hegemony, has been banished from her homeland and captured by the Clockmakers Guild's draconian secret police force.

ONE WOMAN'S ODYSSEY OF LIFE AND LOVE ACROSS NAZI GERMANY AND POSTWAR EUROPE “I want to live an extraordinary life.” Inge Krumm-Heller yearned to live the life of a modern, independent woman in Nazi Germany. From her childhood in East Prussia and labor service with the Reichsarbeitsdienst, to the hardships and air raids of the Second World War, Inge emerged ready to face a bold new world turned upside down by the American occupation. When a mysterious stranger brings news of Inge’s missing parents, she embarks upon an odyssey across the ruins of Europe to find them and, ultimately, to...

Bronx-born top turret-gunner Arthur Meyerowitz was on his second mission when he was shot down in 1943. He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as Harmful Lil Armful who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground. After fleeing the wreck, Arthur knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse, whose owners hastily took him in. Fortunately, his hosts not only despised the Nazis but had a tight connection to the French resistance group Morhange and its founder, Marcel Taillandier.

In this seventh volume, a detailed examination is made of the period from August 1813 to Aril 1814, the end of the war. This history, written many years after Napier's, draws its information from more firsthand accounts and corrects some of the more glaring mistakes and biases of Napier. Although this audiobook is slightly abridged, the only text removed is a small number of footnotes written entirely in French. All English text from the appendices and footnotes is present.

Some historians have called the Seven Years’ War the first true world war, and they make a good point. Ultimately, this globally coordinated war involved five continents and at least 29 states and tribal confederacies, with a casualty toll in the millions and the maps forever altered. As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War was the last in a long series of colonial conflicts between the French and British and also changed the map in America. At the end of the war, disputed borders were finally settled, and both empires were left reeling from the costs of war.

The Napoleonic Wars, which took place between 1803 and 1815, were spearheaded by probably France’s best tactician and military strategist to date: General Napoleon Bonaparte. His tactics and strategies were so grounded that it has served as the basis for many major warfare campaigns and maneuvers, both during his lifetime as well as after his demise. Even France’s sworn enemy for most of the medieval era, the British, acknowledged his ingenuity despite his ultimate defeat at the hands of the British army at the end of life.

The first of two ground-breaking volumes on the Waterloo campaign, this audiobook is based upon a detailed analysis of sources old and new in four languages. It highlights the political stresses between the Allies, the problems of feeding and paying for the Allied forces assembling in Belgium during the undeclared war and how a strategy was thrashed out. It studies the neglected topic of how the Allies beyond the Rhine hampered the plans of Blücher and Wellington, thus allowing Napoleon to snatch the initiative from them.

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

In this audiobook, you will hear about the Vietnamese, who fought for their country against an enemy with superior weaponry and naval support. Learn about why the world powers of China, the Soviet Union, and the United States all got involved in the First Indochina War, and how that led to the division of Vietnam into a communist North Vietnam and capitalist South Vietnam in the years leading up to the Vietnam War.

Relish in an exhilarating journey with this spellbinding historical adventure book set in the Dordogne region of France during the waning years of the Hundred Years' War (mid-15th century). Peer into the unruly lives of Jean del' Tudor and Martina, two young souls entangled in the chaos of feudal banditry and the struggle between the English and French crowns for control over their homeland. StorylineAt the heart of the tale is Jean del' Tudor, a young craftsman conducting his trade in the cliff-side town of La Roque Gageac. His life takes an unexpected turn when he crosses paths with the ...

On June 29, 1919, one day after the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I, nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France. From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country’s border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen had suffered or died.

The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.