Stalin's Curse
Battling for Communism in War and Cold War
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Stalin's Curse
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Narrated by:
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Paul Woodson
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By:
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Robert Gellately
About this listen
A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin's true motives-and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire-during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West.
At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader. Even astute observers like George F. Kennan concluded that the United States and Great Britain should view Stalin as a modern-day tsarist-like figure whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, not in ideology. Now Robert Gellately uses recently uncovered documents to make clear that, in fact, the dictator was an unwavering revolutionary merely biding his time, determined as ever to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond, and that his actions during these years set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. We see the dictator disguising his political ambitions and prioritizing the future of Communism, even as he pursued the war against Hitler. Along the way, the ascetic dictator's Machiavellian moves and bouts of irrationality kept the Western leaders on their toes, in a world that became more dangerous and divided year by year.
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- By Mike From Mesa on 07-11-15
By: Roger Moorhouse
-
Forgotten Ally
- China's World War II, 1937 - 1945
- By: Rana Mitter
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 356
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 309
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 310
For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China two full years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bland
- By Rodney on 01-23-14
By: Rana Mitter
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Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
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Potsdam
- The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe
- By: Michael Neiberg
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 468
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 409
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 408
After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace - a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Richly told and entertaining.
- By John Kaiser on 06-20-15
By: Michael Neiberg
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1946
- The Making of the Modern World
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
In 1946, Victor Sebestyen creates a taut, panoramic narrative and takes us to meetings that changed the world: to Berlin in July 1945, when Truman tells Stalin that we have successfully tested the bomb; to Ye'nan, China, in January 1946, when General George Marshall tells the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that Americans won't send troops to China, assuring that the Communists will attain power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An education. Somber, detailed, many-faceted
- By Philo on 08-20-16
By: Victor Sebestyen
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1917
- Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 323
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 276
In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times best-selling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries marched into war only to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together, Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Another book you wish was part of every university world history curriculum
- By Bruno Carleston on 11-26-18
By: Arthur Herman
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Yalta
- The Price of Peace
- By: S. M. Plokhy
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 22 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Award-winning Harvard historian S.M. Plokhy delivers a “convincing revisionist analysis” ( Publishers Weekly) of the February 1945 Yalta conference. Bolstered by Soviet wiretaps, Plokhy’s engrossing narrative of Stalin, Churchill, and FDR’s negotiations reveals the West did better than previously thought.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The depth and breadth of understanding
- By Robin LaCorte on 06-27-19
By: S. M. Plokhy
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Overthrow
- America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 629
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 424
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 420
"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Looking at the dark side
- By Stanley on 08-02-06
By: Stephen Kinzer
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The Death of Democracy
- Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 587
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 493
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 490
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.
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1 out of 5 stars
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I can't trust the author's account of these events
- By Example: Mark Twain on 11-10-19
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Hitler
- A Biography
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Alan Robertson
- Length: 46 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 732
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 644
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 637
Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Excellent Read
- By Rodney on 09-19-13
By: Ian Kershaw
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A Peace to End All Peace
- The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
- By: David Fromkin
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 23 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 474
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 406
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 407
The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. Author David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Still A Great Book On The Topic
- By Nostromo on 02-03-19
By: David Fromkin
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Russia in Flames
- War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921
- By: Laura Engelstein
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 31 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events that led to the emergence of the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state, debate continues over whether, as historian E. H. Carr put it decades ago, these earth-shaking days were a "landmark in the emancipation of mankind from past oppression" or "a crime and a disaster."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Solid overview of events
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-19
By: Laura Engelstein
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A Problem From Hell
- America and the Age of Genocide
- By: Samantha Power
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 359
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 324
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 322
In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power - a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy - asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to stop genocide?
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2 out of 5 stars
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A dark lesson in dramatic irony
- By Andrew Palmer on 10-04-17
By: Samantha Power
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Paris 1919
- Six Months That Changed the World
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 25 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,397
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,058
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,049
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, renowned historian Margaret MacMillan's best-selling Paris 1919 is the story of six remarkable months that changed the world. At the close of WWI, between January and July of 1919, delegates from around the world converged on Paris under the auspices of peace. New countries were created, old empires were dissolved, and for six months, Paris was the center of the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book, well narrated
- By W. F. Rucker on 02-07-09
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Cursed Victory
- Israel and the Occupied Territories; A History
- By: Ahron Bregman
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade. The audiobook provides a gripping and unvarnished chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an "enlightened occupation" quickly turned sour and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Largely just the diplomatic history
- By Norman B. Bernstein on 09-28-15
By: Ahron Bregman
-
The World Remade
- America in World War I
- By: G. J. Meyer
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 370
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 332
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 331
After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent - and the globe. The World Remade is an engrossing chronicle of America's pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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"100% America" - a disturbing place to be
- By DPM on 04-01-17
By: G. J. Meyer
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