Laurence Rees has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 11 ratings. The most-rated is The Holocaust.
The Holocaust
Summary
On June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration and death camp. After a cursory look from an SS doctor, Freda's life was spared and her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Freda only survived because the Allies won the war - the Nazis ultimately wanted every Jew to die. Her mother was one of millions who lost their lives because of a racist regime that believed that some human beings simply did not deserve to live - not because of what they had done, but because of who they were. Laurence Rees has spent 25 years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well. He also reveals that there was no single overarching blueprint for the Holocaust. Instead, a series of escalations compounded into the horror. Though Hitler was most responsible for what happened, the blame is widespread, Rees reminds us, and the effects are enduring. The Holocaust: A New History is an accessible yet authoritative account of this terrible crime. A chronological, intensely listenable narrative, this is a compelling exposition of humanity's darkest moment.
©2017 Laurence Rees (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The Nazis
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Following the success of Rees's best-selling Auschwitz, this substantially revised and updated edition of The Nazis - A Warning from History tells the powerfully gripping story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. During a 16-year period, acclaimed author and documentary-maker Laurence Rees met and interviewed a large number of former Nazis, and his unique insights into the Nazi psyche and World War II received enormous praise. At the heart of the book lie compelling eyewitness accounts of life under Adolf Hitler, spoken through the words of those who experienced the Nazi regime at every level of society. An extensive new section on the Nazi/Soviet war (previously published in Rees' War of the Century) provides a chilling insight into Nazi mentality during the most bloody conflict in history. Described as one of the greatest documentary series of all times The Nazis - A Warning from History won a host of awards, including a BAFTA and an International Documentary Award.
©1997 Laurence Rees (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Hitler and Stalin
Summary
An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them. Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed. Laurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.
©2020 Laurence Rees (P)2020 PublicAffairs