Peter Hart has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 10 ratings. The most-rated is Fire and Movement.
Fire and Movement
Summary
The dramatic opening weeks of the Great War passed into legend long before the conflict ended. The British Expeditionary Force fought a mesmerizing campaign, outnumbered and outflanked but courageous and skillful, holding the line against impossible odds, sacrificing themselves to stop the last great German offensive of 1914. A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment, the campaign contains moments of sheer horror and nerve-shattering excitement, pathos and comic relief, occasional cowardice and much selfless courage - all culminating in the climax of the First Battle of Ypres. And yet, as Peter Hart shows in this gripping and revisionary look at the war's first year, for too long the British part in the 1914 campaigns has been veiled in layers of self-congratulatory myth: a tale of poor unprepared Britain, reliant on the peerless class of her regular soldiers to bolster the rabble of the unreliable French Army and defeat the teeming hordes of German troops. But the reality of those early months is in fact far more complex - and ultimately, Hart argues, far more powerful than the standard triumphalist narrative. Fire and Movement places the British role in 1914 into a proper historical context, incorporating the personal experiences of the men who were present on the front lines. The British regulars were indeed skillful soldiers, but as Hart reveals, they also lacked practice in many of the required disciplines of modern warfare, and the inexperience of officers led to severe mistakes. Hart also provides a more accurate portrait of the German Army they faced - not the caricature of hordes of automatons, but the reality of a well-trained and superlatively equipped force that outfought the BEF in the early battles - and allows listeners to come to a full appreciation of the role of the French Army, without whom the Marne never would have been won.
©2015 Peter Hart (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Last Battle
Summary
Author of The Great War, as well as celebrated accounts of the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Jutland, and Gallipoli, historian Peter Hart now turns to World War One's final months. Much has been made of - and written about - August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four years, the endgame seems to come as a stunning anticlimax. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns simply fell silent. The Last Battle definitively corrects this misperception. As Hart shows, a number of factors precipitated the Armistice. After four years of bloodshed, Germany was nearly bankrupt, and there was a growing rift between the military High Command and political leadership. But it also remained a determined combatant, and France and Great Britain had equally been stretched to their limits; Russia had abandoned the conflict in the late winter of 1918. However complex the causes of Germany's ultimate defeat, Allied success on the Western Front, as Hart reveals, tipped the scales - the triumphs at the Fifth Battle of Ypres, the Sambre, the Selle, and the Meuse-Argonne, where American forces made arguably their greatest contribution. The offensives cracked the Hindenburg Line and wore down the German resistance, precipitating collapse. Final victory came at great human cost and involved the combined efforts of millions of men. Using the testimony of a range of participants, from the Doughboys, Tommies, German infantrymen, and French poilus who did the fighting, to those in command during those last days and weeks, Hart brings intimacy and sweep to the events that led to November 11, 1918.
©2018 Peter Hart (P)2018 Tantor
Aces Falling
Summary
How the age of the great WWI aces came to an end in the skies over the Western Front. At the beginning of 1918, the great aces seemed invincible. Flying above the battlefields of the Western Front, they cut a deadly swathe through the ranks of their enemies, as each side struggled to keep control of the air. Some were little more than boys when they started to fly, yet they were respected and feared as some of the deadliest killers in the sky. But as the press of fighting increased with the great offensives of 1918, nervous stress and physical exhaustion finally began to take their toll - and one by one the aces began to fall. This audiobook charts the rise and fall of the WWI aces in the context of the vast battles that were taking place in 1918. It shows the vital importance of reconnaissance, and how large formations of aircraft became the norm - bringing an end to the era of the old, heroic 'lone wolves'. As the First World War came to a close very few of the aces survived. This epic history of the final year of the air war is both a chronicle of the ways in which 1918 changed aerial combat forever, and a requiem for the pioneers of aerial combat who eventually became the victims of their own brilliant innovations. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our Desktop Site.
©2019 Peter Hart (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group
1918
Summary
In every sense, 1918 was the climactic year of the Great War on the Western Front. The battles fought during that spring dwarfed those at the Somme and at Passchendaele.The casualties on both sides were unprecedented, and the weapons and tactics used were the culmination of four years' bloody experience. This epic account of the events of 1918 is the first major reappraisal of the end of the war for more than 20 years, and describes what is in some respects a forgotten chapter in history. The soldiers who returned to Britain in November 1918 were not the martyrs or victims of popular memory - they were a victorious army and were greeted as heroes. As the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, Peter Hart has had unprecedented access to material never before seen or heard. He uses this vast wealth of sources to describe the entire course of the year, at all levels of command, from the terrifying German attacks in the spring to the victorious parades after the Armistice was signed. As a chronicle of the Great War's brutal climax it is unparalleled in its scope and depth.
©2008 Peter Hart (P)2008 Orion Publishing Group Ltd
At Close Range
Summary
The best way to understand what it was like to fight in the Second World War is to see it through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it. The South Notts Hussars fought at almost every major battle of the Second World War, from the Siege of Tobruk to the Battle of El Alamein and the D-Day landings. Here, Peter Hart draws on detailed interviews conducted with members of the regiment to provide both a comprehensive account of the conflict and reconstruct its most thrilling moments in the words of the men who experienced it. This is military history at its best: outlining the path from despair to victory and allowing us to share in soldiers' hopes and fears, the deafening explosions of the shells, the scream of the diving Stukas and the wounded, the pleasures of good comrades and the devastating despair at lost friends.
©2020 Peter Hart (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK