Countdown to D-Day cover art

Countdown to D-Day

The German Perspective

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Countdown to D-Day

By: Peter Margaritis
Narrated by: Roger Clark
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £20.99

Buy Now for £20.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

In December 1943, with the rising realization that the Allies are planning to invade Fortress Europe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is assigned the title of General Inspector for the Atlantic Wall. His mission is to assess their readiness.

His superior, theater commander, crusty old Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who had led the Reich to victory in the early years of the war, is now fed up with the whole Nazi regime. He lives comfortably in a plush villa in a quiet Paris suburb, waiting for the inevitable Allied invasion that will bring about their final defeat.

General der Artillerie Erich Marcks, badly injured in Russia, is the corps commander on the ground in Normandy, trying to build up the coastal defenses with woefully inadequate supplies and a shortage of men to fulfill Rommel's demands. Marcks is convinced that the Allies will land in his sector, but no one higher up the chain of command seems interested in what he thinks.

Countdown to D-Day takes a detailed day-to-day journal approach, tracing the daily activities and machinations of the German High Command as they try to prepare for the Allied invasion.

©2019 Peter Margaritis (P)2019 Tantor Europe France Germany Military Military & War World War II Western Europe War Imperialism

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Dünkirchen 1940 cover art
Nimitz at War cover art
A War of Empires cover art
1971 cover art
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East cover art
The Reckoning cover art
The First World War cover art
Donovan cover art
The Mighty Endeavor cover art
Russia at War, 1941–1945 cover art
The Generals cover art
Ike the Soldier cover art
Nimitz cover art
Dec-41 cover art
The Last 100 Days cover art
War of Shadows cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I found the content so fascinating that I put up with an appalling narration. I’m not sure this was a human at all. The pronunciation of French, German and occasionally, English was woeful. It sounded from some of the odd phraseology and grammar that this was a poorly translated text from German. This was so distracting that I had to listen to most sections several times in order to focus on the story.

Very hard work but I found it just about worth it for content.

Fascinating content entirely ruined by narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
For a specialist student of military history, this book would be ideal. It is a day-by-day account of the build-up to D-Day on the German side. For the general reader, much of the detail seems extraneous and interferes with telling the story of how a régime run by a maniac who surrounded himself with sycophants was certain to lose despite the military genius of Rommel. It also ignores some important questions -- for example, the conversations recorded between senior officers suggest they knew about some of the horrors in the East but deliberately avoided thinking about them. I would have liked to hear more about how and why.

The narrator has one of those American "Voice of God" baritones. I'd prefer a little more engagement with the material, but that's a personal preference, His German pronunciation is acceptable but his French and Dutch are cringeworthy. "Caen" is rendered as "Cannes" and "Boulogne" as "booloney". I'll leave what he does to Vlissingen and Scheveningen to your imagination. How can a producer not get a pronunciation coach in for a couple of hours of training? Unreal

Remarkably detailed but too long

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the first book on WW2 written almost all from the German viewpoint. I really enjoyed learning about how the officers, Rommel, von Runstadt, Merks et al prepared for the invasion that they knew was coming but not when or where. A long book, but the author packs it full of all sorts of really interesting background information and I found I was hooked. If I had had the time I would have binged read. I recommend this book
Gripes? How could the narrator, publisher , producers etc possibly not have known that CAEN is prounounced CARN not CANNES? Not once or twice but every time

D-Day a different perspective

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A superb insight into Germany’s preparations for the invasion. The narrator reading can be a bit irritating with Miss pronunciation of words, and disjointed sentences (pauses in the wrong places,) , but if you can set that aside, this is a fascinating book.

An extremely interesting alternative view point of the Normandy landings and the build up to them from the German perspective

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I thoroughly recommend this title to anyone interested in the events leading up to D-Day.

An interesting perspective.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I managed about eight hours and found the subject really interesting. However, the narration was a huge distraction. He sounded like a failed thespian trying too hard to impress. As others have commented, you needed to spend time to translate the, at times, weired and unrecognisable pronunciation of European locations. Note to self: avoid this narrator

Where did they get the narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
D-Day is perhaps the part of a handful of truly important dates in 20th century history. There are libraries of memoirs, histories and films dedicated to it. Frank Kapra's images, Monty's memoirs, the 1965 cinema epic 'D-Day the Longest Day' and for modern viewers 'Saving Private Ryan' and TV's 'Band of Brothers'.

So, it's refreshing to see this well worn path approached from a new perspective. This is third person narrative. So, it's 'he' and 'they' describing the story.

You follow protagonists around and you're being told what they are thinking. This is a fresh approach and one you take on trust because the sources and footnotes are swept aside.

The book was most fascinating at telling some less known stories. The Allies flotilla that wasn't recalled and was steaming along to the Normandy beaches ignoring the lone Alied plant frantically trying to recall them.

As with all histories, the near misses are the most fascinating .

If there were things missing it's the focus on the key players blotted out the voices of ordinary Germans in the foxholes. But maybe in part it's because there's not many of them made it out to write their memoirs.

The narration is broadly good but the Americanisms on some key words does grate.

Worth a punt.

A fresh perspective on D-Day

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the other side of the coin very revealing, Paints Romell in a good light

fascinating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
it was nice to hear about ww2 from a German perspective, they wasn't all monster's they to had families,I found myself feeling tremendous sympathy for the whole war and every nationality involved.

Mixed emotions

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A terrific book, packed with details that despite having read dozens of books on the subject were completely new. This provides an insight that is unique and is well worth a listen.

Fabulous level of detail

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews