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Their Darkest Hour
- Author
- Laurence Rees
- Narrator
- John Hopkins
- Publisher
- Ebury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 30 July 2020
- Run Time
- 8 hours 32 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. His quest has taken him from the Baltic States to Japan, from Poland to America, and from Germany to China.
Here he presents 35 of his most electrifying encounters. Meet Estera Frenkiel, a young Jewish woman given the chance to save ten fellow Jews from deportation and death; Peter Lee, a British officer brutally treated by his Japanese captors; Zinaida Pytkina, a female member of the Soviet Union's infamous SMERSH organisation, who took pleasure in killing a German Prisoner; Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier so fanatical that he refused to surrender until 29 years after the end of the war; and Petras Zelionka, a Lithuanian who shot Jewish men, women and children for the Nazis.
The devastating first-hand testimony in Their Darkest Hour is both a lasting contribution to our understanding of the war and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis.
© Laurence Rees 2007 (P) Penguin Audio 2020
Critics Review
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Rees has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Second World War. His great urge to comprehend the mentalities of those who took part in the conflict is fired by a passionate curiosity, and his wide body of work is distinguished by a fierce intellectual honesty
Stalingrad and Berlin, the Downfall
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Rees is one of the few people - perhaps the only one - who has met and interviewed at length not only hundreds of people who suffered from the barbarities of World War Two right across the globe but also, crucially, many of the perpetrators... All this has given Rees a comparative, cross-cultural perspective on the horrors of the war that no academic could match
Historians and The Hitler Emigres
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Laurence Rees has devoted much of his life to trying to understand how the atrocities of the Second World War were possible. Nobody else has penetrated as far into the motivation and psyche of such a varied group of people from the war. We should be grateful to him for his work - and we should all read this book
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900
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fascinating but disturbing
Daily Mail
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This book is both a lasting contribution to our understanding of the Second World War and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis
The Independent
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powerful and unsettling
The Sunday Times
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Laurence Rees has done more for good history on television in this country than anyone else. Over several series, he has examined the most terrible aspects of the Second World War with a passionate longing to understand, while rejecting facile moral judgment...Their Darkest Hour comes from a selection of his interviews with both perpetrators and victims...The cumulative effects of Rees's observations, to say nothing of the stories themselves, become deeply disturbing.
The Daily Telegraph
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chilling collection of eye-witness testimonies...bringing nuance to our understanding of the horrific experience of war.
Financial Times
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enthralling and often chilling
Wales on Sunday
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an incredible, well-written, "must read" book
Press Association
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Laurence Rees
- Narrator
- John Hopkins
- Duration
- 8 hours 32 minutes
- Release Date
- 30 July 2020
- ISBN
- 9781473532557
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Ebury Publishing
- Genre
- Second World War, Oral history, Modern warfare
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. His quest has taken him from the Baltic States to Japan, from Poland to America, and from Germany to China.Here he presents 35 of his most electrifying encounters. Meet Estera Frenkiel, a young Jewish woman given the chance to save ten fellow Jews from deportation and death; Peter Lee, a British officer brutally treated by his Japanese captors; Zinaida Pytkina, a female member of the Soviet Union's infamous SMERSH organisation, who took pleasure in killing a German Prisoner; Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier so fanatical that he refused to surrender until 29 years after the end of the war; and Petras Zelionka, a Lithuanian who shot Jewish men, women and children for the Nazis.The devastating first-hand testimony in Their Darkest Hour is both a lasting contribution to our understanding of the war and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis.© Laurence Rees 2007 (P) Penguin Audio 2020
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