Crete 1941: The Battle and the Resistance

Antony Beevor

Dec 2015 · Recorded Books · Narrated by James Langton

About this audiobook

The bestselling author of Stalingrad and D-Day vividly reconstructs the epic WWII struggle for Crete - reissued with a new introduction. Nazi Germany expected its airborne attack on Crete in 1941 to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. Little did they know that the British, using Ultra intercepts, had already laid a careful trap. It should have been the first German defeat of the war when a fatal misunderstanding turned the battle around. Prize-winning historian and bestselling author Antony Beevor lends his gift for storytelling to this important conflict, showing not only how the situation turned bad for Allied forces, but also how ferocious Cretan freedom fighters mounted a heroic resistance. Originally published in 1991, Crete 1941 is a breathtaking account of a momentous battle of World War II.

About the author

British historian Antony Beevor was born on December 14, 1946. He was educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst and studied under the well-known World War Two historian, John Keegan. Beevor was an officer with the 11th Hussars for five years before becoming a writer. His works have received awards including the Runciman Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. The French government made him a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997, and in 2008 the president of Estonia awarded him the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. In 1999 Beevor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the 2014 Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. In 2015 he made The New Zealand Best Seller List with his title Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble.