The Cold War: A Military History

The quality of the individual articles is very high. As a collection, however, something is lacking. A better title would have been, "The Vietnam and Korean Wars with Bonus Material". Such huge portion of the book is dedicated to southeast Asia that one would think it was heart of the Cold War. I find it amazing there isn't a single article on Afghanistan (heck, he could have even have put in the Vietnam section that dominates the book and called the chapter "Russia's Turn"). In fact, the word Afghanistan doesn't even appear in the entire text. Not a word on the wide variety of surrogate wars fought in the Americas or the Middle East either. Another flaw is that the introductory pages to each article written by the editor add almost nothing to the text. The articles would stand better on their own. So basically I'd give the articles five stars. I'd give the editing/collation perhaps two stars. I gave it four overall because the bulk of what your read is very good and I'll give credit where credit is due. Nonetheless, the narrow scope of the collection and the poor quality of the editor's introductions is annoying.

From the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the Soviet Union almost a half century later the two major powers in the world faced a kind of war. It was called the cold war because not much fighting occurred. To be sure, there was some in places like Korea, Viet Nam and Afghanistan. And there were some time where the two superpowers faced each other over loaded weapons such as Berlin and Cuba. But all in all, this was the longest time since the Roman Empire that the two strongest countries on the globe didn't go to war. During much of this time the Military History Quarterly has provided a venue for the most prominent historians of our time to present articles on points of history as it was being lived. Robert Cowley is the founding editor of MHQ. In this volume he has selected articles from the Cold War period that serve to be a history of the Cold War written as it happened. The authors include some of the most prominent historians of that time, and some others that are not so well known but who provide an insight into the times.

This is a fascinating anthology of essays, a rich treasure trove of Cold War experiences told by leading historians. Some events chronicled here are well known -- the Berlin Airlift, Cuban Missile Crisis, Truman's cashiering of MacArthur, Dien Bien Phu, etc. -- while others this reader learned about for the first time. For example, an uprising of North Korean and Chinese POWs at Koje-do; the Chinese Communist assault on the British frigate Amethyst in 1949, or CIA efforts -- soon compromised -- to tap Soviet telephone lines by digging a tunnel in East Berlin. The collection of 27 essays begins with the 1946 showdown with the Soviets over their ambitions in Turkey. James Chace contends the Cold War started on August 19 of that year, when Truman sent a naval task force to Istanbul in response to Stalin's attempt to establish naval bases in the Dardanelles Strait. In the final essay, Williamson Murray examines Soviet military planners' strategy for invading central Europe, which came to light after the Berlin Wall's collapse. Instead of sending their tanks through the Fulda Gap and into West Germany, as widely anticipated, Soviet planners envisioned unleashing 300 to 400 nuclear missiles on Western Europe as a prelude to a ground assault. Only the prospect of massive nuclear retaliation from the U.S., Murray says, dissuaded the Kremlin from acting on its generals' invasion plans. Readers will draw their own conclusions about which essays are the most intriguing. Personally, I especially liked Tom Fleming's account of Matthew Ridgway Herculean efforts to turn the tide in North Korea, and Victor Davis Hanson's "revisionist" account of Curtis LeMay's career and contributions. Whatever your personal preference, this anthology will prove satisfying for any reader with an interest in recent American history.