When American and South Vietnamese forces, led by General Creighton Abrams, launched an attack into neutral Cambodia in 1970, the invasion ignited a firestorm of violent antiwar protests throughout the United States, dealing yet another blow to Nixon's troubled presidency. But, as John Shaw shows, the campaign also proved to be a major military success.

Most histories of the Vietnam War either give the Cambodian invasion short shrift or merely criticize it for its political fallout, thus neglecting one of the campaign's key dimensions. Approaching the subject from a distinctly military...

It seemed that whenever Mussolini acted on his own, it was bad news for Hitler. Indeed, the Fuhrer's relations with his Axis partners were fraught with an almost total lack of coordination. Compared to the Allies, the coalition was hardly an alliance at all. Focusing on Germany's military relations with Italy, Romania, Hungary, and Finland, Richard DiNardo unearths a wealth of information that reveals how the Axis coalition largely undermined Hitler's objectives from the Eastern Front to the Balkans, Mediterranean, and North Africa.

DiNardo argues that the Axis military alliance was...

Scorned by allies and enemies alike, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) was one of the most maligned fighting forces in modern history. Cobbled together by U.S. advisers from the remnants of the French-inspired Vietnamese National Army, it was effectively pushed aside by the Americans in 1965. When toward the end of the war the army was compelled to reassert itself, it was too little, too late for all concerned.

In this first in-depth history of the ARVN from 1955 to 1975, Robert Brigham takes readers into the barracks and training centers of the ARVN to plumb the hearts and souls...

During the Civil War women did a lot more than keep the home fires burning. Expanding on his pioneering Patriots in Disguise, Richard Hall has now produced the most accurate and up-to-date survey available of women who were determined to serve their nation in that time of crisis.

Drawing on a wealth of regimental histories, newspaper archives, and a host of previously unreported accounts, Hall shows that women served in more capacities and in greater number--perhaps several thousand--than has previously been known. They served in the infantry, cavalry, and artillery and as spies, scouts,...

During the Civil War, thirty-six officers in the Army of the Potomac were assigned corps commands of up to 30,000 men. Collectively charged with leading the Union's most significant field army, these leaders proved their courage in countless battlefields from Gettysburg to Antietam to Cold Harbor. Unfortunately, courage alone was not enough. Their often dismal performances played a major role in producing this army's tragic record, one that included more defeats than victories despite its numerical and materiel superiority.

Stephen Taaffe takes a close look at this command cadre,...

The My Lai Massacre was the most publicized incident subjected to military law during the Vietnam War, but military lawyers in all the service branches had their hands full with less-publicized desertions, drug use, rapes, fraggings, black marketeering, and even small claims. William Allison reveals how the military justice system responded to crimes and infractions both inside and outside the combat zone and how it adapted to an unconventional political, military, and social climate as American involvement escalated.

In taking readers to war-torn Vietnam, Allison's study depicts a...

Throughout its existence, the Red Army was viewed as a formidable threat. By the end of the Cold War, however, it had become the weakest link in the Soviet Union's power structure. Always subordinate to the Communist Party, the military in 1991 suddenly found itself answering instead to the president of a democratic state. Dale Herspring closely examines how that relationship influenced the military's viability in the new Russian Federation.

Herspring's book is the first to assess the relationship between the Russian military and the political leadership under Presidents Mikhail...

When the Wehrmacht rolled into the Soviet Union in World War II, it got more than it bargained for. Notwithstanding the Red Army's retreat, Soviet citizens fought fiercely against German occupiers, engaging in raids, sabotage, and intelligence gathering--largely without any oversight from Stalin and his iron-fisted rule.

Kenneth Slepyan provides an enlightening social and political history of the Soviet partisan movement, a people's army of irregulars fighting behind enemy lines. These insurgents included not only civilians-many of them women-but also stranded Red Army soldiers, national...

Women have participated in war throughout history, but their experience in Russia during the First World War was truly exceptional. Between the war's beginning and the October Revolution of 1917, approximately 6,000 women answered their country's call as the army was faced with insubordination and desertion in the ranks while the provisional government prepared for a new offensive. These courageous women became media stars throughout Europe and America, but were brushed aside by Soviet chroniclers and until now have been largely neglected by history.

Laurie Stoff draws on deep archival...

With Allied armies poised on the banks of the Rhine, Nazi Germany tottered on the brink of collapse. The ensuing battles on German soil--especially those in the so-called Ruhr Pocket--were as fierce and hard-fought as any in the European theater. Going well beyond previous accounts, Derek Zumbro chronicles this key military campaign from a unique and fresh perspective--that of the defeated German soldiers and civilians caught in the final maelstrom of the war's western front.

Best known for his translation of In Deadly Combat, the bestselling World War II memoir, Zumbro chronicles...