During the Cold War, when the United States' intelligence efforts were focused on the Soviet Union, one of the primary tasks of the Central Intelligence Agency was to estimate Soviet defense spending. Because this information was used for planning by the U.S. military, the executive branch, and Congress, the CIA's estimates were usually right in the middle of one of the biggest and most enduring political battles in Washington--the annual struggle over the size of the U.S. defense budget.
Despite this central role the CIA estimates played in governmental and public debate throughout the...

As early as the 1920s Adolf Hitler argued that his struggle for dominance would be worldwide. Before war began in Europe, Berlin had already placed contracts for a massive surface navy and four-engine bombers that could cross the Atlantic. Norman J. W. Goda traces the documentary evidence of Germany's long-term plans to extend its conquests to America.
This cogently argued book focuses on Germany's secret efforts to gain base sites for the new navy and long-range bombers in French North West Africa, Spain's Canary Islands, and Portugal's Azores and Cape Verde Islands. During this period...

Traces the development of combat doctrine between the world wars through an examination of the army's primary doctrine manuals, the Field Service Regulations.

In "Under Ice, " William Leary examines the evolution of Arctic submarine operations in the U.S. Navy, a little-known but significant area of national security concern. Through the career of Waldo Lyon, he chronicles the problems of under-ice navigation and the development of Cold War naval strategy.
In World War II, the Arctic became an active theater of operations for German and Soviet subs, which occasionally ducked under the ice to escape detection. The U.S. Navy responded with its own advances in underwater navigation and location, under Lyon's direction. After the war, Lyon's...

Seventy million dollars in fifty-five years. From Texas' annexation in 1845 until the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Army pumped at least that much or more into the economy of the fledgling state, a fact that directly challenges the popular heritage of Texas as the state with roots of pioneer capitalism and fervent independence. In The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900, Thomas T. Smith sheds light on just who bankrolled the evolution of Texas into viable statehood. Smith draws on extensive research gathered from both government archives and Texas army posts in order...

When helicopters plucked the last Americans off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese who had worked with or for the Americans remained behind. Many of these were soon arrested and sent to "reeducation" camps where they faced forced labor, indoctrination sessions, and privation. Others suffered through harrowing flights from their homes seeking safe haven across treacherous seas. The stories of three of these Vietnamese who survived and eventually found their way to America are told here in stark and moving detail.

For a decade before the fall of Saigon,...

"Tactical bombing," Gen. Jimmy Doolittle reportedly observed, "is breaking the milk bottle. Strategic bombing is killing the cow." Most nations have historically chosen between building tactical and strategic air forces; rarely has a state given equal weight to both. The advantages of tactical air power are obvious today as small wars and petty tyrants bedevil us, but in a Cold War world split between continental superpowers, strategic bombing took precedence. According to Craig C. Hannah, the effect on America's tactical air arm was just short of calamitous.
In the 1960s, the U.S. Air...

At the pivotal battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni in February 1951, U.N. forces met and contained large-scale attacks by Chinese forces. Colonel Paul Freeman and the larger-than-life Colonel Ralph Monclar led the American 23rd Infantry Regiment and the French Bataillon de Coree, respectively, in the fierce and dangerous battles that followed the precipitous U.N. retreat down the Korean Peninsula.
In "Leadership in the Crucible, " Kenneth Hamburger details the actions of the units in the United Nations counteroffensive following the Chinese intervention, including routine patrols, the...

Only eighteen years old when he marched off to war, young Confederate Robert Campbell already possessed the keen, perceptive eye of a seasoned journalist. After fighting with the 5th Texas Infantry Regiment in the famed Hood's Texas Brigade, Campbell recorded the first months of his service for the benefit of future generations of his family. Now editors George Skoch and Mark W. Perkins bring Campbell's riveting eyewitness accounts from the frontline to the public in "Lone Star Confederate: A Gallant and Good Soldier of the 5th Texas Infantry," a lively and telling glimpse into a Johnny Reb's...

Earning glory on the fields of battle, Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) was one of the most influential and enigmatic figures of Latin American history. Most North Americans know little of "the Liberator" who freed South America from Spanish rule from 1810 to 1826. Richard W. Slatta and Jane Lucas De Grummond bring forth the entire life and legacy of Simon Bolivar, with special attention to the ups and the downs of his military career in "Bolivar's Quest for Glory." Bolivar's life contained all the makings of an epic war hero: repeated comebacks from defeat, flashes of military genius, tremendous...