The Stuff of Soldiers
The Stuff of Soldiers

Author: Brandon M. Schechter

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 1501739816

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The Stuff of Soldiers uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon M. Schechter attends to a diverse array of things—from spoons to tanks—to show how a wide array of citizens became soldiers, and how the provisioning of material goods separated soldiers from civilians. Through a fascinating examination of leaflets, proclamations, newspapers, manuals, letters to and from the front, diaries, and interviews, The Stuff of Soldiers reveals how the use of everyday items made it possible to wage war. The dazzling range of documents showcases ethnic diversity, women's particular problems at the front, and vivid descriptions of violence and looting. Each chapter features a series of related objects: weapons, uniforms, rations, and even the knick-knacks in a soldier's rucksack. These objects narrate the experience of people at war, illuminating the changes taking place in Soviet society over the course of the most destructive conflict in recorded history. Schechter argues that spoons, shovels, belts, and watches held as much meaning to the waging of war as guns and tanks. In The Stuff of Soldiers, he describes the transformative potential of material things to create a modern culture, citizen, and soldier during World War II.

The Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors
The Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors

Author: Aden Magee

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2021-07-31

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1612009948

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This book details the Soviet Military Liaison Mission (SMLM) in West Germany and the U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) in East Germany as microcosms of the Cold War strategic intelligence and counterintelligence landscape. Thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet and U.S. Military Liaison Missions are all but forgotten. Their operation was established by a post-WWII Allied occupation forces' agreement, and missions had relative freedom to travel and collect intelligence throughout East and West Germany from 1947 until 1990. This book addresses Cold War intelligence and counterintelligence in a manner that provides a broad historical perspective and then brings the reader to a never-before documented artifact of Cold War history. The book details the intelligence/counterintelligence dynamic that was among the most emblematic of the Cold War. Ultimately, the book addresses a saga that remains one of the true Cold War enigmas.

Operation Don's Main Attack
Operation Don's Main Attack

Author: David M. Glantz

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2018-03-08

Total Pages: 952

ISBN-13: 0700625267

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With the defeat and destruction of German Sixth Army at Stalingrad all but certain at the end of 1942, the war on the Eastern Front took a definitive turn as the Germans struggled to erect a new defensive front to halt the Soviet juggernaut driving west. Operation Don’s Main Attack is the first detailed study of the dramatic clash of armies that followed, unfolding inexorably over the course of two months across an expanse of more than 1,600 kilometers. Using recently released Russian archival material never before available to researchers, David M. Glantz provides a close-up account, from both sides, of the planning and conduct of Operation Don—the Soviet offensive by the Red Army's Southern front that aimed to capture Rostov in January–February 1943. His book includes a full array of plans, candid daily reports, situation maps, and strength and casualty reports prepared for the forces that participated in the offensive at every level. Drawing on an unprecedented and comprehensive range of documents, the book delves into many hitherto forbidden topics, such as unit strengths and losses and the foibles and attitudes of command cadre. Glantz’s work also presents rare insights into the military strategy, combat tactics, and operational art of such figures as Generals Eremenko and Malinovsky and Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. A uniquely informed study of a critical but virtually forgotten Soviet military operation, Operation Don’s Main Attack offers a fresh perspective on the nature of the twentieth century’s most terrible of wars.

The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973
The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973

Author: Isabella Ginor

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 0190911433

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Russia's forceful re-entry into the Middle Eastern arena, and the accentuated continuity of Soviet policy and methods of the 1960s and '70s, highlight the topicality of this groundbreaking study, which confirms the USSR's role in shaping Middle Eastern and global history. This book covers the peak of the USSR's direct military involvement in the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The head-on clash between US-armed Israeli forces and some 20,000 Soviet servicemen with state-of-the-art weaponry turned the Middle East into the hottest front of the Cold War. The Soviets' success in this war of attrition paved the way for their planning and support of Egypt's cross-canal offensive in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ginor and Remez challenge a series of long-accepted notions as to the scope, timeline and character of the Soviet intervention and overturn the conventional view that détente with the US induced Moscow to restrainthat a US-Moscow détente led to a curtailment of Egyptian ambitions to recapture of the land it lost to Israel in 1967. Between this analytical rethink and the introduction of an entirely new genre of sources-- -memoirs and other publications by Soviet veterans themselves---The Soviet-Israeli War paves the way for scholars to revisit this pivotal moment in world history.

Smersh
Smersh

Author: Dr. Vadim Birstein

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1849546894

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SMERSH is the award-winning account of the top-secret counterintelligence organisation that dealt with Stalin's enemies from within the shadowy recesses of Soviet government. As James Bond's nemesis in Ian Fleming's novels, SMERSH and its operatives were depicted in exotic duels with 007, rather than fostering the bleak oppression and terror they actually spread in the name of their dictator. Stalin drew a veil of secrecy over SMERSH's operations in 1946, but that did not stop him using it to terrify Red Army dissenters in Leningrad and Moscow, or to abduct and execute suspected spooks - often without cause - across mainland Europe. Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings at the end of the Second World War, SMERSH gained its name from a combination of the Russian words for 'Death to Spies'. Successive Communist governments suppressed traces of Stalin's political hit squad; now Vadim Birstein lays bare the surgical brutality with which it exerted its influence as part of the paranoid regime, both within the Soviet Union and in the wider world. SMERSH was the most mysterious and secret of organisations - this definitive and magisterial history finally reveals truths that lay buried for nearly fifty years.

Able Archer 83
Able Archer 83

Author: Nate Jones

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 162097262X

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In November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert. After months nervously watching increasingly assertive NATO military posturing, Soviet intelligence agencies in Western Europe received flash telegrams reporting alarming activity on U.S. bases. In response, the Soviets began planning for a countdown to a nuclear first strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83, a vast NATO war game exercise that modeled a Soviet attack on NATO allies, ended. What the West didn't know at the time was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were actively preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was largely unknown until last October when the U.S. government released a ninety-four-page presidential analysis of Able Archer that the National Security Archive had spent over a decade trying to declassify. Able Archer 83 is based upon more than a thousand pages of declassified documents that archive staffer Nate Jones has pried loose from several U.S. government agencies and British archives, as well as from formerly classified Soviet Politburo and KGB files, vividly recreating the atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.

The Military History of the Soviet Union
The Military History of the Soviet Union

Author: R. Higham

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-11-14

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0230108210

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This volume provides an introduction to the history of the Soviet armed forces from 1917 to 1991. The authors highlight the many facets of the Cold War, including the rise of the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which marks its twentieth anniversary in 2011.