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David Charlwood

A fast-paced short history that moves between London, Washington, and Cairo to reveal the crisis that brought down a prime minister.

Includes photos, a timeline, and a special afterword examining the parallels with the 2003 Iraq war

In 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, ending nearly a century of British and French control over the crucial waterway. Ignoring U. S. diplomatic efforts and fears of a looming Cold War conflict, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden misled Parliament and the press to take Britain to war alongside France and Israel. In response to a secretly planned Israeli attack in the Sinai, France and Britain intervened as “peacemakers. ”

The invasion of Egypt was supposed to restore British and French control of the canal and reaffirm Britain’s flagging prestige. Instead, the operation spectacularly backfired, setting Britain and the United States on a collision course that would change the balance of power in the Middle East. The combined air, sea, and land battle witnessed the first helicopter-borne deployment of assault troops and the last large-scale parachute drop into a conflict zone by British forces. French and British soldiers fought together against the Soviet-equipped Egyptian military in a short campaign that cost the lives of thousands of soldiers—along with innocent civilians. This book, by a prominent historian specializing in the Middle East, tells the story.

Pen & Sword Military

Cold War, 1945–1991

Suez Crisis 1956: End of Empire and the Reshaping of the Middle East

Gerry van Tonder

An in-depth look at the disastrous consequences of misjudgment and impulsiveness by the United States during the Korean War.

As of October 1950, a quarter of a million Communist Chinese troops, in twenty-seven divisions, had poured across the Yalu River into North Korea, with the singular objective of forcing General Douglas MacArthur’s United Nations troops back across the 38th Parallel and into the Sea of Japan.

Shortly before midnight on April 22, 1951, to the west of the U.S. Eighth Army’s defensive front, the Chinese Sixty-third Army fell on the British 29th Brigade. On the left flank, the 1st Battalion, Gloucester Regiment (“Glosters”) held a tenuous position at a ford on the Imjin River. Despite a gallant defense, the battalion was pushed back to make a desperate but futile stand on Hill 235. On what became known as “Glosters’ Hill,” the battalion ceased to exist. It was subsequently estimated that the attacking force of 27,000 Chinese troops suffered 10,000 casualties, forcing the Chinese army to be withdrawn from the front.

From August 1951 to the summer of 1952, the USAF conducted Operation Strangle in a futile and costly attempt to disrupt Chinese supply routes. In the last two years of fighting, Communist Chinese and UN forces faced each other from well-entrenched positions in hilly terrain, where mapped hill numbers were contested. From June 1952 to March 1953, a series of five hard-fought engagements took place in central Korea as the antagonists sought ownership of Hill 266, commonly referred to as “Old Baldy.” This was followed during April–July 1953 by two tactically pointless battles over Pork Chop Hill, in which the UN forces won the first battle and the Chinese the second, with both sides sustaining major casualties. On July 27, 1953, the two belligerents signed an armistice agreement, implementing a ceasefire that stands to this day. De facto, the Korean War has never ended.

Korean War—Imjin River: Fall of the Glosters to the Armistice, April 1951–July 1953

Stephen Emerson

A history of the military campaign that set the stage for the end of the Vietnam War.
 
 By the end of 1971, in what Hanoi called the American War and at the height of the Cold War, the fighting had dragged on for eight years with neither side gaining a decisive advantage on the battlefield and talks in Paris to the end the war were going nowhere. While the United States was steadily drawing down its ground forces in South Vietnam, Washington was also engaging in a grand effort to build up and strengthen Saigon’s armed forces to the point of self-sufficiency. Not only had the ranks of Saigon’s forces swelled in recent years, but they were now being equipped and trained to use the latest American military equipment. Perhaps now was the time for Hanoi to take one last gamble before it was too late.
 
 With the rumble of men and mechanized equipment breaking the early morning silence, some 40,000 North Vietnamese troops advanced across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam on March 30, 1972, in what would become the largest conventional attack of the war. Ill-prepared and poorly led, South Vietnamese troops in the far north were quickly routed in the face of the ensuing onslaught. Likewise, coordinated attacks across the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon and into the central highlands in the coming weeks gained steam and in due course as many as 200,000 men along with T-54/55 main battle tanks, 130mm towed artillery, ZSU-57 self-propelled ant-aircraft guns, and hundreds of trucks and armored personnel carriers were engaged across three battlefronts. Soon Saigon’s beleaguered forces were being pushed to the brink of defeat in what appeared to be the end for the Thieu government. Ultimately, however, the timely and massive intervention by U.S. and South Vietnamese air power, along with the bravery of some South Vietnamese commanders and their American advisers saved the day. Hanoi’s gamble had failed and, in its wake, lay up to 100,000 dead and South Vietnamese roads littered with the smoldering wrecks of North Vietnamese military equipment. Moreover, it would be another three years before the North had recovered enough to try again.
 
“Informatively presents an episode of the Vietnam War that has otherwise lapsed into obscurity, crowed out of the history books by North Vietnam’s ultimate victory against the U.S. and South Vietnamese military.” —Midwest Book Review
 
“The lessons from Hanoi’s military victory, which are discussed in this book, still echo in today’s U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, so this book’s account is especially pertinent in understanding the current predicaments facing the U.S. in that troubled country.” —Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

North Vietnam's 1972 Easter Offensive: Hanoi's Gamble

An examination of the causes and the direct outcome of North Korea’s seemingly unstoppable thrust down the Korean Peninsula in 1950.

In his first four volumes on the Korean War, the author traces the war’s progress from the North Korean invasion of June 1950, the desperate American defense of the Pusan Perimeter, General Douglas MacArthur’s daring and highly successful amphibious offensive at Inch’on, and his subsequent advance across the 38th Parallel to the Yalu River on the Chinese Manchurian border

Communist Chinese forces, that have been secretly infiltrating North Korean territory by slipping across the Yalu from mid-October 1950, ambush a South Korean regiment in the mountains of central North Korea. This is the first of several Chinese victories over unsuspecting and overstretched South Korean and American units in the winter of 1950-1951.

On November 27, 1950, Chinese leader Mao Zedong, ostensibly fearful of the consequences of hostile American forces on his country’s border along the Yalu River, orders 250,000 troops into Korea, with express orders to annihilate the UN forces. In the western half of the theater, U.S. General Walton H. Walker’s Eighth Army front along the Ch’ongch’on axis is breached, while to the east, the U.S. X Corps suffers a series of crushing defeats, including at the Chosin Reservoir, precipitating a massive evacuation from the North Korean port of Hungnam.

Praise for Korean War - Chinese Invasion

"An extraordinarily informative and exceptionally well written, deftly organized and presented, detailed history.” —Midwest Book Review

Korean War—Chinese Invasion: People's Liberation Army Crosses the Yalu, October 1950–March 1951

Phil Carradice

This account of the disastrous invasion of Cuba funded and directed by the United States is “a readable, accessible introduction to the topic” (H-Net).
 
 Perhaps not in casualties but as far as prestige and standing in the world were concerned, the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 was the worst disaster to befall the USA since the War of 1812 when British forces burned the White House. Badly planned, badly organized, the affair was littered with mistakes from start to finish, not least with an inept performance by John F. Kennedy and his new administration.
 
 Supposedly an attempt by Cuban exiles to regain their homeland, the whole operation was funded and equipped by the USA. When things began to go wrong with the landings at Playa Larga and Playa Giron on the southern coast of Cuba, President Kennedy and his advisers began overruling military decisions with the result that the invading Brigade 2506, made up of Cuban exiles, was left with little or no air cover, limited ammunition, and no easy escape.
 
 Fidel Castro made great play of his success and American failure at the Bay of Pigs. He, like Nikita Khrushchev, thought Kennedy was weak—and the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year was almost an inevitable consequence of the disaster. This account tells the dramatic story of this pivotal Cold War event.

Bay of Pigs: CIA's Cuban Disaster, April 1961

A history of this dramatic and risky amphibious invasion, with photos included.

In the previous two volumes in the author’s series on battles of the Korean War, North Korean ground forces, armor and artillery cross the 38th Parallel into South Korea, inflicting successive ignominious defeats on the ill-prepared US-led UN troops, pushing them ever southward into a tiny defensive enclave—the Pusan Perimeter—on the tip of the Korean Peninsula.

The story continues as General Douglas MacArthur, Second World War veteran of the South East Asia and Pacific theaters, meets with considerable resistance to his plans for a counteroffensive, from both Washington and his staff in South Korea and Japan: it is typhoon season, the approaches to the South Korean port city of Inch’on are not conducive to amphibious assault, and it will leave the besieged Pusan Perimeter in great danger of being overrun. However, the controversial MacArthur’s obstinate persistence prevails and, with a mere three weeks to go, the US X Corps is activated to execute the invasion on D-Day, September 15, 1950.

Elements of the US Marine Corps land successfully on the scheduled day, and with the element of surprise on their side, immediately strike east to Seoul, only fifteen miles away. The next day, General Walker’s Eighth US Army breaks out of Pusan to complete the southerly envelopment of the North Korean forces. Seoul falls on the 25th. MacArthur’s impulsive gamble has paid off, and the South Korean government moves back to their capital. The North Koreans have been driven north of the 38th Parallel, effectively bringing to an end their invasion of the south that started on June 25, 1950. With a timeline and photos included, this book tells the compelling story.

Inchon Landing: MacArthur's Korean War Masterstroke, September 1950

An account of the last American bombardments that took place over North Vietnam while peace talks struggled in Paris. Includes maps and photos.

On March 30, 1972, some thirty thousand North Vietnamese troops, along with tanks and heavy artillery, surged across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam in the opening round of Hanoi’s Easter Offensive. By early May, South Vietnamese forces were on the ropes and faltering. Without the support of U.S. combat troops—who were in their final stage of withdrawing from the country—the Saigon government was in danger of total collapse and with it any American hope of a negotiated settlement to the war.

In response, President Richard Nixon called for an aggressive, sustained bombardment of North Vietnam. Code-named Operation Linebacker I, the interdiction effort sought to stem the flow of men and materiel southward, as well as sever all outside supply lines in the first new bombing of the North Vietnamese heartland in nearly four years. To meet the American air armada, North Vietnamese MiG fighters took to the skies and surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire filled the air from May to October over Hanoi and Haiphong. With the failure of its Easter Offensive to achieve military victory, Hanoi reluctantly returned to the negotiating table in Paris. However, as the peace talks teetered on the edge of collapse in December 1972, Nixon played his trump card: Operation Linebacker II. The resulting twelve-day Christmas bombing campaign unleashed the full wrath of American air power. This book tells the story of these decisive campaigns and how they led, finally, to a ceasefire agreement.

Vietnam's Final Air Campaign: Operation Linebacker I & II, May–December 1972

How superpower interests and Cold War politics exacerbated a war in Africa that left millions dead or displaced.

As the Cold War raged on in the 1970s and 1980s, much of southern Africa, from Angola to Mozambique, became caught up in the superpower competition as local and regional proxies for both Moscow and Washington fought it out on the battlefield. Thus, the struggle to determine the future of a newly independent Mozambique was shaped by multiple factors beyond the control of its people in the course of its sixteen-year conflict from 1977–1992.

The longevity and ferocity of the Mozambican war would leave an estimated one million dead, millions more displaced and homeless, and a country in ruins. From the rise of the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, or Renamo, in 1977 as a Rhodesian weapon against Zimbabwean nationalist guerrillas operating in Mozambique, through South African patronage in the 1980s and to Renamo’s evolution as a self-sufficient insurgency, the forces of Mozambican nationalism became inexorably intertwined with the geopolitics of the region and the international manifestations of the Cold War. 

Thus, both government and rebel forces found themselves repeatedly beholden to external interests—be it American, Soviet, Cuban, South African, or Rhodesian—as each sought to advance its own agenda and future vision of the country. However, it would be Mozambicans themselves who spilled their blood in a clash of men and arms that spanned the length and breadth of the country—and ultimately this is their story of sacrifice and triumph.

Includes maps, photos, and a glossary

Mozambican Civil War: Marxist-Apartheid Proxy, 1977–1992

A history of the “secret war” in Southeast Asia in which nearly three million tons of bombs decimated a newly independent nation.

By 1959 the newly independent Kingdom of Laos was transforming into a Cold War battleground for global superpower competition, having been born out of the chaos following the French military defeat and withdrawal from Indochina in 1954. The country was soon engulfed in a rapidly evolving civil war as rival forces jockeyed for power and swelling foreign intervention intensified the fighting.

Adding even more fuel to the fire, “neutral” Laos’s geographic entanglement in the war in neighbouring South Vietnam deepened in the early 1960s as Hanoi’s reliance on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for moving men and material through the southern Laotian panhandle grew exponentially, making it a priority target of American interdiction efforts. For almost twenty years, the fighting between the Western-supported Royal Lao government and the communist-supported Pathet Lao would rage across the plains, jungles, and mountaintops largely unseen by most of the world. Thousands on each side would die and many more would be displaced as the conflict on the ground ebbed and flowed from season to season and year to year.

 And in the skies above, American and Royal Laotian aircraft would rain down their deadly payloads, decimating large swaths of the countryside in pursuit of victory. Nearly three million tons of bombs would be dropped on Laotian territory between 1965 and 1973, leaving a legacy of unexploded ordnance that lingers to this day. 

The battle for Laos is a tale of entire communities and generations caught up in a war seemingly without end, one that pitted competing foreign interests and their proxies against each other and was forever tied to Washington’s pursuit of victory in Vietnam. This book tells the story of this so-called “secret war. ”

The Battle for Laos: Vietnam's Proxy War, 1955–1975

A historian’s overview of Czechoslovakia’s Alexander Dubček, the Prague Spring of 1968, and the Warsaw Pact Invasion.

Cold War nadir: January 1968 and in Czechoslovakia, the new Communist Party leader, Alexander Dubcek, has made it clear that this is the opportunity to loosen the Soviet stranglehold on the country. As the Prague winter slowly eases into a Prague spring, it really does seem as if Dubček has judged it right. Reforms in oppressive censorship laws, improved housing, a lessening of totalitarian oppression, Dubček promises and delivers on it all. The new regime in Czechoslovakia does seek to destroy communism but it does want to choose its own political destiny.

And then, on the night of 20/21 August, the Prague Spring is crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion: 200,000 Communist troops, mostly Soviet but also Polish and East German, flood the country. The resulting protests and rallies against the invasion, mostly by young people, are violent and bloody. Hundreds die in clashes; self-immolation, in public and before the eyes of the world, brings home the horror and the depth of feeling in the Czech people.

It is the end of the Prague Spring, the reformation of Czechoslovakia having ended in ruins. But despite the brutal crushing of Czech hopes and dreams, the events of 1968 lay the foundations for future change. It will take another two decades but it is, ultimately, where the unraveling of the Communist bloc begins.

Prague Spring 1968: Warsaw Pact Invasion

Al J. Venter

When a large group of rebels invaded Angola from a recently independent Congo in 1961, it heralded the opening shots in another African war of independence. Between 1961 and 1974, Portugal faced the extremely ambitious task of conducting three simultaneous counterinsurgency campaigns to preserve its hegemony of Angola, Portuguese Guinea and Mozambique. 

While other European states were falling over themselves in granting independence to their African possessions, Portugal chose to stay and fight despite the odds against success. That it did so successfully for thirteen years in a distant multi-fronted war remains a remarkable achievement, particularly for a nation of such modest resources. For example, in Angola the Portuguese had a tiny air force of possibly a dozen transport planes, a squadron or two of F-86s and perhaps twenty helicopters: and that in a remote African country twice the size of Texas. 

Portugal proved that such a war can be won. In Angola victory was complete. However, the political leadership proved weak and irresolute, and this encouraged communist elements within the military to stage a coup in April 1974 and lead a capitulation to the insurgent movements, squandering the hard-won military and social gains and abandoning Portugals African citizens to generations of civil war and destitution.

Angolan War of Liberation: Colonial–Communist Clash, 1961–1974

Paul Chrystal

The nervous geopolitical tension between East and West, the Cold War, emerged before the end of the Second World War and lasted until 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The British Army of the Rhine was born in 1945 out of the British Liberation Army at the close of the war as the military government of the British zone of occupied Germany. As the Soviet threat increased, so BAOR became less of an occupational army and assumed the role of defender of Western Europe, and as a major contributor to NATO after 1949.This book traces and examines the changing role of BAOR from 1945 to its demise in the 1993 Options for Change defence cuts. It looks at the part it played in the defence of West Germany, its effectiveness as a Cold War deterrent, the garrisons and capabilities, logistics and infrastructure, its arms and armour, the nuclear option and the lives of the thousands of families living on the front line.

British Army of the Rhine: The BAOR, 1945–1993

One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children died in one of Africa's first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets. Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africa's most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability from which Nigeria never really recovered also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.

Biafra Genocide: Nigeria: Bloodletting and Mass Starvation, 1967–1970

For a hundred years, British and Chinese territorial claims in the Himalayas conflicted, with Indian historians claiming that the region was the fountainhead of Hindu civilization. In the halcyon days of the Raj, London saw Afghanistan and Tibet as buffers against Russian and Chinese imperialism. In 1913, an ephemeral agreement between Britain, Tibet and China was signed, recognizing the McMahon Line as the border of the disputed territory. China, however, failed to ratify the agreement, while India protested against a loss of historical land. After the Second World War, India became independent of Britain and Chinese Communists proclaimed a people's republic. Despite cordial overtures from Indian Prime Minister Nehru, in late 1950 the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) invaded Tibet. In the ensuing twelve years, Indian diplomacy and Chinese cartographic aggression were punctuated by border incidents, particularly in 1953 when armed clashes precipitated a significant increase in the disposition of troops by both sides. In the spring of 1962, Indian forces flooded into the Ladakh region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, to check the Chinese. In a spiralling game of brinkmanship, in September, ground forces were strategically deployed and redeployed. On 10 October, thirty-three Chinese died in a firefight near Dhola. Embittered by Moscow's support of India against a sister communist state, and in a bid to clip Nehru's belligerent wings, on 20 October, the PLA launched a two-pronged attack against Indian positions.

Sino-Indian War: Border Clash: October–November 1962

Anthony Tucker-Jones

The dramatic story of the brutal eight-year war between these rival powers in the 1980s, with numerous photos included.
 
 The bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq war is now almost forgotten, overshadowed by the subsequent Gulf War and Iraq War. It is best remembered for the unique so-called Tanker War, which threatened to strangle the world’s oil supplies.
 
 At the time, defense analyst Anthony Tucker-Jones wrote extensively on the war and now brings his expertise to bear with this account of a conflict fueled by festering regional rivalries, the Cold War, and the emerging threat posed by militant Shia Islam. Fought on land, at sea, and in the air using some of the most modern weapons money could buy, Western-backed Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Iraq and Shia Iran under the ayatollahs fought themselves to a standstill.
 
 Once Saddam’s armored blitzkrieg had been halted and Iran’s human-wave counterattacks fought off, it became a war of attrition with major battles fought for the possession of Khorramshahr and Basra. Both sides resorted to chemical weapons and bombarded each other with missiles. When the war finally spilled over into the waters of the Gulf, it sparked open Western intervention. This is the riveting story of this long and devastating conflict, accompanied by extensive photos.

Iran–Iraq War: The Lion of Babylon, 1980–1988

In early 1965 the United States unleashed the largest sustained aerial bombing campaign since World War II, against North Vietnam. Through an ever-escalating onslaught of destruction, Operation Rolling Thunder intended to signal America's unwavering commitment to its South Vietnamese ally in the face of continued North Vietnamese aggression, break Hanoi's political will to prosecute the war, and bring about a negotiated settlement to the conflict. It was not to be. Against the backdrop of the Cold War and fears of widening the conflict into a global confrontation, Washington policy makers micromanaged and mismanaged the air campaign and increasingly muddled strategic objectives and operational methods that ultimately sowed the seeds of failure, despite the heroic sacrifices by U. S. Air Force and Navy pilots and crews Despite flying some 306,000 combat sorties and dropping 864,000 tons of ordnance on North Vietnam 42 percent more than that used in the Pacific theater during World War II Operation Rolling Thunder failed to drive Hanoi decisively to the negotiating table and end the war. That would take another four years and another air campaign. But by building on the hard earned political and military lessons of the past, the Nixon Administration and American military commanders would get another chance to prove themselves when they implemented operations Linebacker I and II in May and December 1972. And this time the results would be vastly different.

Air War Over North Vietnam: Operation Rolling Thunder, 1965–1968

When the world held its breath It is more than 25 years since the end of the Cold War. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944 long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Syria, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was Korea Without warning, at 4.00 a.m. on 25 June 1950, North Korean artillery laid down a heavy bombardment on the Ongjin Peninsula, followed four hours later by a massive armored, air, amphibious and infantry breach of the ill-conceived postwar border that was the 38 north line of latitude. At 11.00 a.m., North Korea issued a declaration of war against the Republic of Korea. Three days later, the South Korean capital, Seoul, fell.The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. A week after his reaction to the North Korean invasion, US President Harry S. Truman, in compliance with a UN Security Council resolution, appointed that iconic Second World War veteran, General Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of forces in Korea.The first in a six-volume series on the Korean War, this publication considers those first few fateful days in June 1950 that would cement northsouth antagonism to this day, the pariah state that is communist North Korea a seemingly increasing threat to an already tenuous global peace.

North Korea Invades the South: Across the 38th Parallel, June 1950

Louis Archard

When the world held its breath It is more than 25 years since the end of the Cold War. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944 long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Syria, Somalia and Ukraine. 

In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was Hungary Soviet troops had occupied Hungary in 1945 as they pushed towards Germany and by 1949 the country was ruled by a communist government that towed the Soviet line. Resentment at the system eventually boiled over at the end of October 1956. Protests erupted on the streets of Budapest and, as the violence spread, the government fell and was replaced by a new, more moderate regime. 

However, the intention of the new government to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and declare neutrality in the Cold War proved just too much for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Soviet forces had intervened at the beginning of events to help the former regime keep order but were withdrawn at the end of October, only to return in November and quell the uprising with blunt force. 

Thousands were arrested, many of whom were imprisoned and more than 300 executed. An estimated 200,000 fled Hungary as refugees. Despite advocating a policy of rolling back Soviet influence, the US and other western powers were helpless to stop the suppression of the uprising, which marked a realization that the Cold War in Europe had reached a stalemate.

Hungarian Uprising: Budapest's Cataclysmic Twelve Days, 1956

When the world held its breath It is more than 25 years since the end of the Cold War. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944 long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Syria, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was China in 1949 China. 1949: two vast armies prepare for a final showdown that will decide Asia's future. One is led by Mao Tse-tung and his military strategists Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. Hardened by years of guerrilla warfare, armed and trained by the Soviets, and determined to emerge victorious, the Peoples Liberation Army is poised to strike from its Manchurian stronghold. Opposing them are the teetering divisions of the Kuomintang, the KMT. For two decades Chiang Kai-sheks regime had sought to fashion China into a modern state. But years spent battling warlords, and enduring Japan's brutal conquest of their homeland, has left the KMT weak, corrupt, and divided. Millions of Chinese perished during the crucible of the Sino-Japanese War and the long, grueling years of the Second World War. But the Soviet victory against the Japanese Kwantung Army in 1945 allowed Maos Communists to re-arm and prepare for the coming civil war. Within a few short years, the KMT were on the defensive while the Communists possessed the most formidable army in East Asia. The stage was set for Chinas rebirth as a communist dictatorship ruled by a megalomaniac who would become the biggest mass-murderer in history.

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Cold War, 1945–1991 - Bogserien

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