Product Description

From 1949 to 1991 the world was overshadowed by the Cold War. Repeatedly it seemed that in days, even hours, global nuclear conflict would sweep away much of the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe. They would be obliterated in what President Carter described as 'one long, final and very bleak afternoon'. When the Cold War ended, the Warsaw Pact was wound up and the vast military forces which had flourished for over forty years were disbanded. As with all wars, however, it was only then that the realities of what had been involved began to emerge; indeed, much has remained hidden until now. In "The Cold War", David Miller discloses not only the vast scope of the military resources involved, but also how nearly threat came to terrible reality. Most chillingly of all, he reveals that while the menace of nuclear war predominated, it was actually little understood even by the experts. The book examines each military area in turn, covering the formation of the two great alliances, and the strategies and major weapons in the rival navies, armies and air forces. That the Cold War ended without a conflict was due to professionalism on both sides. The result, Miller suggests, would have impressed the Chinese military strategist, Sun Tsu, who, writing in the fifth century BC, said that 'to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #292120 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The end of the Cold War was as dramatic as it was unexpected. At the beginning of 1989 no one in their right mind would have predicted the demise of the Soviet empire, and yet by the end of the year almost every Warsaw Pact regime throughout eastern Europe had been toppled. Some isolated events of that year, such as the knocking down of the Berlin Wall and the execution of the Romanian dictator, Nicolai Ceaucescu, remain vivid, but a decade later it is hard to recapture exactly it felt like to be living under its shadow. The Cold War ended so suddenly that there was little time to absorb what its passing meant, and there's a tendency to play down the threats and to say that the danger really ended with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

David Miller's history of the Cold War is a timely reminder that this was just not so. As the book's title suggests, Miller doesn't go in for any sociological or political analysis of the Cold War, restricting himself solely to a military analysis. At first this feels somewhat self-limiting and you yearn for a wider perspective; but as the book goes on, its narrow focus becomes compellingly powerful.

Miller spent 36 years in the army and he writes in the unquestioning style of someone who is well- acquainted with weapons of mass destruction. But to the lay person, much of what he writes will come as a shock. Most of us only got through the Cold War years thanks to an inbuilt capacity for self-deception. We knew that both sides had vast arsenals, but we managed to kid ourselves that even if the worst came to the worst and war did break out, we'd probably survive one way or another. Miller makes it abundantly clear that we wouldn't.

The Cold War presents a detailed catalogue of each country's military capacity; the conventional weapons alone make fearsome reading but we enter a different dimension when he moves on to nuclear capabilities. In the early 1960s, a UK think-tank predicted that a heavy attack on Britain would have killed 90 per cent of the population. Such an attack would have used only a fraction of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal.

Successive governments' obsession with developing bigger and better military hardware was one of the defining characteristics of the Cold War, and yet by 1965 we all had more than enough weapons to wipe each out several times over. So why did we carry on? The simple answer is that the Cold War generated an irrational momentum of its own. Every nuclear scenario the experts came up with always ended in the same way--a holocaust with no winners- -and yet that did not stop politicians in both the East and West in publicly defending the legitimacy of the nuclear option. It was madness on a grand scale, with Joe Public the unsuspecting pawns.

Miller ends his fine book by declaring that it was only the skill of the military and political leaders that prevented war from breaking out, though the questionable trustworthiness of those leaders makes you feel lucky to still be here. --John Crace

Review
"David Miller's military history of the Cold War is awesome in every sense." -"Evening Standard"

About the Author
David Miller's entire 36-year military career in the British Army was spent under the threat of the Cold War. This book is the result of first-hand experience at the time and of extensive research since. A freelance journalist and author, he has published 25 previous books, most of them on defence subjects.

Customer Reviews

An excellent overall view of the Cold War
For a conflict that spanned the best part of 50 years, there are remarkably few general histories of the Cold War, discounting the small booklets that are produced for high school students. Thus, David Miller ought to be congratulated for writing perhaps the first serious text covering the events of the Cold War. His task is not made any easier by the fact that there were of course no actual battles fought (thankfully!), and so a lot of the material in the book is based on conjecture, based on Miller's own thoughts or, in many cases, those of official think-tanks on both sides. The first few and last few chapters are the strongest points of the book, providing good, clear overviews of the events leading up to the Cold War, and accounts of the entry of member countries into both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, as well as detailed breakdowns of the organisational structure of the opposing sides. This said, the book sags rather heavily in the middle. Miller goes in for a 'bullet-point' style, with chapters entitled 'Strategic bombers', 'Ground forces', 'Naval forces' etc. with each chapter sub-divided into 'USA', 'Warsaw Pact', 'UK', 'France' etc. This approach gets rather tiresome after a while, and furthermore, while the amount of information under each sub-heading is enough to interest the layman, the more educated reader will find it extremely run-of-the-mill stuff, containing very little fresh material. Things that sound as if they might be interesting to people with specific interest in certain areas (in my case, the tank design race), such as tanks mounting 183mm cannon, are skipped over extremely quickly without a reference number for further reading. Also, while understanding that the book is meant to be a 'military history', only a very short chapter called the 'financial cost' is included in the book, dealing with the military/economic side of the Cold War, the failure of the Soviet economy to keep up with mounting costs arguably the main reason the Cold War ended when it did. Finally, compared with his detailed account of the build-up to the Cold War, Miller's account of the end is notably weaker. However, all this does not change the fact that Miller's book is an excellent account of the Cold War, which has formed such an important part of recent world history. The book should prove of interest to both 'beginners' and those with a more advanced knowledge of the subject. On a final more general note, the large format of the book is appreciated by someone who, as a student, spends far too much time poring over history texts which, in an attempt to cram all their material into a small format, have a minute font size which you almost need a magnifying glass to read them properly!

A facinating book
Lets get it out of the way, there are some inaccuracies in this book. One that humdinger that sticks out is the Valiant bomber, which stayed in service till the 1980s (plain wrong, it was withdrawn in the mid 60s).

Right, nitpicking over. What we have he is probably the best single reference book on cold war weapons. Other books do aspect better (such as tanks, aircraft etc) but you would be hard pressed to get ALL of them covered in the context of what they were built for,the cold war,or World war 3 in west germany. I keep coming back to this one again and again, and it comes up with surprises. I never knew the Italians fitted polaris tubes to their cruisers (never used), and I never knew the Kremlin produced its own propaganda sheet called 'whence the threat to peace'. The summation of the soviet war plan for western Europe is chilling.Anybook that covers everything from rifles to telecommunication systems has something for the coldwar freak like me.

Overall, deeply recommended.

A fine introduction to the subject.
This book provides an excellent overview of the military forces available to both sides in the Cold War. It is not as detailed as it might be, but considering the enormity of the subject and the limited space, David Miller does well in addressing every topic from Nuclear Strategy, to the naval forces available to NATO.

The information provided, gives a well-rounded look at the forces available and reduces the seemingly impossibly complicated Soviet missile and submarine designations to something understandable. It helps you distinguish your SS6s from SS23! The large number of appendices also provide very detailed information on the nuclear weapon levels of the USSR and USA and even the number and types of all the submarines the Soviets built, not to mention a hypothetical target list for a US nuclear laydown on the USSR in 1986!

This book is well-rounded and the fact it was written at the end of the Cold War with the additional information now available means that it ties up a number of loose ends. A very valuable all in one reference book that will impress even the casual reader with details of the tremendous power both side wielded during those years. For those of you looking for specific and detailed information on certain aspects of the Cold War militaries it might be somewhat dissapointing - although the information on nuclear warfare is excellent.