History Soviet War

In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders.

To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations?

In this groundbreaking account, Kimmo Rentola traces the epochal shifts in Soviet-Finnish relations. From the Winter War to Finland's exit from World War II in 1944, a possible Soviet-backed coup in 1948, and Moscow's designation of Finland as an enemy state in 1950, Finland was forced to navigate Stalin's outsize political and territorial demands. Rentola presents a dramatic reconstruction of Finland's unlikely survival at a time when the nation's very existence was at stake.

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad—while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance—and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed.

Beginning in the years immediately after the First World War and continuing for more than a decade, the German military and the Soviet Union, despite having been bitter enemies, entered into a partnership designed to overturn the order in Europe. Centering on economic and military cooperation, the arrangement led to the establishment of a network of military bases and industrial facilities on Soviet soil, away from the oversight established by Versailles.

July 1967: At the Moscow Air Show, the Soviets unveiled six new state-of-the-art aircraft. From among this lineup of new fighters and interceptors stood the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 - purportedly capable of outrunning and outmaneuvering any aircraft in NATO’s inventory. Yet even before its public appearance in Moscow, the MiG-25 had been a grave concern for Western analysts.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.

It's 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program has successfully launched five capsules into space, the Chief Designer and his team have never successfully brought one back to Earth. To disguise this, they've used twins. But in a nation built on secrets and propaganda, the biggest lie of all is about to unravel. Because there are no more twins left.

The Cold War was a crucial conflict in American history. At stake was whether the world would be dominated by the forces of totalitarianism led by the Soviet Union, or inspired by the principles of economic and political freedom embodied in the United States. The Cold War established America as the leader of the free world and a global superpower. It shaped US military strategy, economic policy, and domestic politics for nearly 50 years.

In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes listeners from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.

Armageddon tells the story of the climatic months of the Second World War and the destruction of Hitler's Germany. In this compelling study, the author addresses the big human and military questions. Why did the Allies not win the war in 1944, when they were vastly stronger than the Germans? Why did the Russians produce the best generals? What was it like to fight the British, American, German and Soviet armies?

Samantha Moon returns in an all-new story! Vampire private eye Samantha Moon is summoned to a home in the San Diego hills, where she’s about to discover she's been part of a rescue mission in motion for seventy years... There sits on the edge of a lake in Argentina a massive stone structure, a structure that just might have been home to Adolf Hitler... a base of operations from which he and his minions planned to launch the Fourth Reich. That is, until Samantha Moon takes on a case unlike any other... Click BUY NOW or READ FOR FREE!

East Germany: The History and Legacy of the Soviet Satellite State Established after World War II examines the controversial country and its place in the Cold War. The history of East Germany was a remarkable one, from its chaotic origins through its ossification as a Stalinist regime, until the country collapsed with the Berlin Wall. Not only is Germany still marked by the division, but the old frontier still represents different expectations, social conditions, and worldviews.

Entre 1979 y 1989 un millón de tropas soviéticas combatieron en una guerra devastadora en Afganistán que provocó más de 50.000 bajas y acabó con la juventud y la humanidad de varias decenas de miles de soldados más. Los muertos soviéticos volvían a casa en ataúdes de zinc sellados mientras el estado no reconocía ni la mera existencia del conflicto. Svetlana Alexievich expone la verdad de la guerra afgano-soviética: la belleza del país y los abusos del ejército, las muertes y las mutilaciones, la profusión de productos occidentales, las vidas destrozadas de los veteranos.

At the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Soviets were so caught by surprise at the start of the attack that the Germans were able to push several hundred miles into Russia across a front that stretched dozens of miles long, reaching the major cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol in just three months. The first major Russian city in their path was Minsk, which fell in only six days. In order to make clear his determination to win at all costs, Stalin had the three men in charge of the troops defending Minsk executed for their failure to hold their position.

Partly out of dire circumstances and partly from a cultural worldview, it was the Soviet Union who first pressed female pilots into direct combat when Hitler invaded Russia. Ahead of Stalingrad, Stalin publicly declared that “women should be given the right to fly and fight for their country.” As a result, more than 800,000 women served in the Soviet military during the war years.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In the time since the end of the war, the world has become familiar with the number of deaths sustained by the Soviet Union (also known as the USSR) during the conflict - 20 million. And that’s likely low, given the size of the country, census-taking at the time, and the damage done to the bureaucracy of the country.

Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 “winning” the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System.

A thrilling account of the Cold War spies and spycraft that changed the course of history, perfect for listeners of Bomb and The Boys Who Challenged Hitler. Rife with intrigue and filled with fascinating historical figures whose actions shine light on both the past and present, this timely work of narrative nonfiction explores the turbulence of the Cold War through the lens of the men and women who waged it behind closed doors, and helps explain the role secret and clandestine operations have played in America's history and its national security.

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union - a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today. The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the 20th century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas.