Soviet Military

After World War II, 50 percent of Americans polled said they didn’t believe Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide in their bunker in 1945, as captured Nazi officials claimed. Instead, they believed the dictator faked his death and escaped, perhaps to Argentina. This wasn’t a crazy opinion: Joseph Stalin told Allied leaders that Soviet forces never discovered Hitler’s body and that he personally believed the Nazi leader had escaped justice. At least two German submarines crossed the Atlantic and landed on the coast of Argentina in July 1945.

Red November is filled with hair-raising, behind-the-scenes stories that take you deep beneath the surface and into the action of the Cold War. Few know how close the world has come to annihilation better than the warriors who served America during the tense, 45-year struggle known as the Cold War. Yet for decades, their work has remained shrouded in secrecy.

Early in 1968, a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine sank in the waters off Hawaii, hundreds of miles closer to American shores than it should have been. Compelling evidence strongly suggests that the sub sank while attempting to fire a nuclear missile.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain was written by Soviet officers, who had served in Afghanistan and returned for the extensive Command and Staff course at the Frunze Combined Arms Academy in Moscow. While they were at the Academy, the History of the Military Art Department had the Afghanistan veterans write vignettes of their experience. They analyzed these, edited the best and added commentary as lessons learned for future war in mountain-desert terrain. The department published them as an in-house a book in 1991.

From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.

This audiobook is the story of combat from the guerrilla’s perspective and surviving against the overwhelming firepower and technology of a superpower. The audiobook consists of a series of combat vignettes related by Mujahideen combatants in Afghanistan that shows the good and the bad, the mistakes and successes of guerrillas fighting the Soviet military forces.

In January 1951, Lieutenant Evgeniy Borisov was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army in Spassk-Dalnii, a small city in the Russian Far East. Borisov was there on a secret mission. Together with his superior, Major Rusinov, his job was to establish the 91st Special Forces Company. The 91st was to be one of forty-six similar units spread out across the Soviet Union. The new forces were called "spetsnaz"—short for spetsnialnoe naznachenie, which translates to "special purpose."

In the summer of 1944, Nazi Germany still held a deep salient across Belarus. Army Group Centre guarded the approaches to Poland and East Prussia, protected by fortified cities, difficult terrain and a command system that treated withdrawal as betrayal. The Soviet high command intended to destroy it. Operation Bagration opened on 22 June. Behind a mask of deception, four Soviet fronts assembled overwhelming artillery, armour, aircraft and manpower. Their attack did not produce one clean breakthrough. It created a chain of crises: Vitebsk encircled, Orsha forced, Mogilev abandoned, Bobruisk ...

A World War II Military Thriller Inspired by True Events of the Winter War In the frozen skies of 1939 Finland, death doesn’t come from above—it hunts in formation. As the Soviet invasion begins, Finnish fighter ace Lieutenant Veikko Niemi takes to the air in his outclassed Fokker D.XXI, battling overwhelming numbers in defense of his homeland. But something is different this time. The Soviet pilots aren't flying blind bombing runs—they’re coordinated, precise, and deadly. Led by the enigmatic Major Grigori Chernyavin, a disgraced stunt pilot returned from Stalin’s purges, the ...

From International Bestselling Author Dennis Jones comes the critically acclaimed Cold War military thriller. 1989: A U.S.-Soviet arms treaty finally leads to the withdrawal of Pershing and SS20 medium-range missiles from Germany. It seems like the dawn of a new age of peace and stability in Europe – until a highly-placed KGB mole in the German government uncovers that country’s very secret plans... - Germany’s complete secession from NATO - The reunification of her divided East and West into one nation - The revival of the Wehrmacht, armed with French nuclear missiles Suddenly the ...

Flying combat missions in wartime is always dangerous. But imagine doing so in a slow, rickety biplane, at night, with no lights or navigational equipment of any kind. Sound impossible? It wasn't for the Soviet Night Witches. This unit of incredibly brave women flew hundreds of missions to attack German forces on the front lines during World War II. Learn all about these brave women and how their skill and courage in battle helped defeat the Nazis to win the war.

THE STRANGEST COLD WAR HEIST YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF—AND IT REALLY HAPPENED. June 1962. An abandoned Soviet drifting ice station groans in the polar night. Two American operatives, half-frozen and hauling armfuls of secret gear, stare into a blizzard and pray they can hear engines. Their ride home isn’t a helicopter or submarine—it’s a lumbering World War II B‑17 that intends to snatch them off the ice with a balloon, a cable, and a V‑shaped hook. Miss once and they die. Hit it, and they’re yanked into the sky like human kites. Skyhooked: The Untold Shocking True Story of ...

Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.

This classic history of America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies. "a gripping technothriller in which the technology is real" —New York Times Book Review From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful...

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. 

On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.

Can Saddam’s Army hold its own… …against the weight of American military might? Tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, paratroopers, and amphibious assault vehicles mobilize to bring the pain for Operation Desert Storm. Will Saddam use chemical and biological weapons to try and even the score? The mighty guns of the USS Iowa and Wisconsin support one final amphibious assault. Will their 36-inch, 2,000-pound shells shatter the Iraqi defenses and open the way for the Marines? The largest tank battle since World War II is brewing. What if America didn’t stop in southern Iraq? ...

November 30th, 1939 INVADED by the Soviet Union! Finland must mount a desperate defense against overwhelming odds. Outnumbered and outclassed, the world expected the tiny Nordic nation to quickly succumb to the Communist juggernaut. Instead the saga of David versus Goliath was reimagined into Finnish farmers and woodsmen standing firm against Soviet steel. This is the story of Hale’s war, a young man who grew up farming, and hunting the frozen forest of his northern home. Taught from a young age by his father to hunt and trap, Hale has grown into a master woodsman. Not yet eighteen ...

BARBAROSSA is the story of the campaign that changed the Second World War forever. At 03:15 on 22 June 1941, Hitler unleashed the largest land invasion in history. Along a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, German guns opened fire, Soviet airfields burned, and entire armies were thrown into chaos before dawn had fully broken. The Wehrmacht came east expecting a short, annihilating campaign. What followed was one of the most savage military collisions ever fought — a campaign of breathtaking early victories, colossal encirclements, mass death, and a fatal illusion that the ...

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents...