As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The result was the largest battle on the dark continent since Al Alamein, with forces from both sides paying in blood what U.S. -Soviet diplomats were otherwise spending in diplomacy.The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, fully stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcements—the army of Communist Cuba’s.Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, largely unknown in the U.

During the 1980s, the Reagan Administration financed and directed wars against popular movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua that left more than 300,000 dead and countless more wounded. Vowing to block “Soviet expansion,” the U.S. waged a Vietnam-style counterinsurgency against leftist rebels in El Salvador while orchestrating an illegal and covert war to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Some 75,000 died in El Salvador, mostly at the hands of U.

On 4 November 1979, “student” supporters of the Ayatollah seized the U.S. Embassy with over 60 hostages. Although the Cold War was in full swing, the Iran hostage crisis was a watershed for the United States. The counterterrorism learning curve, both political and military, would be steep and often deadly. Detachment A had been established in Berlin early in the Cold War to harass and delay any Soviet military advance west. This Special unit trained relentlessly for every aspect of unconventional warfare, and was later assigned a second mission of counterterrorism. Due to this mix of skills, Det A would be called upon to undertake additional missions, including providing protection to General Al Haig and General Frederick Kroesen following assassination attempts. When American planners were trying to work out how to rescue hostages being held at two sites in the middle of a hostile country, it became apparent that the unit—the only US military dual-capability unit—would be integral to the effort. The plan for Operation Eagle Claw, as it became known, was extremely complex. The first stage was intelligence gathering—no mean feat as most of the CIA’s capabilities in the country had been eliminated. With operatives trained in intelligence work, fluent in many languages and adept at blending in, Det A took on the advanced recon of the targets. Then, when Delta Force admitted that it could only manage the assault of the Embassy, Det A volunteered to rescue the three Americans at the Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile for security purposes, all existing training and exercise commitments in Berlin would continue with no Teams broken up. This caused some consternation as none of the men wanted to miss out on this mission reminiscent of Son Tay. Veteran and historian James Stejskal details Det A’s unique and integral role in Operation Eagle Claw, based upon firsthand accounts of the operatives involved.

On December 7, 1941, an imperial Japanese carrier strike force attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, taking advantage of what was one of the most profound intelligence failures in US history. Galvanised into action, the branches of the U.S. military subsequently developed one of the greatest, albeit imperfect, intelligence-gathering and analysis networks of the combatant nations, opening an invaluable window onto the intentions of their enemies. The picture of U.

Now a green, open space enjoyed by residents, Fort Hunt, Virginia – about 15 miles south of Washington, DC. – was the site of one of the highest-level, clandestine operations during World War II. Shortly after entering World War II, the U. S. military realised that it had to work on exploiting any advantages it might gain on the Axis Powers. One part of these endeavours was to establish a secret facility not too close, but also not too far from the Pentagon, which would interrogate and eavesdrop on the highest-level Nazi prisoners and also translate and analyse captured German war documents. The complex established at Fort Hunt was known by the code name: PO Box 1142. The American servicemen who interrogated German prisoners or translated captured German documents were young, bright, hardworking, and absolutely dedicated to their work. Many of them were Jews, who had escaped Nazi Germany as children – some had come to America with their parents, others had escaped alone, but their experiences and those they had been forced to leave behind meant they all had personal motivation to do whatever they could to defeat Nazi Germany. They were perfect for the difficult and complex job at hand. They never used corporal punishment in interrogations of German soldiers but developed and deployed dozens of tricks to gain information. The Allies won the war against Hitler for a host of reasons, discussed in hundreds of volumes. This is the first book to describe the intelligence operations at PO Box 1142 and their part in that success. It will never be known how many American lives were spared, or whether the war ended sooner with the programs at Fort Hunt, but they doubtless did make a difference. Moreover these programs gave the young Jewish men stationed there the chance to combat the evil that had befallen their families.

During World War II, the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) projected American military might across distances and with destructive force unimaginable just a decade previously. The B-17s and B-24s of the US Eighth Air Force turned much of Germany’s infrastructure to twisted steel and burnt rubble between 1943 and 1945. B-29 Superfortresses unleashed conventional raids on Japan of even greater area destruction than that created by the atomic bomb attacks (also delivered by USAAF crews). Beyond heavy strategic bombing, US bombers performed a multitude of other tactical roles, including hunting Axis submarines, bombing enemy shipping, low-level runs against precision targets, and providing heavy air support to advancing infantry and armour. While the US bombers dealt out violence, they were also prey to a terrifying spectrum of antiaircraft threats, and by the end of the war 88,119 US airmen had died in service. Bomber crews were a world unto themselves, composed of pilots, co-pilots, engineers, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and bombardiers. And each aircraft type had its own unique characteristics and capabilities, from twin-engine B-25 Mitchells designed for strafing and skip-bombing to the four-engine workhorses of the strategic bombing campaign: the B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, and B-29 Superfortress. Fighting from the Heavens presents an invaluable collection of material from US wartime manuals, including doctrinal, training, technical, aircraft-specific, and position-specific publications. Through these manuals, the reader gains an insider’s insight into the demands of US bomber warfare, including long-distance navigation, gun-turret operation, formation flying, bomber start-up procedures, and bomb aiming.

For almost half a century, the hottest front in the Cold War was right across Berlin. From summer 1945 until 1990, the secret services of NATO and the Warsaw Pact fought an ongoing duel in the dark. Throughout the Cold War, espionage was part of everyday life in both East and West Berlin, with German spies playing a crucial part of operations on both sides: Erich Mielke's Stasi and Reinhard Gehlen's Federal Intelligence Service, for example. The construction of the wall in 1961 changed the political situation and the environment for espionage - the invisible front was now concreted and unmistakable. but the fundamentals had not changed: Berlin was and would remain the capital of spies until the fall of the Berlin Wall, a fact which makes it all the more surprising that there are hardly any books about the work of the secret services in Berlin during the Cold War. Journalist Sven Felix Kellerhoff and historian Bernd von Kostka describe the spectacular successes and failures of the various secret services based in the city.

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.

Ten years after the publication of his Services Spéciaux (1935-1945), Paillole took up his pen once again in order to shed further light on the critical role that the French Secret Service played in the infiltration of German agencies. In this first English edition of The Spy in Hitler’s Inner Circle, Paillole brings us to the very heart of the world of espionage and counterintelligence, providing unique insight into the key figures that led to the decoding of the Enigma machine at Bletchley and the ultimate collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich, most notably through Hans-Thilo Schmidt, France’s German spy embedded in the very heart of the Third Reich.In compelling narrative style Paillole details how Schmidt delivered intelligence to France right from the source of the German Cipher Office. Schmidt, whose brother Rudolf occupied one of the highest postings in the Third Reich, commander of 2nd Panzer Army in Russia, created an intelligence network between France, Poland and England, and successfully transmitted crucial details about Hitler’s strategic plans. From information about Germany’s rearmament and the reoccupation of the Rhineland, to fundamental technical intelligence about the Enigma machine, Schmidt’s contributions are key to the Allied victory in the intelligence war, despite the fact that France largely ignored his communications.Revealed here are the most secret aspects of the ‘secret war,’ the ‘war of numbers.’ Paillole also sheds further light on the interaction of secret agents working inside the German government, bringing attention to the cooperation between the French, English and Polish agencies surrounding the challenges of decoding the Enigma machine. We learn the innermost details of the roles that men such as Gustave Bertrand, Rudolphe Lemoine, and Richard Sorge played in this dramatic history and ultimately the pivotal role that Bletchley’s Alan Turing was able to perform as a result.Paillole brings renewed focus onto one of the most important espionage affairs of the war, revealing new aspects of the participation of Enigma during the decisive phases of the Second World War: the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Libya and the Battle of Normandy.