Cold War crescendo: in the author’s first three volumes in a series on battles of the Korean War, North Korean forces cross the 38th Parallel, rolling back US and South Korean forces into a small corner of the Korean peninsula. Months later, commander of the United Nations Command (UNC) in Korea, General Douglas MacArthur, launches a daring counteroffensive invasion at Inchon, enveloping North Korea. Despite a warning from Beijing that it will intervene if US forces cross the 38th, MacArthur uses the UN’s conditional authorization to land elements of the US X Corps at Wonsan and Riwon in North Korea. The Eighth US Army and South Korean forces capture the North Korean capital, P’yngyang, while American paratroops make the first combat jump of the conflict at Sunch’n and Sukch’n, cutting the road to the Chinese border. While MacArthur’s ground forces edge closer to the Yalu River, and the general having designs of chasing the retiring North Koreans across the river into China, in October 1950 the Chinese politburo immediately deploys 200,000 members of the 13th Army Group of the newly titled People’s Volunteer Army (PLA) on a pre-emptive ‘defensive’ operation into North Korea.

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

It was a miracle worthy of the season. When Captain Leonard La Rue spied from his twelve-man merchant ship, the Meredith Victory, the throng of Korean refugees on the docks of a city in flames, he didn't hesitate to do what others would consider impossible. In December of 1950, La Rue and his skeleton crew rescued fourteen thousand Korean refugees from the hands of the rapidly-approaching Chinese army in the city of Hungnam. Through the night and next day, a seemingly endless succession of refugees boarded the Meredith, their will to live and strong spirit steeling them against the bitter cold and incredibly crowded conditions. Standing shoulder to shoulder for three days the refugees and crew stoically endured as La Rue steered the ship through sea battle, a thirty-mile web of sea mines, and enemy shelling. "Ship of Miracles" is the incredible story of what has been called "the greatest rescue operation by a single ship in the history of mankind." Against all odds, the little merchant vessel transported its precious cargo to the island of Koje-Do on Christmas Eve completely unharmed, all fourteen thousand refugees alive and well, including an additional five new lives begun on this incredible journey. As the fiftieth anniversary of this miraculous rescue approaches, "Ship of Miracles" is as touching today as it was then; a tale you'll hold close to your heart, and return to time and again. While the United States Navy prepares to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the perilous evacuation at Hungnam and honor the Meredith Victory's miraculous feat, read this never-before-told account from the crew themselves, as they relate the incredible and unbelievable details of their three-day journey from fear to freedom.

In Churchill Cold War Warrior, renowned military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones reassesses Winston Churchill’s neglected postwar career. He explains how in an unguarded moment Winston inadvertently sowed the seeds for the Cold War by granting Stalin control of Eastern Europe. Famously Churchill, at Fulton, then warned of the growing danger created by this partition of the continent. Winston after the Second World War wanted to prove a point. Shunned by the electorate in 1945, instead of retiring he was determined to be Prime Minister for a second time. Biding his time he watched in dismay as Britain scuttled from India and Palestine and weathered the East-West confrontation over Berlin. He finally got his way in 1951 and took the reins of a country with drastically waning powers. Churchill was confronted by a world in turmoil, with an escalating Cold War that had gone hot in Korea and an unraveling British Empire. Communism and nationalism proved a heady cocktail that fanned the flames of widespread conflict. He had to contain rebellions in Kenya and Malaya while clinging on in Egypt. Desperately he also sought to avoid a Third World War and the use of nuclear weapons by reuniting the 'Big Three'.

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.

Low-intensity conflict (LIC) often has been viewed as the wrong kind of warfare for the American military, dating back to the war in Vietnam and extending to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the American perspective, LIC occurs when the U.S. military must seek limited aims with a relatively modest number of available regular forces, as opposed to the larger commitments that bring into play the full panoply of advanced technology and massive commitments of troops. Yet despite the conventional view, U.S. forces have achieved success in LIC, albeit "under the radar" and with credit largely assigned to allied forces, in a number of counterguerrilla wars in the 1960s."Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Korea, 1966-1969" focuses on what the author calls the Second Korean conflict, which flared up in November 1966 and sputtered to an ill-defined halt more than three years later. During that time, North Korean special operations teams had challenged the U.S. and its South Korean allies in every category of low-intensity conflict - small-scale skirmishes along the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, spectacular terrorist strikes, attempts to foment a viable insurgency in the South, and even the seizure of the USS Pueblo - and failed. This book offers a case study in how an operational-level commander, General Charles H. Bonesteel III, met the challenge of LIC. He and his Korean subordinates crafted a series of shrewd, pragmatic measures that defanged North Korea's aggressive campaign. According to the convincing argument made by "Scenes from an Unfinished War," because the U.S. successfully fought the "wrong kind" of war, it likely blocked another kind of wrong war - a land war in Asia. The Second Korean Conflict serves as a corrective to assumptions about the American military's abilities to formulate and execute a winning counterinsurgency strategy. Originally published in 1991. 180 pages. maps. ill.

The Korean War has been termed "The Forgotten War" or the "Unknown War." It is a conflict which never assumed the mythic character of the American Civil War or World War II. However, this book asserts, it would be impossible to understand the Cold War and indeed post 1945 global history without knowledge of the Korean War. Providing a history of the Korean peninsula before the war and including a detailed analysis of the fighting itself, The Korean War goes beyond the battlefield to deal with the war in the air, ground attack, and air evacuation. The study also evaluates the contributions of the UN naval forces, the impact of the war on various homefronts and issues such as defectors, opposition to the war, racial segregation and integration, POWs and the media. Recently-released Soviet documents are used to assess the role of China, the Soviet Union, North and South Korea and the allied forces in the conflict. This fascinating work offers a unique analysis of the Korean War and will be invaluable to students of twentieth-century history, particularly those concerned with American and Pacific history.

For: Robert J. Johnson.

Fought on what to Westerners was a remote peninsula in northeast Asia, the Korean War was a defining moment of the Cold War. It militarized a conflict that previously had been largely political and economic. And it solidified a series of divisions--of Korea into North and South, of Germany and Europe into East and West, and of China into the mainland and Taiwan--which were to persist for at least two generations. Two of these divisions continue to the present, marking two of the most dangerous political hotspots in the post-Cold War world. The Korean War grew out of the Cold War, it exacerbated the Cold War, and its impact transcended the Cold War. William Stueck presents a fresh analysis of the Korean War's major diplomatic and strategic issues. Drawing on a cache of newly available information from archives in the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union, he provides an interpretive synthesis for scholars and general readers alike. Beginning with the decision to divide Korea in 1945, he analyzes first the origins and then the course of the conflict. He takes into account the balance between the international and internal factors that led to the war and examines the difficulty in containing and eventually ending the fighting. This discussion covers the progression toward Chinese intervention as well as factors that both prolonged the war and prevented it from expanding beyond Korea. Stueck goes on to address the impact of the war on Korean-American relations and evaluates the performance and durability of an American political culture confronting a challenge from authoritarianism abroad. Stueck's crisp yet in-depth analysis combines insightful treatment of past events with a suggestive appraisal of their significance for present and future.