Epstein Secrets

Union and he addressed the threat of annihilation posed by the spread of atomic weaponry. But the career military man — the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War II, the thief of staff of the Army during the postwar era when tensions with Moscow rose — did not

of budget priorities. Eisenhower recognized the threats that existed. He spoke, at length, about difficult relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and he addressed the threat of annihilation posed by the spread of atomic weaponry. But the career military man — the supreme commander of the Allie

, it should be said, demonstrates a real facility for passing out unearned laurels. The war against Nazi Germany, he writes, ended in a "victory by Allied democracies (and the Soviet Union)." This certainly reflects the commonplace American view. But assigning credit on the basis of who did most of th

of Armageddon concentrated minds and helped prevent (or at least postpone) its occurrence. Credit for the Long Peace, therefore, belongs as much to the Soviet Union as to the United States—and perhaps to the nuclear scientists on both sides who so diligently built up their deadly arsenals. Kagan's corollary, t

bombers missed their targets; although 350,000 Germans were killed, Hitler and his government survived. And in the spring of 1945, to forestall an Allied land invasion of Japan that might have doomed millions, Gen. Curtis LeMay sent B- 29 firebombers over Tokyo and 63 other Japanese cities in the larg

in the 1960s, the cold war hastened the warplane's decline. As van Creveld notes, during the entire 45-year conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, not once did combat aircraft of the two countries directly fight each other as part of their own air forces (though Soviet pilots did fight Americ