[PDF] Arming The Free World eBook

Author : Chester J. Pach Jr.
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 487 pages
File Size : 48,63 MB
Release : 2018-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1469650657

GET BOOK

In this important study, Chester Pach traces the emergence of military assistance as a major instrument of contemporary American foreign policy. During the early Cold War, arms aid grew from a few country and regional programs into a worldwide effort with an annual cost of more than $1 billion. Pach analyzes the Truman administration's increasing reliance on arms aid--for Latin America, Greece and Turkey, China, and Western Europe--to contain Communist expansion during the late 1940s. He shows that a crucial event was the passage of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949, the progenitor of a long series of global, Cold War arms measures. Pach demonstrates that the main impetus for the startling growth of military assistance was a belief that it would provide critical political and psychological reassurance to friendly nations. Although this aid was ostensibly provided for military purposes, the overriding goals were insuring goodwill, raising foreign morale, stiffening the will to resist communism, and proving American resolve and reliability. Policymakers, Pach contends, confused means with ends by stressing the symbolic importance of furnishing aid. They sought additional appropriations with the threat that any diminution or cessation of aid suggested a weakening of American commitment. Pach reveals that civilian, not military, officials were the principal advocates of the expansion of military aid, and he shows how the policies established during the Truman administration continued to exert a profound influence throughout the Cold War. Some officials questioned the self-perpetuating qualities of military aid programs, but Pach concludes that their warnings went unheeded. Although fiscal restraints in the Truman administration temporarily stemmed the growth of aid, the Korean War exploded budgetary limitations. MIlitary assistance spending expanded rapidly in size and scope, gaining a momentum that succeeding administrations could not resist. Originally published in 1991. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Author : David G. Herrmann
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 33,19 MB
Release : 2020-03-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0691201382

GET BOOK

David Herrmann's work is the most complete study to date of how land-based military power influenced international affairs during the series of diplomatic crises that led up to the First World War. Instead of emphasizing the naval arms race, which has been extensively studied before, Herrmann draws on documentary research in military and state archives in Germany, France, Austria, England, and Italy to show the previously unexplored effects of changes in the strength of the European armies during this period. Herrmann's work provides not only a contribution to debates about the causes of the war but also an account of how the European armies adopted the new weaponry of the twentieth century in the decade before 1914, including quick-firing artillery, machine guns, motor transport, and aircraft. In a narrative account that runs from the beginning of a series of international crises in 1904 until the outbreak of the war, Herrmann points to changes in the balance of military power to explain why the war began in 1914, instead of at some other time. Russia was incapable of waging a European war in the aftermath of its defeat at the hands of Japan in 1904-5, but in 1912, when Russia appeared to be regaining its capacity to fight, an unprecedented land-armaments race began. Consequently, when the July crisis of 1914 developed, the atmosphere of military competition made war a far more likely outcome than it would have been a decade earlier.

Author : Maury Klein
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 916 pages
File Size : 46,42 MB
Release : 2013-07-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1608194094

GET BOOK

The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.

Author : Michael J. Green
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 38,9 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780231102858

GET BOOK

Michael Green explores the evolution of the kokusanka debate and the indigenous development and production of weapons of war, lucidly outlining the question of Japanese political and military autonomy in the postwar era.

Author : Daniel Uziel
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 36,12 MB
Release : 2011-11-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0786488794

GET BOOK

During World War II, aviation was among the largest industrial branches of the Third Reich. About 40 percent of total German war production, and two million people, were involved in the manufacture of aircraft and air force equipment. Based on German records, Allied intelligence reports, and eyewitness accounts, this study explores the military, political, scientific and social aspects of Germany's wartime aviation industry: production, research and development, Allied attacks, foreign workers and slave labor, and daily life and working conditions in the factories. Testimony from Holocaust survivors who worked in the factories provides a compelling new perspective on the history of the Third Reich.

Author : Stephen P. Cohen
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 27,14 MB
Release : 2013-01-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0815724926

GET BOOK

India has long been motivated to modernize its military, and it now has the resources. But so far, the drive to rebuild has lacked a critical component—strategic military planning. India's approach of arming without strategic purpose remains viable, however, as it seeks great-power accommodation of its rise and does not want to appear threatening. What should we anticipate from this effort in the future, and what are the likely ramifications? Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta answer those crucial questions in a book so timely that it reached number two on the nonfiction bestseller list in India. "Two years after the publication of Arming without Aiming, our view is that India's strategic restraint and its consequent institutional arrangement remain in place. We do not want to predict that India's military-strategic restraint will last forever, but we do expect that the deeper problems in Indian defense policy will continue to slow down military modernization."—from the preface to the paperback edition

Author : Keith D. McFarland
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 492 pages
File Size : 17,77 MB
Release : 2005-10-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780253111647

GET BOOK

"Without question this is an important new addition to World War II and Cold War historiography.... Highly recommended." -- Douglas Brinkley, author of Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years and The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey beyond the White House "A remarkably objective, yet sympathetic, study of Louis Johnson's life and career. Now only half-remembered,... Johnson was a major national figure. Colorful, aggressive, independent-minded, egotistical, his strong views and conflicts with Dean Acheson proved to be his undoing. All in all, a fascinating tale." -- James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense "McFarland and Roll have performed a real service in rescuing from obscurity this Democratic mover and shaker. Their account of the rise and fall of Louis Johnson provides us with the fullest depiction yet of an important Washington figure employed for better or worse as a blunt instrument of policy change by both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman." -- Alonzo L. Hamby, author of Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman and For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s "[Johnson's] career is a cautionary tale of how even the most ruthlessly effective men can become pawns in the Washington power game. McFarland and Roll bring Johnson to life in this thorough and well-told history." -- Evan Thomas, Newsweek, author of Robert Kennedy: His Life and The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA Louis Johnson was FDR's Assistant Secretary of War and the architect of the industrial mobilization plans that put the nation on a war footing prior to its entry into World War II. Later, as Truman's Secretary of Defense, Johnson was given the difficult job of unifying the armed forces and carrying out Truman's orders to dramatically reduce defense expenditures. In both administrations, he was asked to confront and carry out extremely unpopular initiatives -- massive undertakings that each president believed were vital to the nation's security and economic welfare. Johnson's conflicts with Henry Morganthau, Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, Winston Churchill, Harry Hopkins, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, and Paul Nitze find contemporary parallels in the recent disagreements between the national defense establishment and the State Department.