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US Special Forces in Vietnam created and trained the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, a large paramilitary organization designed to operate out of fortified camps in remote areas and protect the loca

Featuring specially commissioned artwork, this study breaks new ground in covering all the uniformed Soviet security organizations from the Russian Revolution through to World War II. While the average person reacts to the term 'SS' with justified horror, most do not realize that, like Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union had its own instrument of terror, the NKVD. The precursor to the NKVD, the Cheka, was central to the Bolsheviks' elimination of political dissent during the Russian Civil War (1918-21). After 1922 the Soviet state-security organs became the GPU and then the OGPU (1923-34) before coalescing into the NKVD. After it played a central role in the Great Terror (1936-38), which saw the widespread repression of many different groups and the imprisonment and execution of prominent figures, the NKVD had its heyday during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). During the conflict the organization deployed full military divisions, frontier troop units and internal security forces and

From the end of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th, most Western powers maintained a naval presence in China. These gunboats protected traders and missionaries, safeguarded national i

With Cold War fears mounting, the M47 and M48 were rushed into production – teething troubles were inevitable. In the decade that followed, however, these tanks proved to be the backbone of US armoure

From the stunning victory at Pearl Harbor to its dramatic reversal at Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy swept all before it in its numerous victories in the Pacific and Far Eastern waters. The Imperi

This book draws on original regimental records to give an account of the organization and personalities of the most renowned of the foreign units that served in the Emperor's armies. Unlike most of h

The Gulf War bore witness to a number of deadly encounters between these two great adversaries. Heavily armored, highly mobile and capable of killing at over 2500m the M1 Abrams is, to this day, a ver

The Russian T-72 Ural tank is the most widely-deployed main battle tank of the current generation. Used by the armies of the former Warsaw pact and Soviet Union, it has also been exported in large num