General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall… Ronald Reagan

Ultimately it was the people themselves who tore down the wall and that is just the way Ronald Reagan would have wanted it. No American politician did more for longer – stayed more consistently on both message and task – than Ronald Reagan. Because we had the great good fortune to have a leader unwilling to accommodate evil for the sake of either appeasement or advancement of some hidden agenda of his own we had a generation of peace, prosperity and security the residue of which kept us afloat for nearly twenty years after he left office. Now that the fifth columnist have taken over we are less hopeful, less certain of our futures and wandering in a wasteland listening to hear his clarion call again.

The crusader : Ronald Reagan and the fall of communism Paul Kengor New York : Regan Books, c 2006 Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xvi, 412 p. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [321]-396) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Based on extraordinary research: a major reassessment of Ronald Reagan’s lifelong crusade to dismantle the Soviet Empire – including shocking revelations about Ted Kennedy who tried to collude with USSR to counter Reagan’s efforts and make one last desperate grab at the White House himself.

Kengor’s God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Kengor’s name as one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. Now, with The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: The story of his lifelong crusade against communism, and of his dogged – and ultimately triumphant – effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.

Drawing upon reams of newly declassified presidential papers, as well as untapped Soviet media archives and new interviews with key players, Kengor traces Reagan’s efforts to target the Soviet Union from his days as governor of California to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of what he famously dubbed the “Evil Empire.” The result is a major revision and enhancement of what historians are only beginning to realize: That Reagan not only wished for the collapse of communism, but had a deep and specific understanding of what it would take – and effected dozens of policy shifts that brought the USSR to its heels within a decade of his presidency.

The Crusader makes use of key sources from behind the Iron Curtain, including one key memo that implicates Ted Kennedy in a scheme to enlist Soviet premier Yuri Andropov to help defeat Reagan’s 1984 reelection bid. Such new finds make The Crusader not just a work of extraordinary history, but a work of explosive revelation that will be debated as hotly today as Reagan’s policies were in the 1980s.

No: war material is life-saving for one’s own people and whoever works and performs in these spheres can be proud of it; here enterprise as a whole finds its highest justification of existence… Gustav Krupp

Tooze has written an interesting book that approaches some of the truths of the inherent failings of National Socialism without decisively stating that the biggest clue is in the name itself. The Soviet Union was, and in many ways still is, not a union of Socialists republics but rather a slave labor camp. England may have many of the elements of socialism but thanks to being an island of shopkeepers the most insidious forms of parasitism have not taken systemic hold of the system. While Hitler might have defeated either he could not have defeated both and finally it took the last market economy in the world to secure the final victory. Tooze gives a very good starting point but it will take someone a little more prescient about market economies – and willing to slay the sacred cows of statism – to explain the entire phenomena.

The wages of destruction : the making and breaking of the Nazi economy  Adam Tooze  New York : Viking, 2007  Hardcover. Originally published: London : Allen Lane, 2006. 1st American ed. and printing. xxvii, 799 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 689-773) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze’s controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler’s surprisingly prescient vision – ultimately hindered by Germany’s limited resources and his own racial ideology – was to create a German super-state to dominate Europe and compete with what he saw as America’s overwhelming power in a soon-to-be globalized world. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that is already setting off debate in Germany and will fundamentally change the way in which history views the Second World War.

This chilling, fascinating new book is the first fully to get to grips with how Hitler’s Nazi empire REALLY functioned. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics – it was Hitler’s obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler’s view, to create a European Empire strong enough to take on the United States – a last chance for Europe to dig itself in before being swept away by the USA’s ever greater power. But, as THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION makes clear, Hitler was never remotely strong enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union – and never even had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the USA. It took years of fighting and the deaths of millions of people to destroy the Third Reich, but effectively World War II in Europe was fought in pursuit of a fantasy: the years in which Western Europe could settle the world’s fate were, by 1939, long past. This is a major book by a major author and will provoke an enormous amount of controversy and debate.

I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery… Aeschylus

They look commonplace like pictures of your father or grandfather. They are for the most part in business suits and while a few may have pretensions to an elegance that belies their treachery most have an off the rack, if not rumpled, appearance. There are no horns growing out of their foreheads and no red stars or armbands decrying their comradeship with Stalin. Like black adders posing as garden snakes they are all the more deadly for it. The harm they have done to this nation – and that their successors continue to do – is like the worm in wood and Ann Coulter may have put it best when she said, Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, [leftists] are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.

Alger Hiss : why he chose treason  Christina Shelton ; an introduction by Richard Pipes  New York : Threshold Editions, 2012  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xvii, 330 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

In 1948, former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy. Because the statute of limitations on espionage had run out, he was convicted only of perjury. Decades later archival evidence surfaced confirming the accusations: a public servant with access to classified documents had indeed passed crucial information to the Soviets for more than a decade.

Unwilling to acknowledge the inconvenient truth many American leftists still consider Hiss an iconic figure — an innocent victim accused of unsubstantiated crimes. They prefer to focus on the bankrupt collectivist ideals Hiss stood for, rather than confront the reality of a man who systemically and methodically betrayed his country in a life that displayed equal parts of cunning and cowardice.

Former U.S. Intelligence analyst Christina Shelton employs an in-depth knowledge of Soviet intelligence affairs as well as recently released Hungarian and KGB archival material to shine a fresh light on one of the most famous U.S. espionage cases. The story is dramatic, but Shelton’s analysis goes beyond sensationalism as she explores both the ideological motivation behind Hiss’s behavior and the lasting influence it has had on U.S. foreign policy.

Hollywood party : how communism seduced the American film industry in the 1930s and 1940s  Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley  Rocklin, CA : Forum, c 1998  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xvii, : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 320-342) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

In the fall of 1997 some of the biggest names in show business filled the Motion Picture Academy theater in Beverly Hills for Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist, a lavish production worthy of an Oscar telecast. In song, film, and live performances by stars such as Billy Crystal, Kevin Spacey, and John Lithgow, the audience relived a time some fifty years before, when, as the story has always been told, courageous writers and actors stood firm against a witch-hunt and blacklist that wrecked lives and destroyed careers. Left untold that night, and ignored in books and films for more than half a century, was a story not so politically correct but vastly more complex and dramatic.

In Hollywood Party the complete story finally emerges, backdropped by the great upheavals of our time and with all the elements of a thriller—wrenching plot twists, intrigue, betrayal, violence, corruption, misguided passion, and lost idealism.

Using long neglected information from public records, the personal files of key players, and recent revelations from Soviet archives, Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley uncovers the Communist Party’s strategic plan for taking control of the movie industry during its golden age, a plan that came perilously close to success. He shows how the Party dominated the politics of the movie industry during the 1930s and 1940s, raising vast sums of money from unwitting liberals and conscripting industry luminaries into supporting Stalinist causes.

In riveting detail, the shameful truth unfolds: Communist writers, actors, and directors, wealthy beyond the dreams of most Americans, posture as proletarian wage slaves as they try to influence the content of movies.

From the days of the Popular Front through the Nazi-Soviet Pact and beyond World War II, they remain faithful to a regime whose brutality rivaled that of Hitler’s Nazis. Their plans for control of the industry a shambles by the mid-1950s, the Party nonetheless succeeded in shaping the popular memory of those days.

By chronicling what has been left on the cutting-room floor, from “back story” to aftermath, Hollywood Party changes those perceptions forever.

Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love… William Butler Yeats

Condor : the Luftwaffe in Spain, 1936-39  Patrick Laureau  Mechanicsburg, PA : Stackpole Books, 2010  Softcover. Originally published as: Legion Condor. Ottringham : Hikoki, 2000. viii, 383 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), map ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG 

In 1936, civil war broke out in Spain, a violent prelude to World War II. Germany and the Soviet Union clashed there by proxy, with Hitler supporting Franco’s Nationalists and Stalin aligning with the Republicans.

The Third Reich sent the Condor Legion, a unit composed primarily of Luftwaffe forces, and the conflict became a proving ground for concepts like blitzkrieg, for officers like Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders, and for aircraft like the Bf 109, He 111, and Ju 97.

Hitler’s rockets : the story of the V-2s  Norman Longmate  New York : Skyhorse Pub., c 2009  Softcover. Previously published: London : Hutchinson, 1985. 422 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 21 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

In Hitler’s Rockets Longmate tells the story of the V-2, the technically brilliant but hated weapon, the ancestor and forerunner of all subsequent ballistic missiles. He reveals the devious power-play within the German armed forces and the Nazi establishment that so influenced the creation of the rockets.

He shows through contemporary documents and protagonists’ accounts how the  intelligence pieced together often contradictory evidence as it sought to establish the true nature of the threat. Finally he recalls in detail the feel and fears of the time from the viewpoint of those who suffered, and those who were all too conscious that they were the target.

Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor… Moshe Dayan

Foxbats over Dimona : the Soviets’ nuclear gamble in the Six-Day War  Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez  New Haven : Yale University Press, c 2007  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xi, 287 p. : maps ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-273) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions.

Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war – well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis.

Ginor and Remez’s startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel’s shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scare Israel into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel’s response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.