Spoils of Victory

Spoils of Victory PDF Author: John A. Connell
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0425281566
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
"When the Third Reich collapsed, the small town Garmisch-Partenkirchen became the home of fleeing war criminals, making it the final depository for the Nazis' stolen riches. There are fortunes to be made on the black market. Murder, extortion, and corruption have become the norm. It's a perfect storm for a criminal investigator like Mason Collins, especially when his friend, CIC Agent John Winstone, claims that a group of powerful men are taking over the lucrative trade. But before he can fully explain, Winstone and his girlfriend are brutally murdered"--

Spoils of Victory

Spoils of Victory PDF Author: John A. Connell
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0425281566
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
"When the Third Reich collapsed, the small town Garmisch-Partenkirchen became the home of fleeing war criminals, making it the final depository for the Nazis' stolen riches. There are fortunes to be made on the black market. Murder, extortion, and corruption have become the norm. It's a perfect storm for a criminal investigator like Mason Collins, especially when his friend, CIC Agent John Winstone, claims that a group of powerful men are taking over the lucrative trade. But before he can fully explain, Winstone and his girlfriend are brutally murdered"--

The Spoils of Victory

The Spoils of Victory PDF Author: Nationalmuseet (Copenhague).
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description


The Verdict of Battle

The Verdict of Battle PDF Author: James Q. Whitman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Today, war is considered a last resort for resolving disagreements. But a day of staged slaughter on the battlefield was once seen as a legitimate means of settling political disputes. James Whitman argues that pitched battle was essentially a trial with a lawful verdict. And when this contained form of battle ceased to exist, the law of victory gave way to the rule of unbridled force. The Verdict of Battle explains why the ritualized violence of the past was more effective than modern warfare in bringing carnage to an end, and why humanitarian laws that cling to a notion of war as evil have led to longer, more barbaric conflicts. Belief that sovereigns could, by rights, wage war for profit made the eighteenth century battle’s golden age. A pitched battle was understood as a kind of legal proceeding in which both sides agreed to be bound by the result. To the victor went the spoils, including the fate of kingdoms. But with the nineteenth-century decline of monarchical legitimacy and the rise of republican sentiment, the public no longer accepted the verdict of pitched battles. Ideology rather than politics became war’s just cause. And because modern humanitarian law provided no means for declaring a victor or dispensing spoils at the end of battle, the violence of war dragged on. The most dangerous wars, Whitman asserts in this iconoclastic tour de force, are the lawless wars we wage today to remake the world in the name of higher moral imperatives.

Spoils

Spoils PDF Author: Brian Van Reet
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316316156
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
It is April 2003. American forces have taken Baghdad and are now charged with winning hearts and minds. But this vital tipping point is barely recognized for what it is, as a series of miscalculations and blunders fuels an already-simmering insurgency intent on making Iraq the next graveyard of empires. In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines: Cassandra, a nineteen-year-old gunner on an American Humvee who is captured during a deadly firefight and awakens in a prison cell; Abu Al-Hool, a lifelong mujahedeen beset by a simmering crisis of conscience as he struggles against enemies from without and within, including the new wave of far more radicalized jihadists; and Specialist Sleed, a tank crewman who goes along with a "victimless" crime, the consequences of which are more awful than any he could have imagined. Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat. "The finest Iraq War novel yet written by an American"-Wall Street Journal, 10 Best Novels of the Year "An electrifying debut" (The Economist) that maps the blurred lines between good and evil, soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished.

The Spoils of War

The Spoils of War PDF Author: Alan Dean Foster
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0575131756
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
After millennia of relentless war, the union of alien races called the Weave was on the verge of winning a decisive victory - thanks to their new allies from Earth, who in a mere handful of centuries had proved masters of combat. But then the birdlike Wais scholar Lalelelang found disturbing evidence that Humans might not adapt so easily to peace - that natural Human aggression would next be turned against the Weave, unless they were once again confined to fight amongst themselves. When her field research revealed the existence of a secret group of powerfully telepathic Humans called the Core, it looked as if Lalelelang would be the first victim in a new war between Humans and their allies. But just as her fate was sealed, a lone Core commander took a chance on her intelligence and compassion, gambling the fate of Humanity on the possibility that together they could both find an alternative to a galaxy-wide bloodbath...

The Spoils of War

The Spoils of War PDF Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610396626
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
"It's striking how many of the presidents Americans venerate--Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, to name a few--oversaw some of the republic's bloodiest years. Perhaps it's because they looked out for important political causes. Or maybe they just looked out for themselves. This ... book puts some of America's greatest leaders under the microscope, [positing that] their calls for war, usually remembered as brave and noble, were in fact selfish and convenient"--

Ruins of War

Ruins of War PDF Author: John A. Connell
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0425283283
Category : Crime stories
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Working as a U.S. Army criminal investigator in the American Zone of occupied Germany seven months after the defeat of the Nazis, former homicide detective Mason Collins risks his life to track down a ritualistic killer in the ruins of Munich.--

Visions of Victory

Visions of Victory PDF Author: Gerhard L. Weinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521852548
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Visions of Victory, first published in 2005, explores the views of eight leaders of the major powers of World War II - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt. He compares their visions of the future in the event of victory. While the leaders primarily focused on fighting and winning the war, their decisions were often shaped by their aspirations for the future. What emerges is a startling picture of postwar worlds. After exterminating the Jews, Hitler intended for all Slavs to die so Germans could inhabit Eastern Europe. Mussolini and Hitler wanted extensive colonies in Africa. Churchill hoped for the re-emergence of British and French empires. De Gaulle wanted to annex the northwest corner of Italy. Stalin wanted to control Eastern Europe. Roosevelt's vision included establishing the United Nations. Weinberg's comparison of the individual portraits of the war-time leaders is a highly original and compelling study of history that might have been.

Feasting on the Spoils

Feasting on the Spoils PDF Author: Seth Hettena
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429917113
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Randy "Duke" Cunningham was an ace fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor. He came back from battle as Vietnam's most famous pilot—a Navy hero in an unpopular war. In his political life, Cunningham was an eight-term United States representative who never lost an election. So how did this powerful politician, one of the Vietnam War's most highly decorated pilots, become the most corrupt congressman in U.S. history? In 2005, Cunningham shocked the nation by pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, fraud, and tax evasion. A federal judge sentenced him to more than eight years in prison, the longest sentence handed down to a member of Congress in 40 years. And even as Cunningham was led, weeping, to prison, investigators continued to uncover a deep-rooted scandal, reaching the cozy nexus between Congress and lobbyists, military contractors, the Defense Department and the upper ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. Cunningham's bribes were seemingly endless. They included a yacht, a Rolls-Royce, and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of antiques. Defense contractors flew him aboard private chartered jets to luxury destinations, picked up the tab at expensive restaurants, and paid for his daughter's graduation party. In total, he collected at least $2.4 million in five years, a series of acts unequaled in the long, sordid history of congressional corruption. An ongoing investigation is even exploring allegations that prostitutes were hired by Cunningham's associates to entertain the congressman. His corruption and that of his cohorts was a decisive factor in the 2006 elections, as Democrats retook control of the House for the first time in more than a decade. What led a man who showed such strength and resolve in battle to show such moral weakness later in life? Had he become a prisoner of greed or was he manipulated by others far more cunning than he? What happened to Randy Cunningham? In Feasting on the Spoils, Hettena offers a probing look at deception and avarice. He paints an unforgettable portrait of a life publicly unraveled, and of a man for whom the mysteries—and the history of fraud—only seem to deepen.

Nomonhan, 1939

Nomonhan, 1939 PDF Author: Stuart Goldman
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612510981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Stuart Goldman convincingly argues that a little-known, but intense Soviet-Japanese conflict along the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier at Nomonhan influenced the outbreak of World War II and shaped the course of the war. The author draws on Japanese, Soviet, and western sources to put the seemingly obscure conflict—actually a small undeclared war— into its proper global geo-strategic perspective. The book describes how the Soviets, in response to a border conflict provoked by Japan, launched an offensive in August 1939 that wiped out the Japanese forces at Nomonhan. At the same time, Stalin signed the German—Soviet Nonaggression Pact, allowing Hitler to invade Poland. The timing of these military and diplomatic strikes was not coincidental, according to the author. In forming an alliance with Hitler that left Tokyo diplomatically isolated, Stalin succeeded in avoiding a two-front war. He saw the pact with the Nazis as a way to pit Germany against Britain and France, leaving the Soviet Union on the sidelines to eventually pick up the spoils from the European conflict, while at the same time giving him a free hand to smash the Japanese at Nomonhan. Goldman not only demonstrates the linkage between the Nomonhan conflict, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, and the outbreak of World War II , but also shows how Nomonhan influenced Japan’s decision to go to war with the United States and thus change the course of history. The book details Gen. Georgy Zhukov’s brilliant victory at Nomonhan that led to his command of the Red Army in 1941 and his success in stopping the Germans at Moscow with reinforcements from the Soviet Far East. Such a strategy was possible, the author contends, only because of Japan’s decision not to attack the Soviet Far East but to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and attack Pearl Harbor instead. Goldman credits Tsuji Masanobu, an influential Japanese officer who instigated the Nomonhan conflict and survived the debacle, with urging his superiors not to take on the Soviets again in 1941, but instead to go to war with the United States.