Odin & Aesop

Fidel Catro overthrew Fulgencio Batista and assumed power in Cuba in January 1959. Relations between Cuba and the United States soured. Castro's government nationalized American-owned property, implemented land reforms, and established diplomatic and economic ties with the Soviet Union. By 1960, President Eisenhower had decided to overthrow Fidel Castro. The Central Intelligence Agency recruited and trained a brigade of Cuban exiles for the job. Peter Wyden...

By the middle of 1942 Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sought a reckoning with the United States Navy. The Japanese wanted to neutralize the United States Navy and consolidate their early gains. Yamamoto’s plan was to draw the United States Navy’s aircraft carriers into a decisive battle by threatening the island of Midway 1,300 miles northwest of Hawaii. The United States Navy took the bait. It took the bait armed with intelligence of the Japanese plan. Mark St...

This Pulitzer Prize winning book traces the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) involvement in Afghanistan. Starting in 1979, it explains how the CIA funneled arms to the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan’s intelligence service in conjunction with money from Saudi Arabia. Next, it provides the details and complexities of how the CIA subsequently attempted to confront the rise in radical Islamic militancy, Osama bin Laden and Al-Queda, and the Taliban. Steve Coll tells the s...

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. It was supposed to be a swift operation to install a loyal communist government. The Soviets were initially successful in gaining control of the cities and major infrastructure but became bogged down and flummoxed fighting against mujahideen guerillas in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains. The Soviet – Afghan War went on for ten years and cost the Soviet army an estimated 15,000 dead. After the Soviets withdrew, the go...

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar announced Egypt was taking control of the British and French owned Suez Canal Company in July 1956. He took this action to fund the Aswan Dam he wanted built. In response to Nassar seizing the canal, Britain, France, and Israel secretly planned a joint invasion. Israel would advance towards the canal through the Sinai Peninsula while Britain and France would intervene and regain control of the canal under the guise of being peacekeepers....

Bill Richardson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and enlisted in the Army in 1945. He deployed to Korea when war broke out in 1950 and fought northward up the length of the Korean peninsula as part of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. On November 5th, 1950, Richardson was captured by the Chinese during the Battle of Unsan. He spent roughly the next three years enduring brutal captivity. So brutal 38% of American prisoners died. Somehow Richardson survived wi...

Among other things, Thomas Edward Lawrence was an author, archeologist, and British Army officer. During the First World War, he served as a liaison between the British and the Arab tribes fighting Ottoman rule in the western Arabian desert. Lawrence spent approximately two years and covered hundreds of miles by camel in this role. His campaign was successful in toppling Ottoman rule yet failed to fully meet the Arab tribes’ aspirations for self-rule. Lawrence tells th...

Within a few short years, drones went from being a niche capability reserved for technically advanced militaries to something ubiquitous on the modern battlefield. According to the Atlantic Council, Ukraine was producing 200,000 first person view drones per month by early 2025. The Ukrainians used those drones to inflict up to 80% of Russian battlefield casualties. That conflict continues and so does its use of drones. Meanwhile, Hamas used drones to as part of the Oct...

Tameichi Hara descended from Japan’s samurai class. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1921 and began a career at sea. When war started with the United States in 1941, Hara was serving as the captain of the destroyer Amatsukaze. He went on to command a destroyer division and participated in major engagements throughout the war. His last assignment at sea was captain of the light cruiser Yahagi tasked with a suicide mission to attack Allied forces ...

On 30 April 1980 six Iranian Arabs seized the Iranian Embassy in the center of London and took 26 people hostage. They demanded the release of prisoners in Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. British authorities managed to get five hostages released in return for minor concessions, but time passed, and tensions rose. On the sixth day, the hostage takers killed one of their captives. This killing triggered the British to launch an assault to rescue the rema...

The A Shau Valley is in the mountainous northwest corner of what used to be South Vietnam. It is right across the border from Laos. Because of its location, the A Shau formed a natural hub for the North Vietnamese Army to move their units and supplies into South Vietnam and threaten the more heavily populated coastal plains. The United States tried multiple times and multiple ways to disrupt what the North Vietnamese were doing. Some of the Vietnam War's heaviest comba...

The island of Crete sits in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1941 the Germans decided to seize Crete, “As a base for air warfare against Great Britain in the Eastern Mediterranean”. The elite paratroopers of Germany’s 7th Air Division were assigned to lead the attack. They would be reinforced by more troops arriving by sea and air. It was Germany’s biggest airborne operation of the war by far. The German attack started on May 20th, 1941. Approximately German 8...

The 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) landed in Beirut Lebanon on May 29th, 1983, as part of a peacekeeping force during Lebanon’s Civil War. Once ashore, the MAU’s battalion landing team, BLT 1/8, took up positions around Beirut International Airport. Things escalated and the Marines began regularly taking fire. They suffered their first deaths on August 29th when Staff Sergeant Alexander Ortega and Second Lieutenant George Losey were killed by mortar fire. Then on Oc...

Japan devastated the United States’ fleet with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. The Japanese followed up on their Pearl Harbor attack by seizing Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Japanese seemed almost unstoppable while the United States asked itself, “What are we going to do, or what can we do, now?” With direction from President Roosevelt to strike Japan, the United States came up with a plan. On A...

Rhodesia, now called the Republic of Zimbabwe, used to be a self-governing British colony. In November 1965, the Cabinet of Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain in an effort to preserve white minority rule. The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Rhodesian Civil War, followed. It lasted until December 1979. This protracted guerilla war pitted Rhodesia’s globally isolated government against the African nationalist Zimbabwe African Nationalist Uni...

South Vietnam has a long coastline and lots of waterways, particularly in the Mekong River Delta at the southern tip of the country. In 1968 U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam had roughly 38,000 sailors serving in country. Their main tasks were to prevent supplies from reaching the Viet Cong, stopping Viet Cong movements, helping move U.S. Army units along the water, and guarding ports and harbors. It was dangerous work. 1,631 sailors were killed in action, 935 died from other ...

The Germans launched “Operation Citadel” on July 5th, 1943. They wanted to encircle and destroy Soviet forces in a salient centered on the city of Kursk. The Soviets knew they were coming and had spent months preparing. What followed was the greatest land battle in history. About two million men with 6,000 tanks, 35,000 guns, and 5,000 aircraft fought into late August. Despite horrific losses, the Soviets stood their ground. Lloyd Clark tells the story in “...

John G. Bourke won the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War. He stayed in the army and graduated from West Point in 1869. Between 1869 and 1883, Bourke served on the frontier with much of that time spent as an aide to General George Crook. Bourke saw action in the Apache Wars and Great Sioux War. He clashed with Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. Bourke was a keen observer and chronicled his varied experiences. He published them in 1892 under ...

The Korean peninsula was split into two countries after the Second World War. The Soviet backed North and the U.S. backed South. North Korea tried to unify the two by invading South Korea in June 1950. Initially North Korea had great success. It pushed South Korea's small military aside and rushed down the peninsula while the United States tried to get forces onto the peninsula. The North Koreans were finally stopped around the port of Pusan at the very bottom of...

Japan captured and occupied China’s sea ports at the onset of World War Two. That lead to hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers building a road through Burma to get supplies to China. That road got blocked when Burma fell to the Japanese. Next, American engineers began building another road through hundreds of miles of steep jungle while pilots flew supplies into China over the Himalayas. Meanwhile, American and British forces fought to keep the Japanese at bay in ...

In 1899, the British went to war with the Boer Republics. This was when the British Empire was close to its blazing zenith and unquestionably the ranking world power. Any war against the somewhat backward Boers on a remote border of the empire in southern Africa would surely be quick and decisive. It did not turn out that way. As Rudyard Kipling put it, the Boers gave the British “no end of a lesson.” Thomas Pakenham tells the story in “The Boer War.”

The United States and Soviet Union stood on opposite sides of the Cold War. Both tried to project strength and both possessed immense arsenals of nuclear weapons. A fundamental problem for both superpowers was figuring out what the other side was doing. What were they capable of? What were they thinking? The United States relied on its submarines to help answers those questions throughout the Cold War. The missions these submarine crews went on were months...

The Japanese attacked the Philippines almost simultaneous with their December 7th, 1941 attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Following Japanese air attacks, the Japanese 14th Army landed in the Philippines on December 8th. By January 1942, the Japanese had U.S. and Filipino forces bottled up on the Bataan Peninsula. Those U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered on May 8th. It is arguably America’s worst military defeat ever. Among the roughly 12,000 Americans t...

NAZI scientists relied on heavy water to produce the right uranium isotope for an atomic weapon. They produced most of their heavy water at a hydroelectric in occupied Norway called Vemork. In February 1943, a small group of Norwegian commandos slipped into Vemork, blew it up, and made their escape. This is after months of reconnaissance and preparation in the frozen wilderness. Neal Bascomb tells the story in “The Winter Fortress.”

In October 2001, the United States began aerial bombing of Afghanistan in response to the terrorist group Al Queda’s attacks of September 11th. Special Forces followed up by teaming with the Taliban’s opponents – the Northern Alliance – and by late November / early December 2001 the Taliban had been driven from power. That didn’t mean the Taliban and Al Queda had gone away or given up. They had moved and gone underground. One of the places they went to was Afghanistan’...

William Manchester served in the Marine Corps during the Second World War. He was wounded during the Battle of Okinawa. After the war, Manchester established himself as a journalist in Baltimore, an adjunct professor at Wesleyan University, and an author. In 1978, he returned to the Pacific and visited various places connected either with his service or the Pacific campaign. That trip forms the basis of this book, “Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War.”

Bill Peters was commissioned in the Marine Corps via Officer Candidate School. After completing the Basic School at Quantico, Virginia, he was assigned to Vietnam as a platoon commander in First Force Reconnaissance Company in 1969. Peters conducted twenty-three long-range patrols in enemy-controlled territory, was wounded, and decorated for bravery. He tells the story in “First Force Recon Company: Sunrise at Midnight.”

The Algerian War of Independence lasted from 1954 to 1962. It carried heavy costs for both sides. Estimates vary but upwards of a million Muslim Algerians died; roughly a million Pied Noir (settlers of European descent) were driven into exile; and France was driven to the brink of civil war. Alistair Horne tells the story in “A Savage War of Peace.”

Siegfried Knappe served in the German Army from 1936 until 1949. He was a member of the German General Staff. Knappe was wounded multiple times and saw action in France as well as the Eastern and Italian fronts. He ended the war in and out of Hitler’s bunker during the Battle of Berlin before spending several years in Soviet captivity. This book provides candid insight into the German Army from the inside out.

The United States entered World War One on April 6th, 1917. Going to war in Europe meant the United States had to greatly expand its Army. It had enlist, train, organize, equip, and deploy hundreds of thousands of young men. One of the units that was part of this expansion was the 79th Infantry Division which was activated in August 1917. Many of the soldiers in the 79th Infantry Division were draftees from Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia. By the time they were...

Company E, 506th Regiment was part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. It was formed in 1942 and comprised of young volunteers that were generally new to the army. Company E received its baptism by fire in June 1944 when it jumped into NAZI occupied France. It went on to jump into Holland as part of Operation Market-Garden; helped blunt the German advance by holding the town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge; and then drove across Germany to secure Hitler’s ...

Sierra Leone’s civil war lasted from 1991 until 2002. It was marked by exceptional levels of cruelty and suffering. During this civil war the United Nations, neighboring West African states, and the United Kingdom launched military interventions into Sierra Leone. The United Kingdom’s intervention was called Operation Palliser. In September 2000 eleven British soldiers participating in Operation Palliser were captured by a militia gang known as the West Side Boys. ...

On November 20th, 1953 thousands of French paratroopers dropped into a place called Dien Bien Phu. Dien Bien Phu is a small valley in the northern part of Vietnam close to Laos. The French plan was to establish a base at Dien Bien Phu, keep it resupplied by air, and then use it as a place to launch operations against the Viet Minh. The French underestimated the scale of the force the Viet Minh would concentrate around Dien Bien Phu. Before long, the French were besiege...

The First Allied Airborne Army launched an attack into the German occupied Netherlands on September 17, 1944. Eventually over the 41,000 troops went in by parachute and glider. The idea was for this huge airborne force to seize nine bridges stretched across 64 miles of the Netherlands. Seizing these bridges would allow the British Army’s XXX Corps to advance rapidly across the rivers and into Germany. It was a bold plan that ultimately failed. Cornelius Ryan expl...

On June 1942, Germany’s Army Group South started an offensive called Case Blue or Plan Blue. The idea was to sprint out off eastern Ukraine, across the Russian steppe, and into the Caucasus to capture the oil fields there. As part of this big effort, the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River. The Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in August. The fighting was ferocious. In November the Soviets launched offensives of their own ...

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists. They demanded the release of 53 terrorists and diverted the plane to Entebbe, Uganda. On July 4th, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers flew over 2,000 miles, assaulted the airport, killed the terrorists, and rescued all but three of the hostages within an hour. The Israeli assault force suffered one fatality: its commander, Yoni Netanyahu (brother of Isr...

By the end of 1914, World War One has stagnated into an industrial age nightmare. The British and French sat opposite the Germans in trenches running through France from the coast to the Alps. Things weren’t much different in the East where the early Russian advance had been defeated. The British looked for options. What could they do to alter the situation? They looked at the Dardanelles Straits. This narrow waterway connects the Black Sea with the Aegean ...

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was established in January 1964 to conduct unconventional warfare operations. These included reconnoitering and disrupting North Vietnamese activities in Laos and Cambodia. Given the sensitive nature of MACV-SOG’s work, its missions were classified. John Plaster served three years with MACV-SOG and tells the unit’s story in “SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam.”

Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from 1933 until he committed suicide in 1945. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Between 1933 and 1945 these two brutal dictators oversaw the killing of 14 million noncombatants in the region comprised of the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. Timothy Snyder explains how and why the NAZI and Soviet regimes inflected such suffering in Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

The Sherwood Rangers were a British tank regiment during the Second World War. They served in North Africa where they fought in the battles of Alam El Hafa and Second El Alamein and helped drive Germany’s Afrika Corps out of Tunisia. Next, the Sherwood Rangers landed in Normandy on D-Day. They lead the drive out of France, across Belgium, and into Germany. It was a hard slog, and they paid a price. The Sherwood Rangers tank crews suffered 148% casualties just in ...

Argentina seized the Falkland Islands on April 2nd, 1982. The British government deployed a naval task force on April 5th to take them back. As the force steadily converged from 8,000 miles away, the rest of the world wondered if the two countries would really fight over the remote and sparsely populated islands. They did. By the time it was over in June, 3,336 people had been killed or wounded; sixteen ships sunk; and 134 aircraft were lost. The Falklands campai...

The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, was created between North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1954. The DMZ was supposed to be a temporary buffer zone that would keep previously hostile forces away from each other. When the planned unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam stalled out, the DMZ stayed on with an air of permanence. It was four to six miles wide and ran about 47 miles from the coast to the border with Laos. Don’t believe the label though. The DMZ was anything but demilitarized. It...

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck commanded Imperial German military forces throughout the East Africa campaign during World War One. His mostly African army of about 14,000 attacked, checked, and evaded much larger Allied forces for over four years. When the war ended, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered and returned undefeated to a hero’s welcome in Germany. This book is how he remembers the experience.

By the middle of 1942 the United States had recovered from the shock of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the early defeats of Japan expanding into the Pacific. Now it started parallel offensives north and south of the equator. By the middle of 1944 the United States had retaken the Marianas Islands and was flowing over Japan’s empire like “a conquering tide.”

Eight soldiers from the Britain’s Special Air Service flew deep into northwestern Iraq on the night of January 22nd, 1991. Their callsign was Bravo Two Zero. Their mission was to destroy the SCUD missiles Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was using against Israel. A young goat herder stumbled across the patrol after it was on the ground for less than a day. With their cover blown and no way to call for help, the eight solders attempted to fight their way more than 100 mil...

In November 1965, roughly 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry flew by helicopter into Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley. They were attacked by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers almost immediately. Three days later, one of their sister battalions was unexpectedly attacked a short distance away. The U.S. lost 237 killed. These two fights at landing zones X-Ray and Albany came on the front end of America’s build up in Vietnam and were a portent of things to come. The two auth...

Ernst Junger was an infantry officer in the German army throughout World War One. He served in the trenches for close to four years, was wounded fourteen times, and was the youngest recipient of Germany’s highest award, Pour le Mérite. Somehow, he lived. Storm of Steel is his memoir. It was first published in 1920.

After the United States invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power in spring 2003, the city of Fallujah became a hotbed of unrest. In March 2004, four American contractors were brutally murdered and mutilated there. President Bush ordered an attack to subdue the city. This attack was called off early after it sparked a media and political firestorm. With U.S. forces out of it, Fallujah became the red-hot epicenter of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency and the U.S. recomm...

The German navy refitted the merchant ship Atlantis with weapons hidden in phony deckhouses and side structures. Using its disguise as a freighter, the Atlantis stalked the ocean for over 600 days in 1940 and 1941. She captured or sank 22 ships until cornered and sunk by the British. Bernhard Rogge was the captain of the Atlantis throughout its service. This is the story of what he and his crew did.

John Paul Vann was a career Army officer. He served in combat during the Korean War and was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army’s IV Corps fighting the Viet Cong for a year from 1962 to 1963. Vann retired from the Army a few months after completed that assignment. He returned to Vietnam in 1965. First he worked as an official for the Agency for International Development. Vann was then made the Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support for the ...