Another Quick Review of a Cold War Gone Hot, The War That Never Was by Michael Palmer

When writing a review for a book about the cold war going hot, I have a couple of criteria.  The first, is it a good read as Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy and The Third World War by Sir John Hackett.  The second, can  I get scenarios out of it for games I may want to run.  The War That Never Was does both in spades.

The style of writing is some where in between Clancy's and Hackett's style.  In some instances one knows the thoughts of the characters as in Red Storm Rising, but not through the whole book and Palmer explains the geopolitics as Hackett does in his book.

There is one stark difference though tn this book as opposed to the a fore mentioned books.  This book emphasis non Central European aspects of the conflict.  Do not get me wrong, he does address the conflict in Germany, but the periphery conflicts is the emphasis of this book.
Some of the maps are as follows:

• The Northern Flank
• Libya and the Central Mediterranean
• Greece Turkey and the Aegean
• The Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf 
• The Western Pacific
• Korea and the DMZ

It is interesting reading, not much writing about the Fulda Gap in this book.

The second criteria that I stated before.  The War That Never Was has endless amounts of scenario ideas.  I can get a lot of ideas for land warfare.  Again not your normal West German vs. Soviet MRDs.  One right of the top of my head is Turkey vs. Bulgarian & Soviet Marines.  It also has a lot of land warfare ideas concerning Norway vs. USSR vs. Finland.  Yep, the Soviets thought it would be a good idea to cut through Finland without permission. Did not they learn that lesson before?

There are too many ideas for air combat scenarios to mention them all.  Though the real scenario gems are concerning modern naval scenario ideas.  If you play modern naval games, do yourself a favor and pick this book up.  It would take playing a lot of games to exhaust all the naval engagements that are dealt with in this book.

This book is available through Alibris and Amazon, both in hardcover and soft cover

I highly recommend this book.  I know at sometime in the future I will read this book again and probably more then once

Thank you for reading.

Mike