The War for Korea, 1951-1954 - Modern War Studies by Alan R Millett Hardcover

Book Synopsis

This third and final volume in Allan Millett's comprehensive history of the Korean War is a journey through the final years of the conflict and a deep examination of the Geneva Convention in 1954.

By July of 1951, the war on the Korean peninsula had been raging for a year and the capital of Seoul had changed hands four times. Armistice talks had begun. The stakes remained high, not just for the Koreans but for the Russians, Chinese, and Americans as well. The future of the Asia-Pacific world and the fight for the global order hung in the balance.

In this third and final volume in his celebrated history of the Korean War, eminent historian Allan Millett leads readers through the complicated and interconnected series of military operations and diplomatic events that occurred from the summer of 1951 through May 1954, the end of the Geneva Conference on Korea. Drawing extensively on newly available archival sources, Millett brings new voices to the history of the war, including Russian, Chinese, and North Korean perspectives and adds new insights to the conventional wisdom of the American and South Korean views of the war.

Proud of their long history of resistance to invaders, both Koreas asserted they sought self-determination. One year after the armistice, with foreign armies still on their soil and scant evidence of recovery, Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-sung had taken political paths they believed were the pre-conditions for rebuilding their Koreas for the conflict they saw in the years ahead.

For the two Koreas the war raised barriers to unification that have not yet been breached.

Review Quotes

"Allan Millett concludes his history of the Korean War with another masterful volume informed by decades of researching and thinking about the war. Once again, he examines the war from clean conference rooms to squalid trenches with vivid prose and deft portraits of civilian and military leaders. Millett's careful attention to all the participants, and especially to the two Koreas, make this book and its companion volumes the definitive history of the Korean War."--William Donnelly, author of Under Army Orders: The Army National Guard during the Korean War

"Millett's coverage of Korea's modern state building, military reforms, and security dynamics in Northeast Asia is provocative not only for historians and veterans but also for Asian Studies specialists, policy makers, and military personnel, both for those who would seek to avoid war with North Korea and China, and those whose task it is to prepare for it."--Xiao-Bing Li, editor and translator of Mao's Generals Remember Korea

"No one has been able to master the array of sources on the Korean War like Alan Millett. In this closing third volume of his classic history of the conflict, he provides a detailed and nuanced account of the way the war evolved in its final years. No other writer has ever been able to provide such detail on the later phases of the war and its outcome."--Conrad Crane, author of American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950-1953

"This masterful account illuminates the Korean War's most neglected phase: the long struggle of stalemate, negotiation, and attrition after 1951. Drawing on decades of multilingual research and an unmatched command of military, political, and diplomatic history, this final volume completes Allan R. Millett's landmark three-volume history and demonstrates why the war's protracted endgame mattered as much as its dramatic opening campaigns. Taken together, the trilogy stands as the definitive modern history of the Korean War, showing how its unresolved outcome continues to shape the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, and why the Korean War never truly ended."--Sheila Miyoshi Jager, author of Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea and The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia

"This granular account of the closing phases of the Korean war documents how the military, diplomatic and negotiating strategies of the contending parties engendered an endemic conflict that so far has made the division of the Korean Peninsula insurmountable."--Frederick Carriere, Former Executive Director, Korea Fulbright Program