Nuclear missiles, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are the best-remembered among the martial past of the Cold War.[1] However, retired U.S. Army Colonel Michael D. Mahler recounts stories of the U.S. Army in West Germany from 1960 to 1975 in his recently published memoir, Tales from the Cold War. First-hand narratives of the organizational insiders reveal the past occurrence and understandings that otherwise might be unknown or unintelligible for historians in the ivory tower. Mahler's anecdotes reflect this throughout the book. Like all memoirs from military leaders, writing decades after their experiences, accurate recollection is often difficult but incredibly crucial.[2]
Knowing the Cold War historical context, namely the necessity of, and the paradoxical relations between the deterrence mission in Europe and the mission of fighting limited wars around the globe is indispensable for understanding Mahler and his comrades’ experiences in U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR). USAREUR was a designated part of the deterrent; however, limited wars inevitably contributed to the rise and fall of this fighting force.[3] Putting Mahler’s service into the broader context of the evolution of the Cold War-era U.S. Army, he graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point during the height of the Pentomic Army in 1959, as the Department of Defense was modernizing for an imagined nuclear battlefield.[4] When Mahler finished his final command in 1975, the Army was in transition from the Reorganization Objective Army Division (ROAD) era to the Army of Excellence, driven by Training and Doctrinal Command.[5] It was in this “ROAD era” when limited wars first became more necessary because of Khrushchev’s nuclear buildup, then became more viable after Kennedy’s conventional reassessment, buildup, and reforms, but eventually exacerbated the tension between deterrence and limited war due to American quagmire in Vietnam.[6] This tension is reflected in one of the three major themes I distilled from Mahler's account.
