Along the vigilantly patrolled line separating East and West Germany lie half the world's conventional (non-nuclear) armed forces--the Warsaw Pact forces to the east, the NATO Alliance to the west. It is here in Europe that military experts predict the next major world war will begin, initially with conventional weapons. In Keeping the Old Game Alive, top military leaders from both NATO and Warsaw Pact countries describe how any future superpower confrontation might evolve. The frightening outcome of one recent NATO war exercise was rapid escalation to all-out nuclear war once supplies of conventional weaponry were exhausted.
Dyer analyzes two centuries of world military history and defines the milestones along the road to total war: the birth of nationalism, conscription, the mobilization of large armies, the invention of the machine gun, tank and atomic bomb, and the deliberate killing of civilians. From Napoleon to Nagasaki, The Road to Total War charts how the social, economic and technological developments of the last two hundred years have made warfare so efficient that it can now destroy us all.
Photographed on location at the United States Marine Corps Parris Island Training Depot in South Carolina, this film follows a group of young recruits through their grueling ten-week "basic training." Anybody's Son Will Do provides insight into techniques that all armies use to indoctrinate recruits with a new set of morals--techniques that transform ordinary citizens into soldiers ready to kill, even to die, for their country.