Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain

Peter Grose

3.58 · Rating details · 19 ratings · 3 reviews

Fascinating . . . well-documented . . . thought-provoking and entertaining” (Publishers Weekly), Operation Rollback is a tale of intrigue and espionage that reveals how and why suspicions on both sides drove the world into the Cold War. In 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union started secretly mobilizing forces against each other, building intricate intelligence netw ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 272 pages

Published November 19th 2001 by Mariner Books (first published May 4th 2000)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Operation Rollback, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Operation Rollback

Lists with This Book

The Real CIA

173 books — 50 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-38

Average rating 3.58 ·

Rating details

· 19 ratings · 3 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain

Jan 12, 2020 Luca Trenta rated it liked it

Shelves: intelligence-and-covert-action, us-history-and-foreign-policy, cold-war

The book provides an overview of the early Cold War years. Starting in 1945, it traces the emergence of 'political warfare' as a strategy to undermine Soviet rule. The book provides some interesting details on the rivalry between the OPC and the CIA as well as on the collaborations and frictions between Washington and London in areas like Albania and Ukraine. The book ocrrectly cast a sceptical light on these efforts. Compared to similar texts in the genre, I found the book to be quite a tough r ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 19, 2018 Joseph Stieb rated it really liked it

Shelves: us-foreign-policy

Although it was a bit scattered, this book does a good job laying out early covert Cold War actions behind the Iron Curtain as well as the politics of the Cold War in its first decade. Grose's main argument is that Kennan's containment is often misunderstood as a more passive bottling up of the USSR that avoided any direct action on the USSR. In fact, Kennan's Long Telegram and X article envisioned applying pressure directly to the USSR and E. Block states. He spelled out the importance of direc Although it was a bit scattered, this book does a good job laying out early covert Cold War actions behind the Iron Curtain as well as the politics of the Cold War in its first decade. Grose's main argument is that Kennan's containment is often misunderstood as a more passive bottling up of the USSR that avoided any direct action on the USSR. In fact, Kennan's Long Telegram and X article envisioned applying pressure directly to the USSR and E. Block states. He spelled out the importance of direct pressure to the communist bloc, and the OPC, a shady covert team that eventually folded into the CIA, actually organized covert action inside the bloc. Using anti-Communist emigres, the rollback plan organized radio broadcasts, sabotage, fomenting insurgencies, political agitation/counter-organizing, and propaganda operations. Other than Radio Free Europe, none of this amounted to much. Many CIA agents, especially the possibly insane Frank Wisner, saw the Eastern Bloc as permanently on the brink of revolt, needing only a little boost from the US. In reality, Soviet agents had infiltrated these emigre groups and turned a bunch of double agents. On the ground, air drops of partisans into the Eastern Bloc almost entirely turned into catastrophes, other than gathering small amounts of intelligence. By about 1952, Kennan and Truman had turned against rollback.

The funny thing, however, is that at the same time Republicans and conservatives (and some Dems) were working up a political movement to make rollback a plank of the GOP's platform and US foreign policy in general. Building from large E. EU immigrant communities in the Midwest, they argued that rollback should try to liberate the captive nations of E EU and pressure the USSR. They accused Truman of doing nothing on this (ironically, he had already had a program going for 4 years), and pressured Ike to adopt this plan. Ike, being smart, resisted these calls and focused on a more conventional approach to containment.

So rollback didn't really amount to a hill of beans, but it sheds some interesting new light on US strategy in the early Cold War. It suggests a deep discomfort in the US with long-term, uncertain containment strategies that rely on the problems of the target state, rather than direct action by your own state, to either change behavior or change the regime. This book definitely casts Kennan in a different light. It also shows the importance of domestic politics in pushing crazy strategies onto the agenda.

Overall, this is a good book for students of USFP or domestic politics in Cold War, but it might be too specialized for anyone else. There are better books about Cold War espionage or covert action, such as Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner. I did find this book a bit thin in some places; it probably could have been a solid 250 if the author fully fleshed out the ideas. ...more

flag Like · see review

Sep 01, 2014 Eric rated it it was ok

The war between a well written historical narrative and staid academia, was unfortunately lost with Operation Roll Back. Primarily because it compressed far too much (good) information into too few many pages at the expense of what it promised, a "rip roaring yarn complete with a colorful cast of characters.." The rip roaring was quickly shot down into the cold sea of sterile academia. Meanwhile characters heralded under the "colorful" banner, exited almost as soon as they arrived, leaving the r ...more

flag Like · see review