While much has been published on the armed forces of the USSR during the 1980s, surprisingly little is available on the forces supplied by the other member nations of the Warsaw Pact.

Rivalling the size of the United States Army, the combined ground forces of the six non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries totalled over 775,000 active troops, with almost two million ground forces reserves. This book examines the history, organization and uniforms of the often overlooked DDR, Czechoslovak, Polish, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian forces at the end of the Cold War.