The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 14: The Stage Is Set

Shortly after 0400 hours on Sunday, 4 August, it became clear to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and was at once made known throughout a world waiting in an agony of suspense, that the Warsaw Pact had opened a general offensive against the forces of the Atlantic Alliance. The invasion of Western Europe had begun.

To some the news brought a curious sense of relief. At least the uncertainty was over. For many others, particularly in the governments and armed services of Allied countries, it raised the anxious question as to whether enough had been done for NATO’s defences since the seventies to repair the damage of the locust years. Could the West, in fact, survive? To most who heard the news, at least in Europe, it brought only grim and unhappy forebodings.

The Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia, and the swift and forceful response to it from the United States, that conjunction of miscalculation and mischance in which could now be seen the spark which set off the general explosion, seemed almost to be forgotten. More important things were at stake. The very future of the human race might now become the issue.

From the outset the world was swamped with Soviet claims, flooding through every possible channel of communication, that this was no more than defensive action, to which the Warsaw Pact had been driven by neo-Nazi ambitions supported by capitalist imperialism.

‘It has long been clear,’ the announcement proclaimed, ‘that the new Nazis are set on the reunification of Germany by force and the subsequent domination of Europe as an early step to world supremacy. The policy of "forward defence", which is self-evident military nonsense if it does not mean action by the FRG east of the Demarcation Line, has never been more than a thin cloak for the firm intention to invade the GDR as a first move towards the dismemberment of the Warsaw Pact and the destruction of the USSR. The change of name from Vorwdrtsverteidigung (Forward Defence) to Vorneverteidigung (Frontal Defence) has done nothing to disguise the nakedness of an essentially aggressive policy. Plans for the invasion are now, in total authenticity,’ as the announcement put it, ‘in Soviet hands, and their authors will in time be brought to justice. Meanwhile, it has become abundantly clear that there is no time to lose in cutting out the Nazi canker. Otherwise all hope will vanish of a lasting peace in Europe.’

The Soviet message to the world went on to give assurances that the purpose of the Pact’s action was first to restore peace in Yugoslavia, where troops from the capitalist West had invaded a socialist country, and at the same time to suppress the true source of disturbance to world peace. This would necessitate the occupation and neutralization of West Germany but no more than that, except for such other action as military security demanded. The integrity of French territory would be especially respected, and the French government was urged to allow its military forces no part in resisting those of the Warsaw Pact. The Italian government was ordered, in rather more peremptory tones, to consult its socialist conscience and permit no resistance to Soviet troops compelled to enter Italy.

‘It is very much hoped,’ the announcement proceeded, ‘that the United Kingdom will see the unwisdom of supporting its old enemies against its former allies, and above all that the United States will recognize the dangers on the one hand from a revival of Nazi adventurism and the fervent hopes for an enduring peace cherished in the Soviet Union on the other.’

Reference was then made to nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union, the statement said, saw no need at present to make use of its very powerful armoury of nuclear weapons in the prophylactic action now going forward.

‘Any significant use of radiation as a weapon of war, however,’ the statement went on, ‘either against troops of the Warsaw Pact or against their homelands, from whatever source, will result in the abandonment by the Soviet Union of all restraints in the use of nuclear weapons and full-scale counter-attack to any depth found necessary. The cities of the NATO countries will face in that event a dreadful end.’

Such was the Soviet message to the world, put out first at 0400 hours, Central European time, on 4 August 1985, and continually repeated in the days that followed. It was made known in many different ways, in many different lands and in many different languages. It was heard with feelings varying from rapturous hope to blank despair, and greeted with responses ranging from warm welcome, which was rare, to raucous derision, which was not.

In Europe, on 4 August 1985, even after only a week of NATO mobilization, the Allied Command was in a far better condition to meet an emergency than could have been possible a very few years before. Several months of spurious detente in the first half of the year had certainly done something to slow down the rate of improvement in NATO’s preparedness; indeed in some respects it had almost brought it to a halt. Illusory hopes that the leopard had this time changed its spots had been freely aired. There had even been repetition of the whimsical claim, so often heard in left-wing groups in Britain, that there could never be any question of changing spots, for the animal had always been in fact immaculate, and that the enormous offensive capability of the USSR had been developed simply to protect its own progressive way of life and the freedom of the peoples it had liberated.

The voices raised for so long among the British left wing, and from their ill-assorted allies among the die-hard disengagers in the USA, urging a sharp reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of troops, had recently been listened to with growing scepticism. It was therefore possible, even in the months of false detente in the spring and early summer of 1985, to proceed, against this chorus, at least with those defence programmes whose suspension would increase domestic unemployment. Improvement in the air defences of the United Kingdom, for example, went on. It was even possible in the USA, though only by the narrowest of margins, to retain the Active Forces Draft.

There is no need to dwell here on the political and social stresses generated in the United States in the years 1979-81 over the reintroduction of the draft, nor to recapitulate the stormy history of the passage of the appropriate legislation. We are more concerned with its consequences, as seen in Allied Command Europe in 1985, and with the sobering reflection that without it no book like this, placing on record as it does the manner of the free West’s survival, could ever have been written.

It is just worth recalling, however, as a helpful reminder, that the US Army was in 1977 facing a critically dangerous position in the virtual disappearance of its reserves. When public disenchantment with the Vietnam War resulted in the end of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army, a sharp decline in paid-drill personnel (i.e. personnel actually carrying out reserve training) set in. By 1977 the Army’s National Guard and Reserve were 100,000 under peacetime strength. The Army’s Individual Ready Reserve — the pool of trained men to fill up units and replace combat losses — was dropping so fast that by 1982 it would at this rate have been 360,000 short of mobilization requirements. The back-up Selective Service System was in such ‘deep standby’ that training of drafted personnel could not start until four months after mobilization and no trained men to replace combat losses could be expected to reach Allied Command Europe until three months after that.

A scheme produced by the US Army to spend $750 million a year on a Reserve Component Readiness Improvement Package (RCRIP) was rejected. Schemes for a Reserve Component Draft, or for an Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Draft, were found to be unworkable. The only real alternative was an Active Forces Draft, with exemption for Reserve Components and IRR volunteers. Without it, within a few years, the US Army would only have been able to go to war when the war was over.

American public opinion in 1977 would not have accepted reintroduction of the draft. A Gallup poll in that year showed that 45 per cent of all Americans were against it, with a count as high as 82 per cent of all males between eighteen and twenty-four years of age.

Gradually, however, as elsewhere in the Alliance, the realization began to spread that the Russians meant what they had so often said and knew exactly what they were doing. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of those who refused to recognize the threat, or argued that if there were one it did not matter, or even claimed that they welcomed the chance of living under a Marxist dictatorship (whether anyone believed them or not), the awareness grew in the United States that a time could come when truly vital decisions would have to be made, and that it would be very foolish for the nation to surrender in advance all power of choice.

Soviet international diplomacy, uncompromising and unconciliatory as ever, was not unhelpful to those in the West who sought to make the danger better known. The Active Forces Draft was introduced in 1982. By early 1985 the reserves, though with some way still to go, had passed above crisis level. The US Army in Europe was no longer in such a state that, in the event of a military showdown with the Warsaw Pact, it would face early and unavoidable disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.

The position of France, critical to the whole question of the survival of the Alliance, must now receive attention. In the long history of Soviet maladroitness and miscalculation since the Second World War nothing — not the free elections so rashly allowed in Austria in 1946, or the swift re-arming of West Germany by the USSR’s recent allies in response to Soviet threats, or yet the alienation of Marxists outside the Soviet Union or the antagonization of China or the ineffective meddling in the Middle East — nothing at all in an impressive record of political ineptitude proved to be a more spectacular and costly failure than the confident attempt by the Soviet Union to persuade France to renounce her obligations under the Atlantic Treaty.[6]

The earlier Brussels Treaty, to which France also still belonged, was even more categorical about affording military aid to a victim of attack.

The II French Corps, stationed in Germany, embodying two enlarged divisions now, with supporting troops, up to full strength, was put by the French government at SACEUR’s disposal even before the Soviet announcement. In fact, it came under command to AFCENT at midnight on 3–4 August. The corps was to be followed in a matter of days by the first of three further mechanized divisions from the First French Army. From 4 August the French Tactical Air Force was ordered to support French forces on the ground as SACEUR might determine. French ports, communications, military installations and, above all, airfields and airspace were at the same time made available to the Allies.

If France had stayed in NATO, or come back in good time, a French army group located in southern Germany and fully integrated into AFCENT might so have strengthened the whole Central Region as to deter in real terms — without nuclear shadow-boxing — a Warsaw Pact invasion. It was too late to think about that now. What gave real cause for satisfaction and solid ground for hope was the very active unofficial contingency planning which had long been a feature of relations between the French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG.

The onset of war in Europe posed a particularly cruel problem for Turkey. She was recovering from deep economic gloom, but her armed forces had been weakened by the restriction on equipment supplies from the US. This ban had been imposed by Congress, contrary to the wishes of the US Administration, on the occasion of the Turkish action in Cyprus in 1974. Some partial mitigation had occurred in the late seventies but full re-supply had only been arranged three years before the present outbreak. Turkey had for some time been making it clear to the US and to the other Allies that the performance of her Alliance responsibilities would have to be made proportionate to her reduced capability. It said much for the steadfastness of the Turkish character, as well as for their historic fear of Russian aggression, that they did not go further in their reaction to Congressional displeasure. Relations with Greece had begun to recover from the low point reached at the time of the Cyprus affair and the argument over sea-bed rights in the Aegean, and it was largely the progress made in patching up this quarrel which finally led Congress to authorize the resumption of full equipment deliveries. But three years was a short time in which to make good the deficiencies and catch up with the new types of weapon systems which had meanwhile become available.

The growing threat during 1984 of Soviet action from the north and Soviet influence in Egypt from the south had further helped to cement the improvement in Greek-Turkish relations, and thus paved the way for Greece to resume active participation in NATO planning and co-operation, which had also been interrupted in the aftermath of the Cyprus affair.

The circumstances leading to the actual outbreak of war in Europe proved particularly unfavourable for Greece and Turkey, however. Egypt’s move into Arabia had disrupted some of their oil supply and emphasized the Soviet presence in Syria and Iraq, which were Turkey’s neighbours to the south and east. The outbreak of hostilities in Yugoslavia brought increased Soviet troop concentrations into the Balkans and enhanced Bulgaria’s role as a potential jumping off point for a drive to the Straits or the Aegean.

Nevertheless, Soviet policy also faced a dilemma. The rugged terrain of the Anatolian plateau was not of much use to them, but passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles might be crucial to their success in driving America out of the eastern Mediterranean. No doubt sufficient forces could be concentrated in Bulgaria to force back the Turkish First Army from Edirne and open the way to occupation of Gallipoli and the Bosphorus approaches — even if Istanbul itself, now peopled by 4 million Turks, would be a most indigestible mouthful. But any such moves, even accompanied by airborne landings, would give plenty of time for the blocking of the Straits by demolition, mines and blockships. Even with control of the shores of the two waterways these obstructions could take some vital weeks to clear. Since this was intended by the Soviet planners to be the period within which the whole European operation would lie, the disadvantage of armed attack on the Straits loomed rather large.

Soviet planners were necessarily aware that the Montreux Convention, which since 1937 had regulated the right of passage through the Turkish Straits, almost totally forbade this right to the warships of belligerents. After the beginning of operations in Europe they would hardly be able to claim not to be in this category, even if no formal declaration of war had been made. Some of them were inclined to assume that, faced with the threat of overwhelming force, the Turks would have no alternative but to accept a bending of the Montreux rules and allow Soviet warships continued passage. Others, who knew Turkey better, argued successfully that this could by no means be relied on and that Turkey was fully capable of living up to her obligations even at great cost to herself. They pointed out that it would do the USSR little good to be in Istanbul if the Bosphorus was blocked. Moreover, apart from Turkish action, it would not be difficult for US aircraft even from the western Mediterranean to make passage of the Straits by Soviet warships exceptionally hazardous.

It was therefore finally accepted by the Soviet command that the only safe course was to get their ships out first from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Once there they would have shore facilities in Alexandria again since the Egyptian volte-face. They could hope for the use of Malta and the seizure of a harbour in the course of the Yugoslav operation. There might even be a chance to settle old scores with Albania and re-occupy the submarine base at Valona, from which they had been rudely ejected when Albania joined the Chinese in 1961. The ships would thus not be as dependent as formerly on periodic return to Black Sea ports for refitting and supply. Civilian merchant shipping from the Black Sea could no doubt fill up the supply gaps, and their passage through the Straits would pose much less risk of Turkish reaction. In the spring of 1985 there was, therefore, an unusual amount of Soviet naval tonnage leaving the Black Sea for the Mediterranean, for manoeuvres, trials and transfer to other stations; by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe all the units required for naval operations in the Mediterranean had already passed through.

There was of course a risk that these movements would seem to imply a Soviet intention to prepare for a European war and stimulate precautions in the West. By routing almost all the ships first of all to Alexandria, however, the Russians strove to give the impression that they were still concerned primarily with the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

When finally hostilities began and the Russians succeeded in penetrating Italy, causing the removal to Spain of all that was possible of AFSOUTH’s infrastructure, as well as its headquarters, the possibility of active participation by Turkey and Greece was drastically curtailed, since only long-distance US air support with help from the Sixth Fleet would for the time being be available.

It was not the first time in Turkey’s history that she had been left almost alone to face her great neighbour in the north. As so often in the past, the Turkish government made it quite clear that while their intentions were not aggressive, no Turkish territory or Turkish rights would be conceded without fierce resistance and if necessary sacrifice. Frontier forces were reinforced and preparations ostentatiously made for blocking the Straits should this prove necessary. Local animosities were forgotten in the face of greater danger, and Turkish and Greek forces linked up in Thrace to confront Bulgaria, while the remaining Greek forces strengthened their northern border against any possible incursions from Yugoslavia or Albania.

The threat of attack from the Warsaw Pact side was a very real one and gave rise to deep apprehensions. In the end, however, the Russians did not find it worth while to divert forces for this purpose, believing no doubt that if all went according to plan in the centre and west they could complete their mastery of the Balkans and of Turkey at greater leisure thereafter. The political and military weaknesses of NATO’s south-east flank had been repaired just in time to make it possible for the flank to hold, even in considerable isolation. It was rash of all concerned to have left the remedial measures so late.

Since the central issue was in the first instance to be the survival of the Federal Republic of Germany, and since the first great land battle would take place on German territory, it is important to take a further look at the Federal Republic’s land forces.

The three German corps embodied sixteen armoured brigades (each with three battalions of tanks, one of armoured infantry and one of armoured artillery), fifteen armoured infantry brigades (each containing two tank and two armoured infantry battalions, one of Jager infantry and one of armoured artillery), with units mostly organized broadly on US models, together with two mountain and three airborne brigades. They were on the whole in very good shape, well officered and well equipped. In an army in which roughly half of its regular strength of 350,000 were conscripts, the general level of troop training was not as high, or as even, as that of an all-regular long-service force like the British. Units had on the whole been kept up to strength rather better than the British, however, and there had been fewer reorganizations in the interests of economy (always presented politically in Britain as improvements in military effectiveness) and a more realistic approach by the Federal government to the provision and maintenance of equipment. The Bundeswehr had thus suffered less from its politicians than its brothers-in-arms in Britain, where cynicism and insularity had long traded on a depth of good will and loyalty in the country’s armed forces that few governments of any party had done much to deserve.

Of two major improvements brought about in the army of the FRG in the five years before the outbreak of war, one was structural, the other operational.

The first concerned reserves. Three Territorial Commands, each of five Military Districts, had been created. In these commands six Home Defence Brigades formed the fighting core of a reserve force with a peacetime strength of some 63,000 (including 30,000 conscripts still working out their reserve service) and an ultimate full mobilization strength for the Territorial Army of half a million. The Federal government was not at first inclined to place these resources under NATO command. They represented, it was argued, the last armed forces available to the Federal Republic as a sovereign power and should remain at its disposal alone. Arguments for undivided command in time of war proved more persuasive. Events were to show the wisdom of assigning these reserve forces, at least on mobilization, to SACEUR.

The second improvement reflected a change in outlook on the best method of defending Federal territory. ‘Forward defence’ on the frontier could hardly mean in military terms anything other than a defence forward of the frontier, a point Warsaw Pact planners were not slow to take. The clearest alternative was defence in depth, trading ground at the best possible rate for the time needed to set up a counter-offensive. This, though it made good military sense, was hardly popular with politicians publicly dedicated to the total defence of the integrity of Federal territory.

The rapid development of anti-tank techniques, the increasing urbanization of much of West Germany and the growing size of the FRG’s military reserves suggested another approach. A network of squads of reservists, locally drawn and armed with ATGW, was incorporated into the operation of the covering forces along the frontier.

A concept had been gradually gaining favour in the Federal Republic since the end of the seventies under which a defence against attack from the East would be organized in three tiers. These would comprise a frontier defence almost entirely composed of Jagd Kommandos (tank-hunting and skirmishing units), with powerful counter-penetration forces in depth in what was described as Raumdeckende Verteidigung (spatial defence) and an area of Heimat Schutz (so-called Homeland Defence), depending mostly on territorial forces, in further depth behind that.

The covering forces deployed by AFCENT would still be expected to fight a delaying battle forward. In the late seventies the proportion of troop strengths in forward corps assigned to fight the covering-force battle had been some 30 to 50 per cent of the whole formation, all along the front of the Central Region. New tactics in NORTHAG, appropriate to the terrain, had enabled forward corps to reduce this to some extent. The full covering-force concept, however, was still to prevail in CENTAG where lack of depth made it important to give away as little ground as possible.

In NORTHAG, British experimentation was proceeding on lines closely related to the new concept now under discussion in Germany, with light anti-tank defences exploiting the possibility of ATGW deployed far forward. The system of frontier defence thus created, with counter-penetration forces deployed in further depth, was beginning to be thought of, by many British and some German officers, as a possible replacement for, or at least a modification of, the full doctrine of ‘forward defence’, however the term was interpreted, which had hitherto prevailed. It was still largely experimental, but over several years of continuous exercises it had been showing considerable promise.

Where the most important advances had been made in preparations to defend the Federal Republic, however, was without any question in the organization of home and civil defence — including the protection of vulnerable points and attention to the problem of refugees — and in the better use of reserves.

Of the other Allied forces deployed in the Central Region on 4 August 1985 (in addition to their most powerful component, those of the United States), I Belgian and I Netherlands Corps in NORTHAG were almost up to strength (though the training of reservists in some units gave little cause for confidence) and were already, at least in part, deployed forward. Pressure within NATO over the years to increase the long-service content in these formations, thus placing less reliance on reserves, and to deploy a higher proportion of them within the Federal Republic near their battle stations (and less in their adjacent homelands) had met with incomplete success. I Belgian and I Netherlands Corps were not the strongest links in the NATO chain.

The embryonic II British Corps, composed in part of reserve units manned by former long-service regulars and in part of regular units, had been due this year, as it happened, for the first time to carry out a full formation exercise, with troops, in BAOR. It was building up in north-west Germany. Its equipment, stockpiled in advance but not yet fully up to scale and, where reserve units were concerned, not always of the latest type, had already been drawn. Its personnel embodied a considerable level of experience, fortified both by a leaven of regular units and by judicious cross-posting from I British Corps. The morale of its reservist soldiers was high.

The much strengthened Canadian Brigade Group, in the rear of the CENTAG area, was held in the Central Army Group reserve.