The Third World War - August 1985

by John Hackett

  The Soviet war-fighting philosophy, from whatever origins it may have been evolved, was in the circumstances of the 1980s exactly right. It enjoined the initiation of total and violent offensive action, swiftly followed through to the early attainment of a valuable objective. The position of military advantage thus secured would then be exploited by political means. Speed was everything. The corollary was that failure to secure the objective in good time must result in a thorough-going reappraisal, in which to continue to press towards the same end might very well be the least sensible course.

  In the operation in the Central Region, at its sharpest point in the Krefeld Salient, the Warsaw Pact advance never got any further than Julich. The newly arrived US corps, equipped out of Convoy CAVALRY, was already by 16 August building up on the western flank. This posed a threat which, taken in conjunction with the northward offensive of the Northern Army Group, could mean nothing other than a halt to the advance and an enforced change-over to defensive action (for which the Red Army was not well suited) or to withdrawal.

  The French division deployed in the Maastricht area in the emergency situation of 13-14 August was relieved as soon as US troops began to arrive in strength. It joined up with the rest of the Southern Army Group, which was now in a position, with some further switch-back of Allied air power, to open a counter-offensive towards the Czechoslovak frontier. This began on 17 August. By then NORTHAG’s northwards offensive towards Bremen had regained possession of the Teutoburger Wald, but it could make no further headway against the very heavy flank defences of a rearward regrouping movement by Pact forces which could hardly yet be described as a retreat.

  We have looked in some detail at the circumstances leading to the abandonment of the initial plan of the Warsaw Pact and the rearward regrouping which followed. The events of the next few weeks can be passed over more rapidly. Before we move on, however, some comment on SACEUR’s handling of the battle may not be out of place.

  It was a very near thing. The Supreme Commander was quite determined to avoid the use of battlefield nuclear weapons if he possibly could, in the certain conviction, shared by the President of the USA, that this could have no other result than swift escalation into the nightmare of unrestricted strategic nuclear exchange, with results which could not fail to be disastrous. As commander in the theatre he was also determined to keep under his own hand as long as he possibly could those modest theatre reserves which constituted his whole remaining capability to influence the battle. He was on the horns of a dilemma, precisely the same dilemma which had brought so much discomfort into the debate on the ‘forward defence’ of the FRG. To be able to hold off a very much superior attacking force, without giving ground, either additional troops were needed on the spot - or nuclear weapons.

  SACEUR’s subordinate commanders had been pressing him to furnish one or the other with ever-growing urgency. Counter-offensive action to relieve pressure at the vital point was most critically necessary. It was the prospect of the arrival of the transatlantic reinforcement convoy which justified him, in his own judgment, in taking the considered (and considerable) risk of releasing his only reserves for this purpose before the new formations to reconstitute them were securely under his hand. This, it may be added, greatly strengthened him in resisting any further pressure for nuclear release.

  Analysts are already busy in debate on the wisdom of Soviet naval policy in the seventies. We make some comment on this in Appendix 2. What is abundantly clear in the present connection is that without the US Navy, assisted by the European Allies, there would have been no further reinforcement of Allied Command Europe by any but light formations after the outbreak of hostilities. Without Allied air power the movement of troops to the theatre and the safe delivery of essential equipment would have been impossible. Without the expectation of early reinforcement SACEUR would have been faced with a choice between surrender of his last remaining means of influencing the battle or, by securing the release of battlefield nuclear weapons, committing the world to the near certainty of a catastrophic future. Without stout fighting by the German Territorial forces, in addition to the outstanding performance of the regular forces of the FRG, the Allied counter-offensive might never have got across the start-line. Without the strength and flexibility of Allied tactical air power, and its skilful exploitation, the battle for the Central Region would have been lost almost before it began. The list of what could have gone badly wrong is a long one. It was certainly a very near thing.

  The rearward movement of Warsaw Pact forces in the Federal Republic was not the retreat of a defeated army. Though always under pressure from Allied forces which were growing constantly in strength, penetrating where they could and never failing to preserve that intimacy of contact which was always something of an insurance against nuclear attack, the forces of the Warsaw Pact were still able to develop a local superiority almost at will and to retain a high degree of tactical control along the forward edge of their battle area. They had failed in what they had set out to do, however, and the opportunity to do it could not be recreated. There was not only no point in staying where they were. It was going to become increasingly dangerous and difficult to try to do so. The wisest course was to withdraw.

  We are concerned here only with the military situation as it confronted Allied Command Europe. Political developments, and particularly those within the Warsaw Pact, which were to become of paramount importance at a later stage, are another matter and are treated in Chapter 26.

  In the AFNORTH area, the whole of Denmark and north Norway remained occupied. A gentle movement of the Soviet administrative elements, with security troops and guard units, which was virtually all that had moved into Italy in the first few days of August, had begun out of the AFSOUTH area. By the end of the month the communist-dominated Italian government was on its own, to make what reconciliation would be found possible with its former allies under the Atlantic Treaty.

  In the Central Region the early withdrawal of the Soviet divisions in the Krefeld Salient, following hard upon the opening of the NORTHAG counter-offensive of 15 August, was the beginning of an orderly rearward movement along the whole Warsaw Pact front, everywhere - except possibly in the extreme south - under firm Soviet tactical control. A concentration of four Soviet divisions north of Osnabruck, facing south, kept open the southern hinge of a door which might otherwise have closed upon Pact formations moving eastwards out of the Low Countries and the westernmost parts of the Federal Republic, harassed on their way by Allied air attack and the action of II British Corps but still in being. The Allied airhead round Bremen, which might have been the hinge of the northern half of NORTHAG’s door, was firmly contained by the enemy; it would be some time before mine clearance allowed access to it from the sea. In spite of persistent pressure from the south the gap between the Teutoburger Wald and the North Sea coast was never fully closed, and Pact formations were able to move through it eastwards, if only, for the most part, at night. Allied artillery fire caused heavy losses and, in spite of the occasional temporary establishment of local air superiority by Pact air forces, Allied air attack was frequently of devastating effectiveness. A dogged Soviet screen of tank and motorized divisions, however, was able to maintain a defensive front, and this, with the help of local counter-attacks, just held off the threat from the south to the rearward movement.

  The Allied purpose was less to inflict a punishing defeat on the armies of the Warsaw Pact in the field than to get them off the territory of the Federal Republic as soon as possible, with the minimum of Allied loss and collateral damage. From the junction with NORTHAG, which was now on a line running north-east through Hildesheim, CENTAG maintained continuous heavy pressure on Pact formations moving eastwards (though with no further major set-piece battle) all the way south to the junction with SOUTHAG. By 18 August no troops of the Warsaw Pact were anywhere to be found in the CENTAG area, out of captivity, west of the Demarcation Line. It was clear, however, that an advance by Allied troops across th
e line into the GDR would be fiercely resisted, and orders to Allied Command Europe were for the present to hold hard.

  In north Germany the position was rather more complicated. Bremen was relieved by 20 August. On the 23rd the forces of the Pact had consolidated everywhere along the Demarcation Line except in the vicinity of Hamburg. Here the River Elbe was the front. Hamburg, its declaration by the Senat as an open city notwithstanding, had been occupied by the Russians. In order to avoid further harm to a city so far very little damaged and the loss of civilian life, no attempt was as yet being made by the Allies to take it back.

  It was only in the extreme south that offensive operations were still in active progress. The Southern Army Group, with II French Corps, II German Corps and about a division of Austrian troops, all under French command, and a heavy concentration of Allied tactical air forces in support, had crossed a start-line between Nurnberg and Munchen on 17 August in an advance directed on Pilsen. It had moved into Czechoslovakia on the 20th and was now making slow but steady progress. Of the troops opposing it none were Czechoslovak. Instead, SOUTHAG was now facing Soviet divisions out of 8 Guards Army and the Thirty-eighth Army from the Carpathian Military District.

  On 21 August the southern advance was brought to a halt, at least for the time being, with its left flank, where II German Corps was deployed, south-west of Cheb. It has since become clear that the Central Group of Soviet Forces was concerned at the possibility of invasion of the GDR from the south and was under orders to resist it strongly if it came. It can also be safely claimed that the forward thrust of the Southern Army Group threw the operations of the Warsaw Pact in the Central Region of NATO considerably off-balance and thus helped to expedite its withdrawal in the northern plain.

  Three momentous weeks had passed since that morning of 4 August when the world woke up to find itself once more with a major war on its hands. Only a pocket, if an important one, of Federal territory was still in the enemy’s hands. Though still very much at war the Federal Republic was able to look cautiously around and make a first assessment of the damage. Bremen was in ruins. Hannover was very badly damaged too, particularly on the east and south. Probably on account of the speed of the action the damage in other cities was not as great. Kassel, Nurnberg and Munchen had all suffered, and the great cities of the Rhineland had not been spared, though the spire of Koln cathedral had again surprisingly survived. But though the future was obscure and peace was not yet in sight, the worst seemed to have been averted, for the time being at least. The invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Warsaw Pact had failed and the Atlantic Alliance had survived.

  CHAPTER 22: Home Fires: The Domestic Scene in a Televisual Society

  Hostilities had opened in Europe after a period in which every country in the Western Alliance had, to some degree or another and each according to its own particular needs and inclinations, done something to offset the result of years of general public disregard of the possibility of war.

  In the Federal Republic of Germany, the country most exposed, it had been necessary to move with circumspection. The inescapable requirement to make some provision for the evacuation of forward areas near the border with East Germany, where early fighting would be sharpest, and the need to take account of refugee movement flooding westwards, had to be met in such a way as not to diminish confidence in the policy of forward defence or in the protection given by NATO. Carefully and unobtrusively a great deal had been done. Arrangements for the evacuation of children and the provision of emergency stand-by services in depth were generally allowed to be not incompatible with an official policy which encouraged people to stay where they were in a war emergency. There was realistic, discreet and thorough planning for what was to be done if they failed to do so. The provision for the handling of a very big flow of population from the forward areas, much of it panic-stricken under air attack, for its marshalling, guidance, reception, dispersion and maintenance, was both extensive and sound. The development of the Territorial Army, which with its three Territorial commands of five military districts had made impressive progress from the late seventies onwards, furnished an invaluable supporting structure for the operation of emergency services. Its communications, engineer, police and service units, working in close harmony at Federal and Land level with civil and paramilitary border police, all under a staff and command system reflecting the usual efficiency of German military practice, proved of inestimable value. In the same years, civil defence measures - including some provision of shelters, emergency stores of food and medical supplies, hardened stand-by communications and sources of power - had also made progress. A more generous financial provision in Federal and Land budgets in the previous five years was well justified in the event.

  In France there was less inclination to provide for civil defence than in the FRG. The argument was freely used that to do so would only diminish confidence in the deterrent effect of the country’s preparedness to defend itself (which included a built-in nuclear capability under national control). It certainly saved the French government a good deal of money.

  The French nuclear capability was never used, however. Under a Popular Front government the nuclear element in the defence programme had been allowed to fall behind, but even if it had not been, there was no question but that in a bilateral exchange with the USSR, without US intervention, France would be the loser. Soviet propaganda played upon this. The Soviet Union made it clear that there would be no area bombing of French cities but that precision attack could be expected from the air on any port or other target actively operating in an Allied military interest. A nuclear response from France would result in a rain of weapons of mass destruction upon her cities.

  There was, in fact, considerable Soviet conventional bombing of French ports and communications complexes. Since, however, penetration by hostile aircraft was for the greater part of their journey over land and through several belts of air defence, the damage that was done, where it mattered most to the Allied war effort (above all in the Western ports), was not intolerably great.

  Quite as much hindrance, and possibly even more, to the prosecution of the war in France came from civil disturbance. War with the Soviet Union stripped the mask from many professing Euro-communism in France, as in Italy and other countries. An impressively well-prepared Peace Movement burgeoned on the streets at once. Demonstrations, strikes and sabotage led to frequent clashes between communist and Gaullist sympathizers and a growing strain on the police, in whose support troops sometimes had to intervene. Widespread avoidance of call-up was accompanied by a sharp rise in petty crime. Food and petrol rationing, introduced on mobilization, never worked and perhaps were scarcely expected to. On the whole, nevertheless, France moved towards a war footing without intolerable upheaval, largely because the overwhelming majority of the French people were seen to be plainly in favour of resistance to the Soviet initiative.

  Conditions were much the same in the Low Countries, with the added pressure of the immediate danger of invasion in both Belgium and the Netherlands, and, in the case of the latter, the burden of partial occupation by the enemy within a very few days. Resistance in Holland was slow to get under way in the Second World War, due to the habits formed over a long period of neutrality. When it found its feet it was formidable. In the Third World War there were many still in Holland who remembered how it had been before. Underground movements began to come into being as soon as the country was ordered to mobilize. From the time Soviet troops first crossed the frontier they felt the strength and dourness of Dutch resistance and replied with a savagery far exceeding what was still remembered in Holland from the Germans. It was fortunate indeed for the Dutch that this occupation by a wartime enemy of a very different sort lasted only a few weeks.

  Britain, once again free from invasion and occupation by an enemy, had its own problems. An account is given in Chapter 4, ‘Awakening Response in the West’, and in Appendices 1 and 4, of the growing awareness, in the seven years before the
outbreak of war, of the reality of the danger to the Western Alliance from the USSR, of the dangerously weak state into which the defences of the United Kingdom had been allowed to fall, and of the country’s exposed position as the bridgehead for US reinforcement. In the matter of civil defence, growing pressure from the public, spearheaded in the first instance by unofficial bodies such as the National Emergency Volunteers (see Appendix 4), finally compelled a reluctant government to take the threat more seriously. Government spending on civil defence (at style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black'>£2 million per annum in 1978, just one-twentieth of what had been allocated ten years earlier) was sharply increased, until by 1983 it was approaching the 1968 figure. The legislation on army reserves (see Appendix 1), introduced as a result of constant pressure from Chief Constables on the Home Office, provided for the re-establishment of what was known as TAVR II - a part of the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve of particular relevance in the management of a national emergency - in a general increase in reserve forces. Further legislation included, in 1983, a Civil Protection (Emergencies) Act, which rationalized and extended emergency planning at all levels and introduced a phased system of alerts. A national civil defence exercise held in August 1984 led to a widespread improvement in procedures and brought out the clear lesson - borne out a year later - that law and order would provide the acutest problems.