The Third World War - The Untold Story

by Sir John Hackett

  ‘Of the plan put forward in the third part, there were three versions.

  Variant A was divided into five phases, set out as follows:

  ‘Phase One (duration 24 minutes): a sudden mass nuclear attack throughout the entire European theatre, including Spain and Portugal, in total depth. The following forces would take part in this first strike: 1 Missile Army of the Strategic Rocket Force; the missile brigades of the thirteen Front Tank Armies and Tank Army Groups (in all twenty-six missile brigades); the missile brigades of the Combined Armies and Tank Armies (in all twenty-eight missile brigades); the missile battalions of all motor rifle and tank divisions within range; the missile submarines of the North, Baltic and Black Sea Fleets and those of 5 Nautical Squadron. Their salvoes would be fired simultaneously by all missile units from their permanent deployment points or their positions at the time. Of the divisional missile battalions (equipped with missiles of up to 150 kilometres’ range), only those would take part in the attack that were located in the immediate vicinity of the frontiers. The first strike was intended to neutralize all enemy forces down to divisions, brigades and regiments, with particular attention to headquarters, together with missile bases, airfields, the principal communications and administrative centres and the air defence systems.

  ‘Phase Two (duration 96 minutes) follows immediately after Phase One. Eight Air Armies, the aircraft of three fleets, two corps of long-distance strategic aircraft, sub-units of the civil aviation Aeroflot and all military transport aircraft will take part. During this phase a maximum effort will be made to determine the results of the first nuclear attack. At the same time, a heavy air attack will be made on any targets seen to have survived the first attack. These would largely be mobile targets, such as field command posts and mobile missile units.

  ‘Nuclear and chemical weapons will be used. At the same time, the military transport aircraft and Aeroflot transport will drop guerrilla sub-units of Spetsnaz (Special Assignment Force) in areas not under nuclear or chemical attack. As soon as the Phase Two attack begins, all the missile launchers which took part in the first attack will when possible be reloaded and tactical missiles not used in the first strike because of their limited range, but which can now be brought to bear, will be moved swiftly forward into the main attack. Missile sub-units will receive target information directly from reconnaissance aircraft.

  ‘Phase Three (duration 30 minutes): all missile sub-units again deliver a massive nuclear attack, as soon as the aircraft are clear. This attack is intended to destroy newly revealed targets and targets insufficiently damaged in the first attacks. Chemical warheads will predominate, although the density of nuclear warheads will remain high.

  ‘Phase Four (duration 7 days): the success of this phase of the operation depends on surprise. Most Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces are not put in a state of readiness at the preliminary alert. The stand-to signal for these divisions is given only as the first nuclear attack takes place. The two and a half hours required for the first three phases of the operation is sufficient time to prepare their echelons and to move them forward from their stations. Detailed plans of action for each division, each army and each front, are worked out in advance and kept sealed. All that remains for commanding officers to do is to unseal the appropriate package and carry out the orders prescribed in it. All others will be destroyed. Even if the assault echelon divisions have not had time fully to prepare themselves in two and a half hours, they must nevertheless be moved forward into action. In these circumstances the enemy divisions will be at a disadvantage. The assault by the first echelon divisions will take place simultaneously along the entire front, to drive in wedges as quickly and as deeply as possible wherever enemy defences permit. On the second or third day of this action the Front Tank Armies will be put in where success has been greatest. On the fourth day of the operation, in any zone where enemy resistance has been effectively suppressed, the Belorussian Group of Tank Armies will be put in to strike across Europe towards the Atlantic coast. During the fourth phase, aircraft and missile sub-units will take supporting action as required by ground and naval forces. On each of the first three days there will be a parachute drop of one airborne division. If the availability of military transport and Aeroflot aircraft permitted, all divisions would have been dropped simultaneously on the first day of the operation. But this is not possible.

  ‘Phase Five would be carried out only in the event of Soviet and East European forces being brought to a halt in West Germany and becoming involved in sustained operations. This could lead to the development of a static front with a linear deployment of NATO forces from north to south. In this case the Ukrainian Group of Tank Armies will move at maximum speed from Hungary through Austria (neutrality notwithstanding) on the axis Linz-Frankfurt-Dunkirk. The purpose of this phase is to disrupt the Allied lines of communication and cut their line of retreat and then press on to the sea.

  Variant B was almost identical with Variant A, although nuclear weapons are not employed. Instead, all missile formations and units deliver a concentrated chemical and high-explosive attack whilst at the same time maintaining a state of constant readiness for the use of nuclear weapons. Variant B envisages a period of tension in Europe before military operations begin, lasting for anything from several days to several months or even one year. The troops on both sides will be in a state of readiness for all this time, carrying out exercises close to the enemy’s lines. The longer this period of tension lasts the better it will be for the Soviet Union. Weariness, boredom and false alarms will combine to reduce alertness. Soviet and Warsaw Pact formations can then be swiftly put on the alert and moved into the attack forthwith. To this the response of NATO forces is likely to be sluggish. Variant B also provides for a possible lightning attack from peacetime locations without chemical weapons. This can best be done when the West is most vulnerable: for example, in August during the holiday period.

  Variant C was divided into a preliminary and a main stage.

  ‘Preliminary Stage (duration 10 days): during this period several dozen civilian special service groups formed in Western and Asiatic non-communist countries will head for Western Europe. Each group acts independently and will not know that its mission is part of a general plan. At the same time, Spetsnaz sabotage units numbering some 5,000 men will cross into Western Europe as tourists. Simultaneously, Soviet merchant ships, with sub-units of marines and sabotage troops hidden on board, will sail towards Europe’s main ports.

  Main Stage: at an appointed time the Spetsnaz groups will destroy key electric power stations with explosives. If sixty of these can be put out of action, the whole of industry and all communication systems in Western Europe will be paralysed and rail transport will come to a standstill. All other means of transport including aircraft will be severely handicapped by lack of communications. In these circumstances it can be expected that water supplies will be cut off, radio and television broadcasting will cease, refrigeration will be impossible and produce will perish in warehouses. In buildings, lifts will stop, lights will go out, and telephones and alarm systems will be cut off. In large cities traffic chaos will result. Petrol and oil fuel supplies will give out. The underground railways will come to a halt. The work of government establishments, military headquarters and police forces will be disrupted. Crime will increase enormously and panic will set in. Pro-Soviet saboteurs in civilian clothes should now be able with little difficulty to destroy the principal communications systems of the main NATO headquarters and put out of action the command posts of the air defence systems. At the same time, Soviet military transport and Aeroflot aircraft will carry out a mass drop of paratroop divisions. These landings will be safeguarded by Soviet REP Osnaz (Special Electronic Counter-Measures Force) sub-units which will ‘blind’ NATO’s radar stations. The mission of the airborne divisions is to seize government establishments, military headquarters and command posts, and to disrupt all state and military administration systems. Once this has been accomp
lished and before it has been possible in the West to evaluate what has happened, the Soviet Government will urgently appeal to the US Government to refrain from a nuclear response and will give guarantees that the Soviet Union will not use nuclear weapons.’

  Several points of outstanding importance were raised when Document OP-85E-SSOV was discussed in the Kremlin. The first was whether the attack should be nuclear from the outset, as in Variant A. Arguments for this were strong. The USSR had a lead over the USA in land-based missile weapons of inter-continental range, though not in those delivered by aircraft or from submarines.

  The bomber aircraft mattered less than the submarines. It was noted that Britain and France had obstinately maintained, and even modernized, independent submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capabilities which, though modest, could do critical damage in the Soviet Union. The USSR was well ahead of the West in military and civil defence provision and in the hardening of launching sites, communications and administrative accommodation. Its size and the dispersal of its population conferred significant advantage. In theatre nuclear forces (TNF) the START Treaty had reduced the Soviet Union’s lead but this was still considerable. It had not been possible, unfortunately, to prevent the beginning of the installation of the new TNF, the Pershing II and cruise missile weapons, though the refusal of the Netherlands to host any had been helpful. The great strides made in generating anti-American and anti-nuclear tendencies in the Alliance reflected considerable credit on those responsible. The billion dollars’ worth of hard currency this had cost the Soviet Union was money well spent. It was difficult to believe but nevertheless true that the conviction was widely held in Britain that if there were no nuclear weapons in the British Isles they would be immune from nuclear attack. This conviction was particularly creditable to Soviet disinformation services and those responsible were to be congratulated. Since the British Isles were of paramount importance to the NATO war effort in Europe they would, of course, without any question be attacked and neutralized, whatever the circumstances.

  Although in TNF in general the USSR was superior, it could not be absolutely guaranteed that the United States would refrain from the use against the Soviet Union of nuclear weapons of inter-continental range, if a nuclear attack were mounted on Western Europe, though the probability that the USA would use strategic nuclear weapons if its European allies were facing early defeat by non-nuclear means was low. Nor could it be guaranteed that a first strike on the United States would destroy so much of its ICBM capability as to rule out the possibility of a highly destructive response. It almost went without saying that what was known in the muddled jargon of the West as ‘escalation’ would certainly take place. That meant that a decision to use any nuclear weapon was in effect a decision to go the whole way into the full strategic exchange.

  Would this, for the USSR, be worthwhile? Even if the USA were devastated, would the Soviet Union in the aftermath be in a position to retain full control over its own people, let alone those of restless client states? This was doubtful. Heavy damage and high casualties in Warsaw Pact states would loosen ties in the socialist world rather than strengthen them, while the progress of the USSR itself would be set back so far as to open dangerous opportunities to China. Opinion in the Politburo appeared to be hardening against the option of a nuclear opening.

  None the less there was a deep and manifest difference of opinion here which could not be overcome. One group, resolutely led by the Chairman of the KGB, Army General Sergei Athanasievich Aristanov, ably supported by the Minister of Defence, Marshal Alexei Alexandrovich Nastin (each a member of the Defence Council of the Politburo), maintained that the Soviet approach to war demanded the swift and violent use of the most powerful weapons available. This suggested, logically enough, a nuclear opening, in total depth, including, it went without saying, ICBM attack on the continental United States. In the strategic exchange between the central systems of the two great powers the Soviet Union would suffer grave damage which would put its progress back significantly. But it would survive and in time recover. The United States, on the other hand, would be destroyed, leaving the Soviet Union to establish progressive socialist societies in its own good time throughout the present capitalist West.

  The arguments for a conventional opening were well known. There would clearly be advantage in a non-nuclear victory and this, with good timing and the correct handling of field operations, was not impossible. If, however, the advance into Western Europe were so far delayed that the Rhine could not be secured within ten days there must be no question but that the whole of the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability must be applied and quickly used. There must be no withholding of the more powerful weapons in the hope that the enemy would do the same with his, and no concession at all to the fallacious Western concept of escalation, which is not only fundamentally incorrect but wholly out of keeping with the now well-established, and even traditional, Soviet method of making war. If there were any uncertainty over the achievement of very early success by non-nuclear means, however, the whole operation should without any doubt be nuclear from the start.

  The Supreme Party Ideologist, Constantin Andrievich Malinsky, who was a member of the Politburo Defence Council, supported by the leader of the Organization of the Party and State Control, Otto Yanovich Berzinsh, and Taras Kyrillovich Nalivaiko, responsible for relations with socialist countries (both being members of the Politburo but not of the Defence Council) demurred. It must be the aim of the Soviet Union to realize Lenin’s grand design of a world under communist rule. A world of which much would be charred rubble or irradiated desert would hardly be worth ruling. What was wanted was supremacy in a living world, not over a charnel house it would be death to enter. Nuclear weapons were to frighten rather than to fight with. Their use would set up a contradiction in socialist practice which should be avoided except in the very last resort and only after the deepest thought.

  For the time being, at least, the majority were in favour of a non-nuclear opening and the meeting passed to consider other matters.

  The position of European neutrals was discussed. Sweden, in spite of signs of restlessness in recent years, could almost certainly be cowed into maintaining its traditional stance. France was an unknown quantity. It was a member of the Atlantic Alliance but not of its military organization, NATO. France’s record of self-interest suggested that it might, and probably would, abstain from belligerence if the advantage offered were sufficient. Ireland would probably follow France’s lead, though recently improved Anglo-Irish relations raised doubts here and it would be as well to target key installations in Ireland for conventional destruction in order to deny their use to the Western allies. The chance would have to be taken that Irish facilities would become available to the enemy, which could raise problems for the Soviet Navy in the Eastern Atlantic.

  To occupy France would impose a serious burden on Soviet resources and involve a significant addition to occupied territories which would certainly raise security problems of their own.

  What would help France to stay out would be a guarantee of total immunity. This suggested that, though offensive action should be planned to cover the whole of Western Europe, the immediate aim should be to occupy and dismantle Federal Germany, stopping, for the time being at least, at the Rhine, while the Federal Republic was being dealt with and negotiations were in progress with the USA. The intention to stop at the Rhine would be widely publicized with maximum pressure on France to accept the Soviet guarantee of immunity and abstain from belligerence, which it almost certainly would. The destruction of Federal Germany would then inevitably cause the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance.

  This policy received approval.

  The question of distracting the attention of the United States from Europe was again discussed. If the USA could be involved in active warfare in Central America and the Caribbean, American public opinion would be unlikely to favour massive support for NATO in Europe. The Warsaw Pact should then have an easy vict
ory. Energetic action to this end should still be pursued, with particular attention to Cuba.

  A suggestion to mount an amphibious and airborne threat to the western seaboard of North America, as a further distraction from war in Europe, was dismissed as implausible. The support of even a small amphibious force across the Bering Sea was impracticable in the face of United States maritime and land-based air strength, while the inability of the Soviet Air Force (SAF) to lift and then maintain all of its seven airborne divisions at once was well known.

  The question was then raised of action in Asia to distract the attention of the United States from the focal point in Europe. Would the setting up of crises either in East Asia, as for example in the area of Indochina, or in South-West Asia, perhaps in the oil-producing areas, be useful? The conclusion was that they would not be productive either in the right way or at the right time, with the possible exception of the Korean peninsula. It would be a mistake to alarm China before Federal Germany was destroyed. Operations in South-West Asia would draw off Soviet and US forces in about equal strengths, which would show a net advantage to the Soviet Union in global terms. There were, however, too many unpredictable factors in that region. What would Pakistan do? What of the Arab world? What of the Moslem population of the Soviet Union? It was thought best to take one thing at a time. The speedy liquidation of the Federal Republic of Germany was the primary objective and nothing must distract attention from this. Where disinformation and action in support of progressive policies was showing promise among native populations, as in southern Africa, these activities should continue. Major initiatives outside Europe, however, should not now be undertaken until the primary objective had been realized and the Alliance destroyed.

  Offensive action in space was also discussed. Obviously the highly developed Soviet capability for interference with US space operations would be fully exploited. Would nuclear weapons be used? The 1963 agreement not to employ weapons in space could, of course, be disregarded. The chief question that arose was whether nuclear weapons could be used in space or at sea without initiating the central exchange. It was thought that they should not be used at all unless it was accepted that the inter-continental exchange would inevitably follow. The question of electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), however, was of particular interest. To the less technically inclined members of the Politburo it was explained that a fusion weapon exploded outside the atmosphere, say 200 kilometres up, would cause no thermal, blast or radiation damage on the earth but would generate a pulse of immense power which could damage or destroy electric or electronic equipment over a wide area, disrupt electricity distribution and communications and severely disorient instrumentation, with what could be catastrophic operational results. The West was far more vulnerable to EMP than the USSR. Should the electromagnetic pulse be exploited?