The Third World War: August 1985

What also seems beyond doubt is that the Soviet plan to penetrate the Northern Army Group, cross the Rhine in the Low Countries, and roll up AFCENT by an offensive thrust from north to south along the west bank of the Rhine, which would have taken CENTAG in the rear, came very close to success. It was well conceived and well prepared, with a not unreasonable assessment of the difficulties involved. This particular plan was an element in a general structure of contingency planning, any one part of which was valid in itself though none was likely to be implemented in isolation. It was the unexpectedly strong Western response to the Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia which pulled the chocks out, as it were, and set the plan for the invasion of the Central Region rolling down the slipway to the launch.

What might have happened in the long run if this plan had come off is quite incalculable. It can be said with complete confidence that in the shorter term it would have brought about the total destruction of the Federal Republic of Germany, and that the Atlantic Alliance would in consequence have lain in ruins. The possibility of a counter-offensive by the United States, in these circumstances, can hardly be conceived. The situation would have been beyond repair.

The bogey of an all-out attack on Allied Command Europe by forces of the Warsaw Pact, planned in total secrecy and carried out with complete surprise by forces already in place, with the aid of massive under-cover operations prepared with absolute security, was not the sort of thing to give sensible men sleepless nights in the years before the war — though it might not have been sensible wholly to disregard the possibility. Much more likely, Allied planners thought, was what actually happened: the implementation of well-prepared contingency plans, involving a high degree of preparation, as crises developing elsewhere showed signs of moving out of control.

Unlikely though it may have been, a surprise attack in the late seventies by in-place forces of the Warsaw Pact would have found Allied Command Europe so ill prepared that its early success could hardly have been in doubt, whether the French came in on the Allied side or not. The US Army in Europe had not yet fully recovered from the Vietnam experience. It was becoming accustomed to the absence of the draft but was already running into serious and unexpected difficulties over reserves as a result of ending it. Stocks which had been run down for the Israeli war were only slowly being replaced. The ‘Reforger’ system, by which formations would be flown in from the continental United States to marry up with equipment pre-stocked in the Federal Republic, though already showing great promise, had not yet been as fully developed as in the years to come.

The Bundeswehr was improving, but although its units were rated by the Russians as the best of the Allied bunch it was still only in moderate shape by the exacting standards of German professional soldiers, while the German Territorial Army was scarcely more than embryonic.

The British Army of the Rhine was again in the throes of reorganization, with the level of provision (and the state) of its equipment causing concern to its officers and with several battalions of its invaluable infantry still in Northern Ireland. The forces for defence in depth in NORTHAG, when the inevitable breakthrough occurred and there was no release of Allied nuclear weapons (which would almost certainly have been withheld), were wholly inadequate.

Belgian and Dutch forces were heavily — and dangerously — reliant on reservists with no more than short conscript training behind them, and were still reluctant (particularly in the case of the Dutch) to maintain any considerable strength in proximity to their forward battle stations in the Federal Republic. There was very little hope that in the event of a surprise attack Dutch forces of any real significance would have been able to reach their emergency positions before these were overrun.

The Allied air forces were still ahead of those of the Warsaw Pact in quality of equipment, though the gap was closing. They were also well ahead in the quality of their aircrew, but among the European Allies air forces had been ruinously run down. Air defence with surface weapons, even in Allied Command Europe, was nowhere strong. Some of the equipment was good. The British low-level Rapier, for instance, was outstanding. There were in 1977 only two Rapier regiments in BAOR, however, neither of which was armoured or even tactically mobile. The air defence of Great Britain, upon which so much would depend, was particularly weak. It was almost as rundown as the UK’s civil defences against air attack, whether by conventional weapons or nuclear.