The Third World War: August 1985

A good deal of intelligence material had been coming into the Ops room during the night from the ‘I’ staff of the British Army of the Rhine (whose C-in-C was also Commander Northern Army Group) but not a lot of it was new. Reports continued, of a sort that had now grown familiar, of preparations in clandestine cells (of which some hundreds were known to exist) for strikes at military and civil communication centres and at other key points throughout the Federal Republic, and for the giving of help to Soviet parachutists coming in on Rhine and Weser bridges. There was the usual wild disagreement on target date and wide discrepancy in detail.

What had not been in doubt for several weeks now, even since before the Yugoslav crisis, was that if the ‘exercises’ of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, now in progress on a scale far larger than any yet seen, were not in fact a full mobilization for war they were a very passable substitute for it. There had been the usual notification through the head of the Soviet Military Mission to C-in-C BAOR (NORTHAG, as a NATO command, was not recognized by the Russians) of the intention to hold manoeuvres, and of the area in the GDR that would be closed, but the areas were of quite unusual size and the exercises were to be of exceptional duration. It was explained by the Soviet Mission that these were ‘readiness exercises’, normal, but gone through only at long intervals.

The crisis in Yugoslavia and the Soviet intervention there, though neither could be described as entirely unexpected, now threw a clearer light on events. To bring the whole Warsaw Pact gently and unobtrusively, as far as this was possible, to a war footing before an initiative in Yugoslavia (now seen to have been planned some time before) made very good sense. The response of the West to a Soviet attempt to force a disintegrating Yugoslavia back into the system might not be easy to predict, but it was unlikely to be accepted as tamely as the subjugation of Czechoslovakia seventeen years before. Of all the possible reactions, an invasion of the Warsaw Pact by NATO could hardly be seen as likely, however useful the possibility of it might be to the USSR for propaganda purposes. It would be important, all the same, for the forces of the Pact to be fully prepared, whether for defensive action against a Western attack or for the more likely contingency of a pre-emptive offensive.

It was in June that the rumours reaching Western intelligence of increasing activity among undercover left-wing groups in the FRG began to receive some confirmation from more trustworthy sources. It was clear that plans existed for sabotage on a considerable scale, and even for operations that made little sense unless they were to be supported by military action from the other side.

In early July the evidence began to harden. An action date some time in mid-September was being indicated. But though it was still doubtful whether much could be achieved by sabotage cells acting on their own, there was still no firm indication that a major initiative by Soviet armed forces was intended, the ‘readiness exercise’ notwithstanding.

The Federal Republic of Germany was not unnaturally the first major Allied power to take the aggregate of these reports really seriously, considered in the context not only of current military activity in the Warsaw Pact but also of the confused and threatening situation in Yugoslavia. The United States began to do so at about the same time, and so did Belgium.

The United Kingdom was rather harder to persuade. There had been no alert for several years — not, in fact, since Tito’s departure from the scene — and the British did not entirely believe what they were being told, largely because they did not want to. The false detente had had its effect. Enough had recently been done within the Alliance, it was generally thought, to prevent the Russians trying anything on. Whatever modification there had been of recent years in British public opinion, the habit of self-deception, persistent for so many years in Britain, was clearly hard to shake off.

The Dutch were even more reluctant to believe anything so uncomfortable. The Norwegians and Danes flatly rejected the evidence, while the French, still members of the Atlantic Alliance though not, of course, of NATO and now under a government of the Popular Front, kept their own counsel.