The Third World War: August 1985

In the realm of space the Soviet Air Forces had recognized the military application of space vehicles for communications and reconnaissance from the earliest moments of their space programme. The USSR-USA competition initiated by the Soviet Sputnik some thirty years earlier had been a long-playing space spectacular for all the world to watch. Although the engineering approach of the superpowers was often different, and US reliability was always superior, in general terms the Soviet Union had acquired capabilities which matched those of the USA. These had proved very valuable in peacetime and it now remained to see what their importance would be in war.

There was another vital matter, upon which little of much significance was said in the Red Army, perhaps because so very little was known about it. It concerned the very nature of nuclear warfare. Though the recent tendency in Soviet military thinking had been to accept that a major war might open with non-nuclear operations, and that these might even be prolonged, it must be emphasized again that nuclear and non-nuclear warfare had never been regarded in the Red Army’s philosophy as alternatives. Each fitted in as an element in a total war-fighting capability, to be exploited as policy and occasion demanded. As we have clearly seen, the Western concept of ‘escalation’ out of conventional warfare into nuclear, and of further ‘escalation’ from battlefield nuclear action into strategic, had no real equivalent in the Soviet Union, still less the notion of a ‘firebreak’ between successive steps. Though a non-nuclear variant had been studied and fully prepared for, it had never ceased to be widely expected that a major campaign against NATO would probably open with massive attack in depth by nuclear or chemical weapons, or both, to be followed by swift and violent exploitation by formations (which would be largely armoured) attacking off the line of march. With nuclear weapons, penetration was expected to reach a depth of some 120 kilometres in a 24-hour period. Equipment in Red Army divisions was designed for action on an irradiated or chemically dangerous battlefield. Outside the combat zone, if a strategic response from the other side brought the homeland under attack with nuclear weapons, there was at least provision — not total but far greater than any until quite recently seen in the West — for the protection of some of the more important elements in the population, for the maintenance of essential services and for the continuance of the war.

If, on the other hand, advantage were to be seen in a non-nuclear offensive, if Western battlefield nuclear weapons could be smothered or blinded and important results could be obtained even before NATO, without the stimulus of their use on the Warsaw Pact side, could reach inter-Allied agreement on the release of such weapons, this possibility too would be considered. Apart from the reduction in scale of the threat to the homeland and the absence of collateral nuclear damage in the theatre (which might or might not have its advantages), the principal effect of a non-nuclear opening to the land battle would be a slowing up in the rate of advance. Instead of covering 110 to 120 kilometres in a day the assaulting formations would be doing well if they managed forty.

But whatever was said, planned or done about nuclear operations of war, whether by hard-headed realists in the East or by commentators in the West ranging from homespun tacticians to far-out philosophers, one thing was universally true. Nuclear weapons of war had never yet been used on the battlefield and nobody, anywhere, knew what would happen if they were. Even within an integral concept of total war-fighting, using all means at choice, the decision to use this one would need very careful consideration indeed. The harder-headed the realists having to make the choice, the more carefully would they be inclined to reflect on the possible — but completely unpredictable — consequences. The West’s increasing preparedness to defend itself was throwing an even harsher light upon this very important consideration.

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.