The Third World War: The Untold Story

The journey down to Rostov was not easy, nor was it easy to find the elder Nekrassov's dwelling when he got there. The habit of not answering questions from strangers, still deeply engrained everywhere, would take a long time to die away. He found where his friend's father lived in the end — not in a dacha in its own grounds, which would have been appropriate to an officer retiring as a general, but in a small apartment on the eleventh floor of one of the square, grey tower blocks, grim and cheerless, of which all Soviet cities were now mostly composed. Cats were foraging in piles of rubbish round the ground floor. Children with dirty faces were quarrelling in the stairways. From a window on the eleventh floor it was at least possible to get a distant glimpse of the River Don.

The older man stood waiting for him at the entrance, as he had done every day since word had reached him that Makarov was coming.

He knew at once who it was. It could be no other.

He went forward to embrace the younger man and turned, with an arm about his shoulder.

“Come in, my other son,” he said, “and tell me.”

Envoi

'We will bury you!' was the irritated retort of Khrushchev to an ill-considered interpolation. He was misunderstood by many, who thought he was threatening the early destruction of the capitalist West in war.

What he was doing was no more than to echo, in his own way, the prophetic words of Lenin.

'As long as capitalism and socialism exist we cannot live in peace: in the end one or the other will triumph — a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism.'

It has been sung.

Author's Notes and Acknowledgements

The team that put together the earlier book, The Third World War: August 1985, has gathered again, some four years later, to take a further look at the events we imagined then and to amplify and explore them a little further. In these years, though much of what we then had to say has since become even more closely relevant to the world about us, as recent events in Poland, for example, suggest, the scene here and there has changed. The Shah has gone. Egypt is no longer dependent on the Soviet Union. The story we now offer takes account of these events. Our purpose, however, has remained the same. It is to tell a cautionary tale (with such adjustment as the passage of time suggests) in an attempt to persuade the public that if, in a dangerous and unstable world, we wish to avoid a nuclear war we must be prepared for a conventional one.

We have assembled the original group, with one or two important additions. Air Chief Marshal Sir John Barraclough brought us unsurpassed experience of air matters and cool judgement; Sir Bernard Burrows, former Ambassador to Turkey and then to NATO, had much of high value to contribute in the political sphere; Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch's long and distinguished naval career, much of it in submarines, which also included NATO command, as well as postgraduate university work on Soviet armed forces and his editorship for some years of The Naval Review, has been of great value; Norman Macrae, Deputy Editor of The Economist, enlivens and illuminates everything he does, and here has run true to form; Major-General John Strawson, a highly literate soldier, lately retired, with several books to his own credit, now working with Westland Aircraft, has given us some thoughtful and penetrating work on the peripheries; and finally, of the old team, Brigadier Ken Hunt, one of the best known of military analysts, not only makes a notable contribution to the content of this book, particularly on the Far East, but has also applied his renowned editorial skills in helping to put it together.

The most important new element in this latest book is some investigation of what it all looked like from the Soviet side. Here I acknowledge a deep debt to a new colleague in Viktor Suvorov, from whose experience and advice I have profited greatly. His own first book, The Liberators (he commanded a motor rifle company in the 'liberation' of Czechoslovakia in 1968), already published, demands attention. He has another book coming out soon.

I am also deeply indebted to Vladimir Bukovsky, a man who in the non-communist world rightly commands enormous respect. The advice he has given me has been most valuable. His own book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter, is of profound importance.

I have also to thank one of the wisest and kindest of men in Lord Caradon, a very old friend, who gave good counsel and helped us particularly over the Middle East.