The Third World War: The Untold Story

During discussion the most important question was whether the fruit was ripe enough. Was this the right moment to shake the tree?

Opinions differed. The GRU advised that the moment had come. Thanks to a policy of detente the Soviet Union had been able to deploy a whole new generation of nuclear weapons for the European theatre, as well as improved conventional armaments, which the West, for political and financial reasons, had been unable to match. Europe might in the future change its mind and give more support to the tougher attitude recently apparent in the United States.

The KGB believed that an even more favourable situation would develop in a couple of years’ time. The suggestion that the Western Alliance would become more coherent in the future could, of course, be dismissed. Europe would become still further detached from the USA and within itself more divided. Further sharp increases in the price of oil, economic recession, widespread strikes and increasingly violent demonstrations would lead to deep uncertainty and general discontent. This would culminate in the collapse of several Western European governments, soonest of all in those countries which, having nationalized heavy industries, had proved wholly unable to run them effectively.

Both intelligence services agreed that the best opportunity for military action would follow mass riots in Western European cities, organized by trades unionists, advocates of peace, students, the unemployed, racists and conservationists. National communist parties, largely working through the trade unions, would be particularly helpful here. Western European governments would be so destabilized and paralysed by these riots that it would not be hard for the Soviet Union to find an occasion to intervene.

The question was asked whether the Soviet intelligence services were confident that disturbances could be organized on a large enough scale. The representatives of both services gave a positive reply.

The Defence Council then examined the Operational Plan. The Defence Council was the most powerful part of the Politburo, made up of only those members directly involved in the most important military matters. These were the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, the Supreme Party Ideologist, the head of the Organizational Department of the Central Committee (that is, the head of the Party machine), the Minister of Defence, and the Chairman of the KGB.

The Operational Plan was the war plan drawn up among the 100 generals and 620 colonels who made up the First Main Directorate of the General Staff. It was based on an analysis of known intentions and probabilities, and of Soviet forces and those of likely enemies, the latter supplied by the GRU.

The Operational Plan was worked out at the end of each year for the following year and then approved by the Defence Council. In practice, the Operational Plan for the current year was usually last year’s plan, adjusted in respect of changes in the international situation and the correlation of forces.

On the basis of the General Staff Operational Plan, the General Staffs of the Strategic Rocket Force (SRF) and of the national Air Defence Forces (PVO Strany), and also the Staffs of Strategic Theatres, made their own operational plans. In their turn the headquarters of military districts, naval fleets and army groups worked out plans for their own areas of responsibility. The headquarters of Operational Directorates based their planning both on information from the General Staff intelligence service and on reports from their own intelligence directorates. These formed part of each main headquarters, disposing of their own networks of agents, guerrilla sub-units, and electronic, airborne and other means of surveillance.

The Eastern European states did not make their own operational plans. Instead, the Warsaw Pact headquarters informed the Eastern European commands only of what was of particular concern to them in their allotted tasks.

The Operational Plan for the year 1985 embraced every possible theatre.

The fifty Soviet divisions in the Far Eastern and Trans-Baykal districts (of which only eight were in Category One — that is, at operational strength) were sufficient to watch this frontier for the time being. China would without doubt develop into a major threat at some time in the future. A world crisis might give it earlier opportunities. For the moment that theatre was stable.

In South-West Asia there were always possibilities of conflict with the United States, with or without some of its satellites.