The Third World War: The Untold Story

Every superior commander used his offensive capability as a whole and then only in the critical sector of the battle. A battalion’s mortar battery is not split up among rifle companies, but is used at full strength to support only one company: the most successful one. The anti-tank weapons at the disposal of the commander of a battalion, regiment, division, army or front were never split into groups but always held concentrated. Only at the most crucial moment were they put in, at full strength, at the enemy’s weakest point. The same applied to tanks, artillery and aircraft.

If an army attacked sluggishly, its commander could expect no air support. On the other hand, if an army attacked with determination and energy, it received the support of the entire front air army, including an airborne assault brigade or division, and in addition possibly even further support from an air corps of the Supreme Commander’s Reserve. This policy was not limited only to weapons such as those with nuclear warheads or to air defence missiles. All resources were concentrated in the hands of senior commanders and what was required was filtered down from top to bottom. A divisional commander, for example, had a medical, an engineer and a maintenance battalion plus other support battalions. He did not divide these resources among his regiments, but instead used them all to support the most successful of his regiments. The divisional motor transport battalion would deliver three times the normal ammunition supply to the regiment registering a success, and perhaps none to any other.

Everyone must work to exploit success, at any level. If one army in a front of three had broken through whilst the other two were held up, the front motor transport brigade would bring this army three times as much ammunition as usual, at the expense of the other armies. The front pipeline brigade would lay its pipes right up to the breakthrough zone, ignoring the rest, and all the fuel for the whole front would be given to the most successful army. The front commander would rush all his bridge-building and road-building regiments and brigades to the area of success. If the front commander received, for example, a re-supply of 100 anti-aircraft missiles, all of them would be given to the most successful army.

This sort of concentration of effort on a narrow sector was not impossible, even in a nuclear war. Each Soviet commander had to search out and destroy the enemy’s nuclear weapons with whatever resources he could muster — from missiles and aircraft to saboteurs and secret agents. But first of all any of the enemy’s weapons that might threaten the successful joining together of his various formations would be sought out by the commander and destroyed. An army commander would seek first to destroy any threat that endangered his best division. A front commander concentrated all his forces to search for and destroy those of the enemy’s weapons that might endanger the front’s best army.

All force were directed along one principal axis. The advance must be swift and in separate groups on the principle: ‘move separately, fight together’. The enormous power of the cutting wedge would be mustered suddenly, right at the critical point of the enemy’s defensive positions. The advancing wedge would manoeuvre past the enemy’s pockets of resistance, leaving them hostage. It was very difficult to deliver a nuclear strike on a tank army that had broken through. Its units were agile as quicksilver, manoeuvring between massed groups of enemy forces, bearing down upon large cities but swiftly by-passing them. Assault on NATO forces in Western European cities would always be too risky.

The two young officers knew all this. They had been well taught. They were also well aware of the penalties awaiting those who disregarded what they had been taught.

Any failure within the Red Army to stick to the principle of sudden concentration of forces in one principal direction meant dismissal, and in wartime could mean brief trial followed by execution. They both knew that. In 1941 the Commander of the Western Front Army, General D. G. Pavlov, had been given only eight minutes in which to explain why he had dispersed his forces. His explanations were deemed insufficient and he was shot there and then. His Chief of Staff, General V. E. Klimovsky, had even less time to speak in his own defence and was also immediately shot. Soviet generals knew that the practice of executing failures was still followed. Not four stars on his shoulder straps, not even the diamond insignia of the rank of marshal, could save a failure from paying the final penalty.