The Third World War: The Untold Story

Many years ago, when the General was still a young lieutenant, he was puzzled at the irrational, even, he used to think, the idiotic way in which so much was done in the Red Army. It was not till he was studying at the Frunze Military Academy that he was able, with greater maturity and more experience, to take a closer look at the Soviet power structure. He saw it not the way it was theoretically said to be, articulated under an exemplary constitution, but the way it was in actual naked fact, a structure serving one end only, the perpetuation of the supreme power of the Party. It was also true that other elements in the composition of the USSR were more interested in the preservation of structures which embodied personal power than in their functional efficiency.

The Red Army was the only organized power grouping in the Soviet Union capable of destroying the entire socialist system without harming itself. It was scarcely surprising therefore that in every battalion, regiment and division, in every headquarters at any level, in every military establishment, the Party and the KGB kept keen and watchful eyes on all that went on. There was a Party political officer in every Soviet company, in the post of deputy commander. There were KGB secret agents in every platoon.

The KGB and the Party realized (for these were not all stupid men) that such close control kills initiative and contributes to a dullness of performance which in an army invites defeat. But what could they do about it? If they did not keep control of the army it would devour them. Here, as many realized, was a clear dilemma. An army which is allowed to think holds dangers for socialism. An army which is not allowed to think cannot be an efficient fighting force. The Party and the KGB, faced with a choice, as they saw it, between an efficient army which could threaten their own position, and an army which constituted no threat but was unlikely to give a good account of itself in battle, chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils. When war came it was even more dangerous to loosen controls on the army than in peacetime. The interference of amateurs in the persons of Party bureaucrats and the secret police in such highly professional matters as the conduct of military operations was certain to cause mistakes and even lead to disaster, but this was clearly far better than letting the army off the leash and out of Party control.

General Pankratov, a high-grade professional, was quite confident he knew how to break up an American division. Neither the KGB men nor the Party stool pigeons knew how to do this and it was not possible to show them, for they were not professional soldiers. They would mouth their Party platitudes and act according to their secret instructions. They would always, of course, have to have the last word. Tomorrow, therefore, General Pankratov would do what they wanted, without any choice, and also without either originality or initiative. He would attack the enemy head-on, for this was the only way his controllers thought a battle could take place. If he did anything else he would be killed and a new commander would take over the division. A newcomer would almost certainly act in a way that the stool pigeons from the political department and the suspicious, watchful “Comrades” from the Special Department understood. If he did not, he too would be killed and another replacement found and this would go on until a commander was found who could easily be controlled and whose every move would be easily understood by everyone.

Nothing, General Pankratov reflected, could be changed. The orders he would have to give for tomorrow’s battle would be foolish ones. Soldiers, of course, would now yet again be sent to a wholly purposeless death.

Quite apart from these personal and somewhat philosophical reflections, the General was also worried over some strictly professional matters. He had found it very difficult to relate the action of motor rifle infantry in BMP to movements of the tanks with which they had to co-operate. The vehicles moved at different speeds. The BMP were highly vulnerable to even light attack from gun or missile. The riflemen were often more effective dismounted than in their vehicles, in spite of the additional armament these carried. On their feet, however, they could not keep up with the tanks and were weak in fire power. It was increasingly the case, therefore, that tanks either came to a halt because they had out-run the infantry, or moved on into anti-tank defences which there had been no infantry at hand to suppress.