The Polish government, in an effort to “…draw a line under the country’s Communist past, and “educate” the Polish public about the old regime” has released the documents from a 1979 Eastern Bloc war game, in which Poland is sacrificed to Allied nuclear weapons blocking Soviet reinforcements, and Soviet citybusters strike most Western European cities. Note that the Soviets did not expect NATO to launch against Eastern cities.
The new conservative government that released them said “It’s important for citizens to know who was a hero, and who was a villain. It is important for the civic health of society to make these things public.”
I’m less sanguine; I’m thinking it’s possible we have files full of similar plans.
But it’s both important to note what the Soviet military leadership expected from us – and planned to do about it – and to put into context the challenges and risks we face as compared to those we faced as recently as the 1980’s.
Lots has improved since then. But we do have a ways to go…
Strange that people seem to have already forgotten life under “the bomb”.
There was never any doubt in people’s minds back then; that any nuke dropped would mean ICBM’s flying in all directions. Thousands of massive explosions ending life on this planet for thousands of years. Except for the cockroaches of course, (impervious to radioactivity). The war would have been over in all of 30 minutes.
The “bomb” has not left us. Nuclear annihilation has not left us either. Its just not as well organized.
Morons at the Telegraph shows arrow (4) pointing the wrong way. Elbe ≠ Rhein!
Very Scary & amazing…
Note that it shows a NATO invasion of East Germany.
_”Morons at the Telegraph shows arrow (4) pointing the wrong way. Elbe ≠ Rhein!”_
_”Note that it shows a NATO invasion of East Germany.”_
Im guessing the media is taking the opportunity to ‘wargame’ how they would have covered the conflict.
Actually, the Soviets would wargame this scenario of “defending” against NATO “agression”. Of course, given the political structure, it is a risible scenario. But there was a period when West Germany discussed a “forward defense” concept to deal with their limited depth that the Soviets used as a basis for propaganda about NATO being an agressor.
There was of course the “Molson Plan,” in which following a nuclear strike on US cities we would invade Canada and seize their major breweries using dog-sled-equipped, LL Bean-clad shock troops able to pass as Canadians. (Turns out to pass as Canadian all you have to do is add “eh?” to declarative sentences. Marines were taught to say, “Surrender or we’re gonna kill you, eh?”) Michael J. Fox, Alan Thicke and Celine Dion were to form a puppet regime.
A.L.:
Thanks. Like you, I was (for a time) in the “peace” movement back in the ’60s and ’70s. There are times now when I wonder how I got it into my head that a unilateral disarmament policy wouldn’t leave the US and Europe vulnerable. All I can say is that I generally assumed that “they”, like “our” counterparts in the peace movement, had no real intention of exploiting an advantage. And this attitude required that I do my very best not to think about it too much.
It’s possible to simply ignore the obvious, if you want and need to badly enough.
#8 Demosophist;
So you’re against peace now?
“I’m thinking it’s possible we have files full of similar plans.”
I’d say that was a safe bet.
Very interesting. I wonder why the blogsphere didn’t pick up much on it back in 2005 when it was released.
Grim, I think you and A.L. are probably right, but the question in my mind is whether the U.S. plans involved destroying Eastern Bloc cities in retaliation for the tactical use of nuclear weapons.
I would have thought the WWII London doctrine would apply – we won’t blow up your cities unless you blow up ours, or at least credibly threaten them.
Nicholas,
A common joke among military planners in the ’70’s and ’80’s was to observe that the distance between cities in Eastern Germany, Poland etc. was about 10 kilotons.
Well, the entire basis of massive retaliation was that it would act as a deterrent to attempts to fight a “limited” nuclear war. If you’re prepared to respond to a tactical nuclear strike on a troop concentration with a general launch of your strategic arsenal, the other guy is a lot less likely to hose off a tactical warhead at your troop concentrations.
If memory serves, though, we went even farther than that – we had no “no first use” policy, so the Soviets couldn’t just pour armor through the Fulda Gap and hope that the US would hold the nukes in order to stave off potential Armageddon. Certainly it wouldn’t have been a rational decision – Soviet-dominated Europe would be preferable to the extinction of mankind, probably – but the deterrent worked admirably. There was plenty of proxy conflict involved in the Cold War, but US and Soviet forces never actually ended up squaring off.
It is interesting to ask exactly who we would have hit in a general exchange response, however. Obviously every target worth hitting in the USSR would have been hit, but what else? Did our retaliation plans include hitting Warsaw Pact cities? What about other Russian-allied nations? We had enough for everybody, of course, but just how wide did we plan to spread it around?
I understand the concept of massive retaliation, but it doesn’t make sense in this case to me for two reasons:
a) This was an internal plan, as far as I know never released until now. Massive retaliation is a psychological tactic. If the other side doesn’t know about it, what’s the point?
b) This was planned as a reaction to an invasion of East Germany. The Soviets would destroy half of Western Europe. What would the response be? My guess is, ICBMs/bombers would have been launched at many Eastern Block cities, escalating into MAD. Therefore why does this plan make any sense? Is the correct reaction to an invasion of one of your territories to cause MAD? Surely you meet each scenario with an appropriate level of response, not go straight to doomsday.
The point of brinkmanship is to prevent the other guy from thinking he can sneak one in. Both sides realized early on it was in their best interest not to allow anybody to think a strictly tactical nuclear exchange was a realistic possibility.
FTR, “forward defense” meant holding Soviet troops as far to the GDR-FRG border as was possible, not beyond it, thereby limiting the amount of West German territory occupied (assuming the Warsaw Pact could even be held). Although it was not an offensive doctrine, as you noted the Soviets and their useful idiots played upon the term for propaganda purposes, saying that it made no sense in any context except an offensive posture. It didn’t make any sense, and was equivalent to Hitler’s ‘not a step back’ directives…but noone said NATO decision making was sensible…The pitfalls of multilateral decision-making.
far *East* to the GDR-FRG border as was possible,
Mark, I understand the idea of brinkmanship, but as I said, aren’t you effectively playing on the psyche of the other side? As such, doesn’t it only make sense when they are aware of your plans?
When you are planning/wargaming seriously, surely you use more realistic response scenarios. You want to game what you will actually do, not what you want them to think you will do, unless you are doing so in such a way that they are aware of it.
In other words, public maneuvers might be manipulated to make your enemy think you are more reckless, but surely in-house plans represent a scenario you think you would find yourself in, and reactions you think you would actually make.
So is this plan an example of “what we would really do” or “what we want them to think we would really do”?
Nicholas:
The Soviets believed in a concept called “nuclear war-fighting,” which was different from MAD. They intended to fight a nuclear war and win it.
I think what’s interesting here is that they misread our intentions, which really were MAD based, in spite of the fact that we projected those intentions pretty clearly. They thought we would use our nukes to create a dead zone that would cut off Russia from Europe, thus allowing us to secure Europe.
That was exactly what we didn’t intend to do — we intended to hit Moscow and wipe out their civilization. They seem to have intended to create havoc on the edge of Western Europe, but leave central Europe clear of nuclear devastation. I think the idea may have been that NATO forces would have to fall back from the “east of the Rhine” position to help deal with the chaos caused by their nuclear strikes, which would relieve the Soviet forces trapped in Europe by the expected NATO strikes. Those forces might then be able to be resupplied by sea, or through some other method.
Grim: Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense. So, in other words, they didn’t think you would have “called their bluff”, but you believed that you would have, in line with the publically announced policy.
I must say that’s an awfully cold (some would say) evil policy on their part – “oh, we’ll wipe out most of Western Europe to keep the US out of our hair for a while…”. I just can’t imagine that they believed that it would end there and they’d come out of it in a strong position.
They did, though. Mao believed it, too. His comments on a possible nuclear war with the West run to the effect that, “Well, it will cause billions of deaths, but it will be worth it because the world will finally be secured for World Socialism.”
“Note that the Soviets did not expect NATO to launch against Eastern cities.”
Note that the 900 mile range Persing II missile, NATO’s answer to the SS20, that could strike as far as 2700 miles, wasn’t deployed before 1984. The Pershing I had a range of only 460 miles. They could have hit Easter German cities, but the German government would never have agreed to nuclear strikes against German soil. That’s why the Warzaw Pact strategic planners expected NATO nuclear warheads to be delivered by bombers and not by missiles, and not against the GDR.
This point is important, since the possible medium range missile gap was the important topic of discussion among NATO governemnts in the late 70s and the beginning of the 80s. While most western leaders, led by German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, preferred a solution where the deployment of the Pershing II was traded against a disarmament of the SS20, a position supported by the late and tragically underestimated president Gerald Ford, the administrations of Carter and Reagan fumbled that approach. Instead of reducing the danger of nuclear warfare for Europe, another round in the arms race began.
Also, pls note that the scenario doesn’t include a global escalation of the conflict. Though this seems to be a bit optimistic to me, the planners didn’t expect ICBMS to be used. The US and the Soviet Union would have come out unharmed from a war that would have devastated all of Western Germany. This shows that the German attempts to reduce the amount of nuclear warheads in Europe had a very real and serious reason.
While Reagan was sable-rattling and putting fuel into the flames by speaking of the ‘Axis of Evil’, Germans were facing a dangerous increase of tensions betwen the blocs, a situation that could have escalated after a single, small mistake on either side (for instance an incident at Checkpoint Charly) and lead to dozens of millions of civilian casualties. Another reason why most of the world thinks the US are dangerously playing with fire in regions where they don’t have to face the same dire consequences as the local population.
Yep, that saber-rattling Reagan got the world blown up.
Oops, looks like on our timeline he “got the Soviets back to the negotiating table 16 days after being re-elected”:http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/1985/1985-2.htm.
“After President Reagan was reelected by a large majority on November 6, the United States and the Soviet Union announced on November 22 that they had agreed to enter into new negotiations on the whole range of questions concerning nuclear and outer-space weapons and that Secretary of State Shultz and Foreign Minister Gromyko would meet in Geneva in early January 1985.”
Thanks for the map. I served on a MPC for the “heavy bombers from East Anglia.” I wonder why they assume we targeted Eastern Europe? Very interesting.
One wonders if we had anything to do with Soviet disbelief that we would “really” engage in MAD. Sure, dangerous in that they might push farther than they would if they really believed you had your finger on the button. But a few minutes’ disbelief and paralysis would have been invaluable in the event of an actual strategic nuclear strike; when it only takes fifteen minutes from detection to detonation, it’s always possible that bureaucratic paralysis would hold up the other side long enough for your missiles to get there…