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FORM 541
FORM 541
CX/MSS/T207
CX/MSS/T207
APPROVED
APPROVED
BATTLETLEGROUP: NORTHAG ES
BAT GROUP: NORTHAG RUL
PART I:
THE END
PART I:
COLD WAR, 1983
OF THE
SECRET
SECRET
Since the end of WWII, peace in Europe had been
maintained by a precarious balance between the
two post-war power blocs that had coalesced from
the Allied nations that had defeated the Third
Reich in 1945. The Western allies, led by the
United States, formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) in 1949, with the aim of
securing Europe as a collective military alliance, in
which an attack against any single NATO nation
would be regarded as an attack against all and bring
a collective response from all NATO’s members.
In 1955, the Soviet Union responded to the US
by forming its own large military alliance of the
eastern and central European nations, which it had
dominated since liberating them from Nazi rule.
These communist states formed the Warsaw Pact as
a direct counter to NATO. Europe’s military forces
were split between two large power blocs of roughly
equal strength; neither would be able to threaten or
defeat the other, producing an unsteady stalemate
and, thus, peace.
But the communist East and capitalist West’s two
political ideologies were also fiercely opposed. Each
side suspected the other of working against it, from
within and without, to undermine it, destabilise it
and weaken it. Whilst there was no direct military
confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact,
smaller ‘proxy wars’ were waged across the globe,
fought by secondary agents as communist forces,
supported by Russia, faced Western forces backed by
the United States. Tensions between the two global
superpowers remained high, ebbing and following
with world events and the shifting balance of power.
Both suspected the other of ultimately seeking to
bring about their downfall. This was the Cold War
and, in 1983, it had been waged for 35 years.
By 1983, the gradual shift in power had moved too
far; the two power blocs that had been supposed
to cancel each other out had started to fall out of
balance. Power was rapidly shifting towards the
West. The pressure felt by the Soviet Union from
wider world events caused the tensions in Europe to
strain beyond breaking point.
The origins of the crisis were many, but on 23rd
March 1983, the 40th US President, Ronald
NORTHERN ARMY GROUP
NORTHAG
was the NATO designation of the
defensive area of the northern German plain, from
Hamburg to Kassel. The backbone of NORTHAG
was the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR),
forming I British Corps with its three armoured
divisions. They were to be assisted by I Dutch
Corps, I German Corps and I Belgian Corps. In
reserve, to move to assist NORTHAG within three
days of an invasion from the east, were III US
Corps and III French Corps, in what was titled
‘Operation Reforger’. NORTHAG was all to be
commanded from the Joint Operations Centre
command bunker near Maastricht, in Holland.
North of Hamburg, on the Danish peninsula, the
AFNORTH (Allied Forces Northern Europe) area
was to be defended by a combination of Danish
and German troops. South of Kassel, command
of NATO forces fell to CENTAG (Central Army
Group), with US and German troops charged with
defending central and southern West Germany.
Reagan, gave his infamous ‘Star Wars’ speech. It
announced the United States’ intention to develop
the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), a new,
comprehensive, space-based missile defence system
that would render the Soviet Union’s arsenal of
strategic nuclear weapons impotent.
“… call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear
weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind
and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these
nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
(Reagan, Speech of March 23rd, 1983)
The planned new defence spending would be vast
– only the United States had the economic power
to make the SDI a reality. In the corridors of power
of the Soviet Union, there was alarm. The science
behind the initiative was sound: with enough
investment the SDI could be done. But the Russian
economy had become weak, the cost of a constant
arms race with the West was proving ruinous – and
unsustainable. SDI was a game-changer and the
Russians knew they could not match it. If Star Wars
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SECRET
BATTLEGROUP: NORTHAG
PART I:
THE END OF THE COLD WAR, 1983
FORM 541
CX/MSS/T207
APPROVED
happened then there would be only one global
superpower, and the fear in Moscow was that the
United States, having neutralised their nuclear
threat, would then seek to destroy a weak Russia as
a rival or a threat.
Six days after the Star Wars speech the US Pacific
Fleet began a large exercise, FleetEx ’83, off the
Soviet Union’s Pacific coast, with three large
carrier battlegroups. All were manoeuvring into
strike range against the Russian naval bases on
Sakhalin Island and at Vladivostok. This was done
deliberately to provoke a reaction from the Soviets,
with the intention of gathering infor mation on
their readiness, equipment and anti-carrier tactics.
Soviet fighters were airborne, tangling with (but not
engaging) and watching their Western counterparts
for almost three weeks.
On March 31st, Premier of the Soviet Union,
Yuri Andropov, convened a full meeting of the
Politburo in Moscow. On the agenda was the
West’s new aggression and how best to respond.
The average age of the Politburo members was
69; all had experienced the bitter privations of
the Great Patriotic War to save the Soviet Union
from German aggression. They remembered how,
in 1941, a surprise attack by Hitler’s armies had
almost destroyed the Soviet Union, how close they
had come to defeat by being caught unprepared
and how that war had then cost over 12 million
dead to their nation. Also discussed was the ‘secret’
infor mation that the United States was soon to
deploy a new Pershing II missile system to Western
Europe. The new missile, with its advanced
guidance systems, could strike the Kremlin in just
five minutes of flight time. This was not enough
time for an effective response before millions died
to its nuclear payload. There was also the proposed
deployment of new, more accurate, ground-
launched cruise missiles to British bases and the US
carrier-based fighters currently invading Russian
airspace above Sakhalin Island and Vladivostok.
To compound matters further, global economics
had also turned against the Soviet Union. The Oil
and Trade Ministers reported that a worldwide oil
glut had so depressed oil prices that it endangered
the Soviet Union’s revenue flow in the hard
currency that Moscow depended upon to keep its
economy afloat. Most importantly, oil exports were
also the money that the wider Soviet Union used to
import grain from the West. In the current global
climate, the forecast was that they faced crippling
economic hard times within two years. The back-
up plan to exploit and float more of the Soviet
Union’s mineral wealth to the West wasn’t workable
either. The West simply would not buy enough to
compensate for the coming massive shortfall in oil
revenues and, should they need to, the West could
go to South Africa for minerals instead, Apartheid
regime or not.
The bleak economic picture, a slow, grinding
implosion within two years, an inability to compete
militarily with new Western weapons and the advent
of the US’ ‘Star Wars’ project now combined to
leave the Soviet Union’s leaders feeling fatally weak
and open to a surprise nuclear attack that could
impact before they could respond in kind, even if
their ageing nuclear arsenal was still a viable option.
It was the Premier’s and the Politburo’s duty to
secure the future of the Soviet Union. The West was
rapidly becoming too great a threat. Action must be
taken. The hard-liners in Moscow had their way – it
was decided that NATO and Western Europe must
be eliminated as a threat in order to guarantee their
own national survival. They would begin secret
preparations for war.
In early April 1983, the Red Army began major
exercises in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, conducted
by 5th and 7th Guards Tank Armies. The exercise
included the largest call-up of reserves in the Soviet
Union since WWII. The exercises concluded on
May 9th, but not all the reservists went back to
their civilian lives, nor was equipment returned to
barracks.
On May 5th, another series of larger exercises
began, involving the Soviet Baltic Military District,
with the Soviet Baltic Fleet putting to sea. The
‘Group of Soviet Forces Germany’ and most non-
Soviet Warsaw Pact armies were all involved as well.
In Berlin, East German
Grenztruppen
(border guards)
began urban combat exercises in training areas that
had been built to emulate the streets of the city.
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FORM 541
FORM 541
CX/MSS/T207
CX/MSS/T207
APPROVED
APPROVED
PAR
COLD
PART I:
THE END OF THE
T I:
WAR, 1983
International events favoured the Soviet Union
here, with a terrorist attack on the US Embassy in
Beirut, Lebanon. This distracted US intelligence
agencies from the Soviets’ initial preparations. The
latest regional crisis in the Middle East was valuable
to the Russians, so Moscow swiftly began to arm
the Syrians, with instructions to pass weaponry on
to Hezbollah. A re-ar med and active Hezbollah
campaign was to attack Western interests in the
Middle East and threaten Israeli security. It was a
deception plan to keep the US intelligence agency’s
focus off Europe, by stoking tensions in the Middle
East.
The distraction worked for a while as in the wake of
the Beirut bombing, violence flared in the Middle
East and on Israel’s borders, but the mask began
to slip in late May. Western intelligence services all
began to see the same thing, a large Warsaw Pact
build-up. An emergency meeting of the NATO
Council of Ministers was called in Brussels on
May 26th. The US and British intelligence services
reported on the details of the troop movements
and exercises. The CIA and MI6 representatives to
NATO both had infor mation from their nations’
military liaison missions with Russia’s forces in East
Germany, smuggled out of the Eastern bloc at great
risk. The Polish Army had begun to move into
East Germany – surreptitiously taken photographs
proved it beyond doubt. The council passed a
motion unanimously for the US Secretary of State
and British Foreign Minister to approach the Soviets
to ask for an explanation of the large mobilisations
and Polish troop movements and to encourage them
to desist from such aggressive behaviour. They used
the US ambassador to Switzerland as a go-between.
On May 28th, after the diplomatic approach,
Premier Andropov stood before the entire Supreme
Soviet and gave a fiery speech to camera. He
denied the allegations of a wide mobilisation or
that the large military exercises were anything but
routine. He then demanded that NATO cease
its own aggressions, citing FleetEx ’83 in detail
and the deployment of Pershing II and ground-
launched cruise missiles in Europe. In the face of
this provocation, he argued, any extra defensive
measures taken by the Warsaw Pact were necessary.
BATTLEGROUP: :NORTHAG RULES
BATTLEGROUP NORTHAG
SECRET
SECRET
He concluded with demands that NATO withdraw
its tactical and inter mediate-range nuclear arsenal
from Europe, under Soviet supervision, and that
future NATO military exercises could only be held
if Soviet observers were present. These steps would
‘help ensure the peace of the world’.
The Western powers read the speech in the most
dramatic terms. President Reagan responded with
his own address to the nation on May 29th. He
“would not sacrifice Europe’s collective security
and the freedom of humanity to the demands of
an Evil Empire”, although he was willing to meet
with Soviet leadership, anytime, anywhere, to “avert
the current crisis and the mistake of a war that
could threaten all of humanity”. The same day the
President activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet and
called up 10,000 reservists for possible deployment
to Europe. Next day, Strike Fleet Atlantic sortied
from its home base at Norfolk and made for
the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap.
Additional aircraft began to be ferried into Europe
to reinforce the USAF squadrons already beginning
to disperse to airfields across Germany and beyond.
The Soviets did not respond to President Reagan’s
peace meeting request.
Taking the US lead, British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher stated to the British Parliament,
“We will not be party to Soviet blackmail of the free
world. We are a free nation, of free people, and we
will stand by our allies in NATO, come what may.”
On May 29th, she enacted the Queen’s Order No.
2, with its ‘Transition to War’ protocols and initiated
a general call-up of the Territorial Army.
By May 30th, the rest of NATO was following
suit in mobilising. Air patrols were increased and
both sides were conducting reconnaissance flights
into enemy air space, against a warning that
transgressions would be met with force. On May
31st there were reports out of East German, Czech
and Polish cities of several riots, believed to be
hostility against an expanded reserve call-up for
those nations’ armies. The riots were swiftly and
brutally met. In Poland, the Solidarity Movement,
publicly blamed for the riots, went underground,
armed and began a low-level insurgency against
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SECRET
BATTLEGROUP: NORTHAG
PART I:
THE END OF THE COLD WAR, 1983
FORM 541
CX/MSS/T207
APPROVED
the pro-Soviet Communist government. After three
terrorist attacks in two days, including the wounding
of the Mayor of Gdansk, the Polish government
appealed to the Soviet Union for aid. Twenty-four
hours later, large numbers of Soviet troops crossed
the Soviet-Polish border and began landing at Polish
airfields, to assist with ‘internal security matters’.
Many of the Russian troops did not stop in Poland
but kept moving in convoys heading on into East
Germany.
It had now become a deeper crisis than that over
the Cuba missiles in 1962. Who would blink first?
The Pope and the Secretary-General of the UN
both approached Premier Andropov and President
Reagan, asking for them to consider an emergency
summit. President Reagan agreed, but Andropov
refused, saying, “I do not negotiate with people who
wish to destroy the Soviet state”. There would be no
last-minute dialogue.
By the start of June the internal logic of a build-up
to conflict had begun and, it seemed, its momentum
could not be stopped. Two large militaries were
on high alert and in close proximity to each other,
expecting the other to make a pre-emptive strike.
Incidents were unavoidable. The destroyer USS
Arthur W Radford
was in a nighttime collision
with the Soviet destroyer
Strogiy
in the eastern
Mediterranean. A subsequent exchange of fire
ended when the
USS Radford
broke off and, listing at
8 degrees, limped back to Valetta with 49 dead and
118 wounded onboard. The
Strogiy
made for Syria,
but she was already badly crippled. Fire reached
her magazines and the ship exploded before dawn.
Only three survivors were pulled from the water
the next day. Both sides accused the other of
recklessness and continued aggression.
On June 7th, after the loss of the
Strogiy,
the Soviets
and East Germans cut all links between West Berlin
and the outside world. The next day, a patrol of
F-15s tangled with twelve East German MiG-23s
and an air battle ensued. Both sides were ordered
back to their bases, but three MiGs and one F-15
had already been shot down. NATO ordered all its
forces to their General Defence positions, ensuring
they would not be caught off guard.
On June 9th, all Western news agencies lost contact
with their bureaus in Eastern bloc countries. The
excuse was ‘technical difficulties’. In response,
seeing the news blackout as the first step to an
attack, the United States activated the Return of
Forces to Germany (REFORGER) plan and began
troop-transport flights into Europe to marry up with
their pre-positioned equipment caches in Germany.
The return flights were filled with US servicemen’s
dependants and other US citizens evacuated from
West Germany. Merchant convoys began to form
in US eastern seaboard ports, laden with more
men, heavy equipment and war materiels. In major
cities across Western Europe, an evacuation began
to rural locations. Important national and local
government and emergency services personnel
moved into hardened shelters. That night, June 9th,
the Soviet Navy left their ports, en masse; getting to
sea before war began was the obvious sign.
June 10th, was a day of tension across the world.
All stood by, watching, waiting, praying… could
somehow a last-ditch diplomatic effort avert
disaster?
June 11th, 2.35 am. Soviet and East German
Spetnatz commando units and sleeper cells
executed their orders for disruptive raids across
European members of NATO, targeting airfields,
munitions dumps, nuclear weapons storage areas
and command and control hubs. They also attacked
major railway marshalling yards and bridges. The
first few hours of chaos caused by the commando
raids were enough for the Warsaw Pact forces to
grab the initiative. Before dawn, the first preparatory
bombardments crash down along the German and
Austrian borders. As the bombs and missiles rain
down, the first-line Warsaw Pact armoured divisions
have moved up to their jump-off positions on the
border. In darkness, behind the continuing heavy
barrages, they were ordered to move out.
The invasion of Western Europe has begun, the
Cold War was over.
World War III has started…
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