WarPac Invasion of W. Europe

[Dunhovrin]

Chaps,

Having "Done My Bit" as a Cold Warrior ("Anyface Anyface etc etc for 8 hours in a goon suit) I'm curious that, now that we're all best mates with everyone this side of the Pripet Marshes, what were the actual Warsaw Pact plans for the invasion of Europe?

I get the impression they didn't actually have an intention to do so and were ready to nuke the proverbial out of invading Nato forces. (That'll be one Saceur and his dog..). But they must have had some plans. Anyone got any leads?

[charliegolf]

When I read the thread title, I thought I'd missed something REALLY important on my 230 tour!

CG

[airborne_artist]

Whether or not they had workable plans, they certainly made it look like they had plans. Viz. the truck drivers - many of them Warsaw Pact junior officers "on attachment" so they could learn the lie of the land. I saw some other stuff going on after a 1BR Corps field ex that made you realise they had plenty of support/sympathisers/sleepers on the W side of the IGB.

[Tiger_mate]

I think they are still coming over, and we even provide signs for them nowadays so that they do not get lost.

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/73337506.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A66F3180AEFA33A186A96D640C84 4286CF

I bet that they were not so thoughtfull with our junior officer truckers :E

[papajuliet]

Makes you wonder if it was all worth it as they're all over here anyway.

[spectre150]

My other half is from a former Soviet Republic. As an ex Cold War warrior myself I still find it strange visiting her country and walking round places that before the wall came down were restricted military areas where even the locals werent allowed never mind Westeners. Walking around disused former Mig bases and peering into the old HASs brought back many memories of target study from my Laarbruch days.

The vast majority of my partner's friends and other ppl I have spoken to over there were glad to see the back of the Sovs and generally speaking the country is much better for it. Yes there are quite a few of them 'over here' but thats because they can be.

[gareth herts]

Ian Black mentions in "The Last Of The Phantoms" that there were ever-present Soviet agents watching their every move from outside the perimeter at RAF Wildenrath. Was this a constant occurence? And did they bother to disgiuse themselves as "spotters"!!

[ORAC]

The Soviet Master Plan to Defeat NATO (http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2007/09/the_soviet_mast.php) - Sept 17, 2007

VIENNA – Memories of past glories still haunt this majestic imperial capitol of the now sadly vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There are also fresher memories of the postwar era when the Soviets shared control of Vienna with Britain, France and the United States. A large, freshly gilded Soviet war memorial still looms over the city.

The old, sinister of days spying, kidnapping and black marketeering were captured here by Carol Reed’s magnificent film, `the Third Man,’ starring Orsen Wells as the charming thug, Harry Lime. My father used to produce plays with Wells, and the actor often regaled us with amusing tales about making this film in the ruins on Vienna under the baleful eyes of the KGB. Half a century later, Well’s presence still haunts Vienna. I half imagine seeing him in the twilight, dressed in a long, black great coat and fedora, slipping around a corner into the dusk.

Vienna also has another fascinating secret. Back in the 1960’s, at the height of the Cold War, I was studying international law at a Swiss University. A group of Swiss Army officers in mufti (civilian dress) were arrested by Austria for spying on its modest fortifications on its Czech border.
Many jokes about `chocolate spies’ were made at the time over this seeming trivial incident. But the Swiss, as always, were deadly serious.

The Swiss officers were monitoring Austria’s eastern defenses against the Soviet Warsaw Pact because their intelligence service had uncovered frightfully alarming news. This information still remains a Swiss state secret, but thanks to my contacts with the Swiss military, I can reveal it for the first time.

NATO’s defenses were concentrated on the North German Plain – the hundreds of miles of flat terrain running from the Bavarian Alps up to the North Sea and supplied by the vast Belgian port complex of Antwerp. This region, and the Fulda Gap to the south, were the Warsaw Pact’s expected invasion route into Western Europe. US, German, British, Canadian, Dutch and Belgian troops were massed there, waiting an attack.

However, the Soviet General Staff had developed a brilliant plan to outflank the bulk of NATO forces
in north Germany. It was a variant of the pre-World War I German Schlieffen Plan. The Soviet version called for a major deception and pinning attacks in the north, while a mass strike force of at least 60 armored and mechanized divisions would sweep west from Czechoslovakia into neutral Austria, cross it, and then erupt into eastern Switzerland.

The Red Army would have to fight its way through the Swiss fortress zone at Sargans, then drive west on an axis Zurich-Bern-Neuchatel-Lausanne-Geneva. From Geneva, the Soviet blitz would break out into France’s Rhone Valley near Grenoble and Lyon, swing northwest along the Saone River and envelop Paris from the south and west.

This vast enveloping attack, whose northern flank would be in large part protected by the Alps and Vosges, would come up behind NATO forces deployed much further east. A Soviet column would take Antwerp and Rotterdam, thus cutting of the main supply lines of US, British, and Canadian forces, and attacking them from the rear.

Had this plan worked, it would have been more successful than the 1914 Schlieffen Plan and as great a triumph as Germany’s 1940 campaign against France. Like Von Manstein’s and Guderian’s audacious attack through the Ardennes forest in May, 1940, a Soviet offensive through Austria and Switzerland would have struck the least expected spot - NATO’s underbelly.

Austria lay naked, but Switzerland was ready. Its 600,000 tough soldiers prepared to fight the Red Army from their mountain fortress redoubts at Sargans, Gothard and St Maurice in the Valais. The Swiss would have seriously delayed Soviet attacks, perhaps giving NATO time, were it fleet enough, to withdraw its northern forces eastward, and pull back troops to defend the strategic Rhone Valley. But it would have been a very, very close run thing.

[parapauk]

I think the idea that the Soviets had no plan of attack stems from a mistaken idea that they posed far less of a threat than many of the currently unfasionable 'hawks' claimed. The truth is that the ONLY Soviet war plan for a European conflict was a blitzkreig assalt accross Europe. This only changed around 1987 when Gorbachov insisted his planners form some defensive options as an alternative. I'm afraid the GSFG had about as much to do with defence as the Berlin Wall had with keeping put the fascists.

[Wader2]

The Soviet's air war plans might also be interesting.

TacAir could certainly have pressed NATO along the whole of its front although the range of the Fitter was strictly limited. For deeper penetration they may have tried to open up corridors and gain local air superiority.

The Smolensk Air Army however would have been vulnerable against NATO central European air defence.

Whilst the Czech-Austro-Swiss corridor might have wrong footed NATO ground troops as far as an air war, the Swiss had Bloodhound SAM. I don't know how many and where they were sited but I imagine the that the mountains would have had some success in preventing low level pentration and allowed the Bloodhounds a fair crack at intruders.

Similarly the Swedes also had Bloodhound and a large number of interceptors. This might have had the effect of closing their airspace to west-bound medium bombers.

An approach down the Baltic would have been protected by neutral Sweden to the North and WPC or captured territory (Bornholm) to the south leaving a comparatively thin defence across Denmark. The Badger and Blinders could then have attacked NATO rear areas from the north or the UK from the north east.

Was it a coincidence that all UK Air Defence Exercises had Denmark as the point of departure for Orange Air? Of course it is possible that the exercise planers chose that axis at it also gave the greatest area of free air space for bomber-fighter intercepts.

[Wader2]

The truth is that the ONLY Soviet war plan for a European conflict was a blitzkreig assalt accross Europe.

Interesting, and the source for this assertion?

[Mark Nine]

Seem to remember hearing somewhere that they planned to invade Blackpool.

[speeddial]

I read a book about Operation Gold, the tunnel under East Berlin, a few years ago. In it was the double agent aspect where George Blake told the Russians all about it before it had even been built. Having the option to ruin the tunnel operation at any point the Russians let it continue for years. Many years later when asked why, one Russian simply said "well we knew we were never going to invade you so it didn't really bother us what you heard us saying". Not sure how true that is but it makes you think just what the Russians thought of it all.


Also, having read the book about the Brixmis operation, its very easy for an outsider to think that the whole cold war was nothing but "high spirits" between the two sides.

[Role1a]

Which book about the BRIXMIS is that, it sounds like an interesting read.
My father was a BRIXMIS driver in the 60s but he never said a great deal about it. I do remember him coming home with wrecked cars and lots of East German Goodies though.:)
R1A

[speeddial]

"Brixmis", Geraghty, Tony, 1997

An excellent read!

[Dockers]

Met him once - had an office full of interesting "souvenirs" as you might expect

[Green Flash]

RIAT, the year the Sovs (Bear, etc) came. There they were, sucking down their one free beer at the hanger party whilst watching the cream of NATO getting totally w@nkered. I often wondered what they thought of this p!ssed rabble.

[B_Fawlty]

Which book about the BRIXMIS is that, it sounds like an interesting read.
You could also try "The Last Mission" by Steve Gibson though it's a little harder to get a hold of than Tony Geraghty's excellent "Brixmis" book. If you draw a blank at your local library, try Alibiris and/or ebay.
Happy hunting :ok:

[LowObservable]

ORAC,
My notion of geography is a little hazy but I did work for a Swiss company at one time, and IIRC Switzerland is kinda chock full of big white pointy things that I would hesitate to try to drive 50,000 tanks across in a hurry.
There are flat bits but they are overlooked by the big white pointy things, which in the event of hostilities would have been full of pissed off, heavily armed gnomes.

[Training Risky]

There are flat bits but they are overlooked by the big white pointy things, which in the event of hostilities would have been full of pissed off, heavily armed gnomes

:ok::ok::ok: (Wiping tea from my monitor).

[Brewster Buffalo]

My father was a BRIXMIS driver in the 60s but he never said a great deal about it.There is Brixmis car at the Cosford Museum...a Vauxhall in a cheery finish of drab green!

[Dunhovrin]

Thanks for the leads chaps. Fully agree with the oddness of all being mates myself. A v good mate of mine took one of the 1st tankers to a show in Poland and liked it so much he married a local. Then again I married a boggie so who am I to comment?

Any more firm leads?

[parapauk]

Interesting, and the source for this assertion?

afraid i'm working in Malta at the moment, so i don't have any of my books to hand. That being said it MIGHT have been in this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-War-Military-History/dp/071955618X

[ExGrunt]

Aah GSFG - brings back memories - for the more youthful stands for Group of Soviet Forces Germany.

I was an intelligence officer at the time. The expectation was that there would be a conventional phase, we'd give them a bloody nose, they would go chemical until we were losing and then we would nuke them. Then it was light the blue touch paper and stand well back for everybody.

I have a vague memory of seeing a soviet plan in the early 1990s which involved them nuking us straight off the go with a blizzard of tac nukes and chemical strikes.

Co-incidently this would fit with a left flanking through Austria. However I have never heard of that before - but makes sense to me. I would have been tempted to loop south of Switzerland through the north Italian plain pitching out in southern France completely behind us.

EG

[elf]

Never mind taking the French from behind. What about the bartwurst at Wankum and then the mad dash across Holland and Belgium before 0045 hrs Calais sailing.

[Blacksheep]

Similarly the Swedes also had Bloodhound and a large number of interceptors. This might have had the effect of closing their airspace to west-bound medium bombers....and perhaps closing neutral Swedish airspace to Eastbound bombers too? :hmm:

Fully agree with the oddness of all being mates myself. Years ago in the QRA shack at Waddo we were idling away the time talking about our opposite numbers in Russia. We guessed that there were a bunch of guys exactly the same as ourselves, looking after a group of clapped out old bombers all geared up and ready to go.

Well, we had Russians over here with one of our customer's aircraft on a 'C' Check. I was struck by the similarity in our outlook and way of doing things. Chatting with their crew chief I found he was ex Soviet air force and yes, they had the same experience, sitting there wondering what we were like on the other side. I guess aircrew and ground crew are basically the same wherever we come from.

[Father Jack Hackett]

What's all this stuff about being "mates" now. I am at least as wary of the Russkies now as I was as a kid during the cold war. They're playing some very ominous power games recently, not to mention their overt threats in response to son-of-star-wars (great idea that is). Also it wasn't very comforting to see big, bad, butch, bonking Vladimir Putin cuddling up to Ahmed Armydinnerjacket this week.

There are many on this site who decry big investment in cold war weapons (and with good reason) but has that threat really gone away?