[Consim-l] World War III

Tue Aug 19 11:06:36 EDT 2008

Feh. I would wager that somewhere in the Archives there are plans for NATO 
to pre-emptively drive to Moscow and beyond and include a nuclear component.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Schweninger, Joe" <Joe.Schweninger at cardinalhealth.com>
To: <consim-l at mailman.halisp.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 9:19 AM
Subject: [Consim-l] World War III

>I thought this article might spark some discussion.
>
>
>
> ========================================================================
> ======
> Documents
>
>
> Blitzkrieg Baedeker: Trove of Documents Proves NATO's Fears Were Well
> Founded --- Papers Seized in East Germany Outline Warsaw Pact Plans For
> a  Push to the Atlantic --- Going Nuclear on Day Two  By Timothy Aeppel.
> Wall Street Journal.  (Europe). Brussels:Jun 13, 1991.
> p. PAGE 1
>
> ! All documents are reproduced with the permission of the copyright
> owner.
> Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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> ======
> Citation style: ProQuest Standard
>
> Document 1 of 1
> [/i/pub/33825.gif]
> Blitzkrieg Baedeker: Trove of Documents Proves NATO's Fears Were Well
> Founded
> --- Papers Seized in East Germany Outline Warsaw Pact Plans For a Push
> to the Atlantic --- Going Nuclear on Day Two By Timothy Aeppel.  Wall
> Street Journal.  (Europe). Brussels:Jun 13, 1991.
> p. PAGE 1
>
> Abstract (Summary)
>
> The Soviets make sure all of their allies are involved from the start,
> but they carefully assign them limited goals. The Poles, for instance,
> join a thrust of Soviets and East Germans, some 170,000 strong, sweeping
> across the north German plain; they reach the Kiel Canal in northern
> West Germany in four days. The East Germans stop at the canal, allowing
> the Poles to seize the rest of northern Germany and Denmark. Parallel
> thrusts target the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France.
>
> For years, NATO officials insisted that the Warsaw Pact was preparing
> for a blitzkrieg of this kind. Western think tanks and intelligence
> agencies churned out studies portraying the scenario, and fear of such
> an attack helped bolster support for the massive U.S. troop presence in
> Europe. But it took the unification of Germany to provide the hard
> evidence -- along with glimpses of how secretive the Soviets were even
> with their own allies, of how much the East knew about the West, and of
> how resolved the Warsaw Pact was to achieve its aims.
>
> Within hours of formal unity last Oct. 3, Western forces raided East
> German military sites, where they discovered the material that charts
> the invasions plans. Some 25,000 documents -- seven truckloads -- were
> collected and carted back to Bonn, including maps of possible invasion
> routes and logs of East German officers recounting briefings and
> exercises with their Soviet counterparts.
>
>
>
> Full Text (2075  words)
>
> Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Jun 13, 1991
>
>
> BONN -- On the first day of World War III, the Warsaw Pact sends waves
> of tanks and armored vehicles rolling across West Germany.
>
> After bursting through the West's front lines, they surge toward the
> Atlantic -
> - using chemical and even nuclear weapons to knock out pockets of North
> Atlantic Treaty Organization forces. The first wave is made up of what
> Western analysts call "throwaway" forces, a mix of Soviets and Eastern
> Europeans whose ranks are constantly replenished by fresh divisions
> pouring in from the East.
>
> The Soviets make sure all of their allies are involved from the start,
> but they carefully assign them limited goals. The Poles, for instance,
> join a thrust of Soviets and East Germans, some 170,000 strong, sweeping
> across the north German plain; they reach the Kiel Canal in northern
> West Germany in four days. The East Germans stop at the canal, allowing
> the Poles to seize the rest of northern Germany and Denmark. Parallel
> thrusts target the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France.
>
> For years, NATO officials insisted that the Warsaw Pact was preparing
> for a blitzkrieg of this kind. Western think tanks and intelligence
> agencies churned out studies portraying the scenario, and fear of such
> an attack helped bolster support for the massive U.S. troop presence in
> Europe. But it took the unification of Germany to provide the hard
> evidence -- along with glimpses of how secretive the Soviets were even
> with their own allies, of how much the East knew about the West, and of
> how resolved the Warsaw Pact was to achieve its aims.
>
> Within hours of formal unity last Oct. 3, Western forces raided East
> German military sites, where they discovered the material that charts
> the invasions plans. Some 25,000 documents -- seven truckloads -- were
> collected and carted back to Bonn, including maps of possible invasion
> routes and logs of East German officers recounting briefings and
> exercises with their Soviet counterparts.
>
> "We knew what we were looking for, and we didn't waste any time going
> after it," says one German defense specialist involved in the roundup.
>
> But figuring out what to make of this trove isn't easy. German military
> analysts say that the material is fragmented and that they have studied
> only a small portion of it closely. And to the disappointment of many
> Western officials, they have found no overarching plan for how the
> Soviets intended to conduct a European war. Indeed, some now question
> whether the East Germans even had access to Moscow's hottest secrets.
> The Soviets wanted to limit the knowledge of their Warsaw Pact allies,
> even about one another.
>
> What was found, however, is enough to reconstruct the outlines of a
> strategy and confirm what many had long suspected -- that the Warsaw
> Pact countries were prepared to attack the West with a barrage of troops
> and weapons. "These dry documents show the plan was not to defend, but
> to attack and overtake Western territory," says one German military
> analyst. Even Soviet generals have acknowledged that while they dubbed
> their past military doctrine "strictly defensive," it never excluded the
> use of offensive operations.
>
> NATO, for its part, never had the forces or political will to consider a
> blitzkrieg of its own, nor did it have any comparable plans to capture
> vast stretches of Warsaw Pact territory or march on Moscow. Its basic
> doctrine was forward defense -- holding the line at the East-West
> frontier for as long as possible. The closest it came to offense was
> Follow on Forces Attack, a plan to have planes and missiles attack
> Warsaw Pact reserves and keep them from reaching the main battle. Other
> plans called for counterattacks against any forces that broke into
> Western territory, while the U.S. considered leapfrogging troop units
> across the line to fight the rear echelon.
>
> According to analysts studying the East German finds, the Warsaw Pact
> planned to use nuclear weapons as early as the second day of a conflict
> and never bothered practicing any sort of clear defensive operations
> until 1989. Original maps now in the hands of Bonn's Defense Ministry
> show that the Soviets allocated chunks of Western Europe to various
> Eastern armies, dividing the territory as far west as the Atlantic coast
> and as far south as Paris. Regions beyond this were presumably reserved
> for the Soviets themselves.
>
> The documents also show that it took about 30 minutes between the time a
> general alarm sounded at East Germany's Defense Ministry and the time
> word reached all major military formations around the country. It took a
> day for the East Germans to get all six of their field divisions ready
> for combat.
>
> Such information is backed up by recollections of former East German
> officers, some of whom now belong to the western German Bundeswehr, or
> military. East Germany was once Moscow's staunchest ally in Eastern
> Europe, with 178,000 troops. But after unification, 50,000 East Germans
> were melded into the larger Bundeswehr.
>
> Analysts say East Germany assumed its army would roll across Western
> Europe at an average speed of 50 kilometers a day. And there is no doubt
> that East Germany's main task was to administer the conquered territory
> of West Germany.
> The East German military had prepared mounds of Besatzungsgeld, or
> "occupation money," ready for use in western Germany, and even
> designated East German rail employees who were to take over individual
> West German train stations.
>
> "My grandfather knew the exact place -- (the West German city of) Hamm
> -- where he was supposed to assume responsibilities after a war," says
> one German Defense Ministry official.
>
> Such revelations don't create the stir inside Germany that many might
> expect.
> Government officials, eager to soothe relations between the two halves
> of the newly united country, don't dwell on such issues. And many
> average Germans, who have known for years that they lived on the front
> line of the Cold War, simply shrug when they hear about abstract war
> plans.
>
> "What was left behind (in East Germany) is a legacy," says Heinz
> Schulte, a Bonn-based military analyst with Jane's Information Group.
> "We can use these documents to tell what the planning was when the
> Soviets were in East Germany.
> But by 1994, they'll be gone." Even now, the Soviets are reorganizing
> their military forces and pulling out of Eastern Europe, so it is
> difficult to draw conclusions about the future military equation.
>
> One of Moscow's conditions for allowing Germany to unify was that the
> East Germans not let Warsaw Pact secrets seep to the West. German
> intelligence sources say huge portions of the East German archive
> vanished before formal unity, either shredded or spirited away. Some
> documents may still be in eastern Germany, stashed on Soviet bases
> closed to Western forces.
>
> "What we have is a collection of bits and pieces," says one German
> military analyst. "But when you put them together, they allow us to see
> the bigger picture." For instance, many documents in the southern part
> of East Germany disappeared. But in the north, the papers were largely
> intact. By using the more complete documents -- which give detailed
> steps for invading northern West Germany and Denmark -- analysts can
> draw conclusions about what was planned elsewhere along the front.
>
> Analysts are also learning, if only indirectly, about Warsaw Pact
> philosophy.
> The invasion plans for the northern region, for example, call for
> involvement by East German, Polish and Soviet forces on the first day of
> battle -- an indication, say analysts, that the Soviets feared some
> Warsaw Pact allies might try to avoid an East-West conflict. Getting
> them involved from the start assured their participation.
>
> The West is also finding confirmation of its own intelligence in the
> documents.
> For example, a secret Western military assessment from 1986 paints a
> scenario for the Warsaw Pact's invasion of northern Germany and Denmark
> almost identical to the one found. The only major difference -- other
> than the West's calling it a "northern front," while the East labeled it
> the "coastal front" -- is that the West assumed this thrust would come
> later in a conflict, rather than in the first days.
>
> Regardless of what they anticipated, many of the analysts studying the
> materials seem startled by the readiness of the Warsaw Pact to use
> whatever means necessary to achieve its goals. The objective of
> advancing 50 kilometers a day, they say, would make the use of nuclear
> and chemical weapons almost a foregone conclusion. "They've mixed
> nuclear, chemical and conventional forces all together freely," says one
> German analyst. "They viewed it all as heavy artillery to cut NATO down
> and achieve goals."
>
> And as it turns out, the Soviets didn't need to worry too much that the
> East Germans would give away secrets. Investigators were startled to
> find that the best material on the Soviet forces held by the East
> Germans was either pilfered from the West or drawn from unclassified
> Western journals. They didn't even have documents showing how many
> Soviets were stationed in various parts of their own country.
>
> "The Soviets didn't want anyone to have an overview of the military
> situation or larger strategic plan, other than themselves," says a
> military analyst attached to a Western embassy in Bonn. Adds Mr.
> Schulte, "The Soviets aren't worried that the East Germans will spill
> the beans, because most of the things they can say or show is what our
> military intelligence already knew."
>
> The East Germans themselves similarly mistrusted most of their own
> military with sensitive information, and they also altered numbers for
> ideological purposes. One map used to train East German officers, for
> instance, shows six Warsaw Pact divisions facing 16 NATO divisions on a
> generic stretch of East- West frontier -- a massive overstatement of
> Western power. The numbers were fudged, German analysts say, to support
> the East's assertion that the West was aggressive and planning to invade
> first. One of the assumptions of the Warsaw Pact was that war would
> begin with a NATO invasion. The East's planning, therefore, was focused
> on the "counterattack" needed to repel NATO and plunge out across the
> Continent.
>
> The overestimates of NATO power were also needed, German analysts say,
> to justify quick escalation to chemical and nuclear weapons. The map
> depicting the
> six-to-16 troop ratio has nine neatly drawn mushroom clouds over Western
> positions to drive home the point.
>
> For the most part, the East German files deal with the initial phase of
> a war, when the Warsaw Pact envisioned driving quickly toward the
> Atlantic. What would be more interesting (but what haven't been found)
> are the Soviets' plans for the second phase of the conflict and for the
> deployment of their own forces.
> For instance, the Soviets are thought to have had invasion plans for
> northern Italy and other parts of Europe, but the materials found in
> East Germany deal with a smaller portion of the Continent.
>
> Almost as important to NATO, however, was finding out how much the East
> knew about the West. And it appears that they knew quite a bit. East
> German military officers reportedly knew about the West's top-secret
> "General Defense Plan."
> But while military analysts say they didn't find a copy of that plan
> among the papers, they did find many political documents and reports
> prepared by the Western alliance. In some cases, the East's evaluations
> of NATO documents are considered better than the documents themselves.
>
> The documents also show that the East German army prepared for war
> almost to the last moment of its existence. The Germans found plans for
> a command exercise -- a war game for top military brass -- scheduled for
> September 1990, just one month before formal German unification and
> nearly a year after the opening of the Berlin Wall.
>
> "It's offensive, it includes nuclear and chemical weapons, and it's
> directed against the West," says a German analyst who has studied it.
> Although the exercise never took place, a similar one was conducted only
> a few months earlier, in June.
>
> German officials say it will take a year to sift through the most
> important materials. Many key documents, they explain, are in Russian
> (the Warsaw Pact's language for joint operations) and are often
> poor-quality copies, so it will take months just to decipher them. The
> interpretation work is being divided up among NATO countries, with the
> Germans dispatching materials of special interest to individual
> intelligence agencies. "This is an important task," says one German
> government official familiar with the archive. "We will be trying to
> understand it for years."
>
> Credit: Staff Reporter
>
> Indexing (document details)
>
> Author(s):            By Timothy Aeppel
>
> Publication title:    Wall Street Journal. (Europe). Brussels: Jun 13,
> 1991.
>                      pg. PAGE.1
>
> Source type:          Newspaper
>
> ISSN:                 09219986
>
> ProQuest document ID: 27621290
>
> Text Word Count       2075
>
> Document URL:         http://proquest.umi.com/
>
> pqdweb?did=27621290&Fmt=3&clientId=3386&RQT=309&VName=PQD
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