The Third World War: August 1985

time, and so did Belgium.

The United Kingdom was rather harder to persuade. There had been no alert for several years — not, in fact, since Tito’s departure from the scene — and the British did not entirely believe what they were being told, largely because they did not want to. The false detente had had its effect. Enough had recently been done within the Alliance, it was generally thought, to prevent the Russians trying anything on. Whatever modification there had been of recent years in British public opinion, the habit of self-deception, persistent for so many years in Britain, was clearly hard to shake off.

The Dutch were even more reluctant to believe anything so uncomfortable. The Norwegians and Danes flatly rejected the evidence, while the French, still members of the Atlantic Alliance though not, of course, of NATO and now under a government of the Popular Front, kept their own counsel.

Troop movement by the GSFG (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany) into the designated manoeuvre area began in a spell of good summer weather in the first week of July. Information coming out of East Germany to the West was, as usual, plentiful, and it soon became apparent that these exercises were going to be conducted on a very massive scale indeed — much larger, even, than had been expected. The Red Army and Air Force certainly seemed to be playing it, as the saying goes, for real. Ammunition, fuel and warlike stores were being moved up in actual tonnages. At the same time, in the Soviet Union itself, the arrangements for recall of reservists seemed to be getting a complete work-out and the men were joining their units. The same thing appeared to be happening in all the Warsaw Pact countries.

It was the New York Times that first aroused really widespread misgiving in the West by reporting that what was going on in the Warsaw Pact looked mighty like a mobilization. Two days later the Frankfurter Allgemeine came out bluntly with the statement that that was just what it was. On the same day a journalist regarded by some as the bane of Whitehall and by others as its only hope, a man called Jardine Snatcher, told the world under banner headlines that he was defying D-notices to let it be known that the British Chiefs of Staff had exercised their constitutional right of access to the Prime Minister in order to call on Mrs Plumber in No. 10 Downing Street and tell her precisely that.

Meanwhile, outside Europe, disquieting developments, referred to elsewhere in this book, were causing increasing concern throughout the Western world — above all, not unnaturally, in Washington.

Relations between the United States and the communist bloc in the Caribbean were more than usually strained and getting worse. Events in Southern Africa and the Middle East seemed to be moving towards not one crisis but several. In all three areas Soviet activity was open, marked and increasing. One-third of the Soviet submarine fleet was known to be at sea. Units of it, with support vessels, had been reported not only off Cuba and Jamaica but also at Alexandria and in North African waters, as well as off Malta and in the Arabian Gulf. Units of the Black Sea Fleet were known to have been moving in some numbers through the Straits into the Mediterranean. What was no less significant was that Soviet combat aircraft were widely deployed in the Caribbean, as also in Libya, Malta, East Africa and Syria, while there was much movement of transport aircraft.

In the USSR the harvest was expected to be even more disastrous than those of the previous two years and critical foodstuffs were known to be scarce. The measures which, in the recent past, had produced waves of unrest in Poland and Romania and even in parts of the Soviet Union itself-in the Ukraine, for example, and in Georgia — were likely to be repeated. Yugoslavia, meanwhile, was on the brink of civil war.

Kremlin-watchers were pointing out the propitious opportunities for Soviet exploitation that were opening up in many different places at once. They were also adding gloomily that if ever there was a time when the Soviet Union needed foreign adventure as a distraction from domestic discontent this was probably it. Of the two prime potential adversaries, moreover, China was not yet ready for a major military enterprise and NATO, though something had been done in the past few years to remedy some of its better known defects, had still not recovered from more than a decade of neglect. Kremlin-watchers had said all that, of course, before. One thing at least was clear: time was not on the side of the Soviet Union.

Looking back on events, it became clear to Western observers later that, with the less noticeable preliminaries embarked on a good deal earlier, full mobilization in the Warsaw Pact had begun on or about 14 July. Though no public announcement had been made in Moscow the indicators were enough for the Secretary of State to advise President Thompson on 18 July that Soviet mobilization must now be accepted as a fact. The same advice was given to heads of government in all member states of the Alliance at about the same time. In the three major partner countries in NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, defence chiefs urged mobilization at once. Only in the Federal Republic was there immediate agreement.

The President of the United States, terribly aware of his unique responsibilities, was reluctant to raise the temperature. He got through on the hot-line to the head of government in the USSR (with some delay — it was several hours before the Soviet President could be brought to the instrument) to make emphatic remonstrance and to urge the cancellation of all further warlike preparations. Surprise was expressed in response to such concern. What was happening in the GDR was only an exercise, of which appropriate notice had been given. Practice mobilizations — carried out only rarely because of the cost — were indispensable to the efficiency of armed forces. When this one was over it would not need to be repeated for a long time. It was hoped that the President of the United States would not encourage panic reaction. The best service to the cause of world peace would be to quieten the manic howls of fascist revanchists in West Germany. These were increasing daily and causing growing concern in the USSR.

Under mounting pressure from the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with clear indications that public opinion was moving strongly in favour of mobilization, the President gave the order on 21 July. The Federal Republic had begun its own mobilization the day before. The United Kingdom did not follow until the 23rd, and even then with some reluctance. It was not at first clear whether the trade unions — no longer the dominant force in the governance of Britain they had been in the seventies, but still powerful — would co-operate. There was the expected chorus of left-wing disapproval; a good deal of hard bargaining and wheedling was needed before the go-ahead could be given. Even then only a modified form of mobilization was ordered in the first instance. Parliament, hastily recalled from recess, quickly passed a short enabling Act to make possible certain preparations (such as the embodiment of voluntary reserves) constitutionally dependent on full mobilization. The reserves began to be called up.

Following an emergency meeting of the NATO Council, mobilization in every other member state of the organization was ordered at about the same time. It had long been a structural flaw in NATO, becoming increasingly apparent in the seventies, that there was no general agreement on the timing of response to alert measures by individual governments. Each retained a high, if varying, degree of discretion. It was fortunate that there was now too little cause for doubt to permit procrastination.

The position of France was uncertain. Though still a signatory to the North Atlantic Treaty she had not been for some twenty years a member of the military organization. Her Popular Front government was unlikely to welcome the possibility of hostilities with the Soviet Union. SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) tried in vain to discover what orders would be given, in the event of hostilities, to II French Corps in south-west Germany. At least, with reservists being recalled in France, deficiencies in personnel and equipment were being made good here, as they were elsewhere, while the relations between the French command and staff in Germany on the one hand and CENTAG on the other continued to be close. Elsewhere, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria were also recalling reservists and bringing their forces to a higher state of readiness.

Almost as difficult for the Americans and British, and for the Canadians too, as the decision to mobilize was the question of whether to order the repatriation of dependants of service personnel in Germany, and other civilian nationals, and, if this was to be done, when to do it. This had always been seen as a critical indicator of whether hostilities were expected. London and Washington both gave forty-eight hours’ notice of evacuation on 23 July. Movement of civilian nationals began on the 25th — in part directly by air to their home countries, in part by road, in the first instance to staging areas, in Holland for the British and in Belgium for the Americans and Canadians. Evacuation was everywhere complete by the 30th.

Meanwhile, throughout the whole European theatre NATO formations were on the move to their operational positions. The headquarters at their different levels — of CENTAG with its American commander at Heidelberg, of NORTHAG under British command at Rheindahlen, of AFCENT with its German commanding general at Brunssum in Holland, and of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe), with its American Supreme Commander (SACEUR) and his British and German deputies, itself at Mons in Belgium — were all due to move to war locations, with staggered timings, in the next few days. Advance parties had manned these locations already and tested