The Third World War: August 1985

— even if Istanbul itself, now peopled by 4 million Turks, would be a most indigestible mouthful. But any such moves, even accompanied by airborne landings, would give plenty of time for the blocking of the Straits by demolition, mines and blockships. Even with control of the shores of the two waterways these obstructions could take some vital weeks to clear. Since this was intended by the Soviet planners to be the period within which the whole European operation would lie, the disadvantage of armed attack on the Straits loomed rather large.

Soviet planners were necessarily aware that the Montreux Convention, which since 1937 had regulated the right of passage through the Turkish Straits, almost totally forbade this right to the warships of belligerents. After the beginning of operations in Europe they would hardly be able to claim not to be in this category, even if no formal declaration of war had been made. Some of them were inclined to assume that, faced with the threat of overwhelming force, the Turks would have no alternative but to accept a bending of the Montreux rules and allow Soviet warships continued passage. Others, who knew Turkey better, argued successfully that this could by no means be relied on and that Turkey was fully capable of living up to her obligations even at great cost to herself. They pointed out that it would do the USSR little good to be in Istanbul if the Bosphorus was blocked. Moreover, apart from Turkish action, it would not be difficult for US aircraft even from the western Mediterranean to make passage of the Straits by Soviet warships exceptionally hazardous.

It was therefore finally accepted by the Soviet command that the only safe course was to get their ships out first from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Once there they would have shore facilities in Alexandria again since the Egyptian volte-face. They could hope for the use of Malta and the seizure of a harbour in the course of the Yugoslav operation. There might even be a chance to settle old scores with Albania and re-occupy the submarine base at Valona, from which they had been rudely ejected when Albania joined the Chinese in 1961. The ships would thus not be as dependent as formerly on periodic return to Black Sea ports for refitting and supply. Civilian merchant shipping from the Black Sea could no doubt fill up the supply gaps, and their passage through the Straits would pose much less risk of Turkish reaction. In the spring of 1985 there was, therefore, an unusual amount of Soviet naval tonnage leaving the Black Sea for the Mediterranean, for manoeuvres, trials and transfer to other stations; by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe all the units required for naval operations in the Mediterranean had already passed through.

There was of course a risk that these movements would seem to imply a Soviet intention to prepare for a European war and stimulate precautions in the West. By routing almost all the ships first of all to Alexandria, however, the Russians strove to give the impression that they were still concerned primarily with the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

When finally hostilities began and the Russians succeeded in penetrating Italy, causing the removal to Spain of all that was possible of AFSOUTH’s infrastructure, as well as its headquarters, the possibility of active participation by Turkey and Greece was drastically curtailed, since only long-distance US air support with help from the Sixth Fleet would for the time being be available.

It was not the first time in Turkey’s history that she had been left almost alone to face her great neighbour in the north. As so often in the past, the Turkish government made it quite clear that while their intentions were not aggressive, no Turkish territory or Turkish rights would be conceded without fierce resistance and if necessary sacrifice. Frontier forces were reinforced and preparations ostentatiously made for blocking the Straits should this prove necessary. Local animosities were forgotten in the face of greater danger, and Turkish and Greek forces linked up in Thrace to confront Bulgaria, while the remaining Greek forces strengthened their northern border against any possible incursions from Yugoslavia or Albania.

The threat of attack from the Warsaw Pact side was a very real one and gave rise to deep apprehensions. In the end, however, the Russians did not find it worth while to divert forces for this purpose, believing no doubt that if all went according to plan in the centre and west they could complete their mastery of the Balkans and of Turkey at greater leisure thereafter. The political and military weaknesses of NATO’s south-east flank had been repaired just in time to make it possible for the flank to hold, even in considerable isolation. It was rash of all concerned to have left the remedial measures so late.

Since the central issue was in the first instance to be the survival of the Federal Republic of Germany, and since the first great land battle would take place on German territory, it is important to take a further look at the Federal Republic’s land forces.

The three German corps embodied sixteen armoured brigades (each with three battalions of tanks, one of armoured infantry and one of armoured artillery), fifteen armoured infantry brigades (each containing two tank and two armoured infantry battalions, one of Jager infantry and one of armoured artillery), with units mostly organized broadly on US models, together with two mountain and three airborne brigades. They were on the whole in very good shape, well officered and well equipped. In an army in which roughly half of its regular strength of 350,000 were conscripts, the general level of troop training was not as high, or as even, as that of an all-regular long-service force like the British. Units had on the whole been kept up to strength rather better than the British, however, and there had been fewer reorganizations in the interests of economy (always presented politically in Britain as improvements in military effectiveness) and a more realistic approach by the Federal government to the provision and maintenance of equipment. The Bundeswehr had thus suffered less from its politicians than its brothers-in-arms in Britain, where cynicism and insularity had long traded on a depth of good will and loyalty in the country’s armed forces that few governments of any party had done much to deserve.

Of two major improvements brought about in the army of the FRG in the five years before the outbreak of war, one was structural, the other operational.

The first concerned reserves. Three Territorial Commands, each of five Military Districts, had been created. In these commands six Home Defence Brigades formed the fighting core of a reserve force with a peacetime strength of some 63,000 (including 30,000 conscripts still working out their reserve service) and an ultimate full mobilization strength for the Territorial Army of half a million. The Federal government was not at first inclined to place these resources under NATO command. They represented, it was argued, the last armed forces available to the Federal Republic as a sovereign power and should remain at its disposal alone. Arguments for undivided command in time of war proved more persuasive. Events were to show the wisdom of assigning these reserve forces, at least on mobilization, to SACEUR.

The second improvement reflected a change in outlook on the best method of defending Federal territory. ‘Forward defence’ on the frontier could hardly mean in military terms anything other than a defence forward of the frontier, a point Warsaw Pact planners were not slow to take. The clearest alternative was defence in depth, trading ground at the best possible rate for the time needed to set up a counter-offensive. This, though it made good military sense, was hardly popular with politicians publicly dedicated to the total defence of the integrity of Federal territory.

The rapid development of anti-tank techniques, the increasing urbanization of much of West Germany and the growing size of the FRG’s military reserves suggested another approach. A network of squads of reservists, locally drawn and armed with ATGW, was incorporated into the operation of the covering forces along the frontier.

A concept had been gradually gaining favour in the Federal Republic since the end of the seventies under which a defence against attack from the East would be organized in three tiers. These would comprise a frontier defence almost entirely composed of Jagd Kommandos (tank-hunting and skirmishing units), with powerful counter-penetration forces in depth in what was described as Raumdeckende Verteidigung (spatial defence) and an area of Heimat Schutz (so-called Homeland Defence), depending mostly on territorial forces, in further depth behind that.

The covering forces deployed by AFCENT would still be expected to fight a delaying battle forward. In the late seventies the proportion of troop strengths in forward corps assigned to fight the covering-force battle had been some 30 to 50 per cent of the whole formation, all along the front of the Central Region. New tactics in NORTHAG, appropriate to the terrain, had enabled forward corps to reduce this to some extent. The full covering-force concept, however, was still to prevail in CENTAG where lack of depth made it important to give away as little ground as possible.

In NORTHAG, British experimentation was proceeding on lines closely related to the new concept now under discussion in Germany, with light anti-tank defences exploiting the possibility of ATGW deployed far forward. The system of frontier defence thus created, with counter-penetration forces deployed in further depth, was beginning to be thought of, by many British and some German officers, as a possible replacement for, or at least a modification of, the full doctrine of ‘forward defence’, however the term was interpreted, which had hitherto