The Third World War (26 page)

What was also beginning to emerge was that a battle seen superficially at the outset as a mainly armoured offensive against an anti-tank defence was becoming more and more a contest between firepower and countermeasures. In an older terminology it would hav& been called an artillery battle between battery and counter-battery; in newer terms it was seen as a battle between rival arrays of electronics.

On the 5th, after a night in which the pressure had been hardly less than by day, the advance went on. In the north the enemy secured crossings over the Weser north of Minden and leading elements were reported moving west towards the Netherlands. I Belgian Corps had been pushed back west of Kassel; I British Corps was still fighting in the outskirts of Hannover and, in the built-up areas and the hill country of the Harz, exploiting with German reservist Jagd Kommandos the advantage of the “sponge’; I German Corps was established east and west along the Teutoburger Wald; 11 British Corps was extending its left westwards to the Dutch frontier, behind which reserve formations were hastily preparing defences in lowlying country now being flooded.

On the
CENTAG
front the first of the newly arrived US divisions, which had already fought such a valuable action, had been withdrawn from V US Corps to join the strong Canadian Brigade Group in army group reserve. The First French Army, taking II German Corps under command, had now assumed responsibility for that sector of the region which ran from Niirnberg south to the Austrian frontier, coming for the time being under command to
CENTAG
, with which French ties, as has been seen, were close.

By the end of 5 August further enemy attacks had opened a salient on the left of HI German Corps, in the extreme north of the
CENTAG
sector on the Corps boundary with the Belgians, and a Soviet thrust was developing towards Giessen. This was checked by flank action from the V US Corps between Alsfeld and Schluchtern. It was perhaps significant that the leading divisions in the enemy’s assault were now more often motor-rifle than tank divisions, and powerful probing for weak points was tending more and more to replace the massive armoured assault of tanks in the first wave. The Allied tactic, at unit level, which was essentially a matter of striving wherever possible to separate the tanks from their supporting infantry, was clearly paying off.

Further south the anti-tank defences of
VII
US Corps, with strong artillery and increasing tactical air support, had just been sufficient to contain a major attempt to break through southeast of Frankfurt where pressure was again building up. From Nurnberg southwards the situation was confused, but what information was available suggested that the First French Army with II German Corps was still more or less in control along the Lech.

Over the ^iext five days of bright, clear weather, as growing French strength in the south did much to stabilize the right flank, it became increasingly clear that the main effort would continue to be made in the north. The boundary between the two army groups had been moved up to give the Kassel area, with command of the much weakened 1 Belgian Corps, to
CENTAG
. After very hard fighting had held up a determined attempt to push down to Frankfurt through Giessen,
COMCENTAG
now believed that he had a good chance of holding an area whose forward edge would run from Kasset down through Alsfeld to south of Wiirzburg. If the Soviet 3 Shock Army had been put in behind ! Guards Tank Army the outlook would have been different, but it had been committed to the attack in the north.

By 7 August the continued enforcement of chemical defensive measures upon
NORTHAG
was beginning to cause concern, and pressure from field commanders for some form of retaliation grew. In theory a nuclear response had always been considered a possibility, at least by the British, but at this stage
SACEUR
was in no doubt that such a response would be an irrational risk. He was, however, prepared to see chemicals used in retaliation;

indeed, authority for their use had already been delegated to-local US commanders.
SACEUR
thus felt able to offer some chemical support to
NORTHAG
. It presented no problem to
COMAAFCE
to allot a squadron of US Air Force F-4 Phantoms equipped with spray tanks to 2
ATAF
, while a’quantity of US t55 mm chemical ammunition was released to the gunners of the British and German divisions of
NORTHAG
. This capability was put to immediate use.

The Phantoms attacked second echelon and reserve Soviet divisions with extensive and heavy concentrations of persistent lethal agents. These attacks forced Soviet units into unplanned moves. The personal protective equipment used by Soviet soldiers was not suitable for prolonged wear and under continued attack by persistent gases grew almost intolerably irksome-It was less easy for
NORTHAG
formations to use the US 155 mm chemical ammunition. It only slowly became available, for the logistic problem in drawing the ammunition from US locations caused delay, while Allied forces were unskilled in its technical and tactical use. The overall effect of the use of chemical agents against the Soviet offensive was nonetheless welcome. Protective clothing and equipment taken with Soviet prisoners was found to be rougher, clumsier, worse-fitting and considerably less effective than that of the Allies—which was itself a great improvement on what had been available only two or three years before. Red Army troops suffered in consequence more serious casualties from the same weight of attack. Their less flexible command and control procedures were moreeasily impeded. On balance. Soviet commanders considered a chemical exchange to be to their disadvantage, and since the Allies adhered to the rule of only using chemical agents in retaliation their use. on the battlefield, as distinct from the rear areas, soon declined.

Refugees were posing an acute and growing problem in the south, as in the north. Large numbers of people from Augsburg and Dim had moved in the direction of Stuttgart, and a rapidly increasing mass of frightened people was building up in the vicinity of Karlsruhe, The same sort of thing was also happening where crowds fleeing from Niirnberg and Wurzburg, augmented by refugees from smaller places, were bearing down on Mannheim. From the Frankfurt area there was a good deal of movement in the direction of Wiesbaden and Mainz. The general picture was one of a widespread and virtually uncontrollable flow from east to west, much of it on foot with possessions piled on vehicles drawn by animals or pushed or dragged by hand. with a chaotic jumble of motor vehicles of every description, more and more of them abandoned as petrol supplies gave out. At the Rhine crossings the pressure was tremendous; to keep the bridges open was putting increasing strain on Federal German police and territorial troops. Disorder was increased by determined Soviet air attack, both at low and medium levels, of which some at least always got through the defences. The importance of maintaining freedom of movement across the Rhine for the Allies, and of blocking it for the Warsaw Pact, was fully realized on both sides. By the fourth day some success began to attend the strenuous efforts of Federal German police and territorial troops to establish control over refugee movements and divert them into areas of open country east of the river. This did much to relieve pressure on the Rhine crossings but could not prevent serious interference with the movement of troops and other essential military traffic.

To the north of the Central Region
AFNORTH
was proving a tougher proposition for the Warsaw Pact than many in the West had expected, perhaps because few had much experience of the very great difficulty of movement from north to south in Norway. By 4 August the Allied Command Europe (
ACE
) Mobile Force of seven battalions with supporting troops had been put in by air and deployed north of Narvik. A Royal Marine Commando came in from Britain by sea and other Allied reinforcements arrived by sea and air to strengthen and support Norwegian national forces deployed in north Norway.

Advanced elements of a Soviet motor-rifle division crossed into Norway from the Kola peninsula on 4 August. A second was already moving westwards through Finnish Lapland, directed on Narvik. The fact that the Soviet and Finnish railway systems were integrated meant that no movement problem hampered the early follow-on of eight to ten more Soviet divisions. Soviet air superiority was complete.

The relative strengths of ground troops in
AFNORTH
did not, however, give a true measure of the Warsaw Pact advantage. It was less than it looked. The strength of the defence lay in the very great difficulty of deployment for offensive action, even with a favourable air situation. It was, in fact, only the action of a Soviet amphibious force in effecting a landing south of Bodo on 10 August that was to compel a southward redeployment of Allied forces to protect the land line of communication through north Trondelag and Nordland. By 15 August a firm Allied defence was based on Trondheim, which was unlikely to be seriously threatened so long as a delaying action continued to be successfully fought in the north.

To the south of the Central Region, HQ
AFSOUTH
, with a hastily put together Italian government in exile, had moved on 6 and 7 August to Spain. The Italian peninsula was now entirely under Soviet control, though with no great strength in Red Army troops.

The Italian and US air elements based in Italy constituting 5 Allied Tactical Air Force, after their initial operations, found themselves overtaken by the virtual disintegration of the
NATO
Southern Region. The wings and squadrons were faced with a fleeting chance and those aircrew who had serviceable aircraft took it by flying to Spain and the south of France where they were subsequently used as a general reserve of tactical air. power for the central battle, chiefly in the south of the Central Region.

Holland came under Soviet occupation as far south as the River Maas by 10 August, the-seat of government having removed to Eindhoven. The iast remnants of a Dutch defence of the frontier had been dispersed in an action near Lmgen on the 8th, and thereafter only floods caused by the opening of the dykes and an active civilian resistance had stood in the invaders’ way.

On 10 August the right-hand corps of the Northern Anry Group, 1 British, was still in being, though battered, in the area round Paderborn. Its anti-tank defences had been its salvation. The tactics of the ‘sponge’ had been highly successful. Small infantry detachments manning
ATGW
were still lying up in built-up or hilly country, waiting for the vulnerable flank, always trying to reduce the impetus of the enemy’s advance by hampering the follow-up and interfering with supply. The concentration of attack at all levels, by every means, on communications, command and control was paying off handsomely. One guided missile could destroy one tank. A single hit on a divisional command post could impose confusion and delay upon a hundred. Even where physical disruption was not possible (and, with the methods currently in use, nodal communication points could quite often be located and destroyed) interference with communication almost always was. It was remarkable how far such interference could reduce the effectiveness of an enemy accustomed to close control by superiors.

To the left of 1 British Corps, I German Corps was still established along the Teutoburger Wald, offering so great a threat to the enemy’s advance from east to west as to invite a major effort very soon to push it out. On its left, in turn, stood II British Corps, forced back to positions south and west of Miinster, with one US brigade under command on the west bank of the Rhine. The remnants of 1 Netherlands Corps, which had taken very heavy punishment in the past few days, were strung out further west towards Nijmegen.

By the evening of the 11 th, I German Corps had been put under such severe pressure from the south and west as to be no longer able to hold the high ground on either side of the Minden Gap. NORTHAG’s main preoccupation was now the defence of the Ruhr and Rhineland and the prevention of a breakthrough on the west bank of the Rhine in the area of Venlo.

In the Central Region the Warsaw Pact invasion had not, it is true, achieved the swift and overwhelming success planned for it. If it had not been completely successful, however, the shortfall so far lay only in the timetable. Allied Command Europe was facing a serious position which was now growing critical.

It was on 13 August that
SACEUR
made known two decisions which can now be seen, among the many difficult problems before him in those momentous days, to have been truly critical to the outcome of the war in Europe. The first was a final refusal to endorse any of the urgent requests of his subordinate commanders for the release of battlefield nuclear weapons. The second concerned the commitment of reserves.

Speculation would be idle on how long any Warsaw-Pact offensive into the Central Region of Europe could have continued under the thunderous threat of national revolt, soon to be looming, as we shall learn, in the Red Army’s rear. What is beyond doubt is that the Allied counteroffensive, shortly to be opened by the forces of the Central Region northwards towards Bremen, was to set up a completely new operational situation for the Pact to face on the land battlefield. To bring this under control was clearly net impossible for the Pact forces. Of the huge military resources available to the Warsaw Pact, relatively little had as yet been lost. But regrouping would be needed on a considerable scale. There was already a growing uncertainty in the rearward political infrastructure, with increasing threats to the security of lines of communication, and a discernible decline in confidence in the reliability of non-Soviet formations. Divisions expected to follow up for the maintenance of offensive momentum were more and more being kept where they were, to safeguard the very lines of communication along which they should have moved. These and other related factors were to combine to render less and less stable the basis on which the operation of containing the Allied counteroffensive and regaining offensive momentum. once this had been lost, would have to rest. A real check to the forward impetus of the invasion of West Germany could not therefore be regarded as only a temporary setback. It was likely, in all the circumstances, to mark the beginning of something much more important.