The Third World War - The Untold Story (20 page)

‘Phase Two
(duration 96 minutes) follows immediately after Phase One. Eight Air Armies, the aircraft of three fleets, two corps of long-distance strategic aircraft, sub-units of the civil aviation Aeroflot and all military transport aircraft will take part. During this phase a maximum effort will be made to determine the results of the first nuclear attack. At the same time, a heavy air attack will be made on any targets seen to have survived the first attack. These would largely be mobile targets, such as field command posts and mobile missile units.

‘Nuclear and chemical weapons will be used. At the same time, the military transport aircraft and Aeroflot transport will drop guerrilla sub-units of
Spetsnaz
(Special Assignment Force) in areas not under nuclear or chemical attack. As soon as the Phase Two attack begins, all the missile launchers which took part in the first attack will when possible be reloaded and tactical missiles not used in the first strike because of their limited range, but which can now be brought to bear, will be moved swiftly forward into the main attack. Missile sub-units will receive target information directly from reconnaissance aircraft.

‘Phase Three
(duration 30 minutes): all missile sub-units again deliver a massive nuclear attack, as soon as the aircraft are clear. This attack is intended to destroy newly revealed targets and targets insufficiently damaged in the first attacks. Chemical warheads will predominate, although the density of nuclear warheads will remain high.

‘Phase Four
(duration 7 days): the success of this phase of the operation depends on surprise. Most Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces are not put in a state of readiness at the preliminary alert. The stand-to signal for these divisions is given only as the first nuclear attack takes place. The two and a half hours required for the first three phases of the operation is sufficient time to prepare their echelons and to move them forward from their stations. Detailed plans of action for each division, each army and each front, are worked out in advance and kept sealed. All that remains for commanding officers to do is to unseal the appropriate package and carry out the orders prescribed in it. All others will be destroyed. Even if the assault echelon divisions have not had time fully to prepare themselves in two and a half hours, they must nevertheless be moved forward into action. In these circumstances the enemy divisions will be at a disadvantage. The assault by the first echelon divisions will take place simultaneously along the entire front, to drive in wedges as quickly and as deeply as possible wherever enemy defences permit. On the second or third day of this action the Front Tank Armies will be put in where success has been greatest. On the fourth day of the operation, in any zone where enemy resistance has been effectively suppressed, the Belorussian Group of Tank Armies will be put in to strike across Europe towards the Atlantic coast. During the fourth phase, aircraft and missile sub-units will take supporting action as required by ground and naval forces. On each of the first three days there will be a parachute drop of one airborne division. If the availability of military transport and Aeroflot aircraft permitted, all divisions would have been dropped simultaneously on the first day of the operation. But this is not possible.

‘Phase Five
would be carried out only in the event of Soviet and East European forces being brought to a halt in West Germany and becoming involved in sustained operations. This could lead to the development of a static front with a linear deployment of NATO forces from north to south. In this case the Ukrainian Group of Tank Armies will move at maximum speed from Hungary through Austria (neutrality notwithstanding) on the axis Linz-Frankfurt-Dunkirk. The purpose of this phase is to disrupt the Allied lines of communication and cut their line of retreat and then press on to the sea.

Variant B
was almost identical with Variant A, although nuclear weapons are not employed. Instead, all missile formations and units deliver a concentrated chemical and high-explosive attack whilst at the same time maintaining a state of constant readiness for the use of nuclear weapons. Variant B envisages a period of tension in Europe before military operations begin, lasting for anything from several days to several months or even one year. The troops on both sides will be in a state of readiness for all this time, carrying out exercises close to the enemy’s lines. The longer this period of tension lasts the better it will be for the Soviet Union. Weariness, boredom and false alarms will combine to reduce alertness. Soviet and Warsaw Pact formations can then be swiftly put on the alert and moved into the attack forthwith. To this the response of NATO forces is likely to be sluggish. Variant B also provides for a possible lightning attack from peacetime locations without chemical weapons. This can best be done when the West is most vulnerable: for example, in August during the holiday period.

Variant C
was divided into a preliminary and a main stage.

‘Preliminary Stage
(duration 10 days): during this period several dozen civilian special service groups formed in Western and Asiatic non-communist countries will head for Western Europe. Each group acts independently and will not know that its mission is part of a general plan. At the same time,
Spetsnaz
sabotage units numbering some 5,000 men will cross into Western Europe as tourists. Simultaneously, Soviet merchant ships, with sub-units of marines and sabotage troops hidden on board, will sail towards Europe’s main ports.

Main Stage:
at an appointed time the
Spetsnaz
groups will destroy key electric power stations with explosives. If sixty of these can be put out of action, the whole of industry and all communication systems in Western Europe will be paralysed and rail transport will come to a standstill. All other means of transport including aircraft will be severely handicapped by lack of communications. In these circumstances it can be expected that water supplies will be cut off, radio and television broadcasting will cease, refrigeration will be impossible and produce will perish in warehouses. In buildings, lifts will stop, lights will go out, and telephones and alarm systems will be cut off. In large cities traffic chaos will result. Petrol and oil fuel supplies will give out. The underground railways will come to a halt. The work of government establishments, military headquarters and police forces will be disrupted. Crime will increase enormously and panic will set in. Pro-Soviet saboteurs in civilian clothes should now be able with little difficulty to destroy the principal communications systems of the main NATO headquarters and put out of action the command posts of the air defence systems. At the same time, Soviet military transport and Aeroflot aircraft will carry out a mass drop of paratroop divisions. These landings will be safeguarded by Soviet
REP Osnaz
(Special Electronic Counter-Measures Force) sub-units which will ‘blind’ NATO’s radar stations. The mission of the airborne divisions is to seize government establishments, military headquarters and command posts, and to disrupt all state and military administration systems. Once this has been accomplished and before it has been possible in the West to evaluate what has happened, the Soviet Government will urgently appeal to the US Government to refrain from a nuclear response and will give guarantees that the Soviet Union will not use nuclear weapons.’

Several points of outstanding importance were raised when Document OP-85E-SSOV was discussed in the Kremlin. The first was whether the attack should be nuclear from the outset, as in Variant A. Arguments for this were strong. The USSR had a lead over the USA in land-based missile weapons of inter-continental range, though not in those delivered by aircraft or from submarines.

The bomber aircraft mattered less than the submarines. It was noted that Britain and France had obstinately maintained, and even modernized, independent submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capabilities which, though modest, could do critical damage in the Soviet Union. The USSR was well ahead of the West in military and civil defence provision and in the hardening of launching sites, communications and administrative accommodation. Its size and the dispersal of its population conferred significant advantage. In theatre nuclear forces (TNF) the START Treaty had reduced the Soviet Union’s lead but this was still considerable. It had not been possible, unfortunately, to prevent the beginning of the installation of the new TNF, the
Pershing
II and cruise missile weapons, though the refusal of the Netherlands to host any had been helpful. The great strides made in generating anti-American and anti-nuclear tendencies in the Alliance reflected considerable credit on those responsible. The billion dollars’ worth of hard currency this had cost the Soviet Union was money well spent. It was difficult to believe but nevertheless true that the conviction was widely held in Britain that if there were no nuclear weapons in the British Isles they would be immune from nuclear attack. This conviction was particularly creditable to Soviet disinformation services and those responsible were to be congratulated. Since the British Isles were of paramount importance to the NATO war effort in Europe they would, of course, without any question be attacked and neutralized, whatever the circumstances.

Although in TNF in general the USSR was superior, it could not be absolutely guaranteed that the United States would refrain from the use against the Soviet Union of nuclear weapons of inter-continental range, if a nuclear attack were mounted on Western Europe, though the probability that the USA would use strategic nuclear weapons if its European allies were facing early defeat by non-nuclear means was low. Nor could it be guaranteed that a first strike on the United States would destroy so much of its ICBM capability as to rule out the possibility of a highly destructive response. It almost went without saying that what was known in the muddled jargon of the West as ‘escalation’ would certainly take place. That meant that a decision to use any nuclear weapon was in effect a decision to go the whole way into the full strategic exchange.

Would this, for the USSR, be worthwhile? Even if the USA were devastated, would the Soviet Union in the aftermath be in a position to retain full control over its own people, let alone those of restless client states? This was doubtful. Heavy damage and high casualties in Warsaw Pact states would loosen ties in the socialist world rather than strengthen them, while the progress of the USSR itself would be set back so far as to open dangerous opportunities to China. Opinion in the Politburo appeared to be hardening against the option of a nuclear opening.

None the less there was a deep and manifest difference of opinion here which could not be overcome. One group, resolutely led by the Chairman of the KGB, Army General Sergei Athanasievich Aristanov, ably supported by the Minister of Defence, Marshal Alexei Alexandrovich Nastin (each a member of the Defence Council of the Politburo), maintained that the Soviet approach to war demanded the swift and violent use of the most powerful weapons available. This suggested, logically enough, a nuclear opening, in total depth, including, it went without saying, ICBM attack on the continental United States. In the strategic exchange between the central systems of the two great powers the Soviet Union would suffer grave damage which would put its progress back significantly. But it would survive and in time recover. The United States, on the other hand, would be destroyed, leaving the Soviet Union to establish progressive socialist societies in its own good time throughout the present capitalist West.

The arguments for a conventional opening were well known. There would clearly be advantage in a non-nuclear victory and this, with good timing and the correct handling of field operations, was not impossible. If, however, the advance into Western Europe were so far delayed that the Rhine could not be secured within ten days there must be no question but that the
whole
of the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability must be applied and quickly used. There must be no withholding of the more powerful weapons in the hope that the enemy would do the same with his, and no concession at all to the fallacious Western concept of escalation, which is not only fundamentally incorrect but wholly out of keeping with the now well-established, and even traditional, Soviet method of making war. If there were any uncertainty over the achievement of very early success by non-nuclear means, however, the whole operation should without any doubt be nuclear from the start.

The Supreme Party Ideologist, Constantin Andrievich Malinsky, who was a member of the Politburo Defence Council, supported by the leader of the Organization of the Party and State Control, Otto Yanovich Berzinsh, and Taras Kyrillovich Nalivaiko, responsible for relations with socialist countries (both being members of the Politburo but not of the Defence Council) demurred. It must be the aim of the Soviet Union to realize Lenin’s grand design of a world under communist rule. A world of which much would be charred rubble or irradiated desert would hardly be worth ruling. What was wanted was supremacy in a living world, not over a charnel house it would be death to enter. Nuclear weapons were to frighten rather than to fight with. Their use would set up a contradiction in socialist practice which should be avoided except in the very last resort and only after the deepest thought.

For the time being, at least, the majority were in favour of a non-nuclear opening and the meeting passed to consider other matters.

The position of European neutrals was discussed. Sweden, in spite of signs of restlessness in recent years, could almost certainly be cowed into maintaining its traditional stance. France was an unknown quantity. It was a member of the Atlantic Alliance but not of its military organization, NATO. France’s record of self-interest suggested that it might, and probably would, abstain from belligerence if the advantage offered were sufficient. Ireland would probably follow France’s lead, though recently improved Anglo-Irish relations raised doubts here and it would be as well to target key installations in Ireland for conventional destruction in order to deny their use to the Western allies. The chance would have to be taken that Irish facilities would become available to the enemy, which could raise problems for the Soviet Navy in the Eastern Atlantic.