Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

I think the Swedish police, intelligence and special forces will be on standby to nip as many Spetsnaz attacks in bud ASAP. They'll be coming because it's standard Soviet operating procedures.
Target vocal opponents through smears, blackmail, assassination attempts, bombings. The moment they get a "No" from the Swedes, Chemical attacks and a ground invasion.

Most Swedish tanks will either be Centurion based, 50's designs or the rather effective STRV-103 - the S tank. It's a low profile ambush specialist. Between that and the man portable anti tank missiles the Swedes have, any ground invasion is likely to be thrown back hard. At that point the Soviets have two choices: accept it and sell the action as "a suitable punishment for the Swedes who have now learned their lesson", (to be followed up with smaller naval and commando attacks), or they go Nuclear, and we say goodbye to Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.

The Swedes are in a tough place and likely to have to chose how much they're prepared to suffer.

   James

It's a different streategic situation; not only the situation between the EEC and the Soviets it's hardly civil (and i don't even consider the recent kidnapping) so many in the various capital will think that's only a question of time before is their turn and frankly losing another country to the soviet (even if transformed like Finland) will severely hurt the EEC economy and political stand, plus there is the high risk that the opening of the straits will be the prelude of the falling of the UK and this also mean game over.
I also disagree regarding Denmark, she is one of the gang and unlike Ireland she has not declared war on her own, she will be attacked and not defending her will mean that the entire euro position is a bluff and they can give the key of the nations at Moscow

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December 1984: Western Europe

The news that the Soviets had kidnapped President Mitterrand’s secret daughter had been passed to governments and intelligence organisations across the Continent. Further increases around the security of VIPs and their families, even more than what already had occurred over the previous few months, took place through many countries. There had been no contact made from the KGB kidnappers and thus there was always the very slim outside chance that the snatching of the Pingeot girl had been the work of someone else, but that was very unlikely. Everyone knew how the KGB had taken family members of several politicians in the United States hostage and also killed British royals – Princess Diana and her newborn baby – in their pursuit of geo-political aims. Mitterrand’s bitter dispute with the Soviet Union had driven them to take his child and would clearly try to use her safe return as an attempt to change France’s policy when it came to refusing Soviet overtures. The French public knew nothing of this though. Mitterrand wasn’t about to tell his people about his lovechild nor any of his other secrets. Maybe he could have, come clean with his people, but he wasn’t that type of man. Those who needed to know did. Mitterrand and the French government waited for word to come from those who had kidnapped his daughter, ready to react to their demands. Situations were run through when it came to hypothetical KGB demands for her safety and how each of those would be responded to. A great deal of work was done by the DGSE on this all the while the same organisation conducted a major covert search for her or trace of those who had taken the child. This occurred across France and outside of the country too where their inquires led them along the route she had been taken. The life of the friend of Mitterrand’s mistress, the woman who’d helped take the girl and then been killed, was taken apart by investigators. All those at the secluded country house – security and staff – were questioned intensely. Over in Switzerland, following a trail led France’s intelligence operatives to locate an abandoned building in the northeast of the country, about a dozen miles from Zurich and not that far from Lake Constance. Permission was sought and gained from the Swiss to strike there where French special forces were allowed to act on Swiss territory. This had taken a great deal of effort to allow to occur as the Swiss were more than a little apprehensive to see this done, but Mitterrand’s personal intervention with the Swiss Government plus the ties between the DGSE and the Swiss intelligence community saw it allowed to take place. The time delay was frustrating for all those involved but the politics mattered on this. Swiss special forces attached a few officers as liaison though the French commandos from a select detachment of 1 RPIMa undertook the mission in reality.

A shootout occurred with armed men inside the building who fought back well even when hit with an assault like they were. Two Frenchmen would end up dead and another three badly-hurt. Six men inside the building, all with false identification, were found with four killed straight away and one died despite intensive medical treatment. The sixth man was knocked unconscious in the firefight and looked dead to everyone at first with a bloody headwound. Once it was discovered he was not – when a 1 RPIMa soldier was about to give him the ‘double-tap’ to finish him off just-for-sure, he noticed that despite the blood he was still breathing –, the injured man was at once removed for questioning. A Swiss officer went with him as he was flown first by helicopter to a Swiss military base by the French military and the DGSE before that same Swiss officer then went to France with him too. At all times, he legally remained in Swiss custody though that was just a political fudge: his interrogation would all be done by the French. In that building, there was much evidence gained that the men here had been intimately involved in the kidnapping across in France. The girl had been here too. She was searched for in case she was hidden but all evidence pointed to her having be brought here and then moved onwards. She hadn’t been removed in that delay when Bern and Paris were talking either, but before then. The trail went cold. It would appear that she might have been taken to West Germany, maybe Austria, by going across Lake Constance rather than over land borders yet that was only speculation. She could still be in Switzerland. She could even be dead and buried somewhere. That prisoner would be ‘asked’. That he was as the DGSE forced him to talk. He had been on the receiving end of the girl’s arrival in Switzerland and took her into custody alongside others with him who were now dead, not the snatch team who’d done the hand-off and departed. Afterwards, a third team had taken her onwards. He didn’t know where that was, despite all of the questioning. He was forced to give much more information yet he knew little on the fate of the missing child. French intelligence activity moved to West Germany to search for her there afterwards but where the now ten years-old (she’d had her birthday while held hostage) Mazarine Marie Pingeot was remained still unknown.


Confirmed KGB involvement in the kidnapping led Mitterrand to take direct action. He’d held back but once the prisoner was speaking – and he had a lot to say about many other things too –, then it was time to act. In Salzburg, a Soviet trade attaché who the French knew was the KGB rezidentura for their activities in the consulate in Austria was snatched off the street and taken for interrogation too with no cooperation done with the Austrian authorities. In Niger and Tanzania, African nations on both sides of the continent, KGB officers in Niamey and Dar es Salaam who the DGSE had been monitoring for their activities in these neutral nations were gunned down by local criminals in the pay of France. At Dubrovnik on the Yugoslavian coast, a ship being used by the KGB which had been active in the Med. for intelligence-gathering missions in the electronic field was tied alongside the harbour there. It was blown up by persons unknown, killing more than twenty people which included Yugoslavians. The Salzburg kidnapping saw several important KGB people travel there from Vienna in a vehicle with diplomatic plates. Before it reached Salzburg, someone took a shot at it from distance and the driver was killed by that sniper. The vehicle crashed, killing another person inside and injuring two more of them gravely. An attempt to ambush a reaction team heading to the Dubrovnik bombing didn’t work out due to Yugoslavian internal security measures (reacting better than the Austrians could) being rather tight.

France was doing what the Soviets had been doing: striking out with lethal intent in actions done with plausible deniability across neutral nations. The trade attaché in Salzburg was an accredited diplomat, not someone who could have been openly touched without it all becoming a bigger deal than it already was. He was taken rather than killed because of the identified links that there were with the Pingeot kidnapping which came from DGSE investigations in neighbouring Bavaria to look for her. The others were all targets of opportunity. What the French did was to send unspoken messages to the KGB rather than the whole Soviet Union. Such people in Africa and that ship using a Yugoslavian identity were bit part players in a big worldwide conflict yet France hit them because their actions in doing what they did would negatively affect that for the KGB. The kidnappers of Mitterrand’s child were still being sought while at the same time the organisation behind that was being hit hard. More French actions were in the works, all to be done while the missing child was out there.


West Germany continued to be full of troops from the Bundeswehr and neighbouring countries who were spread across the nation in defensive positions. NATO was officially still an active organisation which hadn’t been legally wound up though in reality it was as dead as a dodo. Direct government-to-government relations wouldn’t do long-term if the country was going to be continued to be defended against what was perceived as a Soviet threat to invade the country where it retained its huge force on the other side of the Iron Curtain despite its foreign wars elsewhere. There needed to be a new NATO.

A new NATO wasn’t wanted by many though. The governments of France, West Germany and Italy were all keen on an organised mutual defence organisation but their Western European partners in Denmark and the Low Countries weren’t keen on that. Left unsaid was the fact that the allegations by the Americans and other former NATO allies that Western Europe had ‘bailed’ on them back in September rang true. Why sign up to another agreement and put all the necessary commitment to it if the same countries who were involved the first time around might once again choose at the last minute not to honour obligations? The form of what kind of a new NATO would take concerned others. If it would just be the combined defence of West Germany against a Soviet attack – recognised in all quarters as of supreme importance –, then that would be fine. But if it meant doing other things, then no. The Dutch were already unhappy at the pressure France applied to them earlier in the war which they were neutral in to allow for British forces, troops of a nation at war, to pass through their country on the way home. They saw their neutrality as having being violated and their people endangered at the behest of foreign powers: this made them suspicious of a French-led military alliance. The Danes were concerned with their own joint cooperation with Sweden over the Baltic Exits and if a new NATO didn’t support that, then they wanted no part of it. Belgium expressed concern at any troop commitment. Like Denmark and the Netherlands, Belgium had a major internal security operation ongoing and a partial mobilisation. This was costing them dear and a new NATO for anything more than the defence of West Germany, which they were committed to, would mean more mobilisation and more expenditure. The three bigger countries were all mobilised, costing them much, but swallowing that where they pushed for the smaller nations to follow their lead. However, while in France and Italy, the political will was there with that mobilisation, in West Germany there were wobbles in the grand coalition of the SPD, CDU and FDP about that going on forever.

Soviet actions elsewhere forced progress on a new NATO though. There was the news which came from Sweden and then what was going on down in the Aegean too as the Greek-Turkish War saw a third force enter the play. The Soviets might have been fighting the Americans, the British, the Chinese and whomever else they wanted to as they sought to control the world, but they were still threatening the edges of Western Europe too. Negations on a defensive alliance would take place next year. Before then, work was done on a reorganised command structure with military forces deployed in West Germany to better serve the mission there ahead of that. Troops were moved about and staffs set up. This was done under French military supervision. To some, these changes which commenced in late December looked less defensive everyday and more offensive-minded instead. That wasn’t what it was all supposed to be about and the French dismissed such a notion. One of the high-ranking West German generals who looked at this and came to the same conclusion didn’t make a complaint to his government. He spoke to his KGB contact instead and provided evidence of what he saw as ‘a threat to European peace’. His handler nodded with sympathy, feigning understanding of his agent’s moral plight just as a good agent handler should. That evidence – top secret documents – was fast on its way to Moscow.