lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 13, 2018 21:07:19 GMT
Chapter Twenty–Two – Capture & Collapse(311)March 1985: The Eastern Caribbean and the North Atlantic Western Europe was too at war with the Soviet Union and those countries aligned with it. The EDA, eight countries of which seven were former NATO members, was fighting the same nations as the Allies – many of them once with NATO pre-war too – also were. There were talks underway for a formal, meaningful alliance between the two blocs but there were difficulties involved with that. This made the EDA and the Allies co-belligerents in legal terms. Physical separation meant that the politics aside, there was only some immediate cooperation in the war between the majority of the two blocs apart from on mainland Europe with the arrival of troops from several Allied countries to fight there alongside the EDA. However, between each bloc, there was the North Atlantic where the two were both fighting the Soviets. Early cooperation and joint efforts at sea fell back upon NATO understandings in many instances through there had been some quiet agreements made before the EDA entered the war where both Britain and Spain had (with American knowledge) discussed some things with France in the final stages of that country’s collision course with the Soviets. In the eastern Caribbean, the French acted there generally alone though. Their defence attaché in New York was busy in helping to smooth over many issues before afterwards the military heads of France and the United States used their own people to establish better liaisons. An absence of any form of friendly fire was something that each wanted to achieve. French aircraft made attacks against Barbados and St. Lucia. They used Mirage-IIIs for fighter cover to protect several nights of bomb runs made by Mirage F-1s against Soviet military bases on those two islands. A strong French military commitment to the Caribbean had been made late last year when Cuba gobbled up all of those defenceless independent island nations and this included troops and naval vessels too. There was a need across in Europe for the military assets deployed here but over on this side of the ocean they were for now. Soviet Naval Aviation aircraft had already been attacked before when on land and faced increasing losses when flying out over the ocean all at Allied hands. Now, instead of as was the case earlier when the island’s air facilities were attacked from distant American bases, the French had the aircraft in-theatre to attack them from close-range. Repeated strikes were made. The French took losses but these weren’t crippling. What the Soviets lost in terms of aircraft were though. Naval air operations out over the North Atlantic came to a close. Orders came for there to be a dispersion of the remaining Backfires, Badgers, Bears and Blinders to save them. They moved to Grenada and St. Vincent away to the south as well as up to Antigua in the north. These kept them from being destroyed on the ground yet the dispersion meant that they would be ineffective in their role for some time due to all of the disruption to their ground support. Then Antigua was hit by the Americans not long after many of these aircraft arrived. F-111s flying from Puerto Rico hit Coolidge Airport in a heavy strike. French air cover hadn’t been provided yet at the same time, the French were active above St. Lucia were the Cubans had fighters and thus secured the flank for the US Air Force when it hit Antigua, leaving them only have to deal with what fewer Soviet fighters there were. Invasion fears spread through the eastern Caribbean in response. Cuba held all of those islands with few of their own troops. Local forces were present with their ‘gunpoint governments’ supplying them for security duty around all of the little people’s republics in the region. Apart from Grenada, none of those regimes were friends of Cuba. They were all forced collaborators: Allied propaganda did tell a different story yet that was the fact on the ground. With none of their own men available, the Soviets demanded that Cuba sent more men to the islands to protect them from a French invasion, maybe even a joint French-US amphibious assault, to take all of those harbours and airports which allowed the war in North America to go on. Cuba had the troops free – only reservists though – yet wavered over sending them. Meanwhile, the French began to make their own moves. They didn’t have enough forces in the region to launch a major assault but had the ships, aircraft and commando units to conduct raiding operations. St. Lucia was where they focused, the closest island to Martinique. The activity there was small yet effective. Local troops from the island did poorly in combat – only when the French targeted them and that was only by accident – before starting to desert. Moscow raged at Havana and the Castros bowed to the pressure. They sent extra troops to the island as well as a squadron of fighters. The numbers weren’t that large yet it only added to the massive overextension on the part of Cuba to this war. Meanwhile, the French kept up the pressure as they threatened capture of St. Lucia. American eyes were elsewhere in the region. Unable to strike at the current time yet with a significant introduction of forces to the region, they were getting ready to do so when they were finally ready. Cooperation agreements on that matter remained difficult though. Months of the Americans and the Allies fighting ‘alone’ weren’t going to be forgotten in an instant. French and EDA naval activity was concentrated in both the Baltic Exits as well as the Mediterranean too. There was some EDA maritime activity through the North Atlantic though. Some French, Belgian and Dutch ships and submarines were active out in the open ocean. There were no major trans-Atlantic convoys to protect as would have been the case had this been a NATO-Soviet conflict yet the Allied nations on both sides of the North Atlantic were still sending ships each way. The Soviets had spent the war trying to interfere with that using aircraft and submarines. In addition, they themselves were trying to send ships across the ocean. Allied military activity through the past several months especially had put an end to the majority of that. Regardless, where possible, EDA military activity supported the Allies and that was done the other way too in acting against the common enemy. Information on ships, submarines and aircraft in Soviet service if located by either the Allies or the EDA was fast shared with the other. There were a few joint attacks made too. All of those years spent training together when in NATO might have been forgotten in political drama, yet officers and seamen with each new bloc worked together as if they were part of that former lone bloc. Each side saved the other’s bacon at times as well. Fuel and consumable supplies were exchanged when at sea and then in port too: Bermuda saw a Dutch frigate make a stop there and Spanish naval vessels transited through the French naval station at Brest. British-EDA naval cooperation closer to the mainland of Europe put all of that to shame though where they worked together extensively. Opposition to this came from many quarters in both blocs. Voices in the United States and Norway were the loudest against aspects of this cooperation yet there were some in Western Europe who were also extremely opposed to what was going on. Common sense wasn’t always followed in such criticism yet there remained many legitimate issues on this as well. Elsewhere over the ocean, the Allied continued their ongoing air campaigns against both Iceland and the Azores. The US Navy focused upon that large island at the top of the North Atlantic. These were far larger than the French activity around Barbados and St. Lucia. The Soviets couldn’t get a track on the carriers involved and had what aircraft weren’t destroyed on the ground whittled down when trying to find them. A successful submarine attack hit several large escorts, but the USS Nimitz and the USS Saratoga eluded efforts to put holes in them. Losses on Iceland to naval aircraft and also the fighters there were many. Furthermore, the Soviets were temporarily unable to fly transport aircraft through Iceland. This was a major stop on the air route across to North America. The danger to defenceless air-freighters and airliners – carrying stores and men – going both ways was immense and so Iceland’s ability as a stopover and also as a safe travel lane was greatly limited. Lajes Field in the Azores was another part of that air-route. The RAF returned to bomb this airbase in March like they had done in February too. Their attacks were less significant yet nothing to be scoffed at. Soviet aircraft on the ground were targeted and the Tornados even managed to get a pair of air-to-air kills where the RAF shot down helpless transports using Sidewinders at close-range. The RAF wanted those Tornados over mainland Europe yet while flying from Portugal – using Madeira for divert purposes – they were influencing the overall war effort more in doing this. There remained Allied plan to retake the Azores and the Portuguese were eager to get on with it capturing their sovereign soil. Ongoing military activity over Western Europe put that on hold for the time being though. The Portuguese were displeased yet not fuming and acting out. They needed the British to do much of the heavy-lifting in getting their liberating troops into the Azores and to help collapse Soviet control with air & naval support and would have to wait. That was because, alongside both Ireland and Spain, Britain was fighting alongside the EDA on mainland Europe in one hell of an ongoing war taking place there. Another great update James G as always. |
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Post by eurowatch on Dec 13, 2018 22:50:38 GMT
Chapter Twenty–Two – Capture & Collapse(311)March 1985: The Eastern Caribbean and the North Atlantic Western Europe was too at war with the Soviet Union and those countries aligned with it. The EDA, eight countries of which seven were former NATO members, was fighting the same nations as the Allies – many of them once with NATO pre-war too – also were. There were talks underway for a formal, meaningful alliance between the two blocs but there were difficulties involved with that. This made the EDA and the Allies co-belligerents in legal terms. Physical separation meant that the politics aside, there was only some immediate cooperation in the war between the majority of the two blocs apart from on mainland Europe with the arrival of troops from several Allied countries to fight there alongside the EDA. However, between each bloc, there was the North Atlantic where the two were both fighting the Soviets. Early cooperation and joint efforts at sea fell back upon NATO understandings in many instances through there had been some quiet agreements made before the EDA entered the war where both Britain and Spain had (with American knowledge) discussed some things with France in the final stages of that country’s collision course with the Soviets. In the eastern Caribbean, the French acted there generally alone though. Their defence attaché in New York was busy in helping to smooth over many issues before afterwards the military heads of France and the United States used their own people to establish better liaisons. An absence of any form of friendly fire was something that each wanted to achieve. French aircraft made attacks against Barbados and St. Lucia. They used Mirage-IIIs for fighter cover to protect several nights of bomb runs made by Mirage F-1s against Soviet military bases on those two islands. A strong French military commitment to the Caribbean had been made late last year when Cuba gobbled up all of those defenceless independent island nations and this included troops and naval vessels too. There was a need across in Europe for the military assets deployed here but over on this side of the ocean they were for now. Soviet Naval Aviation aircraft had already been attacked before when on land and faced increasing losses when flying out over the ocean all at Allied hands. Now, instead of as was the case earlier when the island’s air facilities were attacked from distant American bases, the French had the aircraft in-theatre to attack them from close-range. Repeated strikes were made. The French took losses but these weren’t crippling. What the Soviets lost in terms of aircraft were though. Naval air operations out over the North Atlantic came to a close. Orders came for there to be a dispersion of the remaining Backfires, Badgers, Bears and Blinders to save them. They moved to Grenada and St. Vincent away to the south as well as up to Antigua in the north. These kept them from being destroyed on the ground yet the dispersion meant that they would be ineffective in their role for some time due to all of the disruption to their ground support. Then Antigua was hit by the Americans not long after many of these aircraft arrived. F-111s flying from Puerto Rico hit Coolidge Airport in a heavy strike. French air cover hadn’t been provided yet at the same time, the French were active above St. Lucia were the Cubans had fighters and thus secured the flank for the US Air Force when it hit Antigua, leaving them only have to deal with what fewer Soviet fighters there were. Invasion fears spread through the eastern Caribbean in response. Cuba held all of those islands with few of their own troops. Local forces were present with their ‘gunpoint governments’ supplying them for security duty around all of the little people’s republics in the region. Apart from Grenada, none of those regimes were friends of Cuba. They were all forced collaborators: Allied propaganda did tell a different story yet that was the fact on the ground. With none of their own men available, the Soviets demanded that Cuba sent more men to the islands to protect them from a French invasion, maybe even a joint French-US amphibious assault, to take all of those harbours and airports which allowed the war in North America to go on. Cuba had the troops free – only reservists though – yet wavered over sending them. Meanwhile, the French began to make their own moves. They didn’t have enough forces in the region to launch a major assault but had the ships, aircraft and commando units to conduct raiding operations. St. Lucia was where they focused, the closest island to Martinique. The activity there was small yet effective. Local troops from the island did poorly in combat – only when the French targeted them and that was only by accident – before starting to desert. Moscow raged at Havana and the Castros bowed to the pressure. They sent extra troops to the island as well as a squadron of fighters. The numbers weren’t that large yet it only added to the massive overextension on the part of Cuba to this war. Meanwhile, the French kept up the pressure as they threatened capture of St. Lucia. American eyes were elsewhere in the region. Unable to strike at the current time yet with a significant introduction of forces to the region, they were getting ready to do so when they were finally ready. Cooperation agreements on that matter remained difficult though. Months of the Americans and the Allies fighting ‘alone’ weren’t going to be forgotten in an instant. French and EDA naval activity was concentrated in both the Baltic Exits as well as the Mediterranean too. There was some EDA maritime activity through the North Atlantic though. Some French, Belgian and Dutch ships and submarines were active out in the open ocean. There were no major trans-Atlantic convoys to protect as would have been the case had this been a NATO-Soviet conflict yet the Allied nations on both sides of the North Atlantic were still sending ships each way. The Soviets had spent the war trying to interfere with that using aircraft and submarines. In addition, they themselves were trying to send ships across the ocean. Allied military activity through the past several months especially had put an end to the majority of that. Regardless, where possible, EDA military activity supported the Allies and that was done the other way too in acting against the common enemy. Information on ships, submarines and aircraft in Soviet service if located by either the Allies or the EDA was fast shared with the other. There were a few joint attacks made too. All of those years spent training together when in NATO might have been forgotten in political drama, yet officers and seamen with each new bloc worked together as if they were part of that former lone bloc. Each side saved the other’s bacon at times as well. Fuel and consumable supplies were exchanged when at sea and then in port too: Bermuda saw a Dutch frigate make a stop there and Spanish naval vessels transited through the French naval station at Brest. British-EDA naval cooperation closer to the mainland of Europe put all of that to shame though where they worked together extensively. Opposition to this came from many quarters in both blocs. Voices in the United States and Norway were the loudest against aspects of this cooperation yet there were some in Western Europe who were also extremely opposed to what was going on. Common sense wasn’t always followed in such criticism yet there remained many legitimate issues on this as well. Elsewhere over the ocean, the Allied continued their ongoing air campaigns against both Iceland and the Azores. The US Navy focused upon that large island at the top of the North Atlantic. These were far larger than the French activity around Barbados and St. Lucia. The Soviets couldn’t get a track on the carriers involved and had what aircraft weren’t destroyed on the ground whittled down when trying to find them. A successful submarine attack hit several large escorts, but the USS Nimitz and the USS Saratoga eluded efforts to put holes in them. Losses on Iceland to naval aircraft and also the fighters there were many. Furthermore, the Soviets were temporarily unable to fly transport aircraft through Iceland. This was a major stop on the air route across to North America. The danger to defenceless air-freighters and airliners – carrying stores and men – going both ways was immense and so Iceland’s ability as a stopover and also as a safe travel lane was greatly limited. Lajes Field in the Azores was another part of that air-route. The RAF returned to bomb this airbase in March like they had done in February too. Their attacks were less significant yet nothing to be scoffed at. Soviet aircraft on the ground were targeted and the Tornados even managed to get a pair of air-to-air kills where the RAF shot down helpless transports using Sidewinders at close-range. The RAF wanted those Tornados over mainland Europe yet while flying from Portugal – using Madeira for divert purposes – they were influencing the overall war effort more in doing this. There remained Allied plan to retake the Azores and the Portuguese were eager to get on with it capturing their sovereign soil. Ongoing military activity over Western Europe put that on hold for the time being though. The Portuguese were displeased yet not fuming and acting out. They needed the British to do much of the heavy-lifting in getting their liberating troops into the Azores and to help collapse Soviet control with air & naval support and would have to wait. That was because, alongside both Ireland and Spain, Britain was fighting alongside the EDA on mainland Europe in one hell of an ongoing war taking place there. So the Soviets are now fighting their equivalant of the Battle of The Bulge, their last chance at negiating peace terms from a posistion of strenght. Now, the end of the war is in sight. One last push is all that remains. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Dec 14, 2018 20:45:49 GMT
Chapter Twenty–Two – Capture & Collapse(311)March 1985: The Eastern Caribbean and the North Atlantic Western Europe was too at war with the Soviet Union and those countries aligned with it. The EDA, eight countries of which seven were former NATO members, was fighting the same nations as the Allies – many of them once with NATO pre-war too – also were. There were talks underway for a formal, meaningful alliance between the two blocs but there were difficulties involved with that. This made the EDA and the Allies co-belligerents in legal terms. Physical separation meant that the politics aside, there was only some immediate cooperation in the war between the majority of the two blocs apart from on mainland Europe with the arrival of troops from several Allied countries to fight there alongside the EDA. However, between each bloc, there was the North Atlantic where the two were both fighting the Soviets. Early cooperation and joint efforts at sea fell back upon NATO understandings in many instances through there had been some quiet agreements made before the EDA entered the war where both Britain and Spain had (with American knowledge) discussed some things with France in the final stages of that country’s collision course with the Soviets. In the eastern Caribbean, the French acted there generally alone though. Their defence attaché in New York was busy in helping to smooth over many issues before afterwards the military heads of France and the United States used their own people to establish better liaisons. An absence of any form of friendly fire was something that each wanted to achieve. French aircraft made attacks against Barbados and St. Lucia. They used Mirage-IIIs for fighter cover to protect several nights of bomb runs made by Mirage F-1s against Soviet military bases on those two islands. A strong French military commitment to the Caribbean had been made late last year when Cuba gobbled up all of those defenceless independent island nations and this included troops and naval vessels too. There was a need across in Europe for the military assets deployed here but over on this side of the ocean they were for now. Soviet Naval Aviation aircraft had already been attacked before when on land and faced increasing losses when flying out over the ocean all at Allied hands. Now, instead of as was the case earlier when the island’s air facilities were attacked from distant American bases, the French had the aircraft in-theatre to attack them from close-range. Repeated strikes were made. The French took losses but these weren’t crippling. What the Soviets lost in terms of aircraft were though. Naval air operations out over the North Atlantic came to a close. Orders came for there to be a dispersion of the remaining Backfires, Badgers, Bears and Blinders to save them. They moved to Grenada and St. Vincent away to the south as well as up to Antigua in the north. These kept them from being destroyed on the ground yet the dispersion meant that they would be ineffective in their role for some time due to all of the disruption to their ground support. Then Antigua was hit by the Americans not long after many of these aircraft arrived. F-111s flying from Puerto Rico hit Coolidge Airport in a heavy strike. French air cover hadn’t been provided yet at the same time, the French were active above St. Lucia were the Cubans had fighters and thus secured the flank for the US Air Force when it hit Antigua, leaving them only have to deal with what fewer Soviet fighters there were. Invasion fears spread through the eastern Caribbean in response. Cuba held all of those islands with few of their own troops. Local forces were present with their ‘gunpoint governments’ supplying them for security duty around all of the little people’s republics in the region. Apart from Grenada, none of those regimes were friends of Cuba. They were all forced collaborators: Allied propaganda did tell a different story yet that was the fact on the ground. With none of their own men available, the Soviets demanded that Cuba sent more men to the islands to protect them from a French invasion, maybe even a joint French-US amphibious assault, to take all of those harbours and airports which allowed the war in North America to go on. Cuba had the troops free – only reservists though – yet wavered over sending them. Meanwhile, the French began to make their own moves. They didn’t have enough forces in the region to launch a major assault but had the ships, aircraft and commando units to conduct raiding operations. St. Lucia was where they focused, the closest island to Martinique. The activity there was small yet effective. Local troops from the island did poorly in combat – only when the French targeted them and that was only by accident – before starting to desert. Moscow raged at Havana and the Castros bowed to the pressure. They sent extra troops to the island as well as a squadron of fighters. The numbers weren’t that large yet it only added to the massive overextension on the part of Cuba to this war. Meanwhile, the French kept up the pressure as they threatened capture of St. Lucia. American eyes were elsewhere in the region. Unable to strike at the current time yet with a significant introduction of forces to the region, they were getting ready to do so when they were finally ready. Cooperation agreements on that matter remained difficult though. Months of the Americans and the Allies fighting ‘alone’ weren’t going to be forgotten in an instant. French and EDA naval activity was concentrated in both the Baltic Exits as well as the Mediterranean too. There was some EDA maritime activity through the North Atlantic though. Some French, Belgian and Dutch ships and submarines were active out in the open ocean. There were no major trans-Atlantic convoys to protect as would have been the case had this been a NATO-Soviet conflict yet the Allied nations on both sides of the North Atlantic were still sending ships each way. The Soviets had spent the war trying to interfere with that using aircraft and submarines. In addition, they themselves were trying to send ships across the ocean. Allied military activity through the past several months especially had put an end to the majority of that. Regardless, where possible, EDA military activity supported the Allies and that was done the other way too in acting against the common enemy. Information on ships, submarines and aircraft in Soviet service if located by either the Allies or the EDA was fast shared with the other. There were a few joint attacks made too. All of those years spent training together when in NATO might have been forgotten in political drama, yet officers and seamen with each new bloc worked together as if they were part of that former lone bloc. Each side saved the other’s bacon at times as well. Fuel and consumable supplies were exchanged when at sea and then in port too: Bermuda saw a Dutch frigate make a stop there and Spanish naval vessels transited through the French naval station at Brest. British-EDA naval cooperation closer to the mainland of Europe put all of that to shame though where they worked together extensively. Opposition to this came from many quarters in both blocs. Voices in the United States and Norway were the loudest against aspects of this cooperation yet there were some in Western Europe who were also extremely opposed to what was going on. Common sense wasn’t always followed in such criticism yet there remained many legitimate issues on this as well. Elsewhere over the ocean, the Allied continued their ongoing air campaigns against both Iceland and the Azores. The US Navy focused upon that large island at the top of the North Atlantic. These were far larger than the French activity around Barbados and St. Lucia. The Soviets couldn’t get a track on the carriers involved and had what aircraft weren’t destroyed on the ground whittled down when trying to find them. A successful submarine attack hit several large escorts, but the USS Nimitz and the USS Saratoga eluded efforts to put holes in them. Losses on Iceland to naval aircraft and also the fighters there were many. Furthermore, the Soviets were temporarily unable to fly transport aircraft through Iceland. This was a major stop on the air route across to North America. The danger to defenceless air-freighters and airliners – carrying stores and men – going both ways was immense and so Iceland’s ability as a stopover and also as a safe travel lane was greatly limited. Lajes Field in the Azores was another part of that air-route. The RAF returned to bomb this airbase in March like they had done in February too. Their attacks were less significant yet nothing to be scoffed at. Soviet aircraft on the ground were targeted and the Tornados even managed to get a pair of air-to-air kills where the RAF shot down helpless transports using Sidewinders at close-range. The RAF wanted those Tornados over mainland Europe yet while flying from Portugal – using Madeira for divert purposes – they were influencing the overall war effort more in doing this. There remained Allied plan to retake the Azores and the Portuguese were eager to get on with it capturing their sovereign soil. Ongoing military activity over Western Europe put that on hold for the time being though. The Portuguese were displeased yet not fuming and acting out. They needed the British to do much of the heavy-lifting in getting their liberating troops into the Azores and to help collapse Soviet control with air & naval support and would have to wait. That was because, alongside both Ireland and Spain, Britain was fighting alongside the EDA on mainland Europe in one hell of an ongoing war taking place there. Another great update James G as always. Thank you. More, many more, updates to come between now and the New Year. So the Soviets are now fighting their equivalant of the Battle of The Bulge, their last chance at negiating peace terms from a posistion of strenght. Now, the end of the war is in sight. One last push is all that remains. Last chances are gone and a last push is coming. That position of strength is about to be thrown away. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Dec 14, 2018 20:47:57 GMT
(312)
Early March 1985: Europe
Strong condemnation in Ireland came when the comment was made that the ‘West Brits were off to fight for their English housemasters’. Irish opposition politicians and also non-parliamentary figures were criticised for their characterisation of Defence Force elements joining the British Army and heading off to war on Continental Europe in such terms. Those were the Republic’s soldiers, the response came, and patriotic Irishmen going off to fight to defend the threat to Europe and thus Ireland too. Those against the deployment were the same who had objected in the strongest of terms beforehand when the Defence Forces sent the same men to England last year for training. The argument put forth was that Ireland should send its men to the United States to fight there or, if not, then to Canada, Norway, Portugal or Spain: anywhere but mainland Britain. Now, the 6th Infantry Brigade was being sent off to war in West Germany while an integral part of the British deployment to the Continent. This reignited all that anger which stretched back to Ireland’s decision to join the war and then how tied the country, let alone its small military forces, was with Britain at the moment. The British were the enemy to such people; the Soviets were just some foreigners which their sell-out government was supporting the British in fighting for no good reason. The Irish soldiers who moved from Salisbury Plain first to Southampton and then across the Channel to Cherbourg were meant to be isolated from such things for the good of morale. That was impossible to do though. They knew what was being said at home by the loudest critics and knew too that there was much unsaid unease throughout their nation at not just what they had been doing but also the wider war. These men had a job to do though and a war to fight. All told, there were almost seven thousand of them attached directly to the 6th Brigade as well as independent supporting units. Ships from Ireland, Britain and France transported them across to Cherbourg and then they moved across the width of France and into West Germany. Ireland was sending its fighting men to war and, arguments at home aside about subservience to former/current colonial masters, it was a war which many people back home feared that they wouldn’t be coming home alive from.
Spanish troops moved into France too, aiming to link up with the British and the Irish going into West Germany. There had been other fights which Spain had sent its soldiers to take place in during this war. There remined some of them up in Norway and there had been those engagements both on Tenerife and at Ceuta. The majority of the Spanish Army had not seen action though. When the British had considered going to North America in-strength, so too had the Spanish. Madrid was keen to see the Soviets fought. Now that time had come. Their 1st Armoured & 3rd Infantry Divisions crossed through France via highways and rail-lines held open for their use while at the same time there was much air and sea movements too in support. As the Irish were, the Spanish were part of the British Second Army. This was a multi-corps command formed of six British divisions as well as many attachments. It entered the Continent through the Low Countries and France, avoiding entry ports direct into either West Germany and Denmark due to the ongoing situation in both latter countries. The deployment had been long-planned yet putting all that into practise was no easy feat. There was much help from the EDA in this though. These Allied troops would be fighting as a co-belligerent with the armies of Western Europe and were needed to assist them. There were logistical hiccups yet generally it went as planned. Thankfully, the movement of the large numbers of men, plus everything they brought with them to fight, was little-contested. There was a Soviet cruise missile attack on Calais during the deployment and also a submarine active off Ostend. Overall though, there was so much more that the Soviet could have done – were expected to have done too – to interfere. Defensive measures were in-place with the EDA and the Allies working together to cover this from Soviet action. However, the Soviets were busy elsewhere. They’d regret not interfering either on the Continental side of the deployment or elsewhere back in Britain. In recent months, since the they had gone into Sweden and combined with the losses inflicted elsewhere in the world with their many wars, the Soviet Union had been unable to strike against Britain with anywhere near as much fury as they had done previously. Their available strike forces were committed elsewhere. Many more British troops armed and in uniform were staying at home on internal security duties yet the last Soviet commando attack against Britain was on January 28th. Throughout the Low Countries and France, EDA security forces were everywhere and while they too fought than once the shooting war with the Soviets started at the end of February, there were very few attacks made against the rear areas here as well.
Scandinavia and Central Europe were where the fighting was taking place and where the Soviets were putting what available forces they had into. As March began, the war which started with EDA attacks against the Soviets had spread fast and continued to do so. Everyone in Western Europe was waiting for the Soviet Army to start pouring over the Inner-German Border either with or without an accompanying attack using weapons of mass destruction.
Up in the very southern reaches of Sweden, the Soviet lodgement there refused to be overcome. On land, in the air and in the nearby sea, Soviet and EDA forces continued to clash. The EDA wanted to eliminate that lodgement had had believed that they could with haste yet the Soviets held on. They were dug-in and wouldn’t be budged. French and Swedish troops continued their attacks though the West Germans weren’t involved in that. They had good troops there, elite Fallschirmjager and Gebirgsjager (paratroopers and mountain infantry), yet orders from Bonn kept them on defensive duties around the supply lines. That wouldn’t last forever though. The Danes had realised by now that the silence from their island of Bornholm – located out in the middle of the Baltic – wasn’t a communications issue but the Soviets had taken it and ended all resistance. Elsewhere across their country, they and the Italians (light troops of brigade-strength) engaged Soviet raiders through larger islands of the country who came in by air and sea. The main fighting wasn’t on land though but with engagements in the sky and on the water. Denmark was strongly attacked and the government feared that the Soviets would once again use nuclear weapons like they had previously done. An invasion was prepared for yet considered unlikely given the available forces that the Soviets had to hand. There were French troops in Demark, sent here beforehand. However, at the beginning of the month yet they moved down into Schleswig-Holstein, across into West Germany soon enough and towards the East German frontier. That was where any invasion of Denmark was going to come from and they joined more Danish soldiers there as well.
As most of West Germany was, Schleswig-Holstein was a battlefield of war. Soviet tanks had yet to begin pouring westwards yet throughout the country, there were armed military engagements taking place. The first few Soviet air strikes following the EDA attack elsewhere only led to counterstrikes against both East Germany and Czechoslovakia were they came from and then counter-counterstrikes. Bombs and missiles hit West Germany. Along the Iron Curtain there were clashes between light units were patrols ran into infiltration attempts; cross-frontier shelling and then counter-shelling was ongoing as well. Deeper inside the country, away from the direct military actions, Soviet attempts to cause chaos were ongoing. There had been murders and kidnappings of public figures as well as bombings and shooting incidents. The West Germans were meant to be prepared for this. They were still caught by the intensity of it and some remarkable failures occurred. The French believed that previous efforts to detain traitors and expel Soviet nationals before the war hadn’t been as effective as Bonn had claimed due to the influence that the KGB and the Stasi had over certain sections of the country’s security forces. The Inner-German Border was still more important than everything else though. It was behind there that the EDA lined-up its forces ready to oppose an invasion. Belgium and the Netherlands had deployed their armies into the country, following behind the last of the French. Where there was that low-level ground combat, the massed EDA armies stood back from this and let specialist forces take part in that. In the skies above, aircraft from the Low Countries – deployed ahead of their troops – joined with those of France in making those air attacks going eastwards. Bonn was refusing to allow the Luftwaffe to fly offensive missions, only defensive ones. Arguments back and forth between the West Germans and their EDA partners were ongoing on this matter. They would be resolved soon enough though.
Down in Austria, the country struggled immensely to maintain its neutrality and stay out of the Euro-Soviet War. This wasn’t something that was going to be decided in Vienna though. Soviet intelligence operations watched the activities of the EDA – France and Italy were doing this – as the two of them sought to, in the eyes of the KGB, ‘capture’ Austria and add it to their military bloc. There were EDA troops on Austria’s borders and their intelligence operatives inside the country. Austria’s military was mobilised but from the east and the west, there were other armies poised to move in to fight on their soil too. A similar situation in the eyes of the Soviet Union was going on with Yugoslavia as well. A war which the country was playing no active role in was soon to bring the country to its knees and maybe even cause its collapse. Yugoslavia’s international trade was at a standstill and there was no more money from the West. The Soviets watched as the Italians sent a diplomatic team to Belgrade to talk with the Yugoslavian Government. A bomb went off before that meeting could take place, killing the majority of the senior Italian diplomats. Yugoslavia reacted angrily to this violation of its sovereignty. Relations with the Soviets had gone sour since the wider war had started and there had come all that use of Yugoslavia as a proxy for Soviet disguised shipping. Some elements of the Yugoslavian regime had enriched themselves; others hadn’t and had had no idea what was happening until Allied naval activity put a stop to the majority of this. When the money stopped coming from Western Europe to keep the economy afloat, job losses were made and prices for basic necessities were raised. Like Austria, Yugoslavia wanted no part of the war between the Soviets and the EDA like it had stayed out of the conflict between the Soviets and the Allies too. They were soon to be in this whether they wanted to or not.
During the last two days of February and the first six days of March, this quasi-war went on… until it became a real war.
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary all mobilised their armed forces fully in response to the beginning of the Euro-Soviet War. This was a process held back through all the many months that they had been engaged in warfare against the Allies due to the economic and domestic problems which would come by doing so. Now things were different though. Hungary was the only one of the four which hadn’t sent troops abroad to North America nor had any outside of their borders; the other three already had sent regular forces to the Western Hemisphere (lone divisions or divisional-sized equivalents) and there were too Czechoslovak and East German forces both on the ground in Poland (each with two more pre-war divisions). Such military commitments – which came with combat aircraft and also many elite units for those foreign deployments when it come to ground forces – meant that reserves returned to uniform with full mobilisation was needed. The Bulgarians and Hungarians managed well with their mobilisations; the Czechoslovaks and East Germans had difficulties. Those involved men not turning up and also protests made. With the Soviets more than a little interested in these events, Prague and East Berlin cracked down hard themselves. The two regimes had those troops in Poland due to the last time a Warsaw Pact member had seen ‘troubles’ and had no wish for their allies in Moscow to take the decision to do the same to them. In normal circumstances such a fear might have been irrational when the protests were as small as they were yet these weren’t normal times at all. The strong responses were only met with a strong reaction. Protests weren’t nipped in the bud. The regimes of Husak and Honecker hadn’t expected that. They knew that propaganda broadcasts from Western Europe for many long months had been heard across the nation and they had believed that those wouldn’t set off opposition. That was partially true: such things where news from outside which contradicted the official government line wouldn’t have set off what occurred. It was a wider issue though. The hardships of war with restrictions on the supply of basic goods had built up anger. Now that the war really had come home, that combined with everything else to bring these about. Neither country was on the verge of revolt or collapse yet the situation wasn’t good at all.
This all occurred while the Soviet Army reinforced their forward-deployed forces in the Warsaw Pact countries. On paper, they doubled their strength by the scale of the deployment. Field armies and air armies moved forward, some of them those withdrawn back during the Kennedy-Andropov agreements on force reductions. The then American president’s critics had said that the Soviets would do this with ease and that the American pull-out he started couldn’t easily be reversed. Those had been prophetic warnings indeed. Streaming across Poland and into the three other Warsaw Pact nations at the top end of Eastern Europe came convoys of Soviet forces. Freight trains and trucks rolled westwards, all to link-up with those already based in forward roles. The Soviets moved their troops into attack positions, not defensive ones. However, many of the reinforcing units were significantly understrength. The Soviets had had their own mobilisation issues. These hadn’t been protests but absenteeism where the call to uniform hadn’t been answered. Earlier mobilisations had seen only small numbers of missing soldiers. With those who refused to turn out, they suffered from reprisals. The numbers this time were far greater. The Soviet state had the ability to still arrest and punish all of those who effectively deserted their army and betrayed their country by not showing up when they were meant to, yet in Moscow there wasn’t the will to do so.
It was one of many ongoing problems that the Soviet regime had and one not currently being addressed when it really should have been.
Across the Soviet Government, there was utter determination to finish this war that France and the EDA had started with them. The country had been attacked without warning on the orders of Mitterrand. This was a real first strike too, not one made up as had been the case with how the war was supposed to have started with the Allies. The Defence Council, the Politburo, the intelligence services and the military were all keen on hitting back and emerging victorious. Of that there was no dissent. It was the how that was the problem on that though, one which was causing delays in Moscow when it came to getting on with it all, as well as why this had all happened.
Vorotnikov and the Defence Council were the ones who were making all of the important decisions when it came to the many wars which the nation was fighting. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean that the other organs of the state were powerless and would just rubber-stamp this. The Politburo were the ones who gave authorisation to all that the Defence Council did while below them everyone else carried out instructions. The layers of government went sideways as well as downwards. There were all sorts of complicated alliances between different parts of the government. Personalities mattered and relationships changed. Historical difficulties between separate organisations were important too. It was all a maze when looked at from outside, yet also increasingly from within especially since last October when Vorotnikov had replaced the deceased Ustinov. Vorotnikov had enemies since the moment he was appointed leader. He was an outsider, brought in fast to take over. There were those who were passed over and others who didn’t get what they wanted from him once he was in power. The Politburo was headed by him but he was spending little time with his comrades. The war was important, no one would disagree with that, yet so too was everything else that was going on. He made more enemies. The orders for all those deaths to occur among military personnel and then spooks too for dubious war-related issues upset those also within each. Complaints were made to the Politburo on this. They had signed-off on that but they hadn’t understood how widespread this would be. None liked what they discovered.
The Politburo was even more displeased when they discovered why exactly the country was at war with Western Europe. In the words of one of them, they were fighting a continent which the plan had been to capture via diplomatic means instead of have to conquer in war all because of ‘a bastard child of an amorous Frenchman!’ Far worse things that that one particular kidnapping had been approved by the Politburo – other children had been taken for political purposes; babies murdered in bombings and nuclear attacks – but this was something different. They hadn’t been told about this. Some of them actually understood Mitterrand’s motivation now where their thought train ran that he had the EDA fight this war over that child. Where was the missing girl? The KGB chief told them the grim news on that matter. She was dead after accidentally dying during her kidnap and the body buried secretly & securely to avoid her being discovered. This maddened members of the nation’s ruling committee. They saw it all as an avoidable chain of events and – catching on fast to the mood – the KGB chief blamed Vorotnikov himself for this all: it was actually his fault but he wasn’t about to admit that, was he? The thinking on the part of the Politburo remained that their war with the United States and the Allies was still a legitimate one. The China War was now being seen as a major mistake and all the fault of Ustinov. Now Vorotnikov had given them this foolish war with Western Europe.
Gromyko emerged to lead what was beginning to be an opposition to Vorotnikov. Nothing to act openly against him was yet being spoken of and the opposition wasn’t plotting and scheming. That was only yet it must be said. There was for now just an alignment of thinking. It was the foreign minister who was moving things along now though when it came to how the Politburo coerced Vorotnikov and the Defence Council to act when it came to the Euro-Soviet War. They voted on this and the Defence Council followed. It wouldn’t be stopped but it would be a limited conflict in terms of goals and conduct. Nuclear weapons wouldn’t be used. West Germany was full of French nuclear weapons pointed eastwards, the French had several strategic missile submarines at sea and the KGB was saying that the Italians either was already or nearly on its way to having a viable (but very small) nuclear weapons capability. Chemical weapons were on the table though: where they had failed to work in North America, it was decided that they would be effective in Western Europe. This brought up the issue of troops from the Allies soon to be fought alongside EDA forces and – in a compromise which was nothing but an utter shambles when it came down to it – the Soviets decided to not use them against Allied troops no matter what yet attack the Western Europeans with them. The war would be fought on foreign territory in West Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia with the latter two countries used as a springboard to attack Italy and their armies forces to stand aside by direct threats made to their governments to fight them too otherwise.
That ‘real’ war, when the troops and tanks went forward, would begin at first light on March 7th. Everything was supposed to go to plan with this and the Euro-Soviet War would be won by a limited conflict too. Soviet forces were only going so far west, not all the way. They would defeat the EDA, and any Allied forces engaged too, close to the Iron Curtain and therefore a diplomatic solution was supposed to fast come. No one in power within the Soviet (fracturing) leadership considered the fact that they were making the same mistakes made in North America and China all over again.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Dec 14, 2018 20:52:45 GMT
The update above all occurs before the Mexico Massacre. The results are part of the reason where the USSR doesn't react to the US nuclear attack there. Over the next few days, there will be several updates with the Euro-Soviet War stretching continent-wide. This map will show alliances (not overrun areas) once it begins: allies and territories of France and Italy outside the EDA are shown in light green. The Allies are in Blue, Moscow's bloc is in red and China - all alone - is on purple. {click on image to enlarge}  |
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Post by eurowatch on Dec 14, 2018 21:26:30 GMT
(312)Early March 1985: Europe Strong condemnation in Ireland came when the comment was made that the ‘West Brits were off to fight for their English housemasters’. Irish opposition politicians and also non-parliamentary figures were criticised for their characterisation of Defence Force elements joining the British Army and heading off to war on Continental Europe in such terms. Those were the Republic’s soldiers, the response came, and patriotic Irishmen going off to fight to defend the threat to Europe and thus Ireland too. Those against the deployment were the same who had objected in the strongest of terms beforehand when the Defence Forces sent the same men to England last year for training. The argument put forth was that Ireland should send its men to the United States to fight there or, if not, then to Canada, Norway, Portugal or Spain: anywhere but mainland Britain. Now, the 6th Infantry Brigade was being sent off to war in West Germany while an integral part of the British deployment to the Continent. This reignited all that anger which stretched back to Ireland’s decision to join the war and then how tied the country, let alone its small military forces, was with Britain at the moment. The British were the enemy to such people; the Soviets were just some foreigners which their sell-out government was supporting the British in fighting for no good reason. The Irish soldiers who moved from Salisbury Plain first to Southampton and then across the Channel to Cherbourg were meant to be isolated from such things for the good of morale. That was impossible to do though. They knew what was being said at home by the loudest critics and knew too that there was much unsaid unease throughout their nation at not just what they had been doing but also the wider war. These men had a job to do though and a war to fight. All told, there were almost seven thousand of them attached directly to the 6th Brigade as well as independent supporting units. Ships from Ireland, Britain and France transported them across to Cherbourg and then they moved across the width of France and into West Germany. Ireland was sending its fighting men to war and, arguments at home aside about subservience to former/current colonial masters, it was a war which many people back home feared that they wouldn’t be coming home alive from. Spanish troops moved into France too, aiming to link up with the British and the Irish going into West Germany. There had been other fights which Spain had sent its soldiers to take place in during this war. There remined some of them up in Norway and there had been those engagements both on Tenerife and at Ceuta. The majority of the Spanish Army had not seen action though. When the British had considered going to North America in-strength, so too had the Spanish. Madrid was keen to see the Soviets fought. Now that time had come. Their 1st Armoured & 3rd Infantry Divisions crossed through France via highways and rail-lines held open for their use while at the same time there was much air and sea movements too in support. As the Irish were, the Spanish were part of the British Second Army. This was a multi-corps command formed of six British divisions as well as many attachments. It entered the Continent through the Low Countries and France, avoiding entry ports direct into either West Germany and Denmark due to the ongoing situation in both latter countries. The deployment had been long-planned yet putting all that into practise was no easy feat. There was much help from the EDA in this though. These Allied troops would be fighting as a co-belligerent with the armies of Western Europe and were needed to assist them. There were logistical hiccups yet generally it went as planned. Thankfully, the movement of the large numbers of men, plus everything they brought with them to fight, was little-contested. There was a Soviet cruise missile attack on Calais during the deployment and also a submarine active off Ostend. Overall though, there was so much more that the Soviet could have done – were expected to have done too – to interfere. Defensive measures were in-place with the EDA and the Allies working together to cover this from Soviet action. However, the Soviets were busy elsewhere. They’d regret not interfering either on the Continental side of the deployment or elsewhere back in Britain. In recent months, since the they had gone into Sweden and combined with the losses inflicted elsewhere in the world with their many wars, the Soviet Union had been unable to strike against Britain with anywhere near as much fury as they had done previously. Their available strike forces were committed elsewhere. Many more British troops armed and in uniform were staying at home on internal security duties yet the last Soviet commando attack against Britain was on January 28th. Throughout the Low Countries and France, EDA security forces were everywhere and while they too fought than once the shooting war with the Soviets started at the end of February, there were very few attacks made against the rear areas here as well. Scandinavia and Central Europe were where the fighting was taking place and where the Soviets were putting what available forces they had into. As March began, the war which started with EDA attacks against the Soviets had spread fast and continued to do so. Everyone in Western Europe was waiting for the Soviet Army to start pouring over the Inner-German Border either with or without an accompanying attack using weapons of mass destruction. Up in the very southern reaches of Sweden, the Soviet lodgement there refused to be overcome. On land, in the air and in the nearby sea, Soviet and EDA forces continued to clash. The EDA wanted to eliminate that lodgement had had believed that they could with haste yet the Soviets held on. They were dug-in and wouldn’t be budged. French and Swedish troops continued their attacks though the West Germans weren’t involved in that. They had good troops there, elite Fallschirmjager and Gebirgsjager (paratroopers and mountain infantry), yet orders from Bonn kept them on defensive duties around the supply lines. That wouldn’t last forever though. The Danes had realised by now that the silence from their island of Bornholm – located out in the middle of the Baltic – wasn’t a communications issue but the Soviets had taken it and ended all resistance. Elsewhere across their country, they and the Italians (light troops of brigade-strength) engaged Soviet raiders through larger islands of the country who came in by air and sea. The main fighting wasn’t on land though but with engagements in the sky and on the water. Denmark was strongly attacked and the government feared that the Soviets would once again use nuclear weapons like they had previously done. An invasion was prepared for yet considered unlikely given the available forces that the Soviets had to hand. There were French troops in Demark, sent here beforehand. However, at the beginning of the month yet they moved down into Schleswig-Holstein, across into West Germany soon enough and towards the East German frontier. That was where any invasion of Denmark was going to come from and they joined more Danish soldiers there as well. As most of West Germany was, Schleswig-Holstein was a battlefield of war. Soviet tanks had yet to begin pouring westwards yet throughout the country, there were armed military engagements taking place. The first few Soviet air strikes following the EDA attack elsewhere only led to counterstrikes against both East Germany and Czechoslovakia were they came from and then counter-counterstrikes. Bombs and missiles hit West Germany. Along the Iron Curtain there were clashes between light units were patrols ran into infiltration attempts; cross-frontier shelling and then counter-shelling was ongoing as well. Deeper inside the country, away from the direct military actions, Soviet attempts to cause chaos were ongoing. There had been murders and kidnappings of public figures as well as bombings and shooting incidents. The West Germans were meant to be prepared for this. They were still caught by the intensity of it and some remarkable failures occurred. The French believed that previous efforts to detain traitors and expel Soviet nationals before the war hadn’t been as effective as Bonn had claimed due to the influence that the KGB and the Stasi had over certain sections of the country’s security forces. The Inner-German Border was still more important than everything else though. It was behind there that the EDA lined-up its forces ready to oppose an invasion. Belgium and the Netherlands had deployed their armies into the country, following behind the last of the French. Where there was that low-level ground combat, the massed EDA armies stood back from this and let specialist forces take part in that. In the skies above, aircraft from the Low Countries – deployed ahead of their troops – joined with those of France in making those air attacks going eastwards. Bonn was refusing to allow the Luftwaffe to fly offensive missions, only defensive ones. Arguments back and forth between the West Germans and their EDA partners were ongoing on this matter. They would be resolved soon enough though. Down in Austria, the country struggled immensely to maintain its neutrality and stay out of the Euro-Soviet War. This wasn’t something that was going to be decided in Vienna though. Soviet intelligence operations watched the activities of the EDA – France and Italy were doing this – as the two of them sought to, in the eyes of the KGB, ‘capture’ Austria and add it to their military bloc. There were EDA troops on Austria’s borders and their intelligence operatives inside the country. Austria’s military was mobilised but from the east and the west, there were other armies poised to move in to fight on their soil too. A similar situation in the eyes of the Soviet Union was going on with Yugoslavia as well. A war which the country was playing no active role in was soon to bring the country to its knees and maybe even cause its collapse. Yugoslavia’s international trade was at a standstill and there was no more money from the West. The Soviets watched as the Italians sent a diplomatic team to Belgrade to talk with the Yugoslavian Government. A bomb went off before that meeting could take place, killing the majority of the senior Italian diplomats. Yugoslavia reacted angrily to this violation of its sovereignty. Relations with the Soviets had gone sour since the wider war had started and there had come all that use of Yugoslavia as a proxy for Soviet disguised shipping. Some elements of the Yugoslavian regime had enriched themselves; others hadn’t and had had no idea what was happening until Allied naval activity put a stop to the majority of this. When the money stopped coming from Western Europe to keep the economy afloat, job losses were made and prices for basic necessities were raised. Like Austria, Yugoslavia wanted no part of the war between the Soviets and the EDA like it had stayed out of the conflict between the Soviets and the Allies too. They were soon to be in this whether they wanted to or not. During the last two days of February and the first six days of March, this quasi-war went on… until it became a real war. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary all mobilised their armed forces fully in response to the beginning of the Euro-Soviet War. This was a process held back through all the many months that they had been engaged in warfare against the Allies due to the economic and domestic problems which would come by doing so. Now things were different though. Hungary was the only one of the four which hadn’t sent troops abroad to North America nor had any outside of their borders; the other three already had sent regular forces to the Western Hemisphere (lone divisions or divisional-sized equivalents) and there were too Czechoslovak and East German forces both on the ground in Poland (each with two more pre-war divisions). Such military commitments – which came with combat aircraft and also many elite units for those foreign deployments when it come to ground forces – meant that reserves returned to uniform with full mobilisation was needed. The Bulgarians and Hungarians managed well with their mobilisations; the Czechoslovaks and East Germans had difficulties. Those involved men not turning up and also protests made. With the Soviets more than a little interested in these events, Prague and East Berlin cracked down hard themselves. The two regimes had those troops in Poland due to the last time a Warsaw Pact member had seen ‘troubles’ and had no wish for their allies in Moscow to take the decision to do the same to them. In normal circumstances such a fear might have been irrational when the protests were as small as they were yet these weren’t normal times at all. The strong responses were only met with a strong reaction. Protests weren’t nipped in the bud. The regimes of Husak and Honecker hadn’t expected that. They knew that propaganda broadcasts from Western Europe for many long months had been heard across the nation and they had believed that those wouldn’t set off opposition. That was partially true: such things where news from outside which contradicted the official government line wouldn’t have set off what occurred. It was a wider issue though. The hardships of war with restrictions on the supply of basic goods had built up anger. Now that the war really had come home, that combined with everything else to bring these about. Neither country was on the verge of revolt or collapse yet the situation wasn’t good at all. This all occurred while the Soviet Army reinforced their forward-deployed forces in the Warsaw Pact countries. On paper, they doubled their strength by the scale of the deployment. Field armies and air armies moved forward, some of them those withdrawn back during the Kennedy-Andropov agreements on force reductions. The then American president’s critics had said that the Soviets would do this with ease and that the American pull-out he started couldn’t easily be reversed. Those had been prophetic warnings indeed. Streaming across Poland and into the three other Warsaw Pact nations at the top end of Eastern Europe came convoys of Soviet forces. Freight trains and trucks rolled westwards, all to link-up with those already based in forward roles. The Soviets moved their troops into attack positions, not defensive ones. However, many of the reinforcing units were significantly understrength. The Soviets had had their own mobilisation issues. These hadn’t been protests but absenteeism where the call to uniform hadn’t been answered. Earlier mobilisations had seen only small numbers of missing soldiers. With those who refused to turn out, they suffered from reprisals. The numbers this time were far greater. The Soviet state had the ability to still arrest and punish all of those who effectively deserted their army and betrayed their country by not showing up when they were meant to, yet in Moscow there wasn’t the will to do so. It was one of many ongoing problems that the Soviet regime had and one not currently being addressed when it really should have been. Across the Soviet Government, there was utter determination to finish this war that France and the EDA had started with them. The country had been attacked without warning on the orders of Mitterrand. This was a real first strike too, not one made up as had been the case with how the war was supposed to have started with the Allies. The Defence Council, the Politburo, the intelligence services and the military were all keen on hitting back and emerging victorious. Of that there was no dissent. It was the how that was the problem on that though, one which was causing delays in Moscow when it came to getting on with it all, as well as why this had all happened. Vorotnikov and the Defence Council were the ones who were making all of the important decisions when it came to the many wars which the nation was fighting. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean that the other organs of the state were powerless and would just rubber-stamp this. The Politburo were the ones who gave authorisation to all that the Defence Council did while below them everyone else carried out instructions. The layers of government went sideways as well as downwards. There were all sorts of complicated alliances between different parts of the government. Personalities mattered and relationships changed. Historical difficulties between separate organisations were important too. It was all a maze when looked at from outside, yet also increasingly from within especially since last October when Vorotnikov had replaced the deceased Ustinov. Vorotnikov had enemies since the moment he was appointed leader. He was an outsider, brought in fast to take over. There were those who were passed over and others who didn’t get what they wanted from him once he was in power. The Politburo was headed by him but he was spending little time with his comrades. The war was important, no one would disagree with that, yet so too was everything else that was going on. He made more enemies. The orders for all those deaths to occur among military personnel and then spooks too for dubious war-related issues upset those also within each. Complaints were made to the Politburo on this. They had signed-off on that but they hadn’t understood how widespread this would be. None liked what they discovered. The Politburo was even more displeased when they discovered why exactly the country was at war with Western Europe. In the words of one of them, they were fighting a continent which the plan had been to capture via diplomatic means instead of have to conquer in war all because of ‘a bastard child of an amorous Frenchman!’ Far worse things that that one particular kidnapping had been approved by the Politburo – other children had been taken for political purposes; babies murdered in bombings and nuclear attacks – but this was something different. They hadn’t been told about this. Some of them actually understood Mitterrand’s motivation now where their thought train ran that he had the EDA fight this war over that child. Where was the missing girl? The KGB chief told them the grim news on that matter. She was dead after accidentally dying during her kidnap and the body buried secretly & securely to avoid her being discovered. This maddened members of the nation’s ruling committee. They saw it all as an avoidable chain of events and – catching on fast to the mood – the KGB chief blamed Vorotnikov himself for this all: it was actually his fault but he wasn’t about to admit that, was he? The thinking on the part of the Politburo remained that their war with the United States and the Allies was still a legitimate one. The China War was now being seen as a major mistake and all the fault of Ustinov. Now Vorotnikov had given them this foolish war with Western Europe. Gromyko emerged to lead what was beginning to be an opposition to Vorotnikov. Nothing to act openly against him was yet being spoken of and the opposition wasn’t plotting and scheming. That was only yet it must be said. There was for now just an alignment of thinking. It was the foreign minister who was moving things along now though when it came to how the Politburo coerced Vorotnikov and the Defence Council to act when it came to the Euro-Soviet War. They voted on this and the Defence Council followed. It wouldn’t be stopped but it would be a limited conflict in terms of goals and conduct. Nuclear weapons wouldn’t be used. West Germany was full of French nuclear weapons pointed eastwards, the French had several strategic missile submarines at sea and the KGB was saying that the Italians either was already or nearly on its way to having a viable (but very small) nuclear weapons capability. Chemical weapons were on the table though: where they had failed to work in North America, it was decided that they would be effective in Western Europe. This brought up the issue of troops from the Allies soon to be fought alongside EDA forces and – in a compromise which was nothing but an utter shambles when it came down to it – the Soviets decided to not use them against Allied troops no matter what yet attack the Western Europeans with them. The war would be fought on foreign territory in West Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia with the latter two countries used as a springboard to attack Italy and their armies forces to stand aside by direct threats made to their governments to fight them too otherwise. That ‘real’ war, when the troops and tanks went forward, would begin at first light on March 7th. Everything was supposed to go to plan with this and the Euro-Soviet War would be won by a limited conflict too. Soviet forces were only going so far west, not all the way. They would defeat the EDA, and any Allied forces engaged too, close to the Iron Curtain and therefore a diplomatic solution was supposed to fast come. No one in power within the Soviet (fracturing) leadership considered the fact that they were making the same mistakes made in North America and China all over again. I have a feeling that soon the Soviets Will realise that Tito fucked Germany, he can take on a flesh lump in a fucking waistcoat. |
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Post by lukedalton on Dec 14, 2018 22:31:17 GMT
One definition of madness is to continuing doing the same thing hoping for a different result...and this seem the standard Modus Operandi for the URSS leaderships in the last 6 months; they have enlarged a conflict that were hard pressed to win when was only limited to North America.
They are basically doing a variant of the 'Seven days on the Rhine' plan developed in 1979, only without nuclear weapons and with limited use of the chemical arsenal (at least in term of target)...unfortunely it's a little too late as the crack in the communist system are now showing, both in the east european satellites and even in the URSS and frankly i doubt that the non soviet troops will have that great enthusiasm or Elan in their assault to the NATO/EDA position.
Jugoslavia is an important piece, the standard plan of our neighbourgh was to wage a guerrilla war against the invader as they know there were no possibility to hold the border, this mean that the understrenght WP force will face the italian defensive line and fortifications in the alps with the supplies lines under attack by jugoslavian partisan and regular forces...what can go wrong?
Basically, to reach and attack Italy they will first go through two neutrals and if with the WP at normal strenght this was not really a problem, in this situation this mean deplete already weakened forces, expecially without the possibility to use spesznat and paratroopers to launch behind the line attack and raid to eliminate the border defense before the assault.
The snip about Jugoslavia fate don't bode well for the Federation, well while this war will be destructive and will exacerbate the ethnic tension even earlier than OTL can also bring unity by giving to the population a common enemy, even the current economic problem can be placed at the feet of the Soviets...by using some skilled propaganda effort to deflect the blame. Naturally the soviet can try to use the problem between the ethnic component to make their job easier, maybe by supporting a 'sudden' coup by concerned members of the serbian leaderships and starting a civil war.
By the map another possible/future front is North Africa, with Algeria and Tunisia in the EDA camp and Lybia under the Soviet thumb and generally the not very good or at least very complicated relations that there were between this nation at the time, things can escalte, expecially if Moscow want to use Lybia to put pressure on the last oil supplier of Western Europe
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 14, 2018 23:06:16 GMT
The update above all occurs before the Mexico Massacre. The results are part of the reason where the USSR doesn't react to the US nuclear attack there. Over the next few days, there will be several updates with the Euro-Soviet War stretching continent-wide. This map will show alliances (not overrun areas) once it begins: allies and territories of France and Italy outside the EDA are shown in light green. The Allies are in Blue, Moscow's bloc is in red and China - all alone - is on purple. {click on image to enlarge} View AttachmentFirst, another great update James G. Second, why is Taiwan not part of any faction, they are involved in the China War. |
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Post by eurowatch on Dec 14, 2018 23:17:19 GMT
The update above all occurs before the Mexico Massacre. The results are part of the reason where the USSR doesn't react to the US nuclear attack there. Over the next few days, there will be several updates with the Euro-Soviet War stretching continent-wide. This map will show alliances (not overrun areas) once it begins: allies and territories of France and Italy outside the EDA are shown in light green. The Allies are in Blue, Moscow's bloc is in red and China - all alone - is on purple. {click on image to enlarge} First, another great update James G . Second, why is Taiwan not part of any faction, they are involved in the China War. If I were to make an assumption, I would say it is because they want all the room to manouver that they can get. Their main goal is to conquer/liberate as much of China as they can before the war ends and tying themselves to one group is only going to involve them in the fight they have no interest in fighting. |
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lueck
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Post by lueck on Dec 15, 2018 3:24:10 GMT
wait the soviet is going attack yet again another enemy and assumes that said stack forces the other side out of the war, aka the same plan they tried several times in both north American and china and failed every time they did it.
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James G
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Post by James G on Dec 16, 2018 19:40:38 GMT
(312)Early March 1985: Europe Strong condemnation in Ireland came when the comment was made that the ‘West Brits were off to fight for their English housemasters’. Irish opposition politicians and also non-parliamentary figures were criticised for their characterisation of Defence Force elements joining the British Army and heading off to war on Continental Europe in such terms. Those were the Republic’s soldiers, the response came, and patriotic Irishmen going off to fight to defend the threat to Europe and thus Ireland too. Those against the deployment were the same who had objected in the strongest of terms beforehand when the Defence Forces sent the same men to England last year for training. The argument put forth was that Ireland should send its men to the United States to fight there or, if not, then to Canada, Norway, Portugal or Spain: anywhere but mainland Britain. Now, the 6th Infantry Brigade was being sent off to war in West Germany while an integral part of the British deployment to the Continent. This reignited all that anger which stretched back to Ireland’s decision to join the war and then how tied the country, let alone its small military forces, was with Britain at the moment. The British were the enemy to such people; the Soviets were just some foreigners which their sell-out government was supporting the British in fighting for no good reason. The Irish soldiers who moved from Salisbury Plain first to Southampton and then across the Channel to Cherbourg were meant to be isolated from such things for the good of morale. That was impossible to do though. They knew what was being said at home by the loudest critics and knew too that there was much unsaid unease throughout their nation at not just what they had been doing but also the wider war. These men had a job to do though and a war to fight. All told, there were almost seven thousand of them attached directly to the 6th Brigade as well as independent supporting units. Ships from Ireland, Britain and France transported them across to Cherbourg and then they moved across the width of France and into West Germany. Ireland was sending its fighting men to war and, arguments at home aside about subservience to former/current colonial masters, it was a war which many people back home feared that they wouldn’t be coming home alive from. Spanish troops moved into France too, aiming to link up with the British and the Irish going into West Germany. There had been other fights which Spain had sent its soldiers to take place in during this war. There remined some of them up in Norway and there had been those engagements both on Tenerife and at Ceuta. The majority of the Spanish Army had not seen action though. When the British had considered going to North America in-strength, so too had the Spanish. Madrid was keen to see the Soviets fought. Now that time had come. Their 1st Armoured & 3rd Infantry Divisions crossed through France via highways and rail-lines held open for their use while at the same time there was much air and sea movements too in support. As the Irish were, the Spanish were part of the British Second Army. This was a multi-corps command formed of six British divisions as well as many attachments. It entered the Continent through the Low Countries and France, avoiding entry ports direct into either West Germany and Denmark due to the ongoing situation in both latter countries. The deployment had been long-planned yet putting all that into practise was no easy feat. There was much help from the EDA in this though. These Allied troops would be fighting as a co-belligerent with the armies of Western Europe and were needed to assist them. There were logistical hiccups yet generally it went as planned. Thankfully, the movement of the large numbers of men, plus everything they brought with them to fight, was little-contested. There was a Soviet cruise missile attack on Calais during the deployment and also a submarine active off Ostend. Overall though, there was so much more that the Soviet could have done – were expected to have done too – to interfere. Defensive measures were in-place with the EDA and the Allies working together to cover this from Soviet action. However, the Soviets were busy elsewhere. They’d regret not interfering either on the Continental side of the deployment or elsewhere back in Britain. In recent months, since the they had gone into Sweden and combined with the losses inflicted elsewhere in the world with their many wars, the Soviet Union had been unable to strike against Britain with anywhere near as much fury as they had done previously. Their available strike forces were committed elsewhere. Many more British troops armed and in uniform were staying at home on internal security duties yet the last Soviet commando attack against Britain was on January 28th. Throughout the Low Countries and France, EDA security forces were everywhere and while they too fought than once the shooting war with the Soviets started at the end of February, there were very few attacks made against the rear areas here as well. Scandinavia and Central Europe were where the fighting was taking place and where the Soviets were putting what available forces they had into. As March began, the war which started with EDA attacks against the Soviets had spread fast and continued to do so. Everyone in Western Europe was waiting for the Soviet Army to start pouring over the Inner-German Border either with or without an accompanying attack using weapons of mass destruction. Up in the very southern reaches of Sweden, the Soviet lodgement there refused to be overcome. On land, in the air and in the nearby sea, Soviet and EDA forces continued to clash. The EDA wanted to eliminate that lodgement had had believed that they could with haste yet the Soviets held on. They were dug-in and wouldn’t be budged. French and Swedish troops continued their attacks though the West Germans weren’t involved in that. They had good troops there, elite Fallschirmjager and Gebirgsjager (paratroopers and mountain infantry), yet orders from Bonn kept them on defensive duties around the supply lines. That wouldn’t last forever though. The Danes had realised by now that the silence from their island of Bornholm – located out in the middle of the Baltic – wasn’t a communications issue but the Soviets had taken it and ended all resistance. Elsewhere across their country, they and the Italians (light troops of brigade-strength) engaged Soviet raiders through larger islands of the country who came in by air and sea. The main fighting wasn’t on land though but with engagements in the sky and on the water. Denmark was strongly attacked and the government feared that the Soviets would once again use nuclear weapons like they had previously done. An invasion was prepared for yet considered unlikely given the available forces that the Soviets had to hand. There were French troops in Demark, sent here beforehand. However, at the beginning of the month yet they moved down into Schleswig-Holstein, across into West Germany soon enough and towards the East German frontier. That was where any invasion of Denmark was going to come from and they joined more Danish soldiers there as well. As most of West Germany was, Schleswig-Holstein was a battlefield of war. Soviet tanks had yet to begin pouring westwards yet throughout the country, there were armed military engagements taking place. The first few Soviet air strikes following the EDA attack elsewhere only led to counterstrikes against both East Germany and Czechoslovakia were they came from and then counter-counterstrikes. Bombs and missiles hit West Germany. Along the Iron Curtain there were clashes between light units were patrols ran into infiltration attempts; cross-frontier shelling and then counter-shelling was ongoing as well. Deeper inside the country, away from the direct military actions, Soviet attempts to cause chaos were ongoing. There had been murders and kidnappings of public figures as well as bombings and shooting incidents. The West Germans were meant to be prepared for this. They were still caught by the intensity of it and some remarkable failures occurred. The French believed that previous efforts to detain traitors and expel Soviet nationals before the war hadn’t been as effective as Bonn had claimed due to the influence that the KGB and the Stasi had over certain sections of the country’s security forces. The Inner-German Border was still more important than everything else though. It was behind there that the EDA lined-up its forces ready to oppose an invasion. Belgium and the Netherlands had deployed their armies into the country, following behind the last of the French. Where there was that low-level ground combat, the massed EDA armies stood back from this and let specialist forces take part in that. In the skies above, aircraft from the Low Countries – deployed ahead of their troops – joined with those of France in making those air attacks going eastwards. Bonn was refusing to allow the Luftwaffe to fly offensive missions, only defensive ones. Arguments back and forth between the West Germans and their EDA partners were ongoing on this matter. They would be resolved soon enough though. Down in Austria, the country struggled immensely to maintain its neutrality and stay out of the Euro-Soviet War. This wasn’t something that was going to be decided in Vienna though. Soviet intelligence operations watched the activities of the EDA – France and Italy were doing this – as the two of them sought to, in the eyes of the KGB, ‘capture’ Austria and add it to their military bloc. There were EDA troops on Austria’s borders and their intelligence operatives inside the country. Austria’s military was mobilised but from the east and the west, there were other armies poised to move in to fight on their soil too. A similar situation in the eyes of the Soviet Union was going on with Yugoslavia as well. A war which the country was playing no active role in was soon to bring the country to its knees and maybe even cause its collapse. Yugoslavia’s international trade was at a standstill and there was no more money from the West. The Soviets watched as the Italians sent a diplomatic team to Belgrade to talk with the Yugoslavian Government. A bomb went off before that meeting could take place, killing the majority of the senior Italian diplomats. Yugoslavia reacted angrily to this violation of its sovereignty. Relations with the Soviets had gone sour since the wider war had started and there had come all that use of Yugoslavia as a proxy for Soviet disguised shipping. Some elements of the Yugoslavian regime had enriched themselves; others hadn’t and had had no idea what was happening until Allied naval activity put a stop to the majority of this. When the money stopped coming from Western Europe to keep the economy afloat, job losses were made and prices for basic necessities were raised. Like Austria, Yugoslavia wanted no part of the war between the Soviets and the EDA like it had stayed out of the conflict between the Soviets and the Allies too. They were soon to be in this whether they wanted to or not. During the last two days of February and the first six days of March, this quasi-war went on… until it became a real war. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary all mobilised their armed forces fully in response to the beginning of the Euro-Soviet War. This was a process held back through all the many months that they had been engaged in warfare against the Allies due to the economic and domestic problems which would come by doing so. Now things were different though. Hungary was the only one of the four which hadn’t sent troops abroad to North America nor had any outside of their borders; the other three already had sent regular forces to the Western Hemisphere (lone divisions or divisional-sized equivalents) and there were too Czechoslovak and East German forces both on the ground in Poland (each with two more pre-war divisions). Such military commitments – which came with combat aircraft and also many elite units for those foreign deployments when it come to ground forces – meant that reserves returned to uniform with full mobilisation was needed. The Bulgarians and Hungarians managed well with their mobilisations; the Czechoslovaks and East Germans had difficulties. Those involved men not turning up and also protests made. With the Soviets more than a little interested in these events, Prague and East Berlin cracked down hard themselves. The two regimes had those troops in Poland due to the last time a Warsaw Pact member had seen ‘troubles’ and had no wish for their allies in Moscow to take the decision to do the same to them. In normal circumstances such a fear might have been irrational when the protests were as small as they were yet these weren’t normal times at all. The strong responses were only met with a strong reaction. Protests weren’t nipped in the bud. The regimes of Husak and Honecker hadn’t expected that. They knew that propaganda broadcasts from Western Europe for many long months had been heard across the nation and they had believed that those wouldn’t set off opposition. That was partially true: such things where news from outside which contradicted the official government line wouldn’t have set off what occurred. It was a wider issue though. The hardships of war with restrictions on the supply of basic goods had built up anger. Now that the war really had come home, that combined with everything else to bring these about. Neither country was on the verge of revolt or collapse yet the situation wasn’t good at all. This all occurred while the Soviet Army reinforced their forward-deployed forces in the Warsaw Pact countries. On paper, they doubled their strength by the scale of the deployment. Field armies and air armies moved forward, some of them those withdrawn back during the Kennedy-Andropov agreements on force reductions. The then American president’s critics had said that the Soviets would do this with ease and that the American pull-out he started couldn’t easily be reversed. Those had been prophetic warnings indeed. Streaming across Poland and into the three other Warsaw Pact nations at the top end of Eastern Europe came convoys of Soviet forces. Freight trains and trucks rolled westwards, all to link-up with those already based in forward roles. The Soviets moved their troops into attack positions, not defensive ones. However, many of the reinforcing units were significantly understrength. The Soviets had had their own mobilisation issues. These hadn’t been protests but absenteeism where the call to uniform hadn’t been answered. Earlier mobilisations had seen only small numbers of missing soldiers. With those who refused to turn out, they suffered from reprisals. The numbers this time were far greater. The Soviet state had the ability to still arrest and punish all of those who effectively deserted their army and betrayed their country by not showing up when they were meant to, yet in Moscow there wasn’t the will to do so. It was one of many ongoing problems that the Soviet regime had and one not currently being addressed when it really should have been. Across the Soviet Government, there was utter determination to finish this war that France and the EDA had started with them. The country had been attacked without warning on the orders of Mitterrand. This was a real first strike too, not one made up as had been the case with how the war was supposed to have started with the Allies. The Defence Council, the Politburo, the intelligence services and the military were all keen on hitting back and emerging victorious. Of that there was no dissent. It was the how that was the problem on that though, one which was causing delays in Moscow when it came to getting on with it all, as well as why this had all happened. Vorotnikov and the Defence Council were the ones who were making all of the important decisions when it came to the many wars which the nation was fighting. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean that the other organs of the state were powerless and would just rubber-stamp this. The Politburo were the ones who gave authorisation to all that the Defence Council did while below them everyone else carried out instructions. The layers of government went sideways as well as downwards. There were all sorts of complicated alliances between different parts of the government. Personalities mattered and relationships changed. Historical difficulties between separate organisations were important too. It was all a maze when looked at from outside, yet also increasingly from within especially since last October when Vorotnikov had replaced the deceased Ustinov. Vorotnikov had enemies since the moment he was appointed leader. He was an outsider, brought in fast to take over. There were those who were passed over and others who didn’t get what they wanted from him once he was in power. The Politburo was headed by him but he was spending little time with his comrades. The war was important, no one would disagree with that, yet so too was everything else that was going on. He made more enemies. The orders for all those deaths to occur among military personnel and then spooks too for dubious war-related issues upset those also within each. Complaints were made to the Politburo on this. They had signed-off on that but they hadn’t understood how widespread this would be. None liked what they discovered. The Politburo was even more displeased when they discovered why exactly the country was at war with Western Europe. In the words of one of them, they were fighting a continent which the plan had been to capture via diplomatic means instead of have to conquer in war all because of ‘a bastard child of an amorous Frenchman!’ Far worse things that that one particular kidnapping had been approved by the Politburo – other children had been taken for political purposes; babies murdered in bombings and nuclear attacks – but this was something different. They hadn’t been told about this. Some of them actually understood Mitterrand’s motivation now where their thought train ran that he had the EDA fight this war over that child. Where was the missing girl? The KGB chief told them the grim news on that matter. She was dead after accidentally dying during her kidnap and the body buried secretly & securely to avoid her being discovered. This maddened members of the nation’s ruling committee. They saw it all as an avoidable chain of events and – catching on fast to the mood – the KGB chief blamed Vorotnikov himself for this all: it was actually his fault but he wasn’t about to admit that, was he? The thinking on the part of the Politburo remained that their war with the United States and the Allies was still a legitimate one. The China War was now being seen as a major mistake and all the fault of Ustinov. Now Vorotnikov had given them this foolish war with Western Europe. Gromyko emerged to lead what was beginning to be an opposition to Vorotnikov. Nothing to act openly against him was yet being spoken of and the opposition wasn’t plotting and scheming. That was only yet it must be said. There was for now just an alignment of thinking. It was the foreign minister who was moving things along now though when it came to how the Politburo coerced Vorotnikov and the Defence Council to act when it came to the Euro-Soviet War. They voted on this and the Defence Council followed. It wouldn’t be stopped but it would be a limited conflict in terms of goals and conduct. Nuclear weapons wouldn’t be used. West Germany was full of French nuclear weapons pointed eastwards, the French had several strategic missile submarines at sea and the KGB was saying that the Italians either was already or nearly on its way to having a viable (but very small) nuclear weapons capability. Chemical weapons were on the table though: where they had failed to work in North America, it was decided that they would be effective in Western Europe. This brought up the issue of troops from the Allies soon to be fought alongside EDA forces and – in a compromise which was nothing but an utter shambles when it came down to it – the Soviets decided to not use them against Allied troops no matter what yet attack the Western Europeans with them. The war would be fought on foreign territory in West Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia with the latter two countries used as a springboard to attack Italy and their armies forces to stand aside by direct threats made to their governments to fight them too otherwise. That ‘real’ war, when the troops and tanks went forward, would begin at first light on March 7th. Everything was supposed to go to plan with this and the Euro-Soviet War would be won by a limited conflict too. Soviet forces were only going so far west, not all the way. They would defeat the EDA, and any Allied forces engaged too, close to the Iron Curtain and therefore a diplomatic solution was supposed to fast come. No one in power within the Soviet (fracturing) leadership considered the fact that they were making the same mistakes made in North America and China all over again. I have a feeling that soon the Soviets Will realise that Tito fucked Germany, he can take on a flesh lump in a fucking waistcoat. Tito died in 1980 but your sentiment on this when it comes to his country is correct. The Yugoslavs will not have their country used as an invasion route for a war which they want no part in. They will resist and end up allied with the EDA. One definition of madness is to continuing doing the same thing hoping for a different result...and this seem the standard Modus Operandi for the URSS leaderships in the last 6 months; they have enlarged a conflict that were hard pressed to win when was only limited to North America. They are basically doing a variant of the 'Seven days on the Rhine' plan developed in 1979, only without nuclear weapons and with limited use of the chemical arsenal (at least in term of target)...unfortunely it's a little too late as the crack in the communist system are now showing, both in the east european satellites and even in the URSS and frankly i doubt that the non soviet troops will have that great enthusiasm or Elan in their assault to the NATO/EDA position. Jugoslavia is an important piece, the standard plan of our neighbourgh was to wage a guerrilla war against the invader as they know there were no possibility to hold the border, this mean that the understrenght WP force will face the italian defensive line and fortifications in the alps with the supplies lines under attack by jugoslavian partisan and regular forces...what can go wrong? Basically, to reach and attack Italy they will first go through two neutrals and if with the WP at normal strenght this was not really a problem, in this situation this mean deplete already weakened forces, expecially without the possibility to use spesznat and paratroopers to launch behind the line attack and raid to eliminate the border defense before the assault. The snip about Jugoslavia fate don't bode well for the Federation, well while this war will be destructive and will exacerbate the ethnic tension even earlier than OTL can also bring unity by giving to the population a common enemy, even the current economic problem can be placed at the feet of the Soviets...by using some skilled propaganda effort to deflect the blame. Naturally the soviet can try to use the problem between the ethnic component to make their job easier, maybe by supporting a 'sudden' coup by concerned members of the serbian leaderships and starting a civil war. By the map another possible/future front is North Africa, with Algeria and Tunisia in the EDA camp and Lybia under the Soviet thumb and generally the not very good or at least very complicated relations that there were between this nation at the time, things can escalte, expecially if Moscow want to use Lybia to put pressure on the last oil supplier of Western Europe Overall it is stupid, but individually they see justifications. They can't see the forest for the trees. The war will not go to plan. The forces involves, while large, aren't as capable as they should be. A heck of a lot of reliance in WP units is needed too. It is all too late. Last October /November would have worked or even this earlier year before the EDA got organised and made a full deployment. Yugoslavia and Austria will not be a pushover. I've read about the defensive lines and the detailed plans. Yep, the Soviets would need to prise open those defences and here they won't be able to. They will have to get there first. As to Libya, I thought that when I made the map. Yet, the situation in Libya is more than a little complicated as we'll soon see: plus the Soviets themselves will have to deal with what is coming towards Malta, their key position in the middle part of the Med. First, another great update James G. Second, why is Taiwan not part of any faction, they are involved in the China War. Thank you. Well... I forgot. I guess they could be Yellow. There are other countries which then would have to get their own colours too because some neutrals - Egypt, Thailand and others - have non-official roles in the war too. If I were to make an assumption, I would say it is because they want all the room to manouver that they can get. Their main goal is to conquer/liberate as much of China as they can before the war ends and tying themselves to one group is only going to involve them in the fight they have no interest in fighting. As I said just above, I did forget to include them. They are non-official in the war though. Plus, thinking on it, I'm going to have them do more in coming updates. wait the soviet is going attack yet again another enemy and assumes that said stack forces the other side out of the war, aka the same plan they tried several times in both north American and china and failed every time they did it. Yep. This time, it is supposed to work because it was done 'wrong' last time and this time it will be done 'right'. |
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James G
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Post by James G on Dec 16, 2018 19:41:15 GMT
Two big updates coming: I've been busy.
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James G
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Post by James G on Dec 16, 2018 19:46:49 GMT
(313)
Mid-March 1985: West Germany (one of two)
To win a war in Western Europe, the Soviets would have had to throw everything at the fight and not fight a limited conflict. Furthermore, the best time to have done so would have been if not last year then before the EDA was fully able to get its defensive forces into place this Spring. It wasn’t a case of them finding themselves in a less ideal situation by attacking how and when they did. Instead, it was only going to bring them failure. That attack in West Germany opened with a wide-ranging use of chemical weapons, a good old-fashioned artillery barrage and targeted air strikes. Then came a full-on combined arms assault by Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies. They hit EDA military forces in the field who were supposed to be ready for what came their way.
The first ten days of the Euro-Soviet War in West Germany was all about how far Soviet-led forces could go. They reached their high-water mark at the end of that. Afterwards, the conflict would take on a far different character.
In the northern reaches of the country, the Soviets aimed to overrun West Germany from the Kiel Canal, through Hamburg and across to Bremen. Their tanks were to get their treads wet by reaching the North Sea. In their way stood Danish, Dutch, French and West Germany forces. East Germans and Soviets fought against an opponent which outnumbered them only slightly yet the belief was that the Second Guards Tank Army had the advantage with firepower and a much stronger armoured component. Conquering territory was secondary to overcoming and crushing those EDA forces, whose manpower numbers were higher by those in fixed defensive positions. Very quickly the wheels came off the Soviet assault. They faced an uncooperative enemy who didn’t respond in the manner which was anticipated. The gassing of so many of them didn’t have the desired effective either: the Danes and the Dutch took high losses yet the French and West Germans didn’t. Cutting down the numbers of opponents had to be done using bullets and shells rather than at range with gas.
Initially, going northwards across the Inner-German Border into Holstein, the East Germans there were stuck but the Soviets pushed in their second echelon to support them. The West Germans and the Danes refused to be split apart into two as desired and withdrew. They fell backwards exposing Lubeck to the east and Hamburg to the west but stuck together. Invading forces chased after them rather than pushing into either city: both defended by lighter forces dug-in and not fighting a mobile battle. As anticipated, the French pushed their 6th Light Armored Division into the fight. They came against the East Germans on the flank just as the Danes attempted a counterattack. Soviet reconnaissance units were meant to be watching to give warning. It was very, very late when they did: the French had lanced forward at high speed and under air cover which shot down many Soviet reconnaissance aircraft. The East Germans held their ground while the Soviets detached part of their own divisional force which was engaging the West Germans to not directly assist that fight but instead slip into a gap behind the French. The French were lucky to not get cut off by this and held the Soviets off long enough to properly engage them. The Soviets had failed to do all that they wanted yet denied the French the ability to fully beat those East Germans. They held and the Danes were ordered to make another withdrawal to see another fight on new ground. The East Germans followed after them, reconnecting with the Soviets beside them. The further forward that the invaders now went, far past the highway linking Hamburg to Lubeck, the more open ground that there was. This was the base of the Jutland Peninsula and it widened further back from the Inner-German Border. The countryside had fewer towns dotted around too. It was perfect tank country all the way to the Kiel Canal far behind. That was somewhere that the invaders found impossible to get to. They couldn’t beat their opponents and therefore the right-wing of the Second Guards Army was unable to fulfil its objectives. Both the East German 8th Motorised Rifle and the Soviet 94th Guards Motorised Rifle Divisions failed to break their opponents in any serious form. The cities on either side, and Kiel far off, were left alone as there was no desire to get into grinding fights for each while the EDA maintained mobile forces outside of them. Through the many days and nights, fighting occurred over and over again through Holstein. Huge amounts of destruction occurred and many deaths were recorded, especially among civilians. Battles near Neumunster on March 10th and outside of Itzehoe on the 13th – each for control of transport links around them – recorded no winners. For the beaten-up but still standing EDA units, this was an overall victory though. They had denied the Soviets their objectives. Waiting was done for the Soviets to throw in a third wave, a tank division or two, to try to finish them off and in response the plan was to fall back to the Kiel Canal but no such enemy reinforcement came… there weren’t those forces back in East Germany. The Danish II Corps (a third of the men being Danes) emerged from that first week and a half able to keep on fighting.
The rest of the Second Guards Tank Army – with four divisions plus attachments – went across the Luneburg Heath. The Dutch were their opponents though there was significant West German support for the Netherlands I Corps. Gas attacks hurt the Dutch greatly. Their protective equipment couldn’t stop deaths as well as terrible injuries coming from some of the ‘exotic’ chemical weapons employed against them. Then the Soviets and East Germans marched across the Elbe and through the open plain going for the North Sea coast, Bremen and the lower reaches of the Weser River. The Dutch fell backwards, fighting a defensive battle and aiming to bring the invaders to a halt soon enough. Soviet air power was a significant factor in stopping the Dutch from being able to do this as planned, especially the closer they were to the Inner-German Border in the first few days of the war. Dutch and West German aircraft were supported by some RAF fighters flying from further back but local control of the air remained in Soviet hands. They made use of that in excellent cooperation between ground and air units. The Dutch were forced to give up more ground earlier than planned to survive being crushed. The Soviet motor rifle division on the southern side of the attack was a first-rate unit but they were lucky to be facing an East German reserve division to the north. If they hadn’t, the Dutch I Corps would have been fully overcome. First an independent tank regiment and then two full Soviet tank divisions were eventually unleashed with their second wave. Those came forward with hundreds of tanks shooting up everyone in their sight… including what the Dutch were certain were incidents of friendly-fire against East German units where there were cases of mistaken identity rather than any intentional acts. That immense force coming at them forced the Dutch to withdraw to the western edges of Luneburg Heath. Because the pressure on them had been weaker when fighting East German reservists, they held more ground to the north and conducted a fighting retreated in a north-western direction. That was impossible to do forever. Whilst doing so, they covered Autobahn-1 which linked Bremen with Hamburg yet there was little military value in that road soon enough for them, the EDA as a whole nor West German civilians on the move where they fled in their many thousands along that highway. Soviet air attacks blocked that highway. The Dutch were unable to do anything to assist with the resulting casualties from that, but, of more-importance, was that they’d end up on the shores of the North Sea if they kept going backwards. The Dutch Government back home was rather alarmed. The EDA wasn’t NATO despite all talk of Western European unity. They didn’t want to see their army cut off and pinned against the sea far from home leaving the way free for the Soviets to move against the Netherlands at their leisure. Command for the Dutch I Corps was with the West German Northern Army (a replacement for NATO’s Northern Army Group) and they were the ones issuing the orders. For the Dutch to run and try and slip back westwards and out of the fight they were in would doom everyone else and permission was denied before it officially was asked. Into all of this came the Soviet 145th Independent Tank Regiment. It broke the worn-down Dutch 1st Mechanised Division eight days into the fight and tore open a gap through the scattered remains. The two tank divisions behind rolled onwards. If the Dutch had wanted to cut and run home, that was only an if, it wasn’t happening now. That regiment and what was left of the East Germans screened the movement of the rampaging tanks as they concentrated together to push through what was later called the Geest Gap: passable terrain between the Weser and Wumme Rivers, where there were road and rail links directly towards Bremen. The furthest Dutch forces were at Rottenburg; the West Germans held onto Verden. Between them the way was clear for the Soviets. Victory was in their grasp should they get through and then turn on the trapped Dutch behind them, wiping out their remaining 4th Mechanised and 5th Armoured Divisions caught behind. Soviet aircraft were everywhere and the tanks raced forward below them. They then slammed into the British Army before the Geest Gap could be exploited and the breakout beyond could occur. British screening units met them first, then heavier units behind. The way ahead was firmly shut.
North-central parts of West Germany were where the Soviets sent two more field armies forward into. The Twentieth Guards and Third Shock Armies – nine Soviet divisions plus three from East Germany (two of those reserve formations) – attacked side by side from the southern parts of the Luneburg Heath all the way down to the Gottingen-Kassel area. The Weser River was as far as they were supposed to go. Through the eastern side of that waterway, there were EDA forces in the form of the Belgians, the French and West Germans. All were to be crushed and not allowed to get over that river in retreat to fight again. Soviet war plans had long intended to use parachute and airmobile units aplenty in a fight here where they would have fought the Americans and the British instead of the French. There were no Soviet Airborne forces available though and the Soviet Army only had a lone brigade of airmobile troops plus two separate battalions of further helicopter-deployable assault troops as well. All those rear-area attacks to hold certain points for either exploitation or to distract what would then have been NATO units were no longer possible. What little the two armies were left with, they had to use wisely and in a limited fashion. Once the offensive came to a stop, it was understood just how missed those units – fighting in Sweden or dead in North America – had been. Air power was also something they were short on too: once again, what was left behind after other worldwide deployments was a shadow of the past massed strength.
The West Germans fought the Twentieth Guards Army. They were outnumbered though not to a significant degree. There was an East German reserve division meant to be assigned to support the Soviets yet it remained on the other side of the frontier throughout. The West Germans believed that those men were kept back due to Soviets fears that they would do terrible in a fight with West German forces and maybe even defect en masse. The Soviets had thought just the same in light of recent troubles across East Germany yet also the poor turn out of men. Regardless, the Twentieth Guards Army’s Soviet-only forces were more than enough for the West Germans. Those men poured over the border on the back of the opening horror of their gas attack and struck forward. The defensive line struck down the western side of the Elbe-Lateral Canal was somewhere the West Germans didn’t expect to hold for long but it fell very fast indeed. The Soviets used an airmobile battalion along part of it and those men, supported by specialist engineers, overcome demolition measures to turn the ground nearby into an impassable swamp. The Soviets pushed onwards. They engaged West German screening efforts and sought battle with them. It had been believed by the EDA that taking West German cities for hostage purposes would be a Soviet goal and so the West German I Corps’ commander was aiming to blunt an attack to take Wolfsburg first and the Hannover afterwards. It was his combat forces that the Soviets sought to take on though. None of the three motor rifle divisions with the Twentieth Guards Army (a command which had spent several years out of East Germany now) were first-rate formations but they did well in establishing contact with the West Germans despite those screening efforts to bring the heavy forces into the fight. It was a fight that the Soviets wanted and it was one that they got. The West Germans won a series of tactical engagements across a wide area for several days on the trot. The 26th Guards Motorised Rifle Division was left broken and the other pair (the 3rd Guards and 50th Guards) were on course to suffer the same fate. However, on came the second echelon Soviet forces. They pushed their two tank divisions forward – pushing onwards through waves of Luftwaffe aircraft striking at low-level on anti-tank missions despite all of the anti-air defences fired upon them – and out onto the Luneburg Heath. The West Germans fell back, shaking off combat with the motor rifle troops and going as far as the Aller River to run a defensive line where reservists from West Germany’s Landwehr had an impressive defensive position arrayed down that river. Through gaps held open, the West Germans rolled backwards and to the other side with three-quarters of their corps but left the rest, the 7th Panzer Division, free to fall back northwards to keep contact with where the Dutch were. The Soviets unleashed hell down the course of the Aller. Gas was used again along with thermobarics and napalm. Huge casualties came among the Landwehr men dug in and in the face of that. The Soviet’s 50th Guards then moved forward on the back of that attack towards Celle but the tank divisions didn’t follow them. Instead they moved west instead of directly southwest. At Engehausen and Winsen, past Celle, one tank division crossed the river to get at the rear areas of the West Germans. The other tank division chased after the 7th Panzer as they carried on seeking that fight. The 20th Tank Division got that tank-on-tank fight. The two of them duked it out for several days without a clear winner yet it was a West German victory overall because they had failed to be beaten. As to the Aller River, the 90th Guards Tank Division got in the West German rear among supporting forces and caused chaos between there and Hannover. There were three more West German divisions though. Three-to-one were not good odds at all, especially when the Soviet plan had been for at least two of them to be busy around Celle fighting the 50th Guards. Caught on the wrong side of the river and trapped, the Soviets fought onwards until they ran out of fuel and ammunition. No escape could be made and their surrender occurred on March 14th. Before then, two of those West German divisions then did as the Soviets expected all along, but only later, and went to Celle and then back over the Aller to engage the Soviets troops who had failed to get across despite all that they had done to the defenders. The Twentieth Guards Army fell backwards. It remained deep inside West Germany yet severely short of geographic and operational objectives. Further offensive capability in any major sense was now gone. The West Germans were looking to push them right back to where they came too.
The French and Belgians faced the Third Shock Army. Pre-war EDA intelligence believed, as NATO intelligence summaries always had, that in wartime this field army would act as a tank-heavy exploitation force – a tank army in effect – to go all the way to the Rhine once combined arms armies had done the main fighting. When it went into West Germany in March 1985, it consisted of three tank divisions and three motor rifle divisions (two of them being East German: one regular, one reserve) and fought in a combined arms role instead of as an exploitation force. The Belgians were in their NATO-assigned area whereas the French III Corps fought where the British would have been under former NATO command. The two sides were relatively-evenly matched in strength despite Soviet beliefs that they had the upper hand going into the fight. Attacking the Belgians, in difficult ground to the south where the Harz Mountains were, was a sideshow for the Soviets: they focused in the main on the French and believed that gas attacks on the Belgians would also keep them out of the fight to be addressed later. That was a mistake. Holding off East German reservists, half of the Belgians fought with the French against the main Third Shock Army advance over the border. The famous Helmstedt crossing and then the Elm Hills were early fights at the beginning of the invasion before the Soviets really got going. They made two big attacks on the ground with one motor rifle division apiece and used that airmobile brigade to seize a bridgehead around Wolfenbüttel right in the middle of the French III Corps rear areas to distract them. The French fought very far forward, further eastwards than the British would have fought in a NATO conflict, and just where the Soviets wanted them to. This cost the French dear and they came rather closing to suffering defeat. Only EDA air attacks over into East Germany – now the Luftwaffe was sending aircraft that way – saved the day when they slowed down the oncoming follow-up tank divisions. Realising just in time what was coming, the French pulled back. No one likes giving up ground which they had fought over and seen their fellow soldiers die to hold, yet the mass of Soviet armour (delays aside) was coming forward. Moreover, that Soviet airhead at Wolfenbüttel became an issue several days after landing. The West Germans with heavy Landwehr units had had them in-hand at first but the rest of the 37th Landing-assault Brigade was lifted in when EDA air power was shifted away from the area. Quickly, these men were on the move using their light armoured vehicles and linked up with the forwardmost ground penetrations. Now was the time, right now, for the French to pull back into new positions. Braunschweig and Wolfsburg were left for other West German reservists to defend in static fights while the French concentrated on dealing with Soviet and what they discovered were East German tanks. Each had a division of them – meaning another Soviet one was missing – showed up and went head-on into battle. The French divisions which they had here were small in peacetime yet full now in wartime of reserve units which included some light armour but mostly a lot of infantry armed with many anti-tank weapons. Without these, the Soviets would have run rings around and pounded the French into complete defeat. Extra men couldn’t save the 8th Infantry Division from being overcome though. A communications mix-up saw its links with the 109th Reserve Infantry Brigade (an independent force meant to cover gaps) opened up and the East Germans getting their 9th Tank Division through that opening. The 8th Infantry was crushed and obliterated by East German regulars doing very well indeed. The Belgians brought up their 16th Armoured Division to join in and nearly saved that French division which got caught and destroyed yet ‘nearly’ wasn’t enough. The Belgians were then in the way of that missing Soviet tank force. If they hadn’t have been there, the French could have faced the possibly of yet another defeat due to the Soviets getting forward fast and undetected. Caught east of the Leine River south of Hannover, the Belgians withdrew rapidly when the 7th Guards Tank Division lanced forward. This only opened up yet another gap, now between the rest of the Belgians to the south and the 16th Armoured which had come north. That gap was plugged by the entry of the Northern Army’s immediate reserve in the form of West German Fallschirmjager who weren’t going to be overcome in anything but a full attack considering the high ground west of the Leine which they arrived at and dug-into with haste. Inserting them here was necessary but still a waste of offensive capability. Meanwhile, the Third Shock Army ignored that (there were no assigned light units on-hand to engage them) and focused upon completing what they had come to do: trapping the French. If they stood, they were finished. If they withdrew, they would be caught and run down. Such was the intention yet that relied on the Soviet tanks looping around behind keeping up their advance. The Belgians fought them and had a torrid time in doing so. They did what they had to though, bringing the Soviets to a stop and allowing for incoming EDA aircraft and armed helicopters to attack them from above and giving the Belgians breathing room to reorganise. French artillery firing nerve gas shells were remarkably helpful in doing this, smashing those shells into Soviet rear areas away from the frontlines and having success there including hitting the divisional HQ. Nonetheless, despite their victory, half of their division was left combat ineffective and thousands of Belgian families would in the following weeks be left grieving when losses were revealed but for now they had saved the French III Corps from complete destruction. Without them, no matter what the French believed it their overall victory all being down to them when finally stropping the other two tank divisions, it was those Belgians who had saved their bacon in the end with their sacrifice.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 16, 2018 19:47:59 GMT
Two big updates coming: I've been busy. Thanks for being busy James G, as always they are great updates. |
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James G
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Post by James G on Dec 16, 2018 19:50:29 GMT
(314)
Mid-March 1985: West Germany (two of two)
Through Hessen in central West Germany, there were more French troops in forward positions. They were where the US Army Europe once was deployed to defend the Fulda Gap. North of them were West Germans also lined up facing eastwards and towards Thüringen. The Soviets had their Eighth Guards Army over there, reinforced from its peacetime rather strong strength now with East German reinforcements. The EDA troops were assigned to keep the Soviets and East Germans back from either making a rush for the distant Rhine across between Cologne and Bonn (a real West German concern) or going southwest towards the wider Frankfurt area, also next to the Rhine but closer. The EDA believed that the invaders could only do one of the two. They weren’t mistaken in this. There weren’t enough men available to both so the Soviets made the decision to only undertake one achievable goal rather than make two failures. They had their men march on Frankfurt going via the Fulda Gap. Fighting together, the French and West Germans aimed to stop them from reaching there. Doing that was just what the Soviets wanted them to do: beating the massed forces of both in battle was far more important than any city itself. The fighting in Hessen would be the decisive fight of the invasion, one which would draw in all available EDA and Soviet & Warsaw Pact reserves too.
The Eighth Guards Army attacked across northern Hessen with a trio of full-strength motor rifle divisions out front. Each sought to open gaps with the ‘winners’ getting support and the ‘losers’ being left to their own devices afterwards. Once across the Inner-German Border, they went for the Fulda River. The terrain here was reasonably good for an advance with heavy forces – better than anywhere else nearby – though not perfect. The Eighth Guards Army had long studied their forward route whereas the French hadn’t been here that long. Both West Germans on the right and French on the left engaged the three forward penetrations and when they reached the Fulda, the French unleashed chemical attacks in response to the earlier ones made when back near the East German frontier. Many bridging engineering units were caught by these with heavy losses yet not enough of them were killed or injured to cause any major delay. France didn’t have unlimited stocks of such weapons and the belief had been that this was the perfect moment to use them. It wasn’t enough. The 27th Guards Motorised Rifle Division fought the first of the West Germans and couldn’t get through them: they turned out to be those ‘losers’. Beside them, and then further southwards, both the 57th & 39th Guards each had more luck with the former getting between the West Germans and the French and the latter pushing the French back where they met them. That gap in the middle which the 57th Guards opened became the main attack. East German tanks followed first and turned northwards to get behind their fellow West Germans. Elsewhere, Soviet fears over Germans fighting Germans had seen this avoided where possible but here it was done. These were regulars, not reservists after all and thought the most reliable. They started their fight well and began getting deeper behind them while supported by Soviet forces. The other opened gap, forced by the 39th Guards, was then followed by a Soviet tank division which smashed into French units on the counterattack. The 3rd & 5th Armored Division conducted a perfect assault to break-up the penetration of Fulda Gap when moving forward yet couldn’t quite finish what they started. Much of the 39th Guards, plus independent screen units of riflemen and anti-tank units, held them off to allow for the tank division to escape the incoming storm. It then broke free and set off for the dash forward. Through the Fliede Valley they went first, when under extremely heavy air attack, before they reached the entrance to the Kinzig Valley. This was the way to Frankfurt with the heights of the Vogelsberg on their right and the Spessart on the left. Parachute insertions in the hills either side had been made of Spetsnaz units to engage what defences were below on the flanks but meanwhile the 79th Guards Tank Division pushed forward. The Eighth Guards Army knew that at this moment the EDA would have to throw in its emergency reserves.
This was perfectly correct. A West German panzer division (the 12th) raced around the Vogelsberg counter-clockwise to meet the Soviets at the bottom end while from each side French light Foreign Legion troops and West German Fallschirmjager converged inwards. Luftwaffe Alpha-Jets and Tornados streamed in alongside French aircraft, battling their way through Soviet air defences on the ground and a strong showing of their fighters above too. They were trying to stop the Soviets in the valley or, if not, then weaken them significantly for when they reached the flat plains around the Main River before Frankfurt. Once the EDA had made their commitment of their reserves here, the Soviets unleashed their own. Hidden behind the Eighth Guards Army back in East Germany was the Thirteenth Guards Army Corps: a mixture of several Soviet and East German units kept back ready for this. There was the 2nd Guards Motorised Rifle Division – the famous Taman Guards – along with the Soviet motor rifle brigade from East Berlin (with a big tank complement) and a pair of East German tank regiments released from their parent motor rifle divisions over in Poland. Between Bad Hersfeld and Hunfeld, the Thirteenth Corps tore forward. They went around the Vogelsberg following those West German panzers which had gone ahead of them and waited for the EDA response. This came pretty quick. The West German III Corps pushed forward hard against the Soviets and East Germans who were attacking them in a major counterattack. The East German 7th Tank Division fared better than the Soviet’s 57th Guards – everyone thought it would have been the other way around – yet still had to fall back too in the face of what came at them as they sought defensive ground to soak up the West Germans. The Eighth Guards Army held their flank position here despite this strong effort. All that the EDA had left was a partial division of Italians; one attached brigade had been dispatched the other month to Denmark. They were put in the way of the Soviet breakthrough and ended up facing the Taman Guards. The Italians put up a strong resistance but it was never going to be enough. They were crushed in a terribly destructive and deadly fight. They held out for longer than everyone else thought they would though and this gave their opponents the time to have one brigade of the 12th Panzer turn back around. The West Germans had hoped to get to the Italians in time. That didn’t occur but upon their arrival then went at once into the attack and ripped into the Taman Guards in the midst of their recovery from their fight with the Italians. Those other Thirteenth Corps units, the independent brigade and the tank regiments, were free of this fight though and still racing southwards. French Foreign Legion troops – an organisation strongly reinforced during the period of tension leading up to the war and a whole division being formed – tried to ease themselves out of their ongoing fight to get in the way but there were a lot of tanks, too many of them to do any damage to from the flanks when dropped off by helicopter runs. Only a lone brigade of West German Landwehr was available. This was of their tank heavy units which consisted of up-gunned M-48s. Forced to split up to face three attacking units attacking on separate axis’, the West Germans couldn’t stop all of them. They held both the two East German tank regiments – each with old T-55s – but not the Soviet brigade with its T-64 heavy tanks and all of those infantry carriers full of battle-hardened troops. The 6th Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade reached the Main at Hanau on March 13th. The supply lines running back were cut for them and this would doom them unless the 79th Guards Division would get out of the Kinzig Valley and reach them. That tank division had kept on moving, despite everything thrown at it and while behind schedule, emerged at Gelnhausen the next morning. It was just a short trip to Hanau for them. Linking up meant going through the rest of the 12th Panzer and this would trap all of those French troops still higher up in the Fulda Gap.
The 12th Panzer couldn’t do it. They were forced to retreat less be destroyed in-place. A link up then occurred and the Soviets were secure with their lodgement on the Main. They were now just upstream from Frankfurt and had seemingly won their fight. All they needed to do now was to crush the trapped forces caught in between, an opponent split into two. Doing so relied upon the Taman Guards holding where they were though and also the 12th Panzer not being allowed to get away. At this moment of victory, failure to do anything more came. French forces and those West Germans not at the very top of Hessen and held where they were there, all began to fall back. It was fast and sloppy with some men left behind, but the main body of the EDA forces escaped the trap. They went right through where the Taman Guards were. That elite Soviet Army unit had taken too many losses and was shredded when held firm as its position was passed by either side. It seemed like everyone wanted to take a shot at them too. Neither the Eighth Guards Army nor the Thirteenth Corps had any idea of what was happening unit it was too late. The French had lost their 12th Light Armored and 15th Infantry Divisions in the Fulda Gap but got the 3rd & 5th Armored Divisions out of there. The West Germans pulled out their worn-down 12th Panzer plus the majority of the deployed paratroopers; one cut-off battalion made a last stand around town of Bad Orb in the Spessart and a last stand it really was for them. Bad Orb was full of West German civilian internal refugees and there was no way out for them and the men who died trying to stop the Soviets from getting in there in the end. Tired and battle-weakened Soviet and East German forces couldn’t give chase against the rest of those more numerous EDA forces who fled once it was realised what was happening. Once the EDA had got the last of its men out that it would, while they couldn’t immediately go back into the fight again, neither could the Soviets give chase. This ‘great escape’ of their near-beaten opponents was certainly the greatest Soviet loss of their war objectives here in West Germany.
Bavaria was attacked from Czechoslovakia, not out of West Germany. There was an East German reserve division attached to the Eighth Guards Army which acted along the Inner-German Border but only in a defensive role alongside border guards. Across the frontier in Czechoslovakia was where the offensive came from. The Soviets had their Thirteenth Army and the Czechoslovak First Army was with them. Again, it was French and West Germans to fight, those dug-in in defensive positions. Part of the French were facing East Germany and were hoped to be distracted fearing an attack coming from that direction. The main assault was tasked to get into Bavaria, before encircling and crushing the rest of the EDA’s troops close to the Czechoslovakia frontier. Nurnberg and especially Munich were too far away to matter for the attacker’s objectives.
Very quickly, the plan fell apart. The French I Corps in north-eastern Bavaria (the historic Franconia region; where the Americans would have been in a NATO-led defensive mission) paid little attention to the East Germans – West German Landwehr screening units secured defensive positions back from the Inner-German Border – and they concentrated on the Czechoslovaks. They kept them from forcing open a gap with the motor rifle divisions they pushed forward and then then, once those were worn down, smashed forward in counterattacks. Requests for nerve gas use to finish this off was denied as the higher command believed that the French I Corps had this in-hand and the stocks of such weapons remained limited. To save their army, the Czechoslovaks moved forward one of their tank divisions. There was no gap for it to lance through but it was hoped that it could turn the tables on the French when they were coming forward. Opportunity came the way of the French to finish off the Czechoslovaks only a couple of days into the invasion. It wasn’t an opportunity passed up. A full-on eastwards assault was made and this went right after the Czechoslovak’s 1st Tank Division. They were caught exposed and smashed to pieces. Another tank division, the lower-grade 14th, was present in the First Army’s order of battle. It didn’t come forward but instead was urgently tasked to defend the approaches to the border and cover the Chep Gap alongside border troops. The French moved right up the frontier and engaged them at distance while dealing with smashed pockets caught in the rear. For longer than anticipated, several held out and the French had a harder time than expected yet in the end, they finished off all parts of the Czechoslovak Army left on West German soil. Consideration was given from above to order the French I Corps to go over the border and make inroads there. This was being discussed up until the very moment that part of the corps was urgently re-tasked to go south and assist the West Germans. The 1st & 7th Armored Divisions raced away because the Soviets had broken through the West Germans down there.
The Bohemian Forest and then the Bavarian Forest next were both between the Czechoslovak frontier and the Danube River. Czechoslovak paratroopers & airmobile troops from their 22nd Special Purpose Airborne Brigade supported smaller numbers of Soviet airmobile units in the valley of the Regen River there in Bavaria. They were meant to open the way for the Thirteenth Army to pour onwards. Initially, it took longer than planned and was thus seen to be going awry but once the successes came, they came fast. West German forces deployed this far forward as a political statement found that they had no way out. The 8th Panzergrenadier Division – reformed from its mountain mission with the Gebrigsjager units removed and forming their own large brigade – lost two thirds of its men with the rest only barely managing to escape to the northwest. Three Soviet motor rifle divisions poured forwards towards the Danube. The intention was to fight the rest of the West Germans on the eastern side of that wider river and destroy them there rather than have to chase them. However, facing a certain defeat if they stayed, the West Germans withdrew. The Soviets couldn’t stop them. They would have needed to have put strong forces on the Danube crossings via air insertions first to block a retreat yet didn’t have the men available due to them long having been sent elsewhere in the world. The 4th Panzergrenadier Division got over the Danube successfully. As to the 10th Panzer Division and that remaining brigade of the 8th Panzergrenadier, they both fell back towards the outskirts of Regensburg: the Landwehr had strong fixed defences there and the regulars intended to fight a mobile battle east and north of the small city. The Soviets sent half of the Thirteenth Army that way to give them that battle and win it. The 161st Motorised Rifle Division, followed closely by the 15th Guards Tank Division, engaged the West Germans near Regensburg and won a significant series of engagements. West Germans units scattered, falling back west and split apart. Most were caught on the wrong side of the downstream reaches of the Regen River (the upstream parts had earlier been fought over and here it met the Danube) and the Soviets this time could close those crossings by getting aircraft through to bomb them repeatedly while their 15th Guards Tank battered as much of the West Germans left fighting as possible. Two days of fighting saw the 10th Panzer eliminated. The French arrived but stayed on the other side of the river. While they couldn’t literally hear the screams for help from their allies across the Regen, it seemed that way with the sounds of battle being so close by. Going over meant destruction for the two French divisions though. They engaged Soviet small-scale crossing attempts and dropped shells over there yet stayed out of the fight while the 10th Panzer died. When the Soviets started moving again several days later, now the French were in a position to stop them. They fought with other West Germans – regulars and reservists – to bring to a violent end any more Soviet progress deeper into Bavaria. The Thirteenth Army was by now spent and unable to go any further. The West Germans would rue the day they ordered their army to go so far forward ahead of an invasion and be in the position they ended up in. This not only cost their II Corps half its pre-war strength but also exposed the long frontier with Austria too. While the war was being fought here, it was also being fought there as well. West German mountain troops with their 23rd Mountain Brigade ended up fighting there in a different but linked conflict.
The British Second Army entered the fighting more than a week into the invasion. Had they arrived earlier, they would have joined in sooner but going from entry points on the coast to the border fighting in one bound was impossible plus also suicide for them. The EDA requested that some of the leading elements, those who had come in first do to so. This would mean breaking up the whole force and using it to plug holes everywhere. Steadfast refusal came to do this. This was about politics but also military sense as well. Together as one, the British Second Army was a counterattack force far greater than the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact had in mainland Europe. Broken up, they would be whittled away and also have to go under EDA tactical command for those fights. There would be a time to go into battle and the first few days weren’t it. The Allies would use their troops at a time of their choosing: this too meant most of the supporting air power as well.
Forming up in Lower Saxony, on the western side of the Weser, the British, Irish and Spanish troops were organised ahead of battle. Three separate corps were formed. One consisted of heavier British forces, the second contained the Spanish and the third was made up of light British units plus the Irish. Efforts at concealment were made though only on an operational level. There was no strategic surprise which could come from the entry of Allied troops into the war in West Germany due to the Soviets not being completely stupid but the aim was to not let them understand how and where the use would come. When ready, only then, did the British Second Army go into battle. This was after there came an agreement with the EDA where the Dutch would join them as a fourth corps command – needed for operational geographic reasons – and the EDA let them generally do their own thing in how they fought. London and Madrid got serious concessions from Paris and Bonn on this. There was an unspoken undercurrent of ‘you need us or you are finished’ with the movement forward and at that time, this was very true. The Dutch had been pushed aside and neither the French nor the West Germans had the forces to plug the gap that the Soviets had opened up near Bremen. The Allies wanted to make their entrance here too because it would give them a clear shot at going over on the counteroffensive. They weren’t going to plug a gap but drive on the Inner-German Border… and bounce it too aiming for the Baltic Sea on the other side.
Late on March 15th saw the first British engagements take place to stop the Soviets in the Geest Gap. The next morning, they went forward on the attack. The Soviets hit them with gas and casualties came despite all defensive preparations. RAF Jaguars and Tornados appeared above Soviet formations and dropped bombs. These didn’t contain high-explosives but the products of Britain’s emergency wartime nerve gas programme (they had the knowledge and the technical base; now there was the political will) of several different agents. Britain, and therefore by extension the Allies, were back in the business of using chemical weapons in this war once again: the Soviets had used them first despite earlier decisions not to against any Allied forces encountered. Someone had ordered that from Moscow, someone who didn’t have the support of his comrades on that matter. As to the British, they would use them all the way on their ‘trip’ to Wismar, Rostock and Stralsund if need be. The political will on that was firm with no disputes at home on it. Meanwhile, British tanks and infantry advanced with the Spanish and Irish following them. Everything with the war in West Germany would now be very different.
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