Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

I'm not a fan of 'nukes all round'. I did that in one of my shorter stories and didn't enjoy it.
So it will not be the case here.
Mexico's future is something in my notes for the epilogue - US presidents and loads of other stuff too; lots to be honest! - but it won't be a happy one.
While the fighting in West Germany has been near the border and Soviet air & missile attacks beyond not that severe, West Germany has still taken a heavy hit. It will remain the economic engine it is and all Western European attention will focus there: anywhere like Mexico is on the other side and can forget anything like that.



Excellent: I hope not to let anyone down with the ending. There is the why and the how to come with the en of fighting plus what comes next.
You are both correct and wrong in what you say! Tomorrow, I should be able to reveal all.

(325)

Early April 1985: Europe (two of two)

The majority of Britain’s Royal Marines had been assigned to 6th Airborne Division as part of the 3rd Commando Brigade yet they didn’t end up in that fight on the North German Plain. Ahead of the deployment made by the British Second Army to the Continent, the brigade had been removed from the order of battle and stayed where they were on the southern coast of Norway when the 5th Airborne & 39th Air-portable Brigades (the rest of that division) crossed over into West Germany. They could have fought far inland, there was no restriction for just coastal operations, but they were kept back for what was deemed ‘Baltic contingencies’. None of those had cropped up during March. EDA forces overcame Soviet forces on Swedish soil and there was no invasion of Denmark. Moreover, there was no British-led Allied drive along the Baltic coast of East Germany as had been first planned either meaning that the Royal Marines wouldn’t be making any assault into Wismar, Rostock or Rugen Island. They waited but no contingency came in the Baltic. Instead, once April came, they were reassigned to the British II Corps up in central Norway. Frustratingly, they would arrive there too late.

Soviet forces had taken Trondheim last year yet not managed to get any further before the worst of the winter weather had come. They’d dug-in and held on. Throughout, a series of attacks against them by the Allies had come with air strikes and raiding operations on the ground all ready for what came starting the end of March. The British, Norwegians and Spanish advanced into the Trondheim area where multiple attacks were made. There were Swedish troops over the border who while not directly involved, conducted border operations down the Norwegian-Swedish frontier against the Soviets and kept their reserves tied up. The Norwegians broke into Trondheim on April 6th. Either side of them, the Spanish reached the important Vaernes Airbase (fighting through a place called Hell on the way) while the British got almost all the way to Orland Airbase. These two military sites were of great importance to the Soviet war effort and would be too for the Allies once they were taken back. Orland held out all the way until the very end though on the morning of April 12th. The British had elements of their 2nd Infantry Division’s 24th Brigade all around it and were shelling Soviet forces there to make it unusable yet they just failed to take Orland before the end. The Norwegians were busy at that point at getting ready to push further onwards, heading northwards while doing so. Intentions were to reach Mo i Rana before the end of April and get as far as Bodo in May. Advantage was to be taken of greater Swedish involvement and the geography of Soviet occupied areas where their held territory narrowed as it did. But, the fighting was over with.

Swedish military activity along the Norwegian border and into occupied Norwegian soil there was coordinated with the Allies. It included shelling, advances in key areas to secure possible later invasion routes and also air activity. There was quite a lot that Sweden did and over a wide area too yet they were unable to do much more than that. On the map, it looked easy for the Swedes to roll forward and take Mo i Rana, Bodo and even Narvik long before the Allies could do any of that. Another simple option looked to be for the Allies themselves to take the ‘Swedish shortcut’ and advance on those key points in the Soviets rear from behind rather than going directly towards them head-on. Alas, if only things were that simple.

Sweden had been invaded and thrown in a significant military commitment to rid their southern coastline of the Soviets. They’d needed French and West German help to do that too. There was also the risk of other invasions coming through Finland or across the Baltic into Stockholm for them to worry about. What forces they had on the Norwegian border were stretched and did all that they could: in later months, victorious forces from the south could come north but that would be then and not now. As to the Allies taking that shortcut across Sweden – moving out of Norway, through Sweden and then back into Norway –, there were the transport links to do this but not necessarily the troops to exploit those. There weren’t the extra men to spare due to the British and the Spanish having their armies fighting in West Germany and the Norwegians having taken so many serious losses early in the war. The Soviets too were able to read a map. They adjusted their defensive positions ahead of several of the Swedish border incursions and when at others the Swedish bashed them about unexpectedly, they pulled what men they could away from those fights into new positions. They weren’t going to be overcome with ease, especially in such terrain where they were defending. None of this mattered in the end though because it was all a fight which never came.


Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Soviet troops were all inside Austria. As was the case at the end of March, through early April, they continued to go nowhere even while moving. The Czechoslovak Fourth Army – with an attached Soviet division – engaged EDA forces north and east of Salzburg and near to the West German border. When they took ground, they were generally driven back soon enough from their gains. This put them not that far away from Munich over in Bavaria and this caused many West German concerns but in military terms, that city was very far away. There were strong and capable EDA forces on the Austrian side of the border – plus the defendable Inn River too – who counterattacked and launched attacks of their own. Fighting here went all the way up to the very last minute of active combat operations (eight in the morning local time on April 12th) with neither side beaten. Elsewhere in Austria, the route through the Bremmer Pass where Austria’s Tyrol region was located was held as a link connecting West Germany to Italy. This was vital to the fight in Austria but also the general EDA war effort. They transferred men and supplies both ways near unhindered. Soviet air interference was minimal and the presence of their Spetsnaz in an area ripe for them to make attacks on convoys going over the Alps was absent. Such commandos were elsewhere in the world and not here where they really could have caused a lot of problems.

Austrian troops were in the centre of the line which ran north-south through the middle of Austria where the frontlines ran. In their sector, they held back the Hungarians in the mountains above and the valleys below. The Austrians wanted to do more, to drive the Hungarians all the way home and to free Vienna on the way, but they had lost too much of their army right at the beginning of the invasion when they were too far forward. All they could do was hold. On their right flank, the Italians began advancing in early April. They were fighting north of were Slovenia was and engaging the Soviets a long way from Italian soil. Their offensive had the goal of reaching the city of Graz and taking the crossroads there. In doing so, that would allow the Italians to crack open the rear not just of the Soviet position on Austrian soil but put their forces in Yugoslavia in grave danger of being cut off from behind too. The fighting would be over long before the Italian 3rd Corps could get anywhere near enough to Graz to threaten it though. They were heading that way through difficult terrain and a capable opponent who, while stopped in their own attack last month, were still effective as a fighting force in defence. The Italians would still be able to celebrate a great victory in war through all their activities on Austrian soil – instead of inside Italy itself – but weren’t able to reach that ultimate prize of destroying the Soviets and their Thirty–Eighth Army.

It was in Yugoslavia where there remaining ongoing fighting past the morning of April 12th. This wasn’t just low-level guerrilla activity in rear areas as seen elsewhere in the many worldwide theatres of war but full-scale and organised combat. Yugoslavia’s relationship with the EDA was still new and Belgrade considered the war it was fighting for its own territory to be more important than anything else. The government there wanted the Soviets, plus the Bulgarians too down in the southwest, off their soil. Moreover, in addition, they would also make sure that Rome was made to understand that while the whole of Yugoslavia was very grateful for the assistance given to repulsing the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies, Italians forces would soon enough have to leave Yugoslavia too once the liberation was done with. Yugoslavia would like to be friends and allies with Italy and the rest of Europe but their sovereignty was paramount. Italian forces in Slovenia were there under nominal Yugoslavian invitation and command. In reality, their 5th Corps had come over the border ahead of Belgrade’s say-so and fought alongside the Yugoslavs as an independent force. Politics mattered though and so the pretence over Yugoslav command was there just like it had been in the re-writing of the entry made back last month.

In both Slovenia and Croatia, the Italians and Yugoslavs had long brought the Soviets to a stop. They were trying to drive them back into Hungary with more success in that occurring over in Croatia than in Slovenia. It was taking time but there was only going to be one clear winner eventually. Soviet reinforcements for this fight were all tied up elsewhere as there remained Romanian intransigence to face down. More than that though, as there had never been the intention of fully fighting Yugoslavia once it ‘acquiesced’ to having its borders crossed, what extra men the Soviets had were second- & third-grade forces anyway. Yugoslavia had been able to parry the semi-serious Bulgarian invasion and concentrate their forces northwards. While they had men of their own fighting in the northwest of their country, they sent more men striking northwards through early April. Those troops went out of the Vojvodina region and entered Hungary. Borders can be crossed both ways! Most of the Hungarian People’s Army was in Austria with only smaller forces left behind. Marching on Budapest wasn’t the Yugoslavian intention but they wanted to get their enemies attention. That they did when the Soviets rushed their 60th Tank Division – what could be described as third-grade; only with half of its manpower too due to mobilisation issues – from where it was at Debrecen and poised to drive into Romania now down to the Hungarian- Yugoslavian frontier. That checked the Yugoslavians but they were holding onto bits of Hungarian soil now. An immediate knock-on effect was felt over in Croatia where there were far fewer aircraft in the skies and attention elsewhere. The Yugoslavians made a series of localised attacks here all in the direction of the Hungarian border too. Success after success was coming. Then everyone wanted to stop fighting.

No, that wasn’t happening. Belgrade wouldn’t accept that, not while there were hostile foreign troops on its soil. Yugoslavian forces fought on. This drew lots of attention to Yugoslavia from every direction with the EDA especially getting involved to stop them. Things were working out where Yugoslavia was going to get a bigger role in post-conflict events than previously decided upon. Twenty-eight hours after the cessation elsewhere, in the afternoon of April 13th, and only once Yugoslavia was ready to, did its men stop fighting. In Belgrade, the government reminded its allies that they would fight all by themselves once again if those promises weren’t kept. Yugoslavia wouldn’t accept any betrayal. Meanwhile, while its regular forces were no longer shooting at the enemy, Yugoslavia irregulars carried on fighting while in occupied areas though.


Greece had left NATO several years before that organisation became irrelevant when the moment came to put NATO to the test. Greece didn’t consider that it had betrayed any of its allies when they needed it the most. In Athens, Prime Minister Papandreou was convinced that the wider world war would eventually end in nuclear holocaust. How could it not when so may countries fighting had nuclear weapons and had already used them on several occasions? His determination to keep Greece out of that war hadn’t stopped him from taking his country into the disaster which was the Greek-Turkish War of 1984. The only winners from that were Turkey and, while not directly involved, the Soviet Union too. Greece was able to exit that conflict claiming it was undefeated but it most-certainly wasn’t. The country was already bankrupt and the war only made that worse. There was no replacement of expended weapons afterwards and Papandreou agreed to Soviet use of military facilities on Crete in exchange for financial aid… aid which only tied Athens to Moscow and, if it carried on forever, would have seen Greece come completely under the thumb of the Soviet Union.

The war had now turned gravely against the Soviets. Papandreou accepted that whereas some members of his government said that it could still swing back in their favour. This only made things worse. They broke the terms of the agreement on how much use they could make of the military sites on Crete and there was the belief that Greece’s leader had that eventually there would come that nuclear war. Crete would be a target in any strategic exchange, he believed, and then after that island was hit it would be mainland Greece next. However, Greece was unable to do anything about this. Papandreou ‘left the room’ when his cabinet discussed making quiet approaches to both the Allies and the EDA to express Greek neutrality. This would give their prime minister plausible deniability if everything blew up in Athens’ face. That was already on the cards though. Internal Greek discussions on how they could get their country the best deal, which meant playing the Allies and the EDA off against each other to win the favour of Greece – the delusion was quite something here –, were still taking place long before any approach was made and when events beyond their control intervened to decide Greece’s fate.

The former NATO anchorage at Souda Bay (though its history as a naval base stretched back to Ottoman rule of Greece) was where damaged ships of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet had retired to following defeats in previous months. Firstly there had been the navies of the Allies which had struck and then afterwards the EDA had got involved too. There were a lot of ships lost, some others still at-sea and then those here in Crete. Among the latter was the missile-cruiser Slava. For the second time in this war, she had come to Souda Bay after taking battle damage. Repairs of the scale needed this second time weren’t going to be made in Crete and the ship needed to go to Sevastopol or one of the shipyards in the Sea of Azov. Patch-ups were being made ahead of that voyage. In the meantime, the Slava was in Greek waters when anchored in Souda Bay. French Mirage-2000s (those which had been in Tunisia and then transferred to retaken Malta once Libyan inaction was noted as only going to continue) rolled as fighters escorted Italian Tornado strike-bombers flying from Sicily for the opening strike of a raid against Crete. Those Tornados put bombs into the Slava and several other battered Soviet warships; the French fighters downed Soviet fighters which came out of Souda Bay’s military airfield. Following this attack came more aircraft, this time naval ones. The French and Italian navies had raced forward during an overnight high-speed run out of the Ionian Sea to reach the bottom of the Peloponnese. They were much closer to Crete and thus gave the aircraft flying from the pair of French carriers more capability in terms of fuel and weapons carried. The Super Étendards undertook bomb runs and missile attacks: the stationary and burning Slava got hit with a trio of Exocets when at-sea targets run out and she was sitting there seemingly begging for such attention. The missile-cruiser capsized soon enough, going over to starboard and making quite the splash. In the midst of all of this EDA military activity against the Soviets, they struck Greek military targets as well.

There were Greek aircraft at Souda Bay and the nearby Kasteli facility too. EDA bombing of Greek aircraft on the ground at the former could be excused as accidental considering the Super Étendards struck Soviet aircraft flying from there; the same couldn’t be said of Kasteli. In addition, Greek radar sites at Kissamos and Ziros were also hit by Martel anti-radar missiles. Neither of them were anywhere near where the Soviet activity on Crete was located and it couldn’t be in anyway excused as an accident to hit either. There was no accident: the French did all this on purpose. They had intelligence that showed Soviet activity at such places and acted on it. Greece had made its bed and would lie in it. The betrayal from Athens in siding with the Soviet Union was to be repaid. While that wasn’t necessarily true because the French acted on faulty information, information supplied by the Turks who were double-dealing here quite spectacularly, that was the way things turned out. Only Crete was designated a war zone to attack Greek forces deemed ‘belligerent’ alongside the Soviets before the fighting came to a close and no more air attacks came. That didn’t mean that this would have been confined to Crete though: Greece escaped likely further military attacks. Their position in EDA eyes at the end of the conflict was that they were on the side of Moscow and thus their treatment in the future would reflect that.

Thank you.
That is a possibility though the prestige of the military was hit by the rule of the generals from '67 to '74 and then the disaster of the war with Turkey.
Greece has ended up on the wrong side and even with any 'internal corrections' that will matter in the long run for them.

Will there be a strike on another important military on another part of the USSR?

(327)

Early April 1985: The Caribbean and Moscow

Within hours of the Soviets using their nuclear weapons against American submarines across over on the other side of the world, the United States responded. They struck against Soviet maritime assets in the Caribbean. Conventional warfare was already taking place here but this was suddenly given a nuclear dimension. A ‘limited’ attack was made near to the island of St. Kitts. The US Navy was authorised to use such weapons against the submarine that they were hunting there that had been eluding them for several days now. The frigates on the surface and the aircraft above were all given that permission to make attacks with such weapons. This came as a surprise to those American forces yet they were quick to take advantage. The enemy which they were hunting – a Victor class attack submarine – had led them on a dance for several days when it had been pursued for some distance away from near Puerto Rico and towards the Cuban-occupied St. Kitts. Anti-submarine work was never easy and required a lot of patience. Nuclear weapons though changed things as far more destructive power could be brought to bear to speed everything up and make killing a submarine a lot easier.

One of the P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft got the kill. It dropped several nuclear depth bombs into the water right where one of the helicopters from a frigate had a track on the submarine. The helicopter made a mad dash to escape despite assurances that the underwater explosions would have no effect upon the crew of the SH-2 Seasprite above: they weren’t about to take the chance of glowing in the dark in the future! In the hours afterwards, with that submarine destroyed and the threat from it thus gone, the US Navy made several attacks against St. Kitts with the frigates and their helicopters striking enemy shipping in the area. While doing so, they were focused upon that and had no idea of the fallout from the nuclear attack they took part in. It wasn’t just here in the Caribbean where both the Dutch and French were rather upset at the use of such weapons near their colonial island possessions but far away in Moscow.


Messages went back-and-forth over the Hot-Line. There was the nuclear attack made in the Sea of Okhotsk and then the retaliation in the Caribbean which formed the basis of exchanges made through the link between the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States. Accusations were made, answers demanded and promises of further action issued.

The Defence Council met to discuss what to do. General Secretary Vorotnikov and Defence Minister Romanov took the approach that the situation had come to a head here with the Americans who were now out of control. They had won ‘some victories’ of their own in North America and were emboldened by EDA ‘partial successes’ in Europe. They had chosen to make an attack against the strategic missile submarines in the Sea of Okhotsk to frighten the Soviet Union into doing nothing in response and then struck with a nuclear attack in the Caribbean. What was coming next? Nuclear strikes against further Soviet allies following on from their attack on Mexico? Nuclear attacks on the Soviet mainland to follow those in Soviet waters? There was no reasoning with this maniac John Glenn!

Grigory Vasilyevich Romanov – the Soviet Union’s fourth defence minister since the war had started – put forward a course of action for the Defence Council to consider. This was something that Vorotnikov told them all that he favoured too. This course of action was for the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons once again as ‘pre-emptive self-defence’. There would be strikes made in both North America and Western Europe and done in the correct manner, Romanov assured his comrades that the Soviet Union would ‘suffer little’ in any response. Due to the late hour when the discussion took place, Vorotnikov asked the Defence Council members to sleep on it and they would meet again in the morning to vote on whether to follow this suggested course of action. He was anticipating that despite some objections, it would be voted through.

The reaction from his comrades, and those on the Politburo who met afterwards without the knowledge of him and Romanov, could be best summed up as ‘hell, no!’.

They all recalled what had happened to Leningrad… Tashkent, Chita, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok too. They remembered when that lone Chinese ICBM had been shot down at the last minute above Moscow. These people weren’t going to see any more incoming nuclear missiles against their country if they had any power to stop that. It wasn’t the supposed maniac Glenn out of control, it was Vorotnikov and Romanov who were. It was they who had consistently gone against the will of both the Defence Council and the Politburo in what they had recently done in the form of the war launched against Yugoslavia, the return to the use of chemical weapons and so much more. Now they wanted to do this? That wasn’t happening.

The Politburo took a vote and once that was done with, action was taken during the early hours. The KGB was responsible for the security of Vorotnikov and with their chairman in the form of Kryuchkov as being the nation’s new leader’s right-hand in this matter, the now-deposed former general secretary was quietly taken into custody after being awoken from his sleep. Once bound, gagged and hooded, he was bundled on an aircraft and flown out of Moscow long before the sun came up. The KGB had a holding site for him down in the Crimea and from there he would never be heard from again. Vorotnikov had taken ill unexpectedly, the story would later be, and he would need much rest and recuperation. Romanov wasn’t so lucky as to get a free vacation to the sunny Crimea. The KGB wasn’t fully responsible for his personal security and shared that duty with the Soviet Army, an organisation which was currently fractionised. While the General Staff was fully-on board with what the Politburo did, not all of the lower-levels were and one of those included the part loyal to Romanov. The KGB was forced to let the military clean their own house and that included dealing with Romanov. Gunshots were exchanged at his official residence between soldiers wearing the same uniform. The attackers won out quickly though it still wasn’t easy and gave Romanov the time to attempt to make a run for it. He had no chance though. He was shot down dead long before he would get a few feet from the war zone in the heart of Moscow which was his residence. There were other arrests and killings during the night though no one else of any real noteworthy significance joined Vorotnikov and Romanov. Talking people around had been the order of the day either by appealing to their common sense and patriotism or by the KGB making them understand that their futures and that of their families lay with following the new order being established.

The coup d’état was complete. It was far less bloodied than it could have been and afterwards no one would call it that. Vorotnikov’s health was their concern and as to Romanov… well… there had been traitors there trying to kill him and when aid had been sent to him, he’d been accidently caught up in the gunfire: such things happen.


Gromyko chaired the Politburo the next morning, taking Vorotnikov’s seat at the head of the table. He was supported by his closest supporters in the form of Kryuchkov, Aliyev and Tikhonov. While retaining the foreign minister’s brief for the time being, Gromyko was now also the general secretary and that was what mattered. The Communist Party’s higher ranks, the KGB and the Soviet Army were all behind him. With that, he was unchallengeable.

A plan of action was put to the Politburo – the Defence Council remained active yet powers had returned to the wider Politburo – by Gromyko. They voted unanimously to follow this once input came from many corners. This was collective decision undertaken, the first of those on such an important thing for a long time now. Following the show of hands, Gromyko then set about having the agreed message sent down the Hot-Line to the Americans as well as an identical one sent via other links to Paris.

The Soviet Union was asking that the Allies and the EDA both agree to a ceasefire pending armistice talks.

Gromyko stated when Soviet forces would cease firing and requested that the military forces of all of those countries within each alliance do so. He assured those reading the messages that there would be no betrayal of this ceasefire from the Soviet Union nor its allies too. He was in complete control here. The timing of the ceasefire was to be that of eight a.m. Moscow time on April 12th: nearly twenty-four hours ahead of when the messages were sent.

Gromyko waited for the Allies and the EDA to respond.

Glenn should have two words for the USSR: Monroe Doctrine. Also known as GTFO of our Hemisphere.

Also, Congress will demand much at the negotiating table. More than the Soviets will be willing to give. I wonder if economic reality will finally rear its ugly head. The Soviet economy must be non functional at this point.

I would think that the United States just couldn't, politically, accept any peace treaty proposed by the Soviets. Just politically, the US public wouldn't accept the peace treaty unless it was proposed by the United States.