raunchel
Commander
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Post by raunchel on Mar 24, 2018 13:10:12 GMT
At least the RAF will really suffer quite a hit in popularity if they are in any way linked to the Unterweser incident. It's really different from their normal behaviour. I keep having the problem, being British, of having to do a double think every time RAF gets used in this TL. Well, they both used bombs against German civilians and tried to disrupt society, being supplied from outside the country...
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stevep
Fleet admiral
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Post by stevep on Mar 24, 2018 13:46:56 GMT
I keep having the problem, being British, of having to do a double think every time RAF gets used in this TL. Well, they both used bombs against German civilians and tried to disrupt society, being supplied from outside the country... Very true.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 24, 2018 14:12:32 GMT
Well, they both used bombs against German civilians and tried to disrupt society, being supplied from outside the country... Very true. Well we cal always call the RAF the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 24, 2018 16:28:13 GMT
I keep having the problem, being British, of having to do a double think every time RAF gets used in this TL. Well, they both used bombs against German civilians and tried to disrupt society, being supplied from outside the country... That was very witty! Well we cal always call the RAF the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang. Or just the Red Army Faction.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 24, 2018 16:29:46 GMT
(81)
November 1982:
The 1982 US mid-term elections saw the Democrats take a beating. In Senate, Congressional, Governor and state races, the Republicans picked up seats across the board. This wasn’t that unexpected: the Democrats held the White House and control over both Houses of Congress. However, the scale of the losses in some places was surprising. The Republicans managed to take control of the Senate and that was the real big news. They ended up with a two-seat majority there. Fault would be apportioned afterwards by many to Kennedy yet he wasn’t a really unpopular president just divisive nationwide. The party in power always takes a beating during the mid-terms, Kennedy’s supporters said. The president has lost us the Senate, said Kennedy’s detractors, and will cost us the House in ’84. Newly-elected politicians wouldn’t take their seats across the country until New Year though the repercussions were immediate.
The Senate Majority Leader announced he would step down come January – so he wouldn’t be the Minority Leader – and in the House there were moves afoot to replace members of the Democratic leadership too as some of the blame, that not directed at Kennedy, was transferred to certain figures who it was said had run a bad national campaign. Many eyes were on the new Congress for a variety of reasons where the newly-elected members plus the changes made would bring about shifts in political direction. The Republicans were certainly going to be in a stronger position now to better hold the president to account on many issues, foreign affairs especially. In addition, there in the Senate on that matter, many of the Democrats opposed to Kennedy’s actions as well at once felt emboldened to do so further come January after several pro-Kennedy senators lost their seats. ‘Interesting times’ were coming for just what the president would be able to do and what he wouldn’t be able to do.
Several weeks later, there was a regional security conference held in Jamaica at Montego Bay. This had been in the works for many months now where several Central American and Caribbean nations had been pushing for a united effort to work together to stop conflict across the whole region using diplomacy. The Montego Bay Conference was organised by the nations of Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica and Barbados. There had been help in getting this done from abroad with leading participation from the Swedish Prime Minister in pushing for it to push for a Latin American Diplomatic Group (LADG). Those national leaders came to Montego Bay to meet and representatives from other nations, inside and outside the region, were invited to attend as well. Cuba declined though Nicaragua sent Borge while the United States was represented by Mondale and Palme came from Stockholm as well. When in Montego Bay and during a private discussion away from the main events, Mondale informed Torrijos of the implications of the US mid-terms when it came to the US-Panama talks on the Canal Zone. The new Senate was very unlikely to approve any treaty. Naturally, there might be some misunderstanding of the outlook of some of the new senators when it came to the Panama Canal, but that body as a whole was not going to approve a transfer of sovereignty for the foreseeable future. The treaty negotiations – still in their early stages – were already a major political football in the United States and the new make-up of the Senate almost guaranteed that once the talks were complete and an agreement reached, no matter what it said, a treaty would be blocked by the new Senate. It was just going to be impossible to get anything done on the issue. Mondale was apologetic. Torrijos spoke of betrayal and walked out of their private meeting.
Away from that drama, when the major players got together, they discussed what they were in Jamaica to talk about: stopping the civil wars and external conflicts raging across the region. The civil wars underway in El Salvador and Honduras, both with extreme brutality being shown and gross abuses of human rights occurring, were talked about with calls from everyone for them to cease. The suggestion from Venezuela’s president that there were Nicaraguan troops in Honduras, fighting an illegal and undeclared war there, were met with denials from Borge and given support from Torrijos. This early break in the apparent unity and harmony of the new LADG was fast a sign of things to come when Mondale clashed with Borge over United States support for ‘arming British Imperialists’ in Belize. The outsiders had derailed the party! There had recently been an agreement struck where Phantom fighter-bombers would be sent to the RAF in Britain from American reserve stocks to free up other Phantoms to be transferred from the UK mainland to maintain an increased British military presence in Belize. The founding members of the LADG were talking about Belize with regards to support for coming future independence for the British territory and to get that back on track after the Belize War. Nicaragua and the United States wanted to argue over a side issue when the main point was to be support for independence. When Jamaica’s prime minister tried to calm the dispute, Borge moved to point out the support given by Jamaica, and Barbados too, for Britain’s role in the Belize War where ‘Guatemala was attacked’. Venezuela made mention of Nicaraguan involvement in that conflict on the side of Guatemala. Palme was joined by Mexico’s López Portillo – on his last foreign visit before he handed over domestic power to Javier García Paniagua – in calling for calm. They were here to discuss solutions. They were here to bring about peace. Score-settling and finger-pointing was not what the LADG was all about. But it had already gone too far. Sides had been picked and animosity expressed.
The concept of a weapons embargo to stop arms going to El Salvador and Honduras so that the killing could stop in those countries was derailed like everything else by the same thing. Rather than talk about ways to achieve that, Barbados’ prime minister objected to arms shipments by Cuba made to Grenada and said that those should be stopped too. Cuba wasn’t here to speak for itself but in came Borge again – a man who had spent so long in Cuba and knew that without Cuban help Somoza wouldn’t have been overthrown in his native Nicaragua – who complained that his fellow socialist nations were under attack in this LADG conference. Venezuela accused Cuba of sending arms to Guatemala and Nicaragua as well, arms which now included a lot of tanks and advanced combat aircraft since the Belize War and with the Soviets sending more-modern military equipment to Cuba to replace what was being sent to Central America. When Torrijos questioned how much of that was true but also defended the right of sovereign countries to arm themselves, Mondale stated that the United States had proof of these weapons transfers taking place and had already raised the issue with the Soviet Union. Borge denied the right of the United States to interfere like they were doing once again in the affairs of Nicaragua. When Palme asked for superpower disputes to be left out of the discussions that the LADG were having, making what he saw as a reasonable request, he found that everyone else looked at him like he was crazy. That was an insane concept! The whole region was affected by US-Soviet interference, active and passive. It would be nice if these matters could be settled by Central American and Caribbean countries but outsiders were the ones who sent those weapons initially. Torrijos pointed to how much the United States had recently armed Mexico while Cuban weapons which were being sent onwards came from Soviet factories. As long as both of those nations continued to arm others, then the region would be full of weapons.
Such was the first, and as it turned out the last, meeting of the LADG. There was no agreement to act to do anything. Everyone just wanted to argue. The outsiders had played far too big of a role than anyone had believed that they would. The opportunity to give peace a chance in the region that might have come from Montego Bay had been lost. 1983 and especially 1984 would see the fears of those behind the LADG come to fruition as conflict spread.
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James G
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Post by James G on Mar 24, 2018 16:31:36 GMT
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 24, 2018 17:12:21 GMT
(81)November 1982: The 1982 US mid-term elections saw the Democrats take a beating. In Senate, Congressional, Governor and state races, the Republicans picked up seats across the board. This wasn’t that unexpected: the Democrats held the White House and control over both Houses of Congress. However, the scale of the losses in some places was surprising. The Republicans managed to take control of the Senate and that was the real big news. They ended up with a two-seat majority there. Fault would be apportioned afterwards by many to Kennedy yet he wasn’t a really unpopular president just divisive nationwide. The party in power always takes a beating during the mid-terms, Kennedy’s supporters said. The president has lost us the Senate, said Kennedy’s detractors, and will cost us the House in ’84. Newly-elected politicians wouldn’t take their seats across the country until New Year though the repercussions were immediate. The Senate Majority Leader announced he would step down come January – so he wouldn’t be the Minority Leader – and in the House there were moves afoot to replace members of the Democratic leadership too as some of the blame, that not directed at Kennedy, was transferred to certain figures who it was said had run a bad national campaign. Many eyes were on the new Congress for a variety of reasons where the newly-elected members plus the changes made would bring about shifts in political direction. The Republicans were certainly going to be in a stronger position now to better hold the president to account on many issues, foreign affairs especially. In addition, there in the Senate on that matter, many of the Democrats opposed to Kennedy’s actions as well at once felt emboldened to do so further come January after several pro-Kennedy senators lost their seats. ‘Interesting times’ were coming for just what the president would be able to do and what he wouldn’t be able to do. Several weeks later, there was a regional security conference held in Jamaica at Montego Bay. This had been in the works for many months now where several Central American and Caribbean nations had been pushing for a united effort to work together to stop conflict across the whole region using diplomacy. The Montego Bay Conference was organised by the nations of Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica and Barbados. There had been help in getting this done from abroad with leading participation from the Swedish Prime Minister in pushing for it to push for a Latin American Diplomatic Group (LADG). Those national leaders came to Montego Bay to meet and representatives from other nations, inside and outside the region, were invited to attend as well. Cuba declined though Nicaragua sent Borge while the United States was represented by Mondale and Palme came from Stockholm as well. When in Montego Bay and during a private discussion away from the main events, Mondale informed Torrijos of the implications of the US mid-terms when it came to the US-Panama talks on the Canal Zone. The new Senate was very unlikely to approve any treaty. Naturally, there might be some misunderstanding of the outlook of some of the new senators when it came to the Panama Canal, but that body as a whole was not going to approve a transfer of sovereignty for the foreseeable future. The treaty negotiations – still in their early stages – were already a major political football in the United States and the new make-up of the Senate almost guaranteed that once the talks were complete and an agreement reached, no matter what it said, a treaty would be blocked by the new Senate. It was just going to be impossible to get anything done on the issue. Mondale was apologetic. Torrijos spoke of betrayal and walked out of their private meeting. Away from that drama, when the major players got together, they discussed what they were in Jamaica to talk about: stopping the civil wars and external conflicts raging across the region. The civil wars underway in El Salvador and Honduras, both with extreme brutality being shown and gross abuses of human rights occurring, were talked about with calls from everyone for them to cease. The suggestion from Venezuela’s president that there were Nicaraguan troops in Honduras, fighting an illegal and undeclared war there, were met with denials from Borge and given support from Torrijos. This early break in the apparent unity and harmony of the new LADG was fast a sign of things to come when Mondale clashed with Borge over United States support for ‘arming British Imperialists’ in Belize. The outsiders had derailed the party! There had recently been an agreement struck where Phantom fighter-bombers would be sent to the RAF in Britain from American reserve stocks to free up other Phantoms to be transferred from the UK mainland to maintain an increased British military presence in Belize. The founding members of the LADG were talking about Belize with regards to support for coming future independence for the British territory and to get that back on track after the Belize War. Nicaragua and the United States wanted to argue over a side issue when the main point was to be support for independence. When Jamaica’s prime minister tried to calm the dispute, Borge moved to point out the support given by Jamaica, and Barbados too, for Britain’s role in the Belize War where ‘Guatemala was attacked’. Venezuela made mention of Nicaraguan involvement in that conflict on the side of Guatemala. Palme was joined by Mexico’s López Portillo – on his last foreign visit before he handed over domestic power to Javier García Paniagua – in calling for calm. They were here to discuss solutions. They were here to bring about peace. Score-settling and finger-pointing was not what the LADG was all about. But it had already gone too far. Sides had been picked and animosity expressed. The concept of a weapons embargo to stop arms going to El Salvador and Honduras so that the killing could stop in those countries was derailed like everything else by the same thing. Rather than talk about ways to achieve that, Barbados’ prime minister objected to arms shipments by Cuba made to Grenada and said that those should be stopped too. Cuba wasn’t here to speak for itself but in came Borge again – a man who had spent so long in Cuba and knew that without Cuban help Somoza wouldn’t have been overthrown in his native Nicaragua – who complained that his fellow socialist nations were under attack in this LADG conference. Venezuela accused Cuba of sending arms to Guatemala and Nicaragua as well, arms which now included a lot of tanks and advanced combat aircraft since the Belize War and with the Soviets sending more-modern military equipment to Cuba to replace what was being sent to Central America. When Torrijos questioned how much of that was true but also defended the right of sovereign countries to arm themselves, Mondale stated that the United States had proof of these weapons transfers taking place and had already raised the issue with the Soviet Union. Borge denied the right of the United States to interfere like they were doing once again in the affairs of Nicaragua. When Palme asked for superpower disputes to be left out of the discussions that the LADG were having, making what he saw as a reasonable request, he found that everyone else looked at him like he was crazy. That was an insane concept! The whole region was affected by US-Soviet interference, active and passive. It would be nice if these matters could be settled by Central American and Caribbean countries but outsiders were the ones who sent those weapons initially. Torrijos pointed to how much the United States had recently armed Mexico while Cuban weapons which were being sent onwards came from Soviet factories. As long as both of those nations continued to arm others, then the region would be full of weapons. Such was the first, and as it turned out the last, meeting of the LADG. There was no agreement to act to do anything. Everyone just wanted to argue. The outsiders had played far too big of a role than anyone had believed that they would. The opportunity to give peace a chance in the region that might have come from Montego Bay had been lost. 1983 and especially 1984 would see the fears of those behind the LADG come to fruition as conflict spread. Lets hope the Republicans can slow the Kennedy avalanche a bit.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 24, 2018 18:44:10 GMT
(82)
December 1982:
The passing of Suslov was the end of an era. The Second Secretary of the Soviet Union, the long-serving ideological chief and the king-maker for the role of General Secretary, died of heart disease after fighting against that illness all year with some of the very best medical attention given to him. Suslov had lasted in his position of power for decades. He had survived Stalin and the Second World War. His heart gave in when the end came, physically but not metaphorically. To the very end, Suslov remained a committed communist with a surety that the cause he championed would be shown to be correct by history. He had hoped to see that validation before he died. Alas, that hadn’t come. He was buried and eulogies given; officially, he would be mourned. Andropov, who owed everything to Suslov, was silently relieved by his passing. He wasn’t alone among his Politburo colleagues in this. Many were glad that Suslov was gone though for reasons which varied and didn’t match with Andropov’s. Suslov was the last of the truly ‘old guard’. He represented the past and not the future. Andropov had brought them into the present and after he was gone, the future would belong to those who no longer came from the era when what Suslov thought was relevant was but back then and not now. He had stood in opposition to the appointment of fresh new blood, younger men, to the Politburo and opposed what he had seen as the weakening of the ‘frontline defences against a resurgence in fascism’ in Europe by the strategy of making troop withdrawals to encourage American troop withdrawals. Adventurism abroad was something else which Suslov had stood in the way of too. He had been waiting for the one day when the masses of the working class in Western Europe and elsewhere in the world would spontaneously rise up in revolt and therefore refused to accept the idea that maybe some encouragement might be needed. Winning his favour had been hard for so many on the Politburo and keeping it more difficult. No more Suslov meant that they no longer had to fear him turning on them and thus a fall from their power and position. Goodbye Comrade Suslov, we won’t miss you.
Andropov had been to see his own doctors again. By now they knew what was wrong with him: kidney disease. Could his life be saved? No. Could he hold on for some time like Suslov had done? Yes. How long? They didn’t know. How long!? A year, maybe a year and a half. He’d taken it better than he would have done years beforehand. Every man was mortal, Andropov knew that. His time on this earth would come to an end. Before that there was much to do. Before he passed on, he would see what he wanted done to be done. He wouldn’t go out like Suslov did with his vision for the future unfulfilled. Andropov would see the security of the state assured for the future by making sure he selected his successor, someone who shared his vision. He wanted someone whom he could rely upon to not drag the Soviet Union into a major war nor allow it to collapse due to pressures exerted from aboard. Many men would want to succeed him when he was gone though the trick was for them to not find out that he was dying until as late as possible. Andropov thought that no one knew how ill he really was: he had no idea that Chebrikov already knew and had already told others. Among the Politburo, there were many of those who could eventually succeed Andropov when he died. These ranged from men like Chebrikov and Ustinov to Grishin and Romanov to Ligachev and even the young pup Gorbachev. Some of those ‘ethnics’ (non-Russians) brought into the Politburo recently, more of that young blood, in the form of Aliyev, Fedorchuk and Shevardnadze could possibly replace him as well. Andropov told himself that he would be the one to anoint such a successor: he really believed that he would be able to.
Away from Moscow, through the final month of the year came the last of the first round of Soviet troop withdrawals out of East Germany. The 14th Guards Motorised Rifle Division followed the process of redeployment out of that country that had been preceded by three more combat divisions beforehand: the 35th Motorised Rifle, the 16th Guards Tank and the 25th Tank. Smaller formations, combat and combat support, had been removed throughout the year. Twenty-five percent of Soviet troops in East Germany had been removed, just as Gromyko had said in East Berlin that they would be. The undertaking had been huge and costly. The soldiers had been far easier to move than their equipment. Done it had been though with the withdrawn formations sitting in holding camps across Czechoslovakia and Poland. NATO intelligence agencies had verified the withdrawals too when the majority of their governments had been convinced that they wouldn’t happen.
As both the GRU and the KGB monitored Western Europe on that issue, they also observed how the West dealt with the Genscher assassination and the Unterweser explosion. There came the hunts for the perpetrators of those responsible for each and the finding of their bodies. The fall-out from Unterweser – the drama not the small about of radiation leaked – was interesting to watch where how panic set in and rumours were spread. The KGB had used up a valuable asset to attack Unterweser but no further in-place spies were called up to assist in creating chaos where there was at first a temptation to do that. West Germans did that themselves. There was blame apportioned to the Soviet Union for each attack from the usual sources who declared that the attacks and then the deaths of the perpetrators were clear signs of state involvement. However, more voices screamed conspiracy louder in a mad frenzy. The reasoning was that if both attacks had been the work of the KGB, then surely they wouldn’t have killed those who carried out the attacks because that wouldn’t make sense if they wanted to get away with what they had done. That made sense, yes? Someone must be framing the Soviet Union. Someone must be framing the Red Army Faction too because why would they want to blow up a nuclear power station in West Germany (in the minds of many, the two events must have been done by the same group because they were so close together). It was all crazy, quite the insanity. The Soviets couldn’t have planned this better. The real after-effects were what Moscow was waiting for now: what would happen with the anti-nuclear movement in West Germany and the stability of the West German government without Genscher?
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 24, 2018 21:15:27 GMT
(82)December 1982: The passing of Suslov was the end of an era. The Second Secretary of the Soviet Union, the long-serving ideological chief and the king-maker for the role of General Secretary, died of heart disease after fighting against that illness all year with some of the very best medical attention given to him. Suslov had lasted in his position of power for decades. He had survived Stalin and the Second World War. His heart gave in when the end came, physically but not metaphorically. To the very end, Suslov remained a committed communist with a surety that the cause he championed would be shown to be correct by history. He had hoped to see that validation before he died. Alas, that hadn’t come. He was buried and eulogies given; officially, he would be mourned. Andropov, who owed everything to Suslov, was silently relieved by his passing. He wasn’t alone among his Politburo colleagues in this. Many were glad that Suslov was gone though for reasons which varied and didn’t match with Andropov’s. Suslov was the last of the truly ‘old guard’. He represented the past and not the future. Andropov had brought them into the present and after he was gone, the future would belong to those who no longer came from the era when what Suslov thought was relevant was but back then and not now. He had stood in opposition to the appointment of fresh new blood, younger men, to the Politburo and opposed what he had seen as the weakening of the ‘frontline defences against a resurgence in fascism’ in Europe by the strategy of making troop withdrawals to encourage American troop withdrawals. Adventurism abroad was something else which Suslov had stood in the way of too. He had been waiting for the one day when the masses of the working class in Western Europe and elsewhere in the world would spontaneously rise up in revolt and therefore refused to accept the idea that maybe some encouragement might be needed. Winning his favour had been hard for so many on the Politburo and keeping it more difficult. No more Suslov meant that they no longer had to fear him turning on them and thus a fall from their power and position. Goodbye Comrade Suslov, we won’t miss you. Andropov had been to see his own doctors again. By now they knew what was wrong with him: kidney disease. Could his life be saved? No. Could he hold on for some time like Suslov had done? Yes. How long? They didn’t know. How long!? A year, maybe a year and a half. He’d taken it better than he would have done years beforehand. Every man was mortal, Andropov knew that. His time on this earth would come to an end. Before that there was much to do. Before he passed on, he would see what he wanted done to be done. He wouldn’t go out like Suslov did with his vision for the future unfulfilled. Andropov would see the security of the state assured for the future by making sure he selected his successor, someone who shared his vision. He wanted someone whom he could rely upon to not drag the Soviet Union into a major war nor allow it to collapse due to pressures exerted from aboard. Many men would want to succeed him when he was gone though the trick was for them to not find out that he was dying until as late as possible. Andropov thought that no one knew how ill he really was: he had no idea that Chebrikov already knew and had already told others. Among the Politburo, there were many of those who could eventually succeed Andropov when he died. These ranged from men like Chebrikov and Ustinov to Grishin and Romanov to Ligachev and even the young pup Gorbachev. Some of those ‘ethnics’ (non-Russians) brought into the Politburo recently, more of that young blood, in the form of Aliyev, Fedorchuk and Shevardnadze could possibly replace him as well. Andropov told himself that he would be the one to anoint such a successor: he really believed that he would be able to. Away from Moscow, through the final month of the year came the last of the first round of Soviet troop withdrawals out of East Germany. The 14th Guards Motorised Rifle Division followed the process of redeployment out of that country that had been preceded by three more combat divisions beforehand: the 35th Motorised Rifle, the 16th Guards Tank and the 25th Tank. Smaller formations, combat and combat support, had been removed throughout the year. Twenty-five percent of Soviet troops in East Germany had been removed, just as Gromyko had said in East Berlin that they would be. The undertaking had been huge and costly. The soldiers had been far easier to move than their equipment. Done it had been though with the withdrawn formations sitting in holding camps across Czechoslovakia and Poland. NATO intelligence agencies had verified the withdrawals too when the majority of their governments had been convinced that they wouldn’t happen. As both the GRU and the KGB monitored Western Europe on that issue, they also observed how the West dealt with the Genscher assassination and the Unterweser explosion. There came the hunts for the perpetrators of those responsible for each and the finding of their bodies. The fall-out from Unterweser – the drama not the small about of radiation leaked – was interesting to watch where how panic set in and rumours were spread. The KGB had used up a valuable asset to attack Unterweser but no further in-place spies were called up to assist in creating chaos where there was at first a temptation to do that. West Germans did that themselves. There was blame apportioned to the Soviet Union for each attack from the usual sources who declared that the attacks and then the deaths of the perpetrators were clear signs of state involvement. However, more voices screamed conspiracy louder in a mad frenzy. The reasoning was that if both attacks had been the work of the KGB, then surely they wouldn’t have killed those who carried out the attacks because that wouldn’t make sense if they wanted to get away with what they had done. That made sense, yes? Someone must be framing the Soviet Union. Someone must be framing the Red Army Faction too because why would they want to blow up a nuclear power station in West Germany (in the minds of many, the two events must have been done by the same group because they were so close together). It was all crazy, quite the insanity. The Soviets couldn’t have planned this better. The real after-effects were what Moscow was waiting for now: what would happen with the anti-nuclear movement in West Germany and the stability of the West German government without Genscher? The Greens are defiantly going to make a case regarding the Soviet pullback from East Germany and thus West Germany does not need to be part of NATO and also they are going to scream murder regarding the Unterweser distaster.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Mar 24, 2018 23:26:16 GMT
(82)December 1982: The passing of Suslov was the end of an era. The Second Secretary of the Soviet Union, the long-serving ideological chief and the king-maker for the role of General Secretary, died of heart disease after fighting against that illness all year with some of the very best medical attention given to him. Suslov had lasted in his position of power for decades. He had survived Stalin and the Second World War. His heart gave in when the end came, physically but not metaphorically. To the very end, Suslov remained a committed communist with a surety that the cause he championed would be shown to be correct by history. He had hoped to see that validation before he died. Alas, that hadn’t come. He was buried and eulogies given; officially, he would be mourned. Andropov, who owed everything to Suslov, was silently relieved by his passing. He wasn’t alone among his Politburo colleagues in this. Many were glad that Suslov was gone though for reasons which varied and didn’t match with Andropov’s. Suslov was the last of the truly ‘old guard’. He represented the past and not the future. Andropov had brought them into the present and after he was gone, the future would belong to those who no longer came from the era when what Suslov thought was relevant was but back then and not now. He had stood in opposition to the appointment of fresh new blood, younger men, to the Politburo and opposed what he had seen as the weakening of the ‘frontline defences against a resurgence in fascism’ in Europe by the strategy of making troop withdrawals to encourage American troop withdrawals. Adventurism abroad was something else which Suslov had stood in the way of too. He had been waiting for the one day when the masses of the working class in Western Europe and elsewhere in the world would spontaneously rise up in revolt and therefore refused to accept the idea that maybe some encouragement might be needed. Winning his favour had been hard for so many on the Politburo and keeping it more difficult. No more Suslov meant that they no longer had to fear him turning on them and thus a fall from their power and position. Goodbye Comrade Suslov, we won’t miss you. Andropov had been to see his own doctors again. By now they knew what was wrong with him: kidney disease. Could his life be saved? No. Could he hold on for some time like Suslov had done? Yes. How long? They didn’t know. How long!? A year, maybe a year and a half. He’d taken it better than he would have done years beforehand. Every man was mortal, Andropov knew that. His time on this earth would come to an end. Before that there was much to do. Before he passed on, he would see what he wanted done to be done. He wouldn’t go out like Suslov did with his vision for the future unfulfilled. Andropov would see the security of the state assured for the future by making sure he selected his successor, someone who shared his vision. He wanted someone whom he could rely upon to not drag the Soviet Union into a major war nor allow it to collapse due to pressures exerted from aboard. Many men would want to succeed him when he was gone though the trick was for them to not find out that he was dying until as late as possible. Andropov thought that no one knew how ill he really was: he had no idea that Chebrikov already knew and had already told others. Among the Politburo, there were many of those who could eventually succeed Andropov when he died. These ranged from men like Chebrikov and Ustinov to Grishin and Romanov to Ligachev and even the young pup Gorbachev. Some of those ‘ethnics’ (non-Russians) brought into the Politburo recently, more of that young blood, in the form of Aliyev, Fedorchuk and Shevardnadze could possibly replace him as well. Andropov told himself that he would be the one to anoint such a successor: he really believed that he would be able to. Away from Moscow, through the final month of the year came the last of the first round of Soviet troop withdrawals out of East Germany. The 14th Guards Motorised Rifle Division followed the process of redeployment out of that country that had been preceded by three more combat divisions beforehand: the 35th Motorised Rifle, the 16th Guards Tank and the 25th Tank. Smaller formations, combat and combat support, had been removed throughout the year. Twenty-five percent of Soviet troops in East Germany had been removed, just as Gromyko had said in East Berlin that they would be. The undertaking had been huge and costly. The soldiers had been far easier to move than their equipment. Done it had been though with the withdrawn formations sitting in holding camps across Czechoslovakia and Poland. NATO intelligence agencies had verified the withdrawals too when the majority of their governments had been convinced that they wouldn’t happen. As both the GRU and the KGB monitored Western Europe on that issue, they also observed how the West dealt with the Genscher assassination and the Unterweser explosion. There came the hunts for the perpetrators of those responsible for each and the finding of their bodies. The fall-out from Unterweser – the drama not the small about of radiation leaked – was interesting to watch where how panic set in and rumours were spread. The KGB had used up a valuable asset to attack Unterweser but no further in-place spies were called up to assist in creating chaos where there was at first a temptation to do that. West Germans did that themselves. There was blame apportioned to the Soviet Union for each attack from the usual sources who declared that the attacks and then the deaths of the perpetrators were clear signs of state involvement. However, more voices screamed conspiracy louder in a mad frenzy. The reasoning was that if both attacks had been the work of the KGB, then surely they wouldn’t have killed those who carried out the attacks because that wouldn’t make sense if they wanted to get away with what they had done. That made sense, yes? Someone must be framing the Soviet Union. Someone must be framing the Red Army Faction too because why would they want to blow up a nuclear power station in West Germany (in the minds of many, the two events must have been done by the same group because they were so close together). It was all crazy, quite the insanity. The Soviets couldn’t have planned this better. The real after-effects were what Moscow was waiting for now: what would happen with the anti-nuclear movement in West Germany and the stability of the West German government without Genscher? The Greens are defiantly going to make a case regarding the Soviet pullback from East Germany and thus West Germany does not need to be part of NATO and also they are going to scream murder regarding the Unterweser distaster. That is the KGB hope. The personalities involved with those Greens back in the early 80s, which I have been reading up on, are very interesting.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 25, 2018 5:12:50 GMT
The Greens are defiantly going to make a case regarding the Soviet pullback from East Germany and thus West Germany does not need to be part of NATO and also they are going to scream murder regarding the Unterweser distaster. That is the KGB hope. The personalities involved with those Greens back in the early 80s, which I have been reading up on, are very interesting. I wonder if this Green effect as i will call it then will spread from West Germany to other West Europe countries.
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James G
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Post by James G on Mar 25, 2018 10:57:32 GMT
That is the KGB hope. The personalities involved with those Greens back in the early 80s, which I have been reading up on, are very interesting. I wonder if this Green effect as i will call it then will spread from West Germany to other West Europe countries. The 'Green Effect': I like the name, I will try and add that in to the story. I think that at this time, only in West Germany did they have the numbers and the political system was set in a way to transform votes into real influence in government.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 25, 2018 11:06:31 GMT
I wonder if this Green effect as i will call it then will spread from West Germany to other West Europe countries. The 'Green Effect': I like the name, I will try and add that in to the story. I think that at this time, only in West Germany did they have the numbers and the political system was set in a way to transform votes into real influence in government. The Netherlands had the Pacifist Socialist Party, it won in OTL due its involved in the organisation of national demonstrations against nuclear weapons in the 1981 election three seats. In the subsequent 1982 election it kept its seats. I could see the PSP win some more seats, maybe two as it runs on a Soviet are out of Europe and we should leave NATO campaign. The Netherlands even has a Communist Party of the Netherlands who in the period of 1977 to its end in 1986 had 3 seats.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 25, 2018 12:39:51 GMT
Now that does sound worrying. The fact the useful idiots don't realise that its in Soviet interests to get rid of people who could point the finger at them shows how deluded they are. Also what Lordroel says about the Netherlands could be a problem. Mind you I had a feeling that James said that, apart from Britain, much of western Europe largely escaped the coming conflict? Which is likely to be very bad for Britain with a lot of s**t coming its way.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 25, 2018 12:42:33 GMT
Now that does sound worrying. The fact the useful idiots don't realise that its in Soviet interests to get rid of people who could point the finger at them shows how deluded they are. Also what Lordroel says about the Netherlands could be a problem. Mind you I had a feeling that James said that, apart from Britain, much of western Europe largely escaped the coming conflict? Which is likely to be very bad for Britain with a lot of s**t coming its way. But let’s hope in the end the British second Darkest Hour will pass when it comes.
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