The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

100 – Go West


Eight hours before the allotted time to strike, Marshal Ogarkov was given final confirmation that Operation Elbe was a go. Now, this wasn’t really final. It was entirely possible that all the way up to the very last-minute tomorrow morning, this could all be called off. However, the issue over the eight-hour time limit was something imposed by the General Staff back in Moscow. They’d told the Politburo that things would be done following H–8 that couldn’t be reversed if the element of surprise was supposed to be maintained following a delay. A delayed Operation Elbe would be something that NATO could be somewhat prepared for once their intelligence & reconnaissance assets saw the certain manoeuvres, staging and such like following H–8. It wouldn’t give them enough time to understand what was coming with the invasion of Western Europe should Operation Elbe go ahead on time though.


It was Saturday night over in Poland. Two divisions of the Soviet VDV, the 7th Guards & 106th Guards Airborne, had been in Poland for many weeks on exercise. Each was a fully mechanised unit complete with their tracked vehicles and mounted heavy weapons. They left their training sites and crossed the western half of Poland, reached the border with East Germany and then went through that second nation. Hundreds of vehicles and thousands of men were on the move. This was complicated! Soviet traffic directors, aided by Poles who were actually under the impression that this was an exercise (their government was only now being told of what was happening), sought to guide them through Poland. On multiple occasions, the columns took the wrong road and got lost. Maps weren’t followed correctly nor were those clear directions either. The vehicles would have to be turned around and locate the right road. Inside East Germany, there was much better preparation with the East Germans in support of the Soviets there keeping better control over the deployment. It was now the early hours of Sunday and the Nationale Volksarmee had more than a day’s head-start in knowledge of the reality of this than the Poles. East German traffic directors in their GAZ field cars took charge of leading columns themselves. Their Soviet counterparts – whom Ogarkov would later admit he’d tasked too few, especially over in Poland – were erecting special signs and also driving about but the East Germans put on a far better show of guidance.

Everything done with this deployment was done without the use of a single radio signal. Few major civilian roads were used and instead it was smaller ones as well as long-established cleared tracks for military use which ran through the forests and countryside. NATO surveillance had seen them being crafted many years before and understood their use. In wartime, they were supposed to be targeted in NATO defensive plans to stop a major reinforcement of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany. They weren’t being watched, nor bombed, as the VDV divisions moved across them tonight. Inside East Germany, some distance back from the Inner-German Border, the columns came to a stop in pre-selected hidden areas. Stragglers arrived as the hours ticked by, those who’d gotten lost in Poland. Reprimands would be made and there would be dismissals of junior officers from their posts by angry superiors. The 106th Guards Airborne, based in peacetime at Tula in the western half of Russia, was in-place first with the 7th Guards Airborne – from the Baltic Military District – arriving at its staging areas next. The divisions were split into three regiment groups in separate geographic areas. Tanks arrived at these places soon enough. Two independent regiments assigned to the GSFG which Ogarkov wanted with his VDV elements had too been broken down each into three. A battalion of T-64s was with now with each airborne mechanised regiment after they came out of their garrisons and followed directions to the staging sites as well. All of this was completed at H–3.


Back over in Poland, the 5th Guards Army Corps left its exercise areas too. They’d been in Poland for some time as well. Once a motor rifle division (the 120th Guards), that formation had transformed into a four-brigade independent corps when in Belarus in the past few years. This was a strike force of well-trained tanks and armoured infantry complete with full supporting assets. A further independent brigade from the Moscow Military District had linked up with them at the end of July and before they would see any action, there’d be additions made when in East Germany too. In the meantime, under Ogarkov’s H–8 authorisation, they went out of the training sites to nearby freight trains waiting for them. They would move by rail into East Germany and it wasn’t going to be a quick process. It wasn’t intended that the corps reach the Inner-German Border by the time the invasion would commence, but they were projected to see action soon enough alongside the GSFG. A pair of Polish-based Soviet Army divisions, one of tanks and another of motor rifle troops, along with the majority of the Northern Group of Forces (NGF) of which they were all assigned, also received orders to move out of their barracks and head for East Germany. Likewise, they wouldn’t be in-place at first light on Sunday morning but were due not that long afterwards. The NGF was an important part of the operational strength Ogarkov’s Operation Elbe. It was the same in Hungary with the larger – four divisions – Southern Group of Forces (SGF). Out of their barracks and on the move they were starting Saturday night with the SFG heading for Czechoslovakia.

The Soviet Army’s own airmobile units, those with the DShV, based in the four Warsaw Pact countries of East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia & Hungary all began pre-battle deployments. The brigades and independent battalions either waited at landing strips from helicopters near to their barracks or made short trips to airfields where transport aircraft were due to come pick them up. When Ogarkov had crafted Plan Zhukov, before it became Operation Elbe, it was obvious that he never would be able to send the VDV and the DShV all into action via air. Even if NATO inflicted few losses on the transporting assets and there was thus several turn-arounds for second & third runs, the lift capability wasn’t there. He’d chosen to send the VDV by road and allow for his DShV to go by air. It was favouritism: the Soviet Army over the Soviet Airborne Forces. Yet, much was riding on each to do as planned once the shooting started.

Garrisons of Soviet Army and Nationale Volksarmee throughout East Germany were hives of activity likewise the Soviet ones in Czechoslovakia. That wasn’t the case at the ones of the Polish, Czechoslovak and Hungarian armies though. At those ones witnessing all the night-time activity, there was no movement out of them by columns of tanks nor infantry vehicles. Instead, the men who’d been forced to bed down earlier in the evening were woken come midnight, fed & formed up. Ammunition was issued and lectures on discipline were given. There were political speeches given too, ones to ‘improve’ their morale. Officers were meanwhile in mass briefings as they were told what was about to happen. A wait was on for H–0. Only then would there be movement into the field to stage ahead of divisional- & army-level attacks. The plan was to send them over the Inner-German Border in the morning, though after the lead units had already gone forward. In addition to those going out of East Germany and Czechoslovakia into West Germany, there were several Soviet and Nationale Volksarmee units going inwards… to make an attack into West Berlin. These troops wouldn’t be delaying their attack like the others. East German border guards would be joining them in undertaking the seizure of that city: Operation Zentrum.

Soviet naval infantry from their Baltic Fleet had been on exercise along the East German coast, back near the Polish border rather than forward near to West Germany and Denmark. There was a brigade of them: marines along with tanks, armoured personnel carriers and transport helicopters. They moved up to their staging sites through the night where a flotilla of ships was meant to meet them. The amphibious ships wouldn’t sail until H–2 but before then, the men had to be aboard. All of their gear was already loaded to make this easier yet it was going to be a big ask for this amphibious element of Operation Elbe to go off as planned at H–0.

At airbases across the Warsaw Pact countries, preparations were underway to get the aircraft and helicopters at them into the air by first light. The undertaking with this was just as difficult as it was with troops and tanks elsewhere. Combat jets, transport planes and supporting aircraft & helicopters all had a complicated set of tasks to complete at H–0 but also before then. Thousands of ground personnel were at work. There had been many things done in the past few days since the Politburo had decided on war and ahead of that there had been that alert status for weeks on end. Still…not all of the aircraft would be ready to fly. The Soviet Air Force wasn’t going to be up to task.

Columns of vehicles which formed missile batteries left their garrisons. Scuds were among them, ones with far better accuracy than the ones supplied to Iraq, but also different, newer ballistic missiles too. The warheads for these missiles were conventional, chemical and nuclear. Dispersal sites had long been selected for the missile batteries to hide among. They went into forests, valleys and open mines: even unused industrial areas were made use of. Security detachments fanned out while camouflage teams went to work. The missile launchers here, when on the move, and post-firing were all supposed to be hidden from observation as long as all procedures were followed.

Right up close to the Inner-German Border, nearer to the line of the Iron Curtain which ran down that internal frontier between a divided nation, Soviet Army forward recon teams assembled. Individually, motorcycles and armoured cars had left selected garrisons to travel to them. Neither grouping was more than twenty men and they had no heavy weapons beyond a few man-portable missiles as well as the machine guns on the specially converted BRDM-2s. They were hidden away too, once more making use of what nature provided with trees in woodland. Maps were handed out. Elsewhere in the Soviet Army, such things were state secrets which a captain might be lucky to see. Here, senior sergeants were given them alongside the junior officers they were with. The missions for them were gone over. They were to go far out ahead, deep into enemy territory. The other borders of West Germany were to be reached: those frontiers with Denmark, France and the Low Countries. Radios were checked and last-minute work was done on their vehicles. Many of these men expected never to see East Germany and the distant Rodina from where they came again: they were going far into hostile territory on scouting missions that would likely see not survive. Before then though, they were sure to spread fear and panic far and wide as well as reporting back all that they saw.


Ogarkov moved into East Germany too. He left his Legnica headquarters complex and flew to a forest clearing north of the divided – not for long – Berlin. His communications team were set up there though there was only the one lone radio at the site. Fixed telephone links connected the site to relay stations elsewhere and those would be used by his staff. The radio was for Ogarkov himself.

Reports came in of all the movements underway. Ogarkov’s staffers made the notations on the maps and the checklists to keep him updated throughout the night of the pre-attack deployment. He kept up to date on them, intervening when necessary to try to correct things using his authority on the matters at-hand. Nothing major went wrong yet there were hundreds of small things. Operation Elbe was mightily complicated.

Throughout all of this, Ogarkov waited for the radio to burst to life. There would either be a recall order which went through Legnica to him or he would be told that NATO was reacting. The latter he expected more than the former. NATO surely had to know what was coming by now. It was night-time and there was plenty of deception being used but the West wasn’t blind nor stupid. They had to see what was happening! They had to react!

The hours ticked away.

No message of either a cancellation or any NATO actions came through.

Ogarkov paced up and down and bit his fingernails. The nerves on display alarmed and shocked his staff. He paid no attention though. His mind was elsewhere.

The countdown to H–0, 05:00 local time, eventually reached that point. A minute ahead of that moment, Ogarkov keyed the radio mike. He waited to speak until the allotted time.

“Go West.”

World War Three was on.


End of Part Two

Very edge of your seat stuff. Good work, I can feel the tension simmering!

When it kicks off, I think there's a possibility - especially with I BR Corps - that various brigades will end up fighting under different divisional commands to those planned, or maybe battalions would be under the command of different brigades than in peacetime: if the Soviets do pull off their surprise attack, NATO units will have to literally fight their way out of their motor pools and garrisons, leaving units scattered all over the place because they won't have time to form up at the brigade level before finding themselves under attack at least by Spetsnaz and aircraft and possibly by VDV or even ground forces.

Part Three – A world in conflict


101 – Checkpoint Alpha


There were several crossings which went over the Inner-German Border linking the two divided countries. The busiest and best known was the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing, known to NATO as Checkpoint Alpha. This was located on Autobahn-2, once the Nazi-era Reichsautobahn, which linked the Rhine & Ruhr across northern Germany over to Berlin. The highway bypassed Hannover in the modern West Germany and went around Magdeburg in East Germany during its course. Where Checkpoint Alpha was located was in an area known as the Helmstedt Bowl. This geographic feature was a basin with the wooded hill ranges of the Elm and the Lappwald enclosing the area with that town after which it was named in the centre. Going through here was the quickest route for travel to the divided Berlin, linking with Checkpoint Bravo in the corner of West Berlin: the famous Checkpoint Charlie was in the centre of Berlin and not part of the autobahn link.

The West German side of the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing had passport control and custom posts there but the set-up was nothing like what was seen on the East German side. Set back from the frontier, closer to Marienborn, the East Germans had built themselves an extensive facility. Modernised through the decades into what it was today, it was a true checkpoint. Those entering and leaving East Germany through here felt the full oppressive power of the state here. It was militarised like the entire border was by the East Germans. Only if passage was allowed would anyone get through here. Almost a thousand men and women wearing the uniform of the Grenztruppen worked here. The majority of them weren’t members of the border guards though, despite the pretence. The Stasi had its people here, hidden in plain sight. It was they who operated the barriers – the ones seen and the unseen ones too – as well as the hidden X-Ray machines, vehicles inspection pits, watchtowers, machine gun posts and communications. Proper Grenztruppen soldiers patrolled the perimeter and provided internal armed security yet the Stasi did all of the real work. East Germany’s secret police force, disguised as they were, would be seen by those passing through on their side of Checkpoint Alpha up on the surface within the compounds of the expansive barbed wire enclosure. What they didn’t see was the connecting tunnels which ran below ground.

All of a sudden, the East Germans disappeared into them. The hundred plus on duty this early Sunday morning went down through the access points in a hurry and shut the air-tight doors behind them. It was a minute before five in the morning and they were ever so quickly gone.

In the hour leading up to this strange occurrence, other odd things had been happening on the East German side of the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing. This wasn’t understood by those few who observed it for what it all meant. The darkness had hidden much of it but, of more importance, it was so bizarre that it just threw all those watching. There were long-distance trucks and even civilian cars waiting to go through the East German inspection. Some of them were approaching from the west and others from the east. These vehicles had been diverted to holding areas either side. Explanations were asked for and not given when it came to why this was the case. The supposed border guards were seen to be dismantling some of the barriers to impede the fast movement of vehicles: when they disabled the hydraulic-propelled emergency barriers (which could shoot forward at speed if needed) this wasn’t observed. Nor did anyone waiting to go through hear the countdown being given by officers to their junior people to get ready to rush to safety at the allotted time.

Several truck drivers beeped their horns, short and long bursts aplenty, in reaction to the sudden vanishing act that the East Germans had done. Already frustrated at the hold up – to be fair, there were always unexplained delays here –, they took it out making plenty of noise. They called out to others waiting alongside them, fellow truckers, asking if they knew what was going on. No one did.

The hour mark was reached and then all those usual barriers that were down suddenly went up as if activated by some unseen hand. War arrived here moments later.


There were border guards at the West German portion of the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing. The Bundesgrenzschutz present didn’t operate in such an intrusive fashion as their fellow Germans down the road. There was nothing like the ‘welcome to totalitarianism’ given here during entry and exit through them. Still, they were armed and did provide security here. What was happening this Sunday morning at Marienborn was something that they didn’t see up close and were only able to observe from a distance. They didn’t see what they did. Understanding what was about to occur, what all the preparations were about, was beyond them. It wasn’t because they were stupid, it was just that it was completely unfathomable. There was some concern expressed though. Just what were the East Germans up to?

This confusion was shared by the half a dozen military officers and NCOs which had showed up at four o’clock. Two Britons, a Frenchman and a trio of Americans had come up to Checkpoint Alpha from the small NATO garrison in Helmstedt itself. They were alert personnel who’d received instructions to go up here and have a nose about. Something strange was going on throughout East Germany, they were told, and they were supposed to go and see what they could from the border.

Helmstedt was no major military installation. Those based there were here because troop convoys and military officials from the three NATO nations which were the leading Allied Powers of World War Two from the West had access rights via land to West Berlin. There were air and rail routes (one of those rail lines was just to the south of here) guaranteed in post-war agreements, but there was often use made of the autobahn through Checkpoints Alpha and Bravo. Escorting personnel from Helmstedt would go with them as liaisons for dealings with the East Germans and the Soviets on the way. In addition, Soviet military ‘visitors’ occasionally came the other way. Another leftover of post-WW2 arrangements following the conquest of defeated Nazi Germany was the various military missions which each nation maintained in the occupation zones of one another. BRIXMIS, MMFL and USLM existed in East Germany: these were in effect legal spies. The Soviets had theirs in West Germany too – SOXMIS – with the one in the British occupation zone at Bünde, near Herford, being the largest. During the times those Soviets went through Checkpoint Alpha, personnel from Helmstedt would be in attendance. It was an intelligence posting for those at Helmstedt yet they were armed. Still, they weren’t ever expected to fight, not with their low numbers, few weapons and no real capability to do anything like take part in a real military engagement.

At five o’clock, just after those truck horns started blaring, there came another noise from the east. One of the Americans and one of the Britons too – combat veterans from Vietnam and the Falklands respectively – recognised that sound at once. Each man called out in alarm.

“Mortars incoming!”

“Get into cover!”

The soldiers scattered from where they were clustered out in the open next to the road.

Mortar rounds arrived seemingly within seconds. They exploded low in the sky. Gas dispersed in the air, quickly covering Checkpoint Alpha’s western side in a white cloud. It was a non-lethal choking agent, one to incapacitate and not kill. Those on the receiving end of the gas attack didn’t know that though. They thought these were their last breaths. They were to be on the receiving end of the first shots of the war fired in Germany.


Unimpeded, right through the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing came a reinforced regiment of Soviet armour and paratroopers. They rolled along the autobahn, going through the open East German side (those truck horns were silenced by drivers open-mouthed with shock) and the bypassing the West Germans laying on the ground on their side. Not a single shot bounced off the sides of all of the armoured vehicles which rolled onwards.

There were T-64 tanks: forty-one of them. Each mounted a 125mm cannon with the long barrel protruding far out in front as its main armament with two machine guns carried as well.

Tracked infantry vehicles were on the move too. There were one hundred and ten BMD-1 tracked armoured infantry fighting vehicles, each with a 73mm cannon, a missile-launcher, three machine guns & a small squad of infantry inside. A hundred and one variants of the BMD-1 vehicle – command, communications, artillery direction, missile carriers and lightly-armed BTR-D personnel carriers – were rolling forward as they carried the main body of paratroopers.

Eighteen self-propelled mortar carriers crossed the Inner-German Border here too. The 2S9 was an armoured vehicle (another variant of the versatile BMD-1) with a 120mm mortar that was quite the effective weapon. The mortar barrel extended from a turret and looked like a cannon to the untrained eye.

No unarmoured trucks nor wheeled armoured vehicles were among the column which went through the Helmstedt-Marienborn Crossing. It was just tracked armour, one which gave the impression of invincibility by its mass and clear intent.

The men carried inside those tanks and tracked vehicles were all inside of each one with overpressure systems switched on to protect them from any other gas more than just the non-lethal chemicals used ahead of them. Their orders were to stay inside until further notice. The crews and paratroopers with the 119th Guards Airborne Regiment, plus an attached battalion from the 221st Guards Tank Regiment, were invading West Germany but they didn’t yet physically step foot inside it. There was no one here for them to fight and thus no need for any halt to be made. There were some soldiers riding inside certain the BTR-Ds who were ready to open the hatch above them and raise a SAM launcher if the need came though. Should they have, they would have got a look around to see what vehicle drivers, gunners & commanders were seeing. Alas, no attack aircraft nor helicopters showed up to give them that view.

That sight was West Germany and it was being invaded without a shot fired in return.

Checkpoint Alpha was overrun without any resistance. The column kept on going, heading into West Germany down an excellent road which provided an arterial route deep into that nation. They were going to go really far starting this Sunday morning. So too were comrades of theirs going over the Inner-German Border elsewhere at further underdefended points.

Would that be a forward detachment that just busted through CP Alpha? I can’t wait to see where it turns up.

It’s interesting that they’re crossing ahead of the prep fires. Even a little bit ahead of the fires will buy them more time to move unsuspected . I’m thinking the prep fires will be very precise and focused to both maximize shock effect and enable freedom of movement for the follow on forces.