The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

   James

165 – Footnote in history


To win the war in southeastern Europe, at the bottom of the Balkans where the seas were, the Soviets needed the Greeks and Turks to be at each other’s throats. Those two NATO countries had to be either fighting each other or, more realistically, in a constant position where they were ready to do so. This had to occur while each was under the attack from Soviet and Bulgarian forces. There had been attempts made to include conflict between them with clever and complicated moves undertaken to see this happen. In the war’s first few days, Greece and Turkey hadn’t started fighting but they hadn’t helped each other. The leadership in each nation was seemingly more concerned about the other taking advantage of their situation and making a land grab. NATO allies of the two countries had fumed at this. Perhaps the KGB and the GRU – not working in concert either – tried too hard… or maybe those in Athens and Ankara finally saw sense. It was more likely the latter yet there were quite the spectacular cock ups by the rival Soviet intelligence services as they tried to keep the Greeks and Turks apart: one ‘cunning plan’ had been to start a three-way fight on Cyprus between the two great antagonists and the British forces based there as well. Once the two allies decided that the Soviets were the greatest threat to them and they needed to do everything that they could to reverse the current situation they were in, then the Soviet war effort here was doomed. Those in the region on the Soviet side, spies and diplomats, would blame each other for the ultimate failure here and worried over the consequences of that disaster. They weren’t aware that, overall, Moscow didn’t care. The fighting in Greece and Turkey remained nothing more than a distraction on the greatest scale. They hadn’t told their underlings that, of course: that would have done nothing to help motivation and keep morale up.

Of the two, the Greeks had made the first move to end the initial stand-off with their erstwhile allies when it came to facing each other down while the Soviets & Bulgarians made their attack. Western Thrace was lost and Greece wanted to retake it. They moved forces out of the Aegean. These were some of their most capable elite light forces who were positioned to counterattack a Turkish move on their islands. To retake territory lost to the Bulgarians they went, with marines and paratroopers soon into the assault. The Turks were at first wary of being duped and couldn’t be sure that those Greek assault forces weren’t going to show up on the coast of Anatolia or even in Cyprus. However, the evidence was there to see when, not trusting what other allies were saying, they confirmed this themselves. Turkey was facing an attack upon Eastern Thrace by the Bulgarians and there were Soviet forces all over the Bosporus including all around their biggest city. Istanbul was at real risk of being lost. Finally, after an exhausting wait where many generals were just itching to take over, Turkish reaction forces were released by the government from the Aegean area and a possible Cyprus mission. They moved their own marines and paratroopers, plus large numbers of commandos too, to where the advancing enemy was. Naturally, the Turks were ready to turn on Greece at any time if necessary and this time near their shared land border through Thrace… but for now they would fight what many in uniform saw as their ‘adversaries’ while worrying about their ‘enemies’ later.

The entry into the Bosporus fight of so many professional and well-equipped – if light – Turkish forces changed the face of the fighting there. These fresh Turkish units came at the Soviets from every direction. There were a mix of Soviet forces fighting around the Turkish Straits with their VDV paratroopers (98th Guards Airborne Division), DShV airmobile troops (23rd Landing–assault Brigade) and marine (810th Naval Infantry Brigade). Those invaders had been engaging Turkish regular infantry units who had managed to recently retake Istanbul’s international airport but were on the back-foot everywhere else. Istanbul was surrounded while there were Soviet troops on either side of the Bosporus as well as in several places down to the Dardanelles. Into this fight these external reinforcements came and they fought with more determination than the Soviets had yet to face. The threat that Istanbul’s streets would soon be the battlefield was lifted. The battle here wasn’t going to be won in an instant but it had changed dramatically. It was soon going to turn from a near disaster for Turkey into a glorious victory, all it needed was a few more days of full engagement. The Turks needed to see that done too. They had information from the Americans – this time trusting their ally’s intelligence – that those Soviet heavy troops (a couple of motor rifle divisions) coming down from Moldovia and the Ukraine were now almost into Eastern Thrace. Romania might be officially neutral in this war but they had opened their rail links up to Soviet forces which then went through Bulgaria. Those Bulgarians who had come onto Turkish soil had never amounted to much after Greece had taken the most attention, but aided by Soviet tanks, it was possible that they would finally make a successful drive all the way to Istanbul. The Turkish Straits needed to be secured to allow that bigger battle to be fought. While that fighting near that city was so drastically changed, the Turks were talking with their allies. They had watched Greece secure all of that external support from NATO partners and wanted some of that themselves. Naturally, this would be under Turkish control though. The headquarters for Allied Forces South-Eastern Europe was on Turkish soil and commanded by a Turkish general. What aid came would be at their command to employ. Allies abroad didn’t disagree but they had very little to send. Turkey wasn’t happy with this at all: why, Ankara asked (while there was much stomping of feet) wouldn’t their NATO partners come to their aid!? That was rather unfair because there had been some help particularly with air units. However, it was only a little – Israel had in fact been more helpful with IDF/AF aircraft in the skies of eastern Turkey – and overall a matter of more pressing needs elsewhere. Turkey would just have to fight with what they had and keep the Soviets at bay. Congratulations were sent for the victories won near Istanbul but the rest of the alliance was more than a little distracted by events far away.


East German-led Warsaw Pact forces remained halted just on the edges of the Danish border with West Germany. The frontlines were on the southern side of that frontier and were being kept there. There were some West Germans fighting with the Danes and a few NATO countries had provided air support (the Americans especially), but much of this was a Danish affair. It was a huge undertaking for Denmark to do this. They were aided by the geography of the Jutland Peninsula at the chosen point though also the unwillingness of the Soviets – who were giving the orders overall – to make a serious push northwards. If they had issued the instructions for further reinforcements to head to this fight, those of their own or from Warsaw Pact nations, then the situation would have been different. However, this flank was not rated as important enough. The Danes didn’t know that and were still calling repeatedly for allied reinforcement: there was the real belief that one hard push could break open those frontlines and see their army crushed. Denmark had benefitted from not having stationed forces inside West Germany pre-war. The East German V Corps had poured through Schleswig-Holstein taking apart West German forces there in a combined over-ground, airmobile & amphibious assault while the Danes conducted a mass mobilisation on home soil while waiting for British and American forces to show up as per NATO plans. What few Heer forces had survived this onslaught by the time that the Danes saw battle and were able to link up with them. Denmark’s Jutland Division was large & capable and was enough, when joined by those West Germans, to hold a position south of the border from Flensburg to the Frisian Islands. Attacks came and were repulsed. They couldn’t counterattack though. All they could do was hold where they were while the Danish Government worried about what else was going to happen. Their Zealand Division was position through that island but also elsewhere across the Baltic islands to the east of Jutland. Bornholm had fallen in the war’s first hours and there had been commando raids throughout others. What was really feared was that Copenhagen was going to be seized like other NATO capitals had been. Danish forces were ready and prepared to fight off an attempt and believed they stood a good chance of doing that. Making ready for the perceived certain effort by the Soviets to do this saw the Danes strip forces from elsewhere. They had their army at the southern half of Jutland and the rest near enough to Copenhagen. A huge gap was sitting there in the middle that they worried about but more so, their allies did too. In NATO thinking, the Soviets were only delaying their inevitable attack to take the Baltic Exits. They had to be preparing to do this: that made sense, didn’t it?

No, it didn’t: not among the Soviet leadership was there any current desire to make that move. The war was planned to be won elsewhere. If they opened up the Danish Straits and put their Baltic Fleet – joined by East German and Polish naval units too – into the North Sea, those ships were going to the sea bottom. In the face of NATO naval strength, that would be an utterly foolish move. What was wanted instead was to see NATO focused on the fear of that. Moscow wanted to see NATO send reinforcements to the Danes. A hypothetical NATO attack against their flank from this direction if they didn’t strike themselves was considered and judged to be impossible with NATO so committed with available forces elsewhere. The war in Denmark, the war outside of Denmark to be fair, was nothing more than a screening move. Some Poles had been sent to the V Corps fighting in Schleswig with others sitting on the East German coast threatening to try an amphibious assault (what a disaster that would have been) yet nothing much was expected from here. The priorities were elsewhere. Later, when the war was won on the battlefields of Western Europe, then the Baltic situation was planned to be turned to Moscow’s satisfaction but even then it was expected that politics and military reality would do the trick. If Denmark by that point refused to see sense, the Danes would get everything thrown at them: for now, a stalemate suited Soviet interests fine. While far fewer than hoped, NATO still had sent some reinforcements there and they were in effect sitting out the war comfortably without making a difference where they could really have had.


Norway was another country with which matters would be settled with post-war. An all-out invasion of Norway wasn’t something that Soviets were willing to do. They didn’t have the resources to spare nor the willingness to do that for what was regarded as very little gain. They had intimidated starting one and seen a massive enemy commitment to defend that country though. For little expense, a fraction of their own forces compared to what NATO soon sent themselves, they put men into Norway and advanced forward some. A major undertaking was made by Norway’s allies to come to their aid. Soviet intelligence summaries correctly predicted what would be deployed there by the West to defend Norway… though not the stunning success claimed by staff officers because they used a lot of open-source information in their reports. Nonetheless, their reports were correct. There were the US Marines in Norway with their 2nd Marine Division plus huge supporting assets attached. NATO’s mixed Allied Mobile Force (AMC) hadn’t been fully committed because it wasn’t assembled pre-war and thus was rushed northwards in bits, but this mix of troops from several nations contained enough to be called a brigade equivalent. The Canadians were following their long-standing pre-war plans to deploy a brigade of their own to Norway. The Norwegians themselves had their standing army and most of their reserves all ready to fight off an attack with no possibility – even the outside chance of that – of them going anywhere else. There were aircraft and warships that NATO sent too. Admittedly these were more of a threat to Soviet interests than the troops were, but these NATO forces were still committed to defensive missions in the first instance with any offensive action by them held back by worries over stripping the defensive posture. As intelligence staffs did, senior Soviet officers reported back to Stavka that they had achieved their mission. There had been a border crossing and NATO had sent troops: this was all their own brilliance. Those in Moscow weren’t fooled by that. It wasn’t genius, just a long-standing reading of the strategic situation by Stavka itself. Conquering Norway was never going to be done but NATO would assume that the Soviet Union would try and thus react accordingly.

Away from the geo-strategic situation of commitments of troops and self-deceptions, there were still enemy troops on Norwegian soil. The furthest advance had reached Lakselv at the bottom of the Porsangerfjorden. There was an airfield here – not a fully functioning airbase – and Banak was fought over. Norwegian and Soviet troops clashed repeatedly. The numbers were on the side of the latter but only overall. They couldn’t fully get all of their men into the fight due to NATO air interdiction from above and Norwegian commando actions on the ground away from where the engagement was fought. Banak was held and a countermove was made to retake the (abandoned) town of Lakselv. There were armoured vehicles, even tanks, in the fight yet this was mainly an infantry fight. For all they tried, liberating Lakselv was ultimately too much for the Norwegians to achieve. Regardless, they did a fine job and their morale was rather high. They were holding off those invading their nation. There would be no repeat of 1940 for Norway this time around. Further Norwegian troops, reservists from the south with equipment long stored in the north, were moving up towards the fight and there was hope that soon enough Lakselv could be retaken with a second go at it. The Soviets were going to be outnumbered, tactical intelligence showed, and a victory was achievable in the long run.

Such information on the state of opposition forces that the Norwegians managed to gain was soon correlated by other means on a wider scale from their allies. There was a realisation among NATO that they had overestimated the size of the Soviet commitment to the Norwegian theatre. This re-think was opposed at first by those who didn’t want to be proved wrong, yet the weight of evidence soon became overwhelming. It fitted into what else was being seen in terms of the fight across the Arctic region. Those US Marines and the AMC – as well as the Canadians should they ever manage to make it – were concentrated back from the fighting that the Norwegians were having. They were waiting in the rear ready to defend a Soviet landing there or pounce towards a major amphibious/airborne operation somewhere else. That wasn’t going to come though so the evidence increasingly showed. Soviet forces in the Kola and nearby were few in number in terms of regulars and only those had showed up: no reserve formations were seen close by nor mobilising back home. The Northern Fleet had ships at sea but in defensive positions in the Barents Sea. There were amphibious ships yet they were all already actively supporting landings of naval infantry closer to the Norwegian-Soviet Union border. NATO began to understand that the Soviets were only creating a buffer zone. They were unable, unwilling maybe, to yet understand that they had been had on a grander scale but were willing to accept that there wasn’t going to be a major operation undertaken here. All of their men sent to Norway, reaction forces in the main, were out of place from where the war was really being decided and those could have been mightily useful if they’d been sent there.


Many long years ago in history, Frederick the Great was once reported to have said “he who defends everywhere defends nothing”. He wasn’t talking about NATO in 1987 but he could have been when it was doing currently exactly this with the consequences of that taking effect. Throughout Europe, NATO was on the defensive. In this trio of theatres – Northern Norway, the Baltic Exits and Southeastern Europe – NATO was on the active defence and successfully doing so. There was a passive defence, one without fighting, with regards to Italy too. These places were being defended for both military and political reasons. As far as NATO saw it, these regions had to be defended to not lose the war. However, while they were being so, so much was being lost elsewhere. Their forces which fought these fights would have done so much good on other battlefields. As to the Soviets, they had the forces to waste in these engagements though were still being careful to not overextend themselves.

For all the glory being won, those battles at Istanbul, Flensburg & Lakselv were looking like they were each to be nothing more than a footnote in history… and not good ones either.

I will always remember my first posting to BAOR as a young thrusting infantryman. The fist thing I was told was that you get four magazines for your SLR (gods gift to the infantry) and one or maybe two bandolier’s of 7.62 if lucky. Now you can imagine my shock when told about the amount of ammo. I will always remember my section commander telling me that we would last about four minutes in combat and that I was now a speed bump. So what did I do simple I became a magazine Magpie and started to acquire as many magazines as I could I even managed to snag four Bren Gun magazines now the urban legend was yes they will work four times out of ten as the magazine feds ammo down on the Bren as apposed to up on the SLR, however if you got on well with your friendly REME gun smith you were sorted. I remember one call out as if it was yesterday . We’ were dug in in a forest in the middle of winter snow every where when we got a visit from SACEUR who was very impressed with our fighting positions unfortunately for me he asked why my magazine looked different than the other troops and being honest I told him that my mates would have four minutes worth of ammo and me I’d have six minutes last man standing and all that he laughed and as when all senior offers laugh his staff laughed and I got a big well done. Sadly my CO did not see the funny side after the four star had left.

166 – Behind the lines – East


From the Inner-German Border to the Rhine, and beyond, there were NATO military personnel caught behind the lines to the east who weren’t in enemy captivity. They were spread across the occupied portions of West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. There were many reasons for them to be there. The majority had been cut off and were on the run either alone, in pairs or in small groups. Most planned to flee. Staying alive by staying out of the fighting was what they wanted to do. Dread and terror were normal for them though there were some who it could be said were enjoying this situation where they were thriving as everyone else around them faltered… such people were a rarity though were present. These cut off soldiers spent their time on the move and hiding. There were occasions where they had to fight to survive but this was avoided. Keeping moving and staying out of sight was the only way that they stood a chance of making back to friendly lines. For most of them, they would fail in this attempt. Eventually, the enemy would get them. They could be spotted by a patrol, run into trouble not of their making and forced to fight. Combat wounds or injury while on the run would see others finished. There were those who were turned in by civilians too, supposedly friendly locals who did so for varying reasons. Those on the run in the rear areas away from where the fighting was were mostly soldiers (regulars and reservists) from NATO armies though there were aircrew too from downed aircraft to whom no rescue had come when they had come down. The scattering was widespread with these military personnel in urban areas, the countryside and everywhere else in between. In encounters with the enemy which brought about an end to their time trying to escape, many of them would be shot where their opponents opened fire upon seeing the enemy. Others would be captured alive though and brought to join the many POWs held.

There were NATO soldiers who were behind the lines but had been ordered to either see the frontlines move past them or who had crossed eastwards to get among the enemy on purpose. Stay behind units of artillery observers & intelligence specialists and then special forces teams afterwards were sent onwards and were all over the place too. They too tried to avoid direct contact with the enemy and were instead either on intelligence gathering, reconnaissance or special raiding missions. If caught, these people would face a terrible fate should their captors be aware of what they were up to. Pretending to be one of the unlucky ones who’d seen the fighting pass them by was how they would stay alive. When undertaking their missions, there was danger for these people as well. They were frightened of the hundreds of pairs of eyes which it always felt were on them no matter how much they tried to hide. Deliberately being surrounded by the enemy was one thing yet they were also concerned over whether locals would inform upon their presence. This happened too. It was rarely done with malice but instead due to certain occupation policies being implemented especially in West Germany. There were Soviet & Warsaw Pact forces out actively hunting these NATO units as well where they sought to run them to ground to capture and interrogate them to make use of what was gained from the knowledge in the heads of such personnel.

Prisoner of War camps were spread across occupied NATO countries as well as back into Eastern Europe. There had been a lot of POWs taken and this was a continuous process leading to constant filling of the camps. New ones were planned to be opened but the rate of incoming captives far outstripped the ability to have proper facilities for them. Guarding POWs where they were held was a drain on manpower. Soviet and East German forces were relying more and more on their Warsaw Pact allies to do this with the Czechoslovaks and the Poles being brought in. There were Soviet overseers (occasionally East German ones especially if those were on East German soil) because they didn’t trust their allies but this was providing a lot of relief where done. Conditions in those camps weren’t good. However, there was hardly the level of depravity that many of the captives had been expecting to find themselves in. These POWs had survived the initial horrors of being taken prisoner and then the transfer into the rear. There were many who hadn’t made it through all of that. Prisoners were separated into different categories with officers, NCOs and junior ranks being held apart. There was some splitting done with nationalities too though that was only seen in certain circumstances. Intelligence teams had already combed through captives long before they reached POW camps though there was often the removal of certain NATO military personnel when a mistake was realised (or made). Discipline over those in the camps was fierce. Resistance came in many forms and could often be successful but only on a non-violent level. Raise a hand to a guard and the captive was almost certain to be shot… including two more men chosen at random as well. Escape attempts were punished even harsher with the escapee and five others shot. It wasn’t only male captives that had been taken to POW camps. NATO armies had female personnel in service. Rape and similar abuse after capture and then through transit was done almost to every one of these prisoners. In the camps, this was a rather rare reoccurrence due to many female guards being present but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen again to the most unfortunate. Cases of suicides and self-harm among female POWs was seen at an extraordinary high rate.


When Soviet-led armies had gone rolling forward, there was little direct molestation of the civilian population done by them. They had to fight and discipline in frontline units was high. Soldiers weren’t given the opportunity to go off to start looting, raping and murdering in chaotic rampages as many civilians might have feared would at once come their way. The war had still killed plenty of civilians though. The fighting and the liberal use of weaponry, by both opposing sides too, had seen the horrors of war unleashed upon those who were unable to get away from it. People were killed and injured everywhere by bullets, explosives, fire and chemical weapons. Some areas got it far worse than others. Across occupied parts of Western Europe, the war had been all that many had feared when it came to what would happen to non-combatants caught in the crossfire of a modern-day full-scale war. Villages, towns and cities were all affected. Millions had fled beyond where the frontlines now were but millions more remained behind. Belgian, Dutch and West German civilians were living in occupied zones. They had foreign soldiers all around them. Among the rear-area enemy forces who were sitting on occupied soil, there was a lot of terror among the locals that these soldiers managed to inflict. They did attack and kill people while stealing and setting fires. Military police units ran around after them but they were often overwhelmed. Senior officers protected their men as best as they could to, especially if those trying to punish them were from another country’s army. The cares of the people who lived here were something that they were indifferent to. They didn’t want to see their own men killed while they were here running the support network for those armies fighting at the frontlines.

There was a different kind of terror which civilians were facing too. The occupation came not with armed soldiers about but also with the activities of foreign intelligence services. The KGB and the Stasi made their presence felt. They arrested people who then vanished and hostages were taken among the civilian population to ‘guarantee’ the good behaviour of others. Collaborators were sought out with. Almost all did so because they wanted to protect others or had the lives of loved ones of their own threatened yet there were some true believers among those who aided the enemy. Into this came the call made for people to report sightings of those in uniform still fighting with promises made in the form of reward. Those rewards were, of course, never given out yet there were many instances of people doing this even without that motivation when they believed that they were helping end this war after seeing for themselves what had happened so far. Civilians caught behind the lines had basic needs that they needed filling. They required food, drinking water, shelter and access to medical care. This was wartime though and the occupiers had other priorities. They were busy themselves taking over buildings for military use and also appropriating civilian supplies that they needed for themselves. Civilians were taken away to work for the occupier – clearing rubble and other labouring tasks – with many of them not seen again. People were dying everywhere as their usual lives had suddenly fallen apart like they had. Others had lost all hope. They were missing loved ones and the war was still raging with a dread among them that this was all going to soon end in a nuclear war. Diseases were spreading (bodies were in the streets) and there was hunger everywhere. Offices, shops and factories were shut. Hospitals were overrun and often looked like war zones. There was no transport. The electricity was off and water wasn’t running. There were no police in many places – collaborators had them running in certain areas yet at a reduced level – and criminality was rife. This was life now for ordinary people in occupied Europe.

There were fake resistance groups that had been set up. The occupiers tried to attract people who were going to resist the occupations towards these ones which they created rather than not have any idea as to what those people were up to. Guerrilla warfare was always going to be attempted and so what came instead was a lot of entrapment. Unlike recognised enemy POWs, anyone caught up in these schemes were quick to be shot. The KGB and the Stasi knew all about the supposedly NATO secret plans for organised stay-behind groups: Operation Gladio and its many forms. Those set-ups had been caught unawares by how the war came about in the surprise fashion that it did. However, attacks were happening despite that and their enemies coming after them. There were killings made of the enemy plus also collaborators (real and suspected) too. Bombings were undertaken and there were fires started. Stay-behind units were formed as terrorists with a different name and they were unleashing terror. Those caught were likewise shot in the same manner as the wannabe guerrillas who had been unable to do all of this. Shutting down resistance came in other forms beyond the armed actions and the work of collaborators too. There was the organised spreading of false information: fake news was unleashed in abundance. The occupiers were telling lies about how the war started, what was happening and what was coming. All forms of media and communications behind the lines were in their hands and the Soviet & East German intelligence services were using that to their advantage. Back in East Berlin, the leadership there wanted the Stasi to be at the forefront of changing West Germany for good in other forms – reorganising civil structures and indoctrinating the people in other ways to ease the way for unification of the divided Germanies – but the Soviets had them busy doing this.


Further back from the frontlines, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the war had come home in places for those in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union too where there had been enemy action. Bombs had fallen and there had been missile strikes. In the Rodina, this was around isolated fringes of the country itself yet across the Warsaw Pact countries, there had been much more of that. NATO attacks, especially ones made by the Americans, had taken place. However, this wasn’t something that any more than a small number of people knew. Information like that was kept out of the public sphere. Coming out of the West, there had been broadcasts made eastwards of propaganda including details of these attacks – exaggerated, naturally – but a lot of effort was being made to silence those (cruise missile strikes against broadcast facilities) and it wasn’t as if that news was repeated internally afterwards. Official state information had told people within the Eastern Bloc that they were at war. There had been a NATO attack, a terrible first strike, and there was now a retaliation under way. That strike back was something promised to be truly terrible as well. The war couldn’t be hidden if there had been a foolish idea to do that. Mobilisation, sudden shortages and the movement of military forces was taking place. The regimes in Moscow, East Berlin and elsewhere controlled the flow of information though and they made use of that. News of the war which came to their peoples was only what they wanted them to know. Details were always sparse. Victories were being won everywhere. Support for those fighting was called for from those doing their patriotic duty back home. A whole load of lies were being told. However, like every good lie, there was a lot of true information mixed in. Soviet-led forces were winning the war – at least in Europe anyway – and those were real images of several NATO capitals in their hands that the people saw. Of the many things that the people weren’t being told though was casualty figures. They were quite something.

In Poland, most of their armed forces were still at home. There were some troops on the Danish-West German border and others had been sent west to undertake POW tasks along with occupation duties in a few areas. Air and air defence units as well as naval assets had been deployed too. However, the majority of Polish soldiers were still at home. Mobilisation had been undertaken in a distorted fashion so as to not impede Soviet forces moving through Poland but there were still men everywhere in uniform. Poland’s large army – bigger than Britain’s – wasn’t going off to war in-force though, not unless the war went very wrong for Soviet interests. Moscow wanted them kept at home and those in Warsaw did as they were told. Those in uniform didn’t know that though nor did the rest of Poland. Everyone thought that Polish soldiers were soon going off to fight. There were rumours abound that those young men would die in their tens of thousands in the face of NATO bullets, gas and nuclear warheads. Desertion was at an all time high and ordinary Poles were aiding those who’d run away. Other Poles took a more pro-active approach to impeding the war effort than this. There were Soviet military movements across Poland and this needed Polish assistance. Delays and accidents were taking place. Go-slows by workers and sabotage dressed up as errors occurred with great frequency. Because they weren’t idiots, neither Poland’s security forces nor the Soviets fell for any of this. They saw individual and collective actions for what they were. There were crackdowns against this. At the same time, alongside all that that was done deliberately by Poles doing what they believed was the right thing to do after hearing NATO propaganda – that had got into Poland rather well and been passed on widely – about the war, honest mistakes and genuine accidents did occur. There was hurry everywhere to get all those trains going, keep roads open and ports operating. Things went wrong. When this happened, suspicious eyes saw it as part of what else was going on. A lot of innocent people paid the price for the deliberate actions of others.

Back in the Soviet Union, there was a public drive by the regime to see a mass patriotic action by the people to support the war. On the back of that propaganda about NATO’s ‘nefarious surprise attack’ and then all the boasts of victories too, people were told to do all that they could to aid the war effort. Encouragements were sent out to work harder and produce more. Participation of everyone was demanded in the war effort and that included too informing the authorities of suspected deserters and those who hadn’t reported for mobilisation. That mobilisation though wasn’t widespread. Millions of men were under arms but it wasn’t full-scale. To not crash the national economy completely, the leadership hadn’t taken that step. They had reservists recalled to units to form cadres of larger formations which could go off to war should mass mobilisation while keeping that on ice for the time being. Ligachev and the Politburo received reports that this had been achieved… perhaps they should have gone for a look for themselves at some of these military garrisons to judge for themselves on that reported high level of readiness? Other falsehoods were being told up through the system to those at the top when it came to the security situation in outlying region of the empire. In the Caucasus, the Baltics and Central Asia some crazy things were going on. Anti-regime riots, acts of sabotage encouraged by foreign broadcasts and refusal of answer the call to the colours from even the few numbers of mobilised reservists was all taking place. In the Soviet Far East, where American air attacks had come, there was civil disorder in Vladivostok after that American naval air raid; scenes like those had been seen in Archangelsk and Murmansk when Tomahawk strikes had come. Deserters in the Baltic Republics had taken their weapons with them and disappeared into the countryside ready to start a resistance movement. Away from these disturbing events, the population in general had no inclination to react like this. Patriotism and the lies had their effects on the ordinary Soviet citizen who didn’t feel the boot of the state on their neck. Yet… that outpouring of mass dedication to supporting the war wasn’t being felt. People were worried about nuclear war and their sons going off to fight too. The shortages in the civilian sector were slowly beginning to take effect. This was all rather troubling for a country at war. Where was the rage among the people at the apparent sneak attack they had suffered? Where was the readiness to give everything to the war that they could? It wasn’t on the streets of Moscow or Leningrad, the factories in the Ukraine or the Urals nor in the fields of nationwide communal farms. The Soviet people were just getting on with things: so much was normal when it shouldn’t have been.

167 – Behind the lines – West


There were Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops behind the frontlines to the west. Their numbers were far fewer than NATO ones to the east. Almost all of them were supposed to be there rather than having been cut off due to the movement of those frontlines. In the few places where NATO had successfully counterattacked to retake territory for good, there were those few of the enemy who got left behind and chose not to surrender. Soviet and East German soldiers were trying to avert capture either by staying hidden or attempting to get back to friendly lines. Going back was dangerous in many ways for those who did. First there was the very real risk that they would be killed in doing so and then there was too the worry among them over what would be said should they manage to get back. Would they be accused of desertion before changing their minds? That was something feared quite a bit among these soldiers. Instead of heading backwards, the best option was to stay where they were and wait for the frontlines to once more come back towards them before letting the fighting reach them again. They’d then show up and report that they’d been fighting all along against the enemy. Others had already done this when the frontlines had moved. All around those caught on the wrong side of the frontlines knew that they were in hostile territory. They were on their guard against being spotted by civilians who they were sure would inform upon them to NATO forces. Staying still remained the best option but it brought with it hardship. Those areas fought over had seen much war damage. Attacks from friendly forces came with artillery fire and air strikes. There were sweeps through the rear by NATO troops at times to look for anyone who had been left behind when Soviet & Warsaw Pact forces had been pushed back out. Food, water and medical attention were the needs that those hiding had too. Without the first, these soldiers could survive for some time but water was a must and so was the need to care for the injuries that many of them had. In trying to find what they needed, exposing themselves to danger, many of those on the run either died or were captured with friendly forces not far away and often soon to reach where they had been had they only waited a little longer.

Soviet special forces teams were joined by commandos from their allies including Czechoslovaks and Poles as well as East Germans. Neither country’s armed forces would provide many men and these non-Soviet forces were deployed in small areas in minimal numbers. In the main, it was Soviet Spetsnaz who were out ahead. Reconnaissance missions were the main task for these commandos. Spetsnaz was known best for its high-risk commando activities but information gathering was their primary tasking. They were to stay out of sight and report in. Some detachments were on search-and-destroy missions when out ahead while others were detailed to particular tasks where they would pinpoint the enemy’s location for incoming attacks. This was all vital work and those involved were risking their lives significantly. Many of them were killed while doing this. They were out there on their own and when things went wrong, there was no reinforcement nor rescue coming. The less numerous raiding parties were in far more danger. They were going out of their way to encounter the enemy. They struck against the unawares far forward and chose their time to make their attacks when conditions were judged right but this was very dangerous because mistakes were easily be made. Mobile targets were sought out rather than fixed ones. On the war’s first day and through that following night, it had been the other way around but afterwards, NATO had increased security everywhere once reservists had flooded into their installations as well as guarding civilian locations of military value. The Spetsnaz hit underway supply convoys as a favoured target. Deception was used to stop them and then attacks were made. Supplies were destroyed along with vehicles, roads were blocked by the damage done and military personnel killed. There were roadblocks set up as fake checkpoints as another typical Spetsnaz tactic. Sometimes these resulted in ambushes of those who came their way but other times there would be deliberate mis-direction of the unwary too: many times those who passed through the roadblocks were sent towards mined areas or even towards incoming Soviet forces.

Close to ten thousand of prisoners of war were being held by NATO. Soviet-led forces held more, many more than NATO did, but there were still plenty of them west of the frontlines. They had been captured in the fighting and survived the initial moment when they fell into custody: others didn’t and would see their lives taken when the blood was up of their opponents. There were a high proportion of them who were wounded and needed medical care too. These POWs needed transporting to the camps opened to hold them and once there they had to be guarded and taken care of. Security was a big deal especially among the prisoners with there being scores settled when in captivity. There were separations of the different categories of POWs – nationalities, rank and whether those held were of value to their captors – made across all of the sites. NATO had difficulties in holding so many of these captives. Pre-war planning for a hypothetical wartime scenario dealing with POWs had underestimated how many would be taken. This affected manpower as well as the logistics of moving, holding and caring for them. Where to set up the camps was another big issue. There were initially camps in West Germany though as the frontlines moved westwards, these had to be moved ahead of those; a situation repeated again in the Netherlands. When much of those two nations fell to the enemy, there were escapes made among POWs in transit during the chaos and then also the abandonment of many captives too in the face of advancing tanks. When it came to a choice of pulling their own fighting men out or taking captives with them, the former option was chosen over the latter. NATO didn’t want to do it but this often had to be done. As to the rest of the POWs, many of them were now in France. Spain and Italy had said that they were willing to take some of them and there was talk of shipping some overseas to Britain & North America, but for now the majority were being held in France.


Millions of civilians had fled as refugees from the advancing frontlines. West German, Belgian and Dutch non-combatants had run in fear of their lives. They went in every direction but east. There were a lot of West Germans in Denmark and they were joined by Danish people themselves who had fled from border areas or isolated islands. Other West Germans had crossed the Austrian and Swiss frontiers to enter those neutral countries: there had been internal political disputes within each country about whether to close their borders but this hadn’t occurred in the end. The majority of West German refugees were in France though. Some had come through the Low Countries on their way and were joined by citizens from those nations as well. There were refugees who arrived with money and belongings, even a place to stay (friends & family), but the overwhelming majority didn’t. They were so many of them and all were desperate. The host nations for these people struggled immensely to deal with them. There was a backlash in places from locals against these ‘foreigners’ too with some ugly scenes taking place. French authorities noticed the many men of military age among those refugees and were sure that there were many deserters who had fled with their families rather than stay a fight. An idea was mooted up as high as President Mitterrand to comb through them to put men in uniform and sent them off to war but the practicalities of that were too daunting to face at this time. The refugees either wanted to stay where they were in the apparent safety which they had found or desired to move on. All around the edges of ports in Denmark and France as well as airports across Western Europe too were civilians who wanted to find their way aboard a ship or an airplane. They weren’t being allowed to do that and this caused a wave of trouble. Others were on the roads and on these there were also immense problems caused by the blockages which they created.

Throughout NATO countries, the sudden war and the consequences of that had brought panic and disorder on an unprecedented scale. Criminality was rife. Despair was everywhere. The war came home to the people in the NATO countries of Western Europe when their nations were hit with bombs and missiles when the fighting was some distance off. On selected occasions, there were gas attacks too where certain Soviet missiles blew up in the sky and dispersed unidentified substances. NATO would later classify these chemical weapons as ‘Novichok’ agents but there were many different substances used with different symptoms. Civilians were unprotected and the casualties huge, especially when panic took hold throughout gassed areas. Mobilisation had seen the call-out of reserves and beyond that in many cases. Conscription was practised across Western Europe and those countries recalled men with past military service. This took away from civilian life many policemen from their duties along with others who functioned in important roles in society: none of this helped maintain order. Medical personnel were mobilised as well to assist with war casualties and they were taken away from civilian tasks. With those enemy attacks plus civilian disorder, they were missed greatly when away from their ordinary duties. In addition, there was a lot of refusal on the part of civilians mobilised for war due to previous military service to answer the call to fight. People didn’t want to fight. They feared death and injury more than legal or civil consequences of their actions. In the chaos of war, tracking down these people to force them into uniform or to punish them was generally impossible. It was tried in many cases though with a lot of effort wasted in doing it.

Dealing with military casualties from NATO’s armed forces was extremely taxing. There were thousands of them with all sorts of injuries and the numbers grew every minute of the ongoing war. The specialist care that was needed for those seriously hurt was more of a strain that lighter injuries but that didn’t mean that those with the latter were easy to attend to. The injured were sent to military hospitals as well as civilian ones. Aero-medical evacuation was done by the Americans of large numbers of their own casualties and the British also shipped some out from mainland Europe back home as well. This was only done in an overall minority of cases through. Casualties were generally treated across the Continent. Medical personnel and facilities were caught up in warfare. Deliberate targeting wasn’t done by Soviet-led forces though when attacks came, it often looked that way to those on the receiving end of it. A North Sea Ferry taken into military service which had left Rotterdam an hour before Soviet tanks arrived there was set on fire while at sea and this was thought to be intentional yet that ship wasn’t clearly marked to the eyes of the pilots of the aircraft which bombed it. Several US Air Force transports were shot down by missiles fired beyond visual range in daylight and even close-in during the darkness and those who did this had no idea of the cargoes. NATO was treating casualties among enemy forces as well. These wounded came with the added pressures of providing security in addition to matters such as translation too. Doctors and nurses worked on the injured regardless of their nationality.


NATO countries had been attacked in an unprovoked war of aggression. The Soviets and their allies had struck for reason. They were out to conqueror Western Europe and impose upon the people the horrors of occupation. War crimes had been committed time and time again with innocents being massacred. It was the duty of everyone to assist the war effort in everyway possible. Across the countries to the west of where the frontlines were, this was the message that governments gave to their people. Official news was always short on detail with information jealously guarded less the enemy make use of it. It was also thought best to not make things complicated though, at the same time, many governments didn’t want people to know the scale of the disaster underway. They feared more panic than there already was and also that public morale would collapse. In places, morale was high yet in others it really wasn’t. The war had enraged many but there were plenty who were frightened and despondent. An end to the war where the consequences would be dealt with was something that many were prepared to see even if it meant a defeat for their country. To say it was a case of ‘Better Red Than Dead’ would have been exaggeration yet there was something to that. At the other end of the spectrum, this war was something no wanted but one which motivated many to do everything that they could to support it. Civilians not called up for military service flocked to recruiting stations. There were volunteers to help with refugees and also assisting their own fellow citizens as well affected by the war just like those from neighbouring countries. The war was bringing out the best in many people.

The situation which those in Western Europe faced wasn’t exactly the same across in North America. Civilians there didn’t have to face enemy air & missile strikes nor the prospect of tanks soon arriving outside their homes. Americans and Canadians shared with their European allies fears of the conflict going nuclear though. There was a lot of despondency among people in spite of what their governments were telling them. Anti-war protests took place in the United States. These didn’t have wide support but there were many attendees. Media coverage was very limited by broadcasters & publishers self-censoring themselves. When fellow citizens heard about these events due to the limited information available, they would shake their heads. This wasn’t the Vietnam War or a conflict in the Middle East where there might be an argument to be listened to even if not agreed with: this was World War Three against the Soviets who were trying to take over the world! Reservists answered the call to arms and volunteers flocked to aid the war effort. Neither the United States nor its northern neighbour transitioned to a full wartime economy yet there was much progress in that direction with large sections of the nation. Airlines lost the majority of their aircraft to the military and it was the same with overseas shipping as that too was required by law to aid the war effort. Canada brought in fuel rationing nationwide and enforced that quite dramatically though that was less of a case to their south. The United States was soon going to be hit by shortages but rather than use legal means to enforce rationing, the government opted to put their faith in people and companies on this matter… that was soon shown to be an error as panic-buying, outrageous price increases and then fuel riots occurred. American political figures generally rallied around the flag. There were a few dissenters with what was done with regards to the mass patriotism and even when it came to Congress officially declaring war. Fringe figures had different approaches to their opposition with figures on the far left and the isolationist extreme right being opposed to the global war that the United States was fighting. This was dangerous for them. Self-declared patriots committed a handful of attempts on the lives of a few prominent ones who they deemed to be anti-American. America was at war and those opposed to it hadn’t put themselves in a good position.