The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

In defeat, control is being lost.
Elsewhere though, the madness of fighting on just because will continue.

193 – The flame of resistance


In Zeelandic Flanders, on the southern side of the Scheldt Estuary in what was still the Netherlands but to many might as well have been Belgium, there were US Army troops trapped with their backs to the water. There’d been here for a few days. A brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, joined by divisional non-combat elements, had been separated from the rest of the division which fought a fighting withdrawal all the way out of Belgium into France. Those near to the port town of Terneuzen had failed to get away though. Stuck where they were, pounded repeatedly and left without hope of being relieved, they had fought as long as they could. No longer was that possible though. No Miracle of Flushing would come for them. Ammunition was almost out and casualties were overwhelming. The end had come. A surrender was made. The senior surviving American officer had to do what he absolutely didn’t want to and gave in. He would watch his men march off into captivity. The Soviets brought in cameras and one of their media teams to add to the humiliation. They’d pulled this propaganda trick elsewhere and would make a big deal out of this surrender. What else could be done though? American soldiers, plus both Belgian and Dutch civilians caught here with them, were dying for nothing the longer the fighting went on. Captivity would be unpleasant but there was no other choice.

Across in Dutch Limburg, a bigger pocket of resistance was coming to an end as well. Larger in size and with numbers in there, the Limburg Pocket, triangle-shaped from Roermond to Maastricht to Aachen (yet with each of the latter small cities in enemy hands already) there were NATO troops in there under Dutch command. The soldiers from Belgium, Britain, the Netherlands, the United States and West Germany surrounded within were on their last legs. They were likewise almost out of ammunition with extensive casualties to deal with without much more medical supplies nor capability to treat the injured. It was hoped that at least another day could be managed where they could continue to fight to tie down enemy forces. That wasn’t to be. Late on the Monday afternoon, the pocket came under extensive barrage from many artillery units and aircraft on attack missions. There was no ability to undertake counter-battery fire and the air defences were almost zero. Three straight hours of this attack came without the defenders seeing a single enemy soldier. This was clearly not about softening them up for a final ground attack, which they could put up a good show in opposing, but causing them a mass of casualties. That it did. It also killed and wounded many Dutch and West German civilians who were trapped here too. After consulting with the senior officers from the other national forces within, the Dutch commander would begin the process of surrendering. There would be difficulties and it wouldn’t be until dawn on Tuesday before the final surrender came but today was the last day of active resistance from here.

Like Hannover (Britons there), Cuxhaven (the Dutch), the Ems River (the Dutch again), Hamburg (West Germans) and then the Ruhr (Belgians, Brits & West Germans), the last of the trapped groupings of NATO forces caught behind the lines in pockets were giving up. Each and every time, as it was today in Zeelandic Flanders and Limburg, lack of ammunition and mounting casualties drove those caught inside to give in. Relief had come to neither pocket. With a few there had been promises made that it would, but, generally, once those caught were surrounded where they were, they were on their own and knew it. Orders came through each time to fight for as long as possible. There had been different, yet simultaneous, Soviet efforts each time to get them to give up. Blasting them from distance was done alongside the use of trickery & deception. The former approach won the day each time for the Soviets: they failed to manage to deceive those caught to surrender by telling them of general NATO collapse or widespread peace. The armies of NATO could be proud that their cut off forces had only surrendered due to being beaten properly… but there wasn’t that much to be happy about when seeing so many men march off into captivity like that.


The rest of the 1st Cavalry Division – with one regular brigade and another of national guardsmen from Mississippi – was in Northern France. They were part of the US III Corps which was spread across the Pas-de-Calais region inland past Lille and with forward scout units on Belgian soil too. Other pre-war assigned III Corps forces were lost or elsewhere in the world. Additions had been made to the corps now it was in France. The US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had flown in from the Middle East (leaving the battlefield in Iraq long behind) and the 10th Infantry Division had finally arrived too. That latter unit had been a late add-on to American forces fighting in the Gulf, sent when the war with Iraq morphed into a conflict with Iran. The 10th Infantry had been in the process of assembling in liberated Kuwait when the balloon went up in Europe and it had taken more than a week to first decide to send them and then get them here… it was a clusterf*ck of quite the proportion. Canadian reservists, light infantry with their Primary Reserve force, were in Pas-de-Calais too under American command. Some of those had come from where they had fought in London with the British who likewise had come across The Channel after fighting to liberate the centre of that city from Soviet paratroopers. The British were forming up the 5th Infantry Division to serve with the III Corps. There were men who’d won in London with this new and not yet complete formation, as well as troops from Ulster and further afield throughout global British possessions from where many soldiers had been flown to France.

The Anglo-Saxons were on the left; France had its troops on the right. The French II Corps had come from where they had been fighting in West Germany, taken out of the frontlines there when CENTAG stepped back to defend the Rhine directly. A trio of divisions – the 3rd Armored, 9th Marine Infantry & 15th Infantry Division – were back on home soil. They were worn down. None of them was large before they’d gone to war, half the size of a NATO division from other countries with the 15th Infantry being especially small. The fighting they had seen had thinned the ranks significantly. The II Corps had been joined by many reservists and also French troops returning home from overseas too yet, overall, it was still a small force. As the US III Corps was, the French II Corps was primarily an infantry force too. There were some tanks and other armoured vehicles but not that many. A big stretch of ground was held by them: from Pas-de-Calais through to the French Ardennes. Looking northwards at the mass of Soviet tanks in Belgium was an exercise which caused a lot of pain. There was NATO air power spread across France, with more across in Britain too as Airstrip One continued to fill up. Those jets were plentiful but not the same as tanks. The French were here to defend their soil yet, should they see battle, it wouldn’t be a fight which they would be the ones deciding how a Soviet offensive through them or the Americans-British-Canadians on their flank ended. Instead, French nuclear weapons stood ready to make sure that 1940 wouldn’t be repeated in 1987.


Through Belgium and the Netherlands there was active armed resistance ongoing behind the lines. Both countries, like most in the NATO alliance, had long-established secret armies on their soil. Set up in the Fifties, with Nazi occupation still fresh in many minds, there were stay-behind networks which had been long waiting for a time such as this when the Soviet Army came. Where known about, at the highest levels of government & military, the Belgian and Dutch versions of Gladio were controversial. Vital it was said they were though. The two countries had seen their armies lost on foreign battlefields – over in West Germany – but the flame of resistance remained alive at home. In that neighbouring larger country, there was resistance too from West Germany’s own stay behind network. Overall that was larger than what was being seen in the Low Countries yet not as intensive when taking in account scale. The Belgians and Dutch had a little more time to prepare for what was coming their way with the Soviet Army rolling in followed by the KGB. Groups of armed men and women were committing what were terrorist actions in the eyes of many but who others would see as the battles fought by freedom fighters.

Bombings and shootings were taking place against the occupiers. Civilians were caught up this. There were the killings of collaborators (suspected and real) and even – in what must be said were exceptional cases – complete innocents where the Soviets were being framed from those. These patriots were doing things which many couldn’t consider very patriotic at all. They fought a dirty, cruel war. When caught, they would suffer harshly. The Soviets got their hands on many of them and the treatment melted out was brutal. Still, there were others not yet caught. They were recruiting more volunteers for the cause too. Millions of civilians, plenty of them West Germans fleeing their own country who’d ended up here, who were caught behind the lines wanted no part of this. Occupation wasn’t welcome at all but neither did they want to die. The Soviets made their reprisals though. These turned many towards the stay-behind as fresh volunteers. A reprisal where the Soviets would execute a held group of civilian hostages or even go crazy and shoot-up a neighbourhood drove others to take up arms against them. It was believed that the opposite would occur but they should have known better.

Some rather terrible things were being done. These took place in the cities and towns but also in the countryside too. On and on the resistance went, the cycle of violence repeating itself. The flame of resistance wasn’t going to die here.

Thank you.
Maybe or though there is a good chance that as a child at this time, you would have been one of the millions of refugees in France. From the BENELUX countries and West Germany, millions have fled to France... whereas Britain closed its borders to all but British nationals.

Given how religious the Soviets were about remembering the actions of the Nazis in the Soviet Union, the reprisals against innocents, collective punishments and how "effective" they were at subduing the Soviets and preventing them from joining the Patizans, the really should have known better.

But of course, the Soviets inflicting collective punishments on foreign nationals is obviously completely different to the inflicting of collective punishment by the Fascists against Soviet citizen, and is done out dialectic sympathy in order to bring the oppressed people to the benign light of Soviet Socialism... [/sarcasm]

194 – The Rhineland falls


The Rhineland fell to the Soviet Army.

After a day of preparation, General Postnikov finished the job which Marshal Ogarkov had started when completing the near total occupation of West Germany. Soviet tanks closed in upon France’s border again as they took the southern part of the Rhineland. On their way, they defeated the combined armies of America and France which had sought to hold the lines in West Germany of the Moselle and Rhine rivers. The defeat was one for the history books, something to marvel at. The consequences would be more than military.


CENTAG – Central Army Group – formed the higher command for the NATO troops spread from Trier up to near Koblenz, along the Rhine through Mainz & then Ludwigshafen and onto the Franco-German border next to the French town of Lauterbourg. The West German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland were behind the line of NATO forces at the front yet also crammed full of the supporting troops to sustain the fight which NATO knew was coming their way. On the left of the CENTAG position was the French I Corps (containing former III Corps units) who were defending the Moselle against Soviet forces already over the Rhine and inside the Rhineland. The centre was held by the US V Corps. These Americans had so successfully and for so long fought through Hessen on the wrong side of the Fulda Gap where they’d kept Frankfurt free of occupation for a week before needing to fall back to here. Next, on the right were the US VII Corps. They had many West Germans with them plus REFORGER arrived units: this was not the VII Corps which had started the war in terms of components. Seven field armies (one Czechoslovak) and two corps commands (one East German) moved against them. Only the Czechoslovak First Army was at near full strength – NATO air power having torn some bits out of it though not enough – with the other large formations all suffering varying degrees of wartime damage. The First Guards Tank Army and Eighth Guards Army in particular were at less than a third of their strength when Operation Elbe begun. A lot of soldiers, plus tanks and heavy guns, descended upon CENTAG’s lines. They reported to the Second Western Front, an army group dwarfing the one which was CENTAG, with Postnikov appointing a new commander there to ensure that what he wanted done was achieved. The attack began long before dawn and would continue to go on long after sunset. It would be midnight by the time the majority Saarland was taken. By then, NATO no longer had to worry about the difficulties of holding the Rhineland anymore.

With the weight of numbers, and the overwhelming use of firepower, so favoured by Postnikov over Ogarkov’s cunning, won the day. Every aircraft, armed helicopter, heavy gun, multiple-barrelled rocket launcher and tactical ballistic missile available was put to use. Throughout the southern Rhineland, the Second Western Front battered the NATO positions near to and far from the frontlines. Underneath this barrage, the forward advance went. Attacking units were met with every defence available to NATO including limited numbers of chemical weapons. The Soviets made more use of gas but the Americans, and increasingly the French too, were employing of their own stocks of chemicals. Using conventional explosives more so, NATO returned fire against what the Second Western Front threw at them. They returned fire with their own artillery as well as plentiful air power. Enemy forces approaching from behind were hit like those who were making the assaults to get over the rivers. In the way of all of this was West Germany. This country, one of Europe’s richest and most industrialized, had already seen much damage done across it. There had been parts overrun quick or abandoned without a fight, yet the southern Rhineland was blown to bits. There were still civilians about. Many had fled yet others remained. To be in the way of all of these air strikes and artillery barrages was one thing… nerve gas was a whole different kind of horror.

Breakthroughs occurred. The defences cracked in places. CENTAG poured men towards the crossing sites to them to try to plug the gaps. The Soviets send in reinforcements to exploit the openings forced. Each of the trio of NATO corps faced successful penetrations made through their defences. The US V Corps managed to bring a halt to the initial cracks yet this saw them move forward everything they had to spare in terms of reserves. It meant that they were unable to assist the French to their west and their fellow Americans to the south when they faced larger attacks. The French I Corps broke under the strain; the US VII Corps came close to early collapse too. With the latter were national guardsmen from North Carolina. They were using stored REFORGER equipment for a US Army unit who’d gone to the Middle East months ago with their US-based equipment. The 30th Infantry Brigade was hit by the Czechoslovaks. The first time in battle for each of them saw those Warsaw Pact troops emerge victorious. One regiment of motorised riflemen was joined by another on the western banks of the Rhine followed by the rest of that division with another to follow. This occurred near Worms, a small town that was left an absolute ruin afterwards. The national guardsmen were beaten and the Czechoslovaks began moving away from Worms. They went north, not immediately west. This sent them through flat, open countryside and across the rear areas of the VII Corps as well as to the juncture between the two American corps. Soviet Twenty–Eighth Army units, those who’d come into the Rhineland through the back door when they went across the Netherlands and eastwards across the Belgian Ardennes, got through the French. The 7th Armored Division was lost when hit by two motor rifle divisions who followed up the lead sacrifices of component regiments on the Moselle to drive on. In came the Soviet’s 23rd Tank Division next, beating off flank attacks by other French units, and breaking free far into the rear.

The flanks had been opened up while the centre held. CENTAG was doomed.


The day went onwards. The Second Western Front moved over those rivers more troops. NATO units fell backwards when they could no longer hold onto where they were. In the middle where the US V Corps was, a stand could have been made. The Americans here were going to be surrounded if they did though. A Mainz Pocket would only surely suffer the same fate as those other pockets that NATO forces had held on West German soil: eventually surrender. A retreat was ordered. The V Corps broke contact at the front and began falling back. There were East Germans from their Third Corps who first tried to cut off the American retreat. Their 7th Tank Division had followed progress made by the Czechoslovaks in opening the frontlines up and went to take advantage of what was sure to be panic as the Americans fell back. It wasn’t a good day to be an East German tanker. That division mainly had T-55s though there were some of the brand-new T-72s as well. Neither could put a stop to the fire power unleashed against them when American helicopter gunships came into play. Dozens of Apaches and Cobras fired missiles into those tanks to blow them to bits. Further back the V Corps got, struggling to join its flanks with allied forces on each side. The Czechoslovaks were all over the US VII Corps by now though: those masses of gunships could have been more helpful there. Underrated by NATO and the Soviets too, the First Army put on a remarkable performance. They fought the Americans and West Germans with everything they had and took ground. Casualties were immense and horror was unleashed but onwards they pushed. Behind them came Soviet tanks, on their way to steal the glory. The remains of the Eighth Tank Army finished what the Czechoslovaks started. A successful retreat back deeper into higher ground, through the forests of the Rhineland-Palatine, was unable to be made. In a series of huge tank battles, the majority of the VII Corps was beaten. Half of the 1st Infantry Division and all of the 12th Panzer Division was run through: the remaining units scattered and without a chance of doing anything by fleeing towards France. The French I Corps was meanwhile broken apart. Soviet tank forces first with the Fifth Guards Army Corps and then the Second Guards Tank Army came over the Moselle behind the Twenty–Eighth Army to take advantage of the French having their centre cracked open. Sensibly, the French right withdrew near to the US V Corps but the units on the left hand side, their 2nd Armored Division, were at first pushed towards Luxembourg and out of the way. They should have made an escape then. They were ordered to make another flanking counterattack instead, going back at the enemy. The Fifth Guards Army Corps put up a defence and defeated them without bending. These two opposing forces had clashed before, several days ago up in the northern Rhineland, and this was the finale of what was almost a blood feud between them.


The US V Corps – with some Frenchmen falling back with them – conducted a fighting withdrawal through the afternoon and evening towards the Saarland. The Second Western Front had its armies chasing them. The Twentieth Army was brought into play, those who had taken the surrender of the Ruhr Pocket recently, though they couldn’t do what others had failed to: stop this retreat. It looked likely that the Americans would get into the Saarland and then fall back into France. Postnikov had his subordinate at Second Western Front HQ understand the consequences of that happening: the general there would be demoted to that of a private and end up in a penal unit. On occasions like this throughout military history, threats like this would have had the opposite effect as intended. It worked today though. Everything, the metaphorical kitchen sink included, was thrown at cutting off the American retreat. The Twentieth Army was broken in the effort and so was much of the Twenty–Eighth Army too. Yet… the Americans were caught. The US V Corps, three divisions plus of the very best of the US Army, lost what would afterwards be called the Battle of Kaiserslautern. Kaiserslautern was well known to the US Army: ‘K-Town’ was at the centre of a large swatch of American military bases in the southern Rhineland with Landstuhl and Ramstein not far away.

The actual fight wasn’t even at K-Town. It was fought nearby over a big area with that town itself barely affected. The Americans and Soviets duked it out in a huge fight where the bulk of the Americans had their escape route cut and then were attacked from all sides while stalled. Soviet tanks kept on coming regardless of losses. Riflemen swarmed forward with infantry carriers left behind while the soldiers themselves were carrying every man-portable heavy weapon to hand. NATO aircraft, most of them American, swept in to influence the fight. Quickly there were no recognisable frontlines. Strikes were aborted, often at the very last moment, when the enemy was too close to friendly forces. Apaches and Cobras did better work but they met mobile air defences and even opposing helicopters with air-to-air missiles. NATO air support wasn’t up to it today when it was really needed. First the 8th Infantry Division, then the 11th Cav’ and finally the 3rd Armored Division were overcome; the majority of the 4th Infantry Division had already made it into the Saarland and would keep going all the way into France. The rest of the V Corps remained behind and was blown to pieces. They took so many of their enemy with them too leaving the Second Western Front in no position to drive into France afterwards. There were no orders to do that though. Destroying CENTAG was the day’s mission and that was achieved.

Monday August 31st 1987 was a day which would live in infamy for the US Army. Their V & VII Corps, the US Army Europe reinforced with REFORGER additions, were gone for good. Some combat units from each had made an escape into France where they weren’t followed… but so many more hadn’t. West Germany was now almost all occupied. NATO had lost major forces in a horrific defeat. And France? The French had the victorious (though badly shot-up) Soviet Army on its border from the sea to the Rhine.

They want to. Moscow is saying no at the minute: be happy with West Berlin and maybe Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein (up to the Danish border). The war plans does call for a withdrawal from West Germany once victory is won. That is how it is on paper but a withdrawal wouldn't be a straight pullout: the Soviets would leave behind forces in NATO bases for 'security'. At the end of the day, East Germany wasn't supposed to get all of West Germany.

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