Lions Will Fight Bears - Britain in World War Three, Spring 1988[{locked}]

Two Hundred & Sixty–Three

The population of West Germany before World War Three begun was more than sixty-one million making the nation the most-populous in Europe excluding the Soviet Union west of the Urals. It was in the main an urbanised nation though with still a significant rural population. Car ownership was very high and there was an abundance of roads and railways linking the nation internally and to its neighbours in the north, further west and to the south.

Using those transport links, more than a fifth of the population left their homes immediately before the conflict opened and during the first week of the war; roughly thirteen million people fled their place of residence. Such a mass movement of civilians was uncoordinated and conducted with little thought apart from to get away from where the war was expected to be fought. Taking place over such a short period of time as well, the magnitude of this mass fleeing of civilians from war was something that hadn’t been seen beforehand in history.

Chancellor Kohl and his government in Bonn had expected that many citizens would flee in fear of their lives. Public announcements were made for people to stay in their homes yet at the same time in the border areas there was an organised evacuation which took place (up to a dozen miles from the Inter-German Border and the Czechoslovak frontier). Other cases of the West German population fleeing in large numbers were expected in private though one internal report stating that as many as two million civilians might move west and south was dismissed as ‘alarmist’. The decision taken to mobilise and call for military assistance from their NATO allies hadn’t been taken lightly and this had been taken into account… but thirteen million people was just an unimaginable number for the West German authorities!

West Germans knew what had happened during World War Two when the Soviet Army had arrived. That may have occurred across in now what was East Germany, but the stories of the rapes and murders were well-known. What was expected was that the rampaging Soviet Army would come storming into the cities and towns where they lived and unleash an orgy of violence and destruction. There were other fears concerning the war too from those who didn’t live anywhere near to the borders in the east but rather near military bases or in the big cities: air attacks and nuclear war.

Those thirteen million who effectively chose to make themselves refugees moved from their homes all across the country. The border areas ended up near deserted yet from out of other locations nationwide civilians left their homes and decided to flee as well. West Germans fled from Hamburg, Bremen, Hannover, the cities in the Ruhr and the Rhineland, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich in their millions. Some flocked to airports and railway stations while most crowded into family cars abandoning their homes in pure fear of what would happen should they stay. Millions of young men were being recalled to uniform across the country and they too took to the roads heading for their mobilisation centres.

Such a mass movement of people came during the time when NATO forces were pouring into West Germany as well as when the Bundeswehr was fast rushing to deployment sites. It continued though the last hours of peace and after the shooting started as well. Those on the move did whatever it took to make an effort to leave where they believed that they were in danger including disobeying official instructions when on the move from the authorities trying to direct the immense and unexpected flow of people. Vehicles laden with families would break down when on the move or be struck by falling bombs from Soviet aircraft attempting to blast NATO forces also trying to move through West Germany. There were many instances where forward enemy spearheads crashed into areas where civilians were moving though those were rare early on in the conflict as NATO managed to hold onto most of their forward positions near the borders. When the big Soviet offensive occurred late in the war’s first week, many more civilians, still on the move, were caught up in the fighting though following those chemical warfare attacks and the unleashing of thousands of rampaging Soviet tanks tearing forward.

Casualties among the fleeing civilians were immense during those occasions where they unintentionally attracted the attention of invading forces especially for those caught out in the open. Then there was the horrors of occupation by many when they didn’t get far enough away and had to suffer like their fellow citizens who didn’t flee away from where the East German occupying forces unleashed what was in many ways a modern-day Red Terror.

Those West Germans who became internal refugees within their own country and who turned into foreign refugees within neighbouring nations generally moved without a set destination in mind and the few that did rarely ended up where they intended to go. Many wanted to leave the country all together and planned to head to the Low Countries, France of Switzerland. Others moved to the western regions of the West Germany even moving towards those big cities where their fellow frightened citizens had decided to flee from. Many had money with them with the aim being to find a hotel to stay or while others had ideas to stay with friends or relatives… most just hoped to go somewhere that they hoped would be safe with the certain knowledge that the authorities would look after them.

Chaos therefore occurred without proper forward planning from those refugees nor their government. The millions and millions of scared and desperate people were just far too many for any organised manner to be undertaken to not just provide them with somewhere to stay but to feed and care for medical needs either. Diseases broke out when makeshift camps were set up without proper sanitary care with many believing that such a thing could never occur in the First World country that was West Germany. Families got separated from each other and there were also many suicides which occurred among the refugees as well when all hope faded among them. Inside the neighbouring countries where many who travelled through borders which were opened up there were attempts made to help them though there were smaller refugee crisis’s going on within those nations too especially the Netherlands. The Swiss eventually gave up and took the unfortunate but necessary step of closing their border with West Germany but the end result of that was an immense build-up of people on that border and then a domestic political crisis at home.

Incidents occurred among the refugees and with those who lived in the areas where their fellow citizens had fled to over issues such as food, criminal acts and also ugly clashes over race. West Germany was home to many ‘Turks’ – guest workers and their families who weren’t naturalised citizens and certainly weren’t all Turkish either – and racism against them was an issue in the country made worse by the refugee problem and also the crisis of war.

Eventually, as the war progressed, the flood of refugees on the move ceased yet the millions of West Germans who had fled their homes were still in great need and spread out far and wide. Several countries as part of NATO and the Allies begun to provide assistance to the West German Government – as well as the Dutch and the Belgians too – to aid these refugees. Tent cities sprung up in the countryside while public buildings in towns and cities were opened to house more refugees. Food and doctors started to arrive as well after some time. Nonetheless, the millions of refugees were still an immense strain upon the authorities of countries struggling with the physical effects of the war.


NATO operations to liberate occupied portions of West Germany and then drive the invaders back into East Germany and Czechoslovakia meant that millions of those refugees were now free to return to their homes as the danger to them had now passed. That was how their government saw the matter, but not how all of those who had left their homes felt about the situation. There was still the fear of nuclear war blasting apart West German cities that many feared while others had heard rumours – sometimes true, sometimes false – that there was immense devastation throughout the areas where fighting had taken place and also where occupation had occurred. Frankfurt and the urban areas in Lower Saxony were heard by the refugees to be utterly destroyed while Hannover was meant to be still smouldering.

For the time being, many West Germans didn’t want to go back to their homes and wanted to stay where they were.

Those that did return faced long journeys across their country which had suffered gravely not just from the direct fighting but from air and missile strikes throughout the rear areas. They were held up by damage wrought to transport links and then too military convoys moving eastwards. Without petrol for their cars they were moved in buses and trucks in an uncomfortable manner and told what they could and couldn’t do as they made their way home.

Those who returned to their homes soon regretted it.

In the eastern parts of the country, there was damage done on sometimes a truly epic scale to their places of residence as well as the areas in which they lived. Looting had taken place not just from foreign soldiers but from their fellow West Germans as well during periods of lawlessness. While household items of value had been stolen, other housewares of no value at all apart from what they meant to their owners were missing too; there was also purposeful destruction taken place within residences. Other homes had been partially or completely destroyed by explosives, demolitions or fire. Some had seen dead bodies left to decay within them while others had been habituated by soldiers billeted inside. Even where a home was untouched the neighbouring area had seen destruction done and of course there were no local services from electricity to running water to shops open. The former refugees despaired at what they found when they came back to where they had lived and so many wanted to go back to where they had been when they had fled. Within the local communities which the refugees returned to they discovered some of what had been happening while they had gone and understood that it would have been far from the best choice to stay behind and try to live under the occupation which had occurred. Enemy soldiers had been one thing but the East German occupation where attempts had begun to socially cleanse those parts of West Germany had been horrific. People had been executed in public; others had been used as slave labour. Industrial goods had been stolen while public buildings and monuments with a history which the East Germans objected to were destroyed. There were tales from the trickle of their neighbours returning who had ended up living under the brief occupation but then there were the empty homes that no one was returning to with a belief that they weren’t fellow refugees yet to return from the west or the south but rather were missing after being taken away by the occupiers for various unspecified means.

The refugees which returned to their homes in western and southern parts of the country, into the large urban areas in particular, discovered that a lot of damage to their residences had been done in their absence too. There had been some looting out to the east but elsewhere inside West Germany it had been rampant. Homes had been broken into and items stolen while much damage had often been done too. There were questions asked as to who were such people and why had no one stopped them from doing this? War damage affected many places too following long-range strikes by Soviet aircraft and missiles that were not particularly accurate. Just as those who returned to their homes in the border areas found, those who had fled from unoccupied regions discovered that even if their own property was fortunate enough to be untouched their neighbourhoods had taken immense damage and public services were out of action.

There continued to be announcements from the authorities which said that things should be soon getting back to normal now that the fighting was taking place in East Germany and not here within West Germany. Yet those refugees who returned home couldn’t imagine when anything would ever be normal again with seemingly no hope of putting their homes and families, let alone their country, back together again.

Meanwhile, many more refugees still remained displaced not yet willing to go back home.




Two Hundred & Sixty–Four

In later years, Czechs would celebrate April 8th as ‘Liberation Day’. There would be a national holiday in memory of that day that the old regime fell but also to recall that the end of forty years of communist rule had come at a cost too.

Prague was where the collapse of the regime occurred before it was entered by NATO troops as it was Czechs who liberated themselves rather than those French tanks waiting to storm the city’s defences. For Czechs this was something important to remember and so too was that while their capital felt freedom on that day it didn’t mean that the rest of the country had been liberated by that point either.


The French First Army, with its Canadian, Moroccan and West German components in addition to those French troops, had entered Czechoslovakia with the goal of taking Prague. They expected strong opposition during their invasion as the southern element of ABOLITION and such fears had been unfortunately justified. The invasion brought about a vicious civil war that erupted between Czechs attempting to free themselves from the oppression of their government and those fighting to keep the regime in-place. Moreover, as Slovaks attempted to assert their own independence to the east against efforts to stop them from breaking away from the union that was Czechoslovakia, the cost in terms of lives was great. Combat deaths for the invading NATO troops would come mainly from fighting against Soviet and Czechoslovak troops but they were caught up in the civil war too.

The city of Prague, the political centre of the country, had been approached the day beforehand from the west and the south with efforts made to interdict links out of the city to the north and east too. French troops had been positioned to launch an assault to capture strategic points on the edges of Prague such as crossroads and high ground with the combat forces from the other national armies covering the flanks as they made sure that enemy forces wouldn’t pose a risk to that attack. There hadn’t been an intention to push directly into the city in strength though plans were made for small raiding parties to try their luck should gaps open up in the lines of the defenders. Intelligence pointed to Czechoslovak Militia being in great number and the city still being full of civilians; such a fight in urban terrain would be far too costly, the French Army believed.

What wasn’t expected, either by the French nor the authorities in Prague, was that the city would rise up first to free themselves without the need for foreign intervention.

Quite rightly fearful for his own life, Bilak wasn’t in Prague when the end came. He proclaimed that the threat to him from NATO bombers was what had kept him in hidden and secure underground locations throughout the conflict but he truly feared his own people and having a fate such as Fidel Castro had suffered in Cuba. Instead of their General Secretary – only a few months ago put into power by Soviet guns – the people of Prague were ruled over by Communist Party officials who had survived the Soviet-inspired purge Bilak had launched when he had been put into power. These were non-entities who certainly hadn’t endeared themselves to the population with sudden arrests of suspected troublemakers and announcements that the ‘Battle of Prague’ would ‘be fought to the last man’. What those in authority did do, even after all the rebellions launched elsewhere throughout western parts of Bohemia, was arm much of the population of the city who were members of the People’s Militia: the Lidove Milice (LV). Pistols, submarine guns and even heavier man-portable weapons including machine guns and mortars were given to factory workers and other civilians who were all members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and considered ‘loyal’ to the regime. No thought was put into this; standard procedures were followed as the country was facing an invasion and the LV was meant to assist the armed forces in that.

Given arms and with the knowledge gleamed from those who heard propaganda broadcasts from the West that other parts of the country was rising up (the true story of the details of the civil war erupting wasn’t coming through) it really shouldn’t have been a surprise that soon enough the citizens of Prague would revolt. They needed a spark first for the fuse to be lit and that came during the night when further radio broadcasts were made in Czech to them that NATO troops were right outside the city. With that, once dawn came, the first of the shooting started.


For those who lived through Liberation Day in Prague it was one which they would never forget… but their memories were affected when it came to the fine details of the truth of what occurred. Stories would be told and retold, complete with embellishments, of how the whole city rose up as one to defeat their oppressors in a spirit of unity. There would be talk of some of the horrors of the day too when innocents were killed but overall for those who were there they would claim that Czechs were united in taking down those who had long enslaved them in a fantastic victory.

Of course, in reality, Prague was just like the rest of the country during the civil war and it was the same on Liberation Day too. There were many who didn’t support the uprising and others who wanted to stay out of such matters. Many of the women and children killed during the day’s fighting were accidentally killed by those trying to free them not just by troops loyal to the government who fought to stop the destruction of the regime. The role played by NATO troops on the outskirts of the city making sure that all attention had been focused externally rather than internally was forgotten as time went on too.

Fighting took place throughout the city from the centre of Prague into the outlying regions where Czechoslovak Army reservists were manning the frontlines against the French First Army. Gunfire and explosions took place with buildings stormed, monuments toppled and plenty of killing. Huge fires broke out and bodies lay in the streets. There was panic and pandemonium alongside crowds waving flags with one hand and shooting in the air with the other. War crimes were committed when those involved in the revolt killed surrendering opponents in uniform and in civilian clothes; regime troops also killed civilians carrying arms and those not in equal measure.

Eventually, as the day got later and the violence more bloody, LV paramilitary forces in revolt got the upper hand over the authorities and their loyal troops to win the Battle of Prague. They had carried the day due to their numbers and the will to win. There were mass celebrations but also acts of vengeance carried out too. The Soviet Embassy was set alight and so too was the StB headquarters; a massacre of those at the secret police headquarters who had tried to barricade themselves inside took place but the Soviet Embassy was devoid of anyone to be killed there. In Wenceslas Square, there was plenty of celebration despite hundreds of wounded Czechs being treated by doctors and volunteers in buildings alongside this open space as well as efforts to remove many bodies too. Nearby, Prague Castle remained nearly untouched from the fighting after most of those involved in the day’s events had taken the unconscious collective decision to not see it destroyed while fighting for control of such an historical place; other famous sites in the city weren’t so fortunate.

There were no popular leaders of the revolt and Liberation Day ended without a figure that could unite the people of Prague. There were unanswered questions as to where the most recognised opponent of the regime Vaclav Havel was and whether he would lead them? Yet, instead of politics there was celebration instead. Guns were fired into the air by some while others sought out drink; many sudden ‘romances’ begun as well.

A few Czechs sought to make contact with the NATO troops which they had been told were nearby and made radio broadcasts of their own declaring the city free and the regime defeated in Prague. These broadcasts told the French outside that there would be no resistance from the city’s population and in fact there would be assistance in attacking what Soviet and Czechoslovak Army defenders remained outside from the rear. Whether anyone in Prague would be able to do such a thing with any degree of organisation or success was another matter, but those who made those broadcasts were happy and full of confidence.

Prague had been freed.

Two Hundred & Sixty–Seven

The marshes of Havelland weren’t going to stop the advances of the British Second Army towards Berlin. They were troublesome and so too were the scattered but deadly enemy troops fighting around them, but the onwards progress to the east was made. Infantrymen with the 2 R IRISH battle-group (part of the Tiger Division's 20th Brigade) had a furious engagement fighting enemy troops surrounded and who wouldn't yield so had to be blasted out of their positions while enemy wheeled armoured vehicles with long-range missiles had to be chased and defeated in-detail when caught by tanks with the newly-formed 5 RTR (with the 21st Brigade, 7th Armoured Division). It was artillery and especially air power which was truly coming into play now, more so in the latter case as anti-aircraft defences were now few and far between. Fire-power unleashed at distance blasted those few Soviet and East German troops who stood in the way while tanks and infantry moved in carefully to overrun what remaining armed opposition there was. It was methodical and above all careful as orders had come down from the top that here on the approaches to Berlin was not the place to be wasting lives in needless close-in fighting when the enemy could be pounded first under shells and bombs.

In the centre, the Bundeswehr IV Corps and the British I Corps, with the Belgians now moving in behind them too, edged forwards towards the Berlin ring-road that was Autobahn-10. To their right, after completing the crushing of all opposition around the town of Brandenburg, the troops with the West German VI Corps moved in strength against Potsdam. Their initial approaches towards that city outside Berlin’s boundaries had come from a southwestern direction in the preceding days with the 13th Panzer Division – reservists and security troops now manning heavier equipment from storage – and today they were joined by the two other formations which made up the corps which they were assigned to. There was the 1st Panzer Division (with elements of the devastated and disbanded 11th Panzergrenadier Division now part of it) and the 16th Panzergrenadier Division too (which consisted of reservists and security troops plus frontline Territorial troops who had been fighting since the war’s first days) in this battle.

The West Germans didn’t want to see Potsdam destroyed and they knew that there were many civilians there – Germans too no matter what the political differences between governments were – who didn’t deserve to be unnecessarily killed. Therefore there was little in the way of long-range strikes towards the rear-area support units in that city which supported the fighting forces outside of there. Instead, the Bundeswehr fought through the lakes, flooded waterways and woodland outside the city and took the losses suffered which they wouldn’t have done if they had unleashed artillery and air strikes against enemy guns firing at distance and coordinated from communications sites deliberately located within that city packed full of civilians. West German sensibilities on this issue had brought comprise from General Kenny as overall commander despite his deep misgivings about the whole situation.

Those defenders of Potsdam were located outside of the city along water-based defensive lines around Weinberg, Leest and Werder using the winding Havel River and also village strongpoints as well. These were KdA paramilitary troops in the main though retired East German Army officers recalled to service as well as military cadets were also present. Their equipment came in the form of hand-held weapons such as rifles and light machine guns as well as the odd mortar and anti-tank rocket-launcher. Against tanks, heavy weapons mounted on armoured vehicles and artillery given free-fire permission outside of Potsdam these forces stood no chance once the Bundeswehr could get at them.

General Kenny had his attention focused on that fighting outside Potsdam and then afterwards as the West German VI Corps came closer to the city engaged in more fighting on the outskirts. He had some of his staff officers down there delivering reports following observations of the fighting efforts made by the East Germans. Unlike those in Havelland, the defences here were part of those inner defences of Berlin. There were no huge earth-berms like those still going up just ahead of the British troops to the north of here outside the surrounding ring-road and Potsdam’s defenders were East Germans with no Soviets. The presence of East German Army officers, very highly-trained professionals, leading irregular KdA forces was known about and the abilities of those men commanding the efforts of Militia troops outside urban areas was something to keep an eye on.

Anti-tank weaponry in the form of towed guns and missile-launchers appeared to be a favourite weapons put to use by those professional men and when used well those were often formidable weapons. The general immobility of such systems when faced with NATO air cover to deal with the former and massed rocket fire from LARS launchers attacking the latter meant that there was only a surprise factor with such weapons though. Once they opened fire they could be pin-pointed for attack and movement from concealed positions towards other firing points would mean attack from above.

The fighting quality of the defenders of Potsdam was also noted for its intensity as the city lay right upon the very southwestern edges of the Berlin Wall. Parts of that structure had been torn down by the East Germans especially through the centre of the city in a symbolic effort by the regime yet it remained standing near Potsdam. Dedication from the defending troops was expected and met here as those observers from the British Second Army’s operations and intelligence staffs noted even if in the end it only hastened the deaths of those men fighting as hard as they did.

Then came the fighting for Potsdam itself.

Edging closer to Potsdam in the late afternoon and through the evening, West German troops fought in the outer suburbs and met what remained to be strong resistance where the defenders could use their lighter weapons that had failed them outside of the city. There was hesitancy to use strong fire-power close up like there had been at distance which even upset many Bundeswehr soldiers involved in the fight and cause them to rage against political orders not to endanger the lives of German civilians any more than was necessary. Large buildings that could be levelled by explosives were taken floor-by-floor, apartment-by-apartment and then there were civilians everywhere too. These people had been deliberately kept in-place by the regime and only once those Stasi officers with guns either fell down dead or eventually tried to make a run for it were the civilians themselves able to flee and run in every direction across fields of fire. There were many unfortunate cases where West German troops accidentally shot civilians and then many instances too where all evidence pointed to the Stasi shooting civilians too knowing that Bundeswehr attention would be focused upon the cries of the fellow Germans. By the late evening, with only small parts to the west and south of Potsdam in-hand the West German soldiers were ordered to stop advancing as their commanders knew that in the dark losses to civilians would only become greater.

The deliberate use of civilians of human shields in Potsdam was something that caused outrage among the West Germans and also other NATO senior people who found out what occurred during the day’s fighting for the city. They were left angry, frustrated and sickened by the callous behaviour undertaken by their enemy here in doing such a thing when it was clear that this was a war-zone and civilians should have been evacuated.

Moreover, higher up in the chain of command to General Kenny and above there were concerns that such a sight would be seen in Berlin too when that city was entered as part of the liberation attempt. Potsdam had been entered by the Bundeswehr not just because it lay on their line of approach but due to the communications links which ran through it in the form of all those wide paved roads needed for the final push into West Berlin.

Throughout the invasion there had been aversions of NATO forces during ABOLITION to go into urban areas and only the West Germans had done so – Magdeburg as the biggest example of that – over worries about the friendly casualties to be taken in such efforts. Now, there were fears that this use of (their own!) civilians by the East Germans at Potsdam would be repeated in Berlin with West Berliners being put in harm’s way on purpose. All intelligence pointed to civilians still being there inside the occupied sectors of West Berlin and over in the eastern side too with a previous hope that those people would be moved out of the way once NATO troops got into the city. Potsdam now displayed for all to see that the exact opposite was going to be the case; millions of civilians in Berlin were likely to be kept where they were so that NATO troops would have to fight among them against an enemy using them as human shields and fighting from the homes of those civilians as well rather than out in the open.

News from Potsdam went up the chain of command military-wise but also to the politicians too.





Two Hundred & Sixty–Eight

The game was up.

Ogarkov had finally come to accept that the war was lost and the course of events were now being led by others in a manner which was leaving the Rodina imperilled. Everything which had been tried to reverse the tide of defeat after defeat had failed miserably and therefore the only course of action to take was to no longer actively partake in the war going on in Europe any longer.

The Soviet armed forces were to take a bow and exit stage left from the fighting there packing up what remained and marching home.

The reasons for this were many.

*​

First in Scandinavia and West Germany, then through East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria Soviet military might had been ruthlessly crushed with immense losses suffered from fantastic reverses. At sea, in the air and most importantly on the ground there had come a complete defeat of Soviet arms at almost every turn with what successes made initially only compounding the scale of ultimate defeat in combat. The technological supremacy of the West when it came to military affairs, what he had warned about for several years and faced much time in disgrace for correctly prophesying of, had triumphed in a fashion to almost make Ogarkov weep.

Early in the conflict, when those victories were accumulating at a fantastic rate, Ogarkov had told Chebrikov that the moment then had been to push on following the deep advances made into West Germany and reach the Rhine before going over that if necessary further westwards. That had been the moment to do such a thing with NATO’s armies on their knees. Yet, Chebrikov, fearful of an uncontrollable escalation from a nuclear weapons release by the West – which, admittedly, Ogarkov had worried over too – had decided to bring to a halt the offensive then a make those foolish efforts at peace overtures that only infuriated the West… following that their fightback had begun.

What had that then brought? The smashing of Soviet military power on occupied soil and then the resulting invasion of the territory of the so-called allies of the Soviet Union. Those fraternal nations were now causing as much suffering to the Soviet cause as the armies of the West. The East Germans and the Czechoslovakians, especially Mielke in Berlin, had gone crazy when faced with NATO troops inside their borders and the Soviet Army unable to stop them due to the defeats incurred earlier in the war.

Czechoslovakians were killing each other in a civil war where brother was pitted against brother there. There were those fighting to topple the regime – which was now, in Ogarkov’s opinion, defeated with Prague lost – and those trying to keep it in power. The Slovaks were fighting against forces trying to keep their federation together while many in the Czech lands were making attempts now to ethnically cleanse Bohemia and Moravia of Slovaks. The Poles were in open revolt partly against their government but mainly trying to kill any Soviet soldier which they could with the result that they were doing more damage to their nation than NATO bombs had done; Hungary was looking like joining them soon enough in rising up as well. Romania, not a member of the Socialist Forces engaged in the war with West, was now privately threatening to ‘intervene’ in Yugoslavia to stop their neighbour from falling apart like Czechoslovakia was unless Ogarkov acted first there. Bulgaria had stayed out of the war like Romania had though on Chebrikov’s command rather than outright refusal to get involved so that an unspecified plan for that country could be put into play at a later date; now Ogarkov was being told that Bulgaria had opened contacts with the West through – of all people – the Turks.

These were the allies of the Soviet Union in Europe and such was their behaviour. Yet none of those compared in any way to the East Germans under that little Hitlerite Mielke who had deliberately gassed and killed Soviet soldiers when trying to steal special weapons from the Soviet Army for purposes unknown but which could only involve gravely threatening the existence of the Soviet state and its people too.

And then of course Mielke was now acting wholly independently from inside Berlin and just gone and done what he had with regards to making those threats to the West all on his own.

Ogarkov no longer believed that allies like these were what his country needed.


As a result of the war, the Soviet Union was in many places tottering on the edge of collapse. Governmental control was breaking down in the outer republics of the union in the southern Caucasus, Central Asia and now the Baltic’s too. There were rebellions, revolts and violence occurring with alarming frequency throughout these regions with other worrying signs that such events might occur elsewhere at some point soon enough too in other parts of the Caucasus, Moldovia and isolated parts of Siberia. Where the people rose up they were quickly crushed but then there would come further outbreaks of violence that were bigger than beforehand and needed even stronger responses.

Ogarkov had been busy distracted from the war going on in Europe in recent days trying to supervise the efforts to stop what was starting to look like the beginnings of succession movements from the union in those places. He found his efforts hampered by local intransigence and then the schemes and conspiracies of the security services against those efforts. The KGB, the GRU and the MVD – all needed by Ogarkov to keep the country together – were against him and were making use of such situations for their own gains. Ogarkov had eliminated all their top people when he had taken power but new men were rising all the time in organisations where everyone seemed to always be intent on conspiring against the state from within to gain personal power. He suspected that much of the trouble was actually instigated by those people and then there had been the suspicious deaths of several key people he had entrusted to restore order in such regions which Ogarkov believed were the work of the security services.

Those spooks and secret policemen were needed by him to keep the country together for the difficult times ahead in the immediate future but many of them seemed determined to break apart the union for temporary personal gains. All attention would have to be focused internally within the country and getting rid of those traitors within would be a tremendous effort that couldn’t be undertaken with a war going on abroad.


The beaten, broken and demoralised Soviet Army was another worry for Ogarkov and the state of that was another reason to give up the fighting in Europe and walk away from that.

He feared for the loyalties of his generals with such men in uniform like himself always hating the security services yet the corrupting influence of them was always there. Other concerns of such men were that they might go rogue and decide to act in a nationalist fashion due to what parts of the union which they were from and involve themselves in ethnic conflicts of the nature already taking place throughout the border areas of the country.

As to the fighting men of the Soviet Army, there were worries over them too… at least those who weren’t dead or in NATO custody. There had been mutinies throughout the war of generally a small scale when fighting abroad though the mass desertion of conscripts in Austria had been something frightening due to how fast it happened and with such numbers. When he had been told that a whole field army deserted as one overnight there had been a moment where Ogarkov had actually thought that all hope was lost.

Currently, with the several hundred thousand troops in Poland kept out of the fighting inside East Germany due to NATO air attacks, and who Ogarkov wanted to march back home, those men weren’t in a position to mutiny. They were fighting for their lives against terrorist attacks launched by Poles at the same time as they suffered under those bombing raids. There was no way that they were going to run away at the moment yet when that they got back home that might be very different unless much effort was expended to make those men remember their loyalty and be fearful of the consequences of disobedience, betrayal or mutiny.

In addition, when it came to the Soviet Army so much of that had been destroyed during the war in terms of men, equipment and the whole doctrine of that organisation. A total of ninety combat divisions – ninety! – had been committed to the fighting and were now no more. Tens of thousands of tanks, other armoured vehicles and pieces of artillery had all joined those formations in being smashed in combat to say nothing of all of those trained Soviet soldiers killed or captured. What remained of the Soviet Army – the weakened forces in Poland as well as what there was left across the nation – were needed to stop Ogarkov’s fear of the Rodina falling apart.

*​

There had already been moves made over the past several days on Ogarkov’s orders that would assist now in the new orders he would give for the fighting in Europe to be left to others as he pulled his military forces out. Ogarkov had felt it necessary that with the tides of war having been reversed in Germany and NATO’s armies storming eastwards that wounded men and specialist officers inside East Germany should have been evacuated by air from there into Poland to escape the trap which he could then see being set before it was as now almost completely sprung. When ordering the air evacuation, Ogarkov had been preparing for the worst and now that was occurring.

In addition to getting such people out of East Germany and not allowing them to fall into the clutches of NATO, Ogarkov had already begun the process of moving POWs captured in combat across into Poland as well. He had no intentions of letting the East Germans do what he feared to such soldiers from the armies of the West. This wasn’t from any moral point of view or compassion that he had but rather because his country would end up being blamed for their fates when Mielke did what Ogarkov suspected would and try to massacre them all. Prisoners were valuable and the numbers of them under Soviet control would be useful later on…

These evacuations would now be joined by the removal of all nuclear weapons that remained in East Germany as well as in Poland and Czechoslovakia back to Soviet territory too. They wouldn’t be left behind to fall into the hands of those former allies nor the West either but rather taken home with their associated launching systems. Escorted convoys would move those special weapons with the troops marching back east too where anyone who wanted to make a real fight of it would be welcome to make their move…

Marshal Korbutov had never been fit for the role of the commander of the West-TVD… yet at the same time the task being set him admittedly too much for any man to achieve. Ogarkov issued orders for his dismissal and recall so that the Soviet Army, and the people too, would have someone to blame. He would keep his life, Ogarkov decided, because the defeat on the battlefield really wasn’t his fault, yet he would have to shoulder the blame there when really it was the Soviet methods of war which he had only tried to follow which had failed rather than him. His deputy would be entrusted with the thankless role of holding on there in East Germany with what troops were left delaying as long as possible any NATO advance to chase the troops from Poland which Ogarkov would save from the debacle there.


There was much danger in what Ogarkov was doing and he was aware of that.

To give up and walk away from the fight as well as the puppet nations in Eastern Europe who were meant to be allies of the Soviet Union were going to upset many people. Unlike Chebrikov before him, he hadn’t purged his nation of all opponents and knew that he could face extreme opposition from many quarters to his decision. As long as he had the guns of the Soviet Army behind him – what remained of that anyway – he believed that he could stay alive and save his country. The security services lacked central command and while still trying to act independent with their own schemes would whimper in fear when faced with massed soldiers threatening them and forcing obedience to Ogarkov… or so he hoped.

Korbutov and the crazy Mielke in Berlin would get all of the blame for what occurred with the war being lost and the Soviet Union itself wouldn’t face destruction nor invasion from abroad either. Quitting now, Ogarkov hoped that his people would understand, was the only thing that could be done and better than having foreigners inside their nation with their guns. Moreover, not an inch of Soviet territory anywhere was going to be surrendered no matter what.

The West had won their battlefield victories but they clearly lacked the political will to dare invade his country and without doing so any demands which they made could be treated with contempt. They had the military forces to at least try to invade through the North-West or the Far East but certainly weren’t going to attempt that due to the nuclear arsenal that the Soviet Union still maintained. Ogarkov understood the West only a little but was certain that they feared the special weapons his country had active ready to be used to stop an invasion even if he himself feared such weapons too with the belief that with one being used all eventually would resulting in the utter destruction of his country and its people.

He could imagine that once the West realised what he had done in marching what forces he had left away from the battlefields in Europe there would be many voices in the homelands of the enemies that his nation had demanding further steps be taken against the Soviet Union. They would want financial reparations, make claims for suspected war criminals and issue calls for such things as territorial adjustments, changes to the political nature of his country and the elimination of nuclear weapons in Soviet hands. They could ask for all that backed up by threats all they wanted: that wouldn’t happen because Ogarkov had taken power and intended now to hold onto it (his initial plan to concede control to a civilian dismissed) to defend the Rodina not serve the wishes of foreigners.

At the same time, others of influence in those countries would be happy with what they would get by Ogarkov’s actions. They had defended Western Europe successfully and tore apart Soviet military might. Ogarkov was leaving behind KGB personnel who still remained inside Eastern Europe for the West to have their vengeance against as well as the regimes there too. Their fears of nuclear war would bring them to agreeing to terminate hostilities as the Soviet Army was back behind its own borders now where fears of a nuclear response would keep them in Europe rather than marching on Moscow.

Ogarkov would be ready for whatever peace treaty terms the west demanded with counters of his own sweetened by the surrendering of tens of thousands of NATO POWs kept from the bullets of the East Germans.


There remained many things to be done even after Ogarkov started issuing his orders late in the evening of April 8th. He would need to make sure that they were carried out in addition to those people he wanted out of Europe removed by the air evacuation flights and also the effective advance of his armies this time eastwards through a hostile Poland. KGB officers left behind would have to be cut off from all means of escape and then there were those troops on the wrong side of the Polish-East German Border who would have to be sacrificed as well in the final battles with NATO’s armies.

His instructions would face sabotage and even outright disobedience which would have to be dealt with yet Ogarkov believed that they would be followed eventually: he wasn’t exactly alone in thinking that the war in Germany was lost.

Moreover, there was his dependable Colonel Lebed still to complete his final mission there too in gaining some justice for those men killed by the East Germans with KGB assistance during the failed attempt to seize nuclear weapons. Ogarkov hadn’t forgotten about that act of treason and it was something he was still determined to see punished.


As those fateful orders to put active forces out of the war effort were received and acknowledgements came in, Ogarkov had more thoughts on the current situation too. He wondered just how the West was going to react to the most recent threats and demands from that madman that Chebrikov had given power to in Berlin? Such acts as that from Mielke had started the process where Ogarkov had decided to do as he was doing, yet at the same time this particular one would be useful too in causing a distraction of such a magnitude that for some time what he was doing with his beaten armies would hopefully go unnoticed.

Two Hundred & Seventy–One

Throughout the weekend, NATO forces inside East Germany moved to overrun much of the remaining portions of that country apart from Berlin and its surrounding environs inside the outer defences set up there. Striking across almost the whole of the country, troops assigned to the ABOLITION mission continued to crush most of the opposition which still stood in their way. However, there were still some pockets of resistance apart from Berlin which managed to hold out against the overwhelming firepower being unleashed against them and the terrible strategic situation which they found themselves in… without understanding that they had been fully abandoned to their fate.


The city of Schwerin remained the focus of the US Marines operating in the north from their coastal landing site at Wismar. Lead elements of the 5th Marine Division – now with an extra regimental-group of Marine Reservists who had arrived from the Caribbean attached – had reached Schwerin on Thursday but been held back outside by bloody attempts at ambushes from KdA forces. Once the US Marines were able to bring forth their considerable fire power they were able to close in around the city to seal it from outside support and then make raids against internal strongpoints. Fighting the East German Militia forces there within the city was expected to be costly in terms of lives lost to the Marine Rifleman as well as civilians so had been previously avoided.

Away from taking the city, which was regarded initially as only having propaganda value, the US Marines focused on getting southwards in strength as far as Autobahn-24 that cut a lateral path through Mecklenburg to their south as well as also reaching the town of Parchim to their east. This was quite a large area over which the US Marines spread for just one division even with reinforcing elements and relied much upon helicopters to move the men about. Many vehicles were still arriving in Wismar and that was taking time after they had had to be brought down from the western side of Jutland and through the war-damaged port surrendered by the East German Navy but with little capability due to bombing attacks made there beforehand. There were isolated places like Schwerin and then Parchim where stubborn resistance was met to them from local forces indoctrinated enough to believe they were fighting for freedom and also seeing themselves as defending their homes.

However, at the same time, there were other soldiers – mainly Soviet – who had been assigned to rear-area missions in northwestern parts of East Germany long abandoned by their comrades and effectively cut off so far away from friendly units as they were. Aerial reconnaissance would often locate groups of these before strikes were made from US Navy aircraft flying from the carriers in the North Sea and then aircraft flown by US Marines moving in for further air attacks. Afterwards helicopters would bring in Marine Riflemen ready to fight those located and bombed opponents… but also often to take immediate surrenders too. These Soviet troops were found with little or no ammunition, food or communications fearful of their own future with a hostile local population even here in East Germany and ready to agree to capture but safety from the US Marines as well as food in their empty stomachs.

By the end of the weekend, a decision was made that for now the area under the control of the 5th Marine Division would no longer be expanded. Most opposition had now been wiped out and US Marines were operating on the edges now of where other NATO forces were assigned to be. Both Schwerin and Parchim remained in the hands of opposing forces who were clinging on and so options were explored to eliminate them now as long as the casualties could be kept down. Parchim was smaller in terms of size and number of defenders and thus thought to be more manageable yet there had been reports of an ammunition crisis within Schwerin so that city was moved against first to take it communications links.

Battalion-sized attacks were made from several directions all at once with much firepower used with careful targeting against KdA positions even if it was only for intimidation purposes. Return fire came at first but then very quickly started to cease: the enemy fast used up their remaining stocks of ammunition as unlike trained soldiers caught up in such a similar situation the militia troops had no control over their own rate of fire. The brittle outer defences of the city to the north and west fell fast and then those to the south too. Helicopters operating low above the waters of Lake Schweriner on the eastern side of the city met even less opposition and then started to bring in troops there. US Marines strove to meet within the city after advancing on their various axis’ of approach used translators to speak to POWs who told them that the insecure radio reports intercepted about ammunition issues were true – as had been seen – but die-hard KdA men had taken a lot of what was left and retreated to Schwerin Castle. That historic structure had been from where several Huey and Sea Knight helicopters had witnessed SAM launchers made against them when operating over the inland water; Cobra gunships had returned fire against men with man-portable launchers doing damage to that castle. It was to there and then Parchim away to the east that the US Marines would now turn their attention to yet many of their officers realised that the mission here in East Germany was coming to an end now with Schwerin falling like it did.

Unless the 5th Marine Division was assigned to assist in liberating West Berlin…?


British forces with the 6th Light Division had been operating in similar fashion to the US Marines to their right. They had moved south from Rostock and Laage following the course of Autobahn-19 southwards taking large areas of territory against little opposition in most places but meeting some elsewhere. Like in Jutland, there had been a hesitancy to do this for fear of overextending themselves but eventually that worry proved unnecessary: the part of Mecklenburg which they were operating in was ill-defended by any major organised enemy force.

Canals and small rivers running beneath where downed bridges had previously crossed were the strongest opposition which the British faced as they moved southwards. Soviet missile attacks against Rostock had come to a halt and the supply base there was functioning well even though like Wismar there wasn’t that much which could be rushed through Rostock fast so the troops operating from there were moving light on transport.

By late on the Saturday the town of Gustrow – on the western flank of the advance – had been wrestled away from East German Militia who had fired a few shots to defend its approaches but then either gave themselves up or tried to melt back into the civilian population. The next day saw Paras get as far south as Petersdorf and Malchow but no further than those two villages which lay between several inland lakes. The British here faced unexpected strong resistance from a blocking position controlling access over a downed bridge and throughout what was in many ways an isthmus. Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles here without fuel to move but with ammunition, supporting infantry and anti-aircraft guns. Orders had come for this force to hold on no matter what and afterwards there had ceased to be higher communications, but the ad hoc regimental-sized group dug-in as they were refused to be budged. Guns from Royal Artillery units supporting the 5th Airborne Brigade and also the Royal Marines following behind the Paras opened fire yet there weren’t that many of these and they also had 105mm shells where much larger calibre ammunition would have been more useful against an impressive array of fortifications.

The RAF was called in an a trio of attacks launched by pairs of Phantoms operating at low-level, coming at the defences behind and with anti-aircraft guns filling the skies with shells to try to stop them, did some damage yet the Soviet position couldn’t be knocked out using stand-off fire power. Frustrated but determined not to be beaten, the British then sent Gurkha light infantry units supported by light armoured vehicles with the Life Guards to move to the west on the other side of Lake Plauer. These troops followed a smaller road and advanced fast before then coming round from behind the enemy just like the RAF had done. Mobility truly hampered the Soviets here as they couldn’t move their vehicles to get out of the way of the attack now coming from their rear while being restarted ahead of them too. Several units were eventually overwhelmed as the British took on positions piecemeal with Paras and Foot Guards using fire support to minimize casualties rather than rushing forward as before in haste and then the whole defensive line started to crumble away as the day came to an end.

This was a harsh lesson learnt for the British though. Their enemy was beaten and often immobile but when attacked with careless rush those Soviet forces left behind were still fighting on until they could be convinced – often following attack from all sides – that they had truly lost the fight here in East Germany.


There were no airborne or airmobile units with the US XVIII Corps yet its advances made during the weekend were what would be expected if the headquarters had the 82nd Airborne & 101st Air Assault Infantry Divisions under command instead of three light infantry divisions. The large airfield at Peenemunde and then the relatively undamaged if small port facilities at the sheltered Stralsund were used to build up strength following the initial entry made by the 7th Light Infantry Division. Both the 6th & 10th Light Infantry Divisions arrived into East Germany and expanded throughout the coastal northeastern region.

Following their landing first the 7th Light Infantry Division advanced in a southeastern direction through Usedom Island and then made the crossing on the small stretch of the Polish-East German border there to march into Swinoujscie. The port city, which served as Szczecin’s direct harbour on the Baltic, was already in the hands of Polish rebels when the US Army arrived. Under higher orders to make best use of the local politics, the American troops here exchanged pleasantries with and recognised those armed civilians which they encountered as an ally and were forced to look the other way when discovering that local authority figures in the town had been hung from lampposts in public places. There were some Soviet POWs who the Poles were kind enough to hand over to the Americans but these were rear-area logistics men; KGB officers, the Poles said, had been executed when captured too after previously committing acts of terror against the locals. Orders later came for the Americans here to expand further into Polish territory through Wolin Island immediately to their east and to also send patrols southwards in the direction of Szczecin as well. This was only done though after liaisons were opened between the local Poles here and a CIA team hastily flown out to start making assurances to the rebels on the ground about a future status for them; the last thing that was wanted was to upset these well-armed and very-motivated Poles on their own territory.

‘Drama’ such as witnessed at Swinoujscie wasn’t seen elsewhere with the US XVIII Corps as its two other divisions took control of their assigned sector of East Germany where they were to operate. The wrecked but ultimately-repairable airbases at Damgarten and Demmin were reached by small detachments in helicopters while trucks and light HMMWV vehicles moved men elsewhere throughout the region. There was fighting undertaken around the town of Anklam against KdA troops yet those in the bigger locality of Greifswald were nowhere to be found. Other engagements occurred with Soviet troops but these were against scattered rear-area forces meant to be fulfilling logistics roles yet operating for days now without orders and seemingly forgotten about. There were many cases where when met with advancing Americans they gave themselves up yet in the majority of meetings they fought for a respectable amount of time before realising the hopelessness of the situation. Just like the British had found out though, orders had got through in a select few places for units to dig-in and fight with all they had after being told that help was on the way to them as they guarded strategic points.

Rugen Island was well defended at several points especially those facing the East German landmass in the Stralsund area. Soviet forces firing artillery and rockets at distance had to be dealt with by air power and when USAR troops serving with the 205th Brigade attached to the 6th Light Infantry Division moved against them a furious battle was fought. The stubbornness here of the Soviets and their willingness to keep fighting even when put in such a bad strategic position infuriated the Americans enough to withdraw their infantry and then order air strike after air strike to rain not just bombs but napalm down upon their opponents.

The city of Neubrandenburg on the way to Berlin was to be the ultimate focus of the US XVIII Corps according to the orders issued to General Foss as corps commander and he initially sent the 10th Light Infantry Division heading that way with plans to have the 6th Light Infantry Division follow once they had cleared the rear areas. The upper reaches of the River Havel and then Berlin lay further to the south but that was quite a distance for the light forces he had to travel… General Foss didn’t expect that his troops would see any combat in the fight to liberate West Berlin.


The change in axis of advance by the US VII Corps operating as part of the US Seventh Army not to take Dresden but to charge north instead meant that a large area of southeastern East Germany had escaped NATO attention during the week apart from air attacks launched by the 3 ATAF. An armoured dash had been made following Autobahn-13 northwards leaving everywhere east of there from Cottbus southwards to the Czechoslovak border unoccupied. There had been intelligence concerning the concentrating of Soviet mobile nuclear weapons platforms there plus the determination to drive upon Berlin.

In the early part of the weekend those convoys of trucks carrying bombs (with thermonuclear and chemical warheads) plus mobile missile launchers escorted by an impressive armoured force rolled eastwards into Poland. Upon orders coming from Acting President Bush and the NSC, there were no HAMMER air attacks against them or the bridges over the Neisse by American bombers: the RAF’s small remaining strike force with the 3 ATAF had been focused further northwards and then towards Schonefeld Airport too. Enemy forces that intelligence pointed to being without fuel and not much ammunition either had been left behind in that region though and they represented a hostile opponent in control of a large portion of territory.

National guardsmen with the US IV Corps – now with the US Seventh Army – were sent in that direction to destroy them and reach the Polish and Czechoslovakian border behind Dresden and up as far as Cottbus too. The three attacking divisions were all sent into action late on the Saturday and fought throughout the next day too.

Striking on the left was the 42nd Mechanized Infantry Division with its men from New York, North Carolina and South Carolina. All veterans now, these national guardsmen had learnt from earlier bloody lessons how to fight against the Soviet Army. They smashed apart a generally immobile enemy and one with such low stocks of ammunition that any sensible opponent would have given up before combat was met. As planned, following a day and a half of fighting, they reached the Neisse at Forst and Bad Muskau as well as taking Cottbus when the East German Militia units they met there decided to declare ‘neutrality’ as long as their city and homes weren’t directly occupied; this odd situation was played for what is was saving many lives while arms were collected so later military rule could be slowly imposed there.

The 50th Armored Division moved in the centre with its ranks of national guardsmen from Georgia and New Jersey. Hoyerswerda and its KdA defenders were ignored in the push through Soviet units who collapsed after firing a few shots as American tanks and tracked armoured vehicles showed them just how to fight when one combatant has fuel and the other does. Then it was to the Neisse the 50th Armored Division went for and reaching that objective ahead of schedule early on the Sunday. At a small East German village called Podrosche, opposite Przewoz on the other side, Georgia national guardsmen with their 2/121 INF went over into Poland. A floating pontoon bridge was captured after demolition charges laid by the Soviets desperately trying to withdraw fast into the ‘safety’ of Poland didn’t go off and American soldiers entered Poland here like they had done at Swinoujscie. Other elements of the 48th Brigade joined them spreading out from Przewoz into the countryside and they found Soviet troops still fleeing them but an area devoid of Poles… apart from bodies in shallow graves everywhere. A massive war crime had been committed here, that was plain to see, but all POWs taken denied all knowledge and said they had come across the river from East Germany. Higher orders brought the national guardsmen to a standstill for the time being from their little bridgehead but they were happy indeed to be inside Poland yet at the same time upset at the immense loss of live which had occurred in this area.

On the right of the US IV Corps advance came the 49th Armored Division with its soldiers from Louisiana and Texas joined by Tennessee national guardsmen with the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment. A larger area with more numerous troops was struck at by these formations yet they had better access to road links and given increased aviation support too. The sites of the treacherous East German attack on Soviet nuclear forces near Bischofswerda and Koenigsbrueck were soon overrun once the Americans got moving as well as the protecting garrisons where those missile forces involved had been deployed from; the latter were smouldering from thermobaric bombs used for demolition purposes by the Soviets along with other strategic sites in this region to deny any intelligence use from them. Upon discovering that such weapons had been employed in demolition roles the Americans here took extra precautions against such devastating weapons being used against them. They were moving very fast though and not bunched up nor in fortifications where weapons like that would have great effect.

Dresden (approached from the rear) and Bautzen both showed signs of determined defence by East German Militia and were ignored for the time being as the national guardsmen moved onwards. They encountered Soviet troops who fought them whilst tied to fixed positions where only some digging-in had been done and that wasn’t going to stop the American troops here from advancing through them. The Czech border was reached and crossed in several places as part of flank security though attention was to the east and orders to reach the Neisse at or near Gorlitz. That was done so late on the Sunday by the Tennessee Cav’ escorting a combined arms battalion task force of national guardsmen from Louisiana: the 1/156 ARM rode into that border town. Texan national guardsmen were either side of them just afterwards in also getting to the Neisse at Klingewalde and Hagenwerder but everyone received orders from above that stated that they weren’t to go over the river at this stage into Poland. No bridges had been captured intact, but the Neisse was something that could be crossed here easily: the evidence to that was the multiple bridges which the Soviets had put up to try to make up for all of those hit by bombs falling from B-52s during HAMMER air strikes. Regardless of desires for a ‘force-by-reconnaissance’ or an ‘armoured raid’, as requested by junior men on the ground, the Neisse wasn’t crossed here today.


Across the rear areas behind the frontlines there remained many ongoing engagements as NATO forces sought to clear out pockets of resistance. Fierce battles which lasted for long periods of the weekend took place but so too did very short fights where trapped forces gave themselves up. There were fights to the finish, early surrenders and requests to ‘respect neutrality’.

Intelligence teams found that many isolated spots held by Soviet forces in the rear had received just what locations which East German Militia units had been stuck in had been in receipt of too: orders from higher command to hold on no matter what because relief was on the way. That ‘relief’ was of course non-existent and when messages were sent to KdA troops in places like Leipzig and Halle these were judged to be desires to see martyrs for Mielke’s dying regime. However, when sent to Soviet troops starting early on the Saturday morning those messages were seen as an effort to have such troops sacrificed for no good military reason at all. Some surrounded, trapped enemy forces like the East German Militia could be ignored and many Soviet forces too, but not all of the latter if they had long-range fire support weapons within their perimeters as well as a chance at mobility operations which could harass the NATO logistics systems. These thus had to be fought against and pockets eliminated across the rear even if it didn’t mean troops being sent against those forces in close-in combat but artillery and air strikes instead.

Both Leipzig and Halle finally surrendered during the Sunday with the bigger city giving up first then the nearby smaller one. These urban areas with their KdA defenders had long since been bypassed and cut off with propaganda efforts being made to induce their surrender as well as those special forces raids to eliminate their leadership. Such attacks, psychological and physical, eventually had the intended effect with the civilians in both places getting very restless and what commanders left fearful of their fellow East Germans rather that threats from a distant Mielke to their dead superiors. There were some instances of clashes with Stasi personnel who hadn’t managed to flee before both cities were isolated though others cast away their uniforms and pretended to be no more than harmless factory workers…

Karl-Marx-Stadt remained holding out though along with a few smaller spots as well despite all of the pressure being applied against them.

Across the rear areas of occupied East Germany, NATO also focused upon empty POW camps which were located. Many had been spotted from the air previously though other had avoided detection. As feared, at the ones runs by the Stasi for Bundeswehr senior officers there were only bodies but the rest of the Soviet-run facilities had been evacuated of prisoners in recent days with all evidence pointing to them being moved eastwards towards Poland. South Carolina national guardsmen with their 4/118 INF had ran into a convoy moving away from Cottbus towards the Neisse at Wilheim-Pieck-Stadt Guben (better known as Guben without the Stalin-esque hero worship to East Germany’s first and only President). Trucks laden with ill-treated and under-fed NATO prisoners – from the British, Dutch, French and US Army’s – had been rescued when their guards had surrendered after being faced with M-60A3 tanks and well-armed infantrymen in up-armoured M-113s. Those seven hundred men were safety dispatched further to the rear for urgent care but were able to provide a little information on when they had left their past camp and all observations made during their journeys. NATO realised that prisoners held by the Soviets were being removed fast out of East Germany with priority but understood that their enemy was seeing them as potential bargaining tools for the future.


Mielke’s defences of Berlin were constructed to guard against attempts to liberate the triangular-shaped occupied western portion of that city from the west and the south. Those defences were anchored in the southeastern corner at Eichwalde covering Schonefeld Airport behind there. The eastern approaches to Berlin, where the East German capital lay, wasn’t protected like elsewhere apart from natural defensive positions such as several lakes and small rivers & canals with downed bridges.

Schwarzkopf as US Seventh Army commander, had joined his superiors in the NATO chain of command and many astute politicians in Allied countries of looking at that situation with a suspicious eye. Were the East Germans, they asked like he did, that foolish? Neither aerial, satellite or signals intelligence spotted a trap being laid there and the only answer to this situation that could be given was that the secret policemen that was Mielke really had no idea about how modern warfare was fought. He had military advisers but he must have been ignoring what they were saying when it came to the defence of his own capital. Or, that speculation went further, he cared more for the value of holding West Berlin than he did East Berlin. Whatever the reason, Schwarzkopf was given his orders when it came to the eastern side of Berlin’s non-defences and he was to follow them.

At dawn on the Saturday morning when the Schwarzkopf had his troops attack he was careful to make the best use of terrain features to allow his attack to go as fast as possible. The Spanish I Corps had been shifted to the left to continue the drive up Autobahn-13 to where it met the outer defences of Berlin at the ring-road Autobahn-10. They were a small but capable force also tasked with attacking any forces they found lying west of them in who had been concentrating around Zossen and Wunsdorf before air evacuation but their main task – honestly explained to them – was to keep the enemy distracted. The flat terrain and the highway offered good going for their tanks but also many wheeled infantry vehicles too.

To the left came the main attack launched in a narrow channel of farmland and many small roads between Dahme and Spree Rivers. There were lakes at the other end where the gap between those two rivers widened out and then the Spree itself ran lateral across the line of advance but that was in the distance behind East Berlin itself. All reconnaissance showed no enemy forces of any significance within this area from Soviet rear-area forces to East German Militia holding any villages in number. This was the perfect avenue to advance through and get around behind Berlin, especially if the Spree there could be ‘bounced’.

Leading the attack was the US VII Corps with the US V Corps behind at first waiting to be sent either left or right – depending upon Schwarzkopf’s final decision at that moment – once wider ground was reached. Six combat divisions were involved with multiple corps assets plus plenty of helicopter gunships; there was also the 4 ATAF with its aircraft in support now that the 8 ATAF was fully-involved with the US Third Army.

There was no surprise here for the US Army. No trap had been set, intelligence efforts hadn’t missed anything and nothing was going to slow down General Watts’ attack as he took the US VII Corps forward tearing across the countryside devoid of a serious enemy in what would later be deemed in (semi-)popular culture ‘Schwarzkopf’s Gap’. Some breakdowns occurred of vehicles while others fell victim to mines laid in the most strangest of places yet enemy troops just weren’t encountered. This area was off the route of those transport links connecting Berlin to Poland and offered no cover with forests or thick woodland to conceal anything either that the Soviets might have wished to have hidden.

By Saturday afternoon, the US V Corps was fighting on the left (in the centre of the US Seventh Army overall) with the US VII Corps crossing the Spree in an effort to keep going north. An advance going east to attack Furstenwalde had been considered then rejected by Schwarzkopf as he felt his flank there didn’t need to be secured and instead he sent General Burba’s fast-arriving follow-up troops towards East Berlin’s undefended outskirts. Later that day Schwarzkopf nearly didn’t get the opportunity to celebrate his success when he went forward to see the edge of combat for himself – there had been some unfair comment about the US Seventh Army being a ‘château general’ and staying safe far in the rear – and while doing so his helicopter was very lucky indeed. Soviet fighters appeared from nowhere trying to escort strike aircraft assigned to stop the threat to the evacuation from Schonefeld Airport and one lined-up Schwarzkopf’s helicopter for an air-to-air missile shot. A Patriot SAM battery moving with the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division opened fire on those enemy aircraft causing the MiG-29 in question to break away without firing a shot that would have been an easy kill to have made. Of course there had been a friendly fire risk with the UH-60 Blackhawk Schwarzkopf was in being in an area cleared for SAM engagements yet with the fast-changing situation on the ground things were often confused and the Patriot missilemen had just saved their army’s commanding officer.

Into the Sunday, there came a focus upon moving northwest by the US V Corps while the US VII Corps carried on heading north. Much stronger opposition was encountered now from East Germans on the ground including motorised KdA forces from the Berlin garrison’s reaction force as well as static militia troops as well. US Army lead elements had reached Kopenick inside East Berlin and as far Rudersdorf behind it by the end of the day yet there was now heavy fighting being met almost everywhere in more-constricted terrain, especially in the outer regions of East Berlin. Those Americans inside Berlin with the 3rd Armored Division would have a terrible night facing sniper fire and attacks by paramilitary troops with petrol bombs as well. At the same time as they suffered under this from seemingly every quarter they met civilians – many of whom might have been KdA men who abandoned their posts and uniforms – trying to flee to and then through their lines to escape from the city. The majority of the men with that division hadn’t been pushed forward down from the forested hills above Kopenick and remained up there on the heights where they were able to observe much of the city which lay before them; when morning and daylight from these positions artillery observers would take their place.

Schwarzkopf had his US Army troops break into East Berlin as well as get halfway through the process of closing all access from the east. News would come to that the Spaniards under his command had done what he wanted of them and held the enemy’s attention for as long as possible as well as having many successes of their own. Everything was working out just as it should have been and there would only be praise soon forthcoming for him rather than petty insults calling him Patton or alluding to him hiding in the rear like those French generals of World War One.


General Chambers’ US Third Army faced much more tenacious enemy forces as they approached Berlin directly from the south. Around Luckenwalde, the 5th Mechanized Infantry Division with the US III Corps joined the rest of their parent command trying to push for the smashed Sperenberg Airbase at towards Zossen and Wunsdorf to their east. Soviet troops here had some fuel and ammunition, enough to make the fighting on Saturday tough for the US Army here. The efforts to stop the Americans came to naught once ambushes were sprung and fire power could be unleashed against them but there were many furious fights. Rocket batteries fired by the Soviets at close range were really something that the Americans didn’t come off well from when engaged by them with some of the very latest Soviet systems having anti-armour bomblets in their rocket warheads. A-10 attack-fighters coming in low against a non-existent anti-air threat were heroes to many soldiers on the ground who wondered just what was going on with the Soviets making such a show of their capabilities here this close to Berlin and this late in the war.

Just to the west of where the US III Corps came unstuck today the US II Corps, with the West Germans following behind them too, headed for Berlin’s defences east of the Potsdam area. There had been briefings on what had happened there and then the scale of enemy defensive works but much confidence remained with these men moving forwards. They reached Autobahn-10 by Saturday evening and then an armoured patrol with the 14th Cav’ was sent along the highway eastwards to link up with the Spanish pushing for the same stretch of paved road over near Eichwalde. This would have brought US II Corps elements in behind the US III Corps and created a huge pocket of Soviet troops trying to hold south of Berlin and unable to withdraw back to the city.

Night-time combat along that highway, even with air cover, was unpleasant for the American troops assigned and ultimately failed. The highway was covered in mines, the road and the embankments both, and other defenders were hidden just to the north with the autobahn zeroed-in. Anti-tank guns and missiles-launchers opened fire at distance and so did artillery too. The 14th Cav’ called for support and aircraft arrived first followed by artillery counter-battery fire. Some of the East Germans were hit but other remained active after digging deep to provide plenty of overhead coverage. What was needed was daytime surveillance of those defensive positions plus being able to see mines too.

Activity on the Sunday failed to do what hadn’t been achieved on the Saturday… yet that wasn’t the end of the world.

There was a lot of defensive fire power being used by the East Germans to stop approaches being made towards Berlin. What could be seen in the case of those huge earth embankments was taken under fire and men atop them killed in macabre slaughters but other fixed defences which littered the landscape everywhere were really difficult to spot and then once detected had to be carefully broken. This was very unsatisfying for the Americans who had advanced here but General Chambers saw opportunity in this too. More and more East Germans were committed to holding the southern line of defences to keep the salient further south from there full of Soviets from being shut closed. He kept requested external fire power in addition to his own with artillery firing at long-range and air support so as to not endanger his men in direct combat yet the enemy funnelled their into that area to try to replace losses. Eventually they would run out of men and give up the effort, allowing the US Third Army to shut the access to that bulge in the lines for good, but before then so many of Berlin’s defenders were sucked into the trap which their commanders had created.

On the map, by the end of the weekend, the amount of ground taken by the US Third Army wouldn’t be as impressive as what the US Seventh Army achieved, nor as glorious as getting to Berlin ahead of everyone else, but this was thought by General Chambers to be far more valuable than that. The enemy was assisting him in having their men killed and that would mean less fighting for his soldiers to do in the week’s upcoming fighting with the result of less casualties.


British and West German forces with the British Second Army spent the weekend pounding the defences west of Berlin from a distance. They took used artillery and air power against the ones they faced which lay inside the ring-road Autobahn-10 as was the case to the south too. Huge amounts of destruction were caused at distance with observations being made of many defenders dying for no good cause.

Less impressive defences than the earth-based embankments meant to keep out an onrush of armour lay before them though and plenty of reconnaissance was directed towards these. There were bunkers and trenches and signs of minefields everywhere along the highway out front as well right on the edges of West Berlin where the Berlin Wall was behind the embankments. Aerial reconnaissance from aircraft and helicopters was used in the majority of cases with less and less threat to them every time they went back to make more pictures or even record video surveillance.

There were reconnaissance parties out on foot too though. Special forces soldiers often accompanied by engineers went through gaps in the defences via clandestine methods of insertion to look at many defences close up and also at the defenders too. There were cases where alert East German troops had to be killed when they spotted these patrols but also a few men identified as officers were snatched too for interrogation purposes on what they knew.

General Kenny had been ordered to wait for the Americans to reach Berlin so that the city could be attacked when it was from all directions at once and he hadn’t minded for studying the defences and smashing them apart too were necessary rather than trying to rush them. In places there was weakness located and in others strength and this was also vital information as he shunted his forces around. The fight to move against Berlin wasn’t one which he was looking forward to taking part in as commanding general of what would be a third of the attacking troops. Potsdam had been a very unpleasant affair and the threat by the East German dictator to make the fight for the city just as bloody was rather unsettling. General Kenny wasn’t sure on whether things would get that far with Berlin as it had been at Potsdam though. There were efforts made all weekend with broadcasts being made towards Berlin and aircraft dropping leaflets by the Sunday letting the people know there what their self-appointed leader was all about and promising them support if they rose up against him.

When it came to Mielke, General Kenny had his operations staff draw up a memorandum that was to be issued to the troops under his command before they went into Berlin. There was to be a message which his soldiers, no matter what nationality they were, would understand: if that man was found anywhere during any part of the campaign he was to be captured alive, acts of victor’s justice would be punished. The chances of his troops finding one such man in the city and Mielke being captured alive were rather slim, General Kenny believed, but he would still make the effort nonetheless just in case.

Meanwhile, all weekend, the British Second Army effectively stood still where it was sorting out matters ahead of the push on Berlin when the order for that came while watching the enemy be pounded before it. The Americans were advancing as they were but the British had got here first and were making the best use of the time to prepare that they had.





Two Hundred & Seventy–Two

Lebed knew that he was running out of time.

NATO armies were closing in upon Berlin with alarming speed and if Lebed was reading the situation correct, there would soon come a moment where the city was surrounded with all access in and (more importantly) out cut. To be captured or killed in this city when it inevitably fell was not something that he desired for his fate. Yet, he had to finish his mission first and that meant being within Berlin at this time when it was clear that all was lost.

To complete his mission meant that there was to be punishment for the one man behind it all. His few remaining staff, men who hadn’t yet been evacuated from East Germany but like him were to soon be before it was too late, had believed at first that such a person was the East German leader Mielke. No, not at all, Lebed had told them, it was his KGB adviser Lt.-Colonel V. V. Putin.


Lebed and his men were all Soviet Army officers with their true enemies not being Americans or any others from the capitalist West but instead Chekists from the KGB.

Such secret policemen had always been despised and their actions following the Moscow Coup when they murdered Marshal Akhromeyev all the way up their activities facilitating the use of nerve gas by the East Germans to kill Soviet military personnel when trying to steal those nuclear weapons, along with every else in between, brought forth that hatred. Had they not purged the Soviet Army time and time again through the decades of the existence of the Soviet Union? Was it not them who had killed hundreds of Soviet Army officers during the war on false charges of defeatism? All of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost by Soviet Army soldiers during this conflict with the West were blamed by men like Lebed and his superior Ogarkov on the KGB with Putin as adviser to Mielke being a prime example of that.

Consideration had been given during the ‘interviews’ with KGB personnel here in East Germany conducted by Lebed that maybe all blame was being apportioned upon just one man by his Chekists comrades when they all equally shared the blame for what had occurred. Lebed wasn’t a fool and understood how at the thought of sparing their own lives was human nature for those brutally questioned to blame someone else, anyone else, for their own misdeeds yet there was other evidence to back up what had been said about this Putin character as well. Regardless, being close to Mielke and all of his activities which had so shamed the Soviet Army with guilt by association was enough to warrant Putin a death sentence anyway as far as Lebed was concerned. The man was a traitor to the Rodina as decreed by Ogarkov and that was all that was needed for action to be taken against him.

Ogarkov wanted him to be dealt with and such an order was one that Lebed was more than pleased to be the one to carry out.


Putin wasn’t exactly a hard man to track down once Lebed was in Berlin.

In recent days, Mielke had distanced himself from the KGB officer, Lebed’s sources of intelligence told him, and so Putin was no longer travelling with the East German leader all over both sides of the city. Instead, like almost all Soviet nationals within the city Putin was at one of the compounds within the city where those from the Rodina were to be found waiting to find out whether they were to be evacuated from East Germany or not. On the Saturday evening, after having his people search the Soviet diplomatic officers in East Berlin as well as the military complexes, information came that Putin was at the KGB facility in Karlshorst… just as Lebed thought that he would be.

KGB personnel from across East Germany who had managed to get away from the advancing NATO armies but not yet managed to escape from the country had been concentrating at Karlshorst for some time now. The headquarters centre for the KGB wasn’t very large in terms of size and in peacetime had been a command and administrative centre for activities across the country conducted from local field offices with coordination from Karlshorst. However, with most of the sites where those offices had been located overrun by the enemy and East Germany becoming very unfriendly for the KGB, the headquarters complex was home to hundreds of these Chekists. It had been bombed several times by American aircraft causing loss of life and there was a great deal of overcrowding going on where the previous offices had become in effect dormitories for KGB personnel without anywhere else to go and feeling the need to stay together for their own safety.

Lebed had been informed that several Chekists at Karlshorst, possibly Putin too, had been scheming of ways to extricate themselves from their current situation. In a reversal of times long since gone, they needed travel permission from the Soviet Army to pass through the necessary checkpoints before they could get anywhere near reaching the Rodina and those were not forthcoming. Therefore many of them had got their hands on false documentation and were also attempting to secure a source of fast and ready cash so that they could use that too in an effort to get away before it was all too late. Where they could go, whether anyone would be convinced by them and what would happen afterwards were questions that Lebed didn’t think that the KGB personnel had sufficient answers to.

There was a risk though of Putin maybe being able to escape from Karlshorst and disappear where he could therefore escape justice.


Armed with personal weapons and lacking in real military training, those at Karlshorst – estimated to be number between two and three hundred low- & middle-ranking officers – were in no way a real threat to an organised military force which might move against them. Putin was surrounded by men who usually worked in the shadows and who used coercion, deception and fear to get their own way.

However, the current situation didn’t allow for Lebed to move against Karlshorst with a strong military force necessary to take on Putin whilst he was surrounded by his comrades who it could be expected would try to defend on of their own. It would have been a different matter if he had some elite Soviet Airborne soldiers with him or even a platoon of tanks… but that was not the case. Ogarkov, when made aware of the situation, even as busy as he was with other far more pressing matters, had told Lebed that such a thing couldn’t be done right inside the heart of East Berlin for the relations with the collapsing East German regime were very strained and they might just make a move to defend the KGB due to factors unknown at the minute.

Frustrated, but not beaten, Lebed had decided to take a lesson from the Chekists in how to deal with one of their number.


Putin wasn’t going to be easily lured out of Karlshorst and Lebed didn’t have the patience for a waiting game like that. If there hadn’t been American troops between Berlin and Dresden then maybe some game could have been played with contacts of his professionally and personally too: there was a young lady employed by the Stasi as a secretary (but Lebed suspected that there might have been something more to her than that) who Putin had been breaking all the rules by having secret liasions with which Lebed’s men had discovered. Instead, of getting Putin out of the KGB complex, Lebed went inside instead.

His courage was something that no one had ever doubted, not even himself, but dressing up as a KGB man and carrying a very suspicious-looking set of identification papers before walking in Karlshorst was really taking a risk. Bullets in Afghanistan and then Norway had been fired at him from the enemy but Chekists were always a different kind of foe.

Bravado, Lebed had decided, would be best employed to achieve his mission and he always had plenty of that in him. He was pretending to be someone who he was not and going to use the KGB’s tactics against them here where they and a certain officer of theirs felt safe. At any moment when inside the Karlshorst complex he risked running into someone who personally knew the man he was pretending to be or even recognised him personally as a Soviet Army officer. His papers could be checked by someone who wanted to know what he was doing here and exposure as a fraud could come. Lebed risked getting a bullet delivered into his skull just as he planned to do to Putin…

…yet luck shined upon him during the Sunday afternoon when he set about completing his mission. No one recognised him for who he wasn’t nor who he was and those few who wanted to see his papers took little notice of the crude forgeries that they were. There was despondency everyone among these Chekists who quite rightly-expected that they were to be abandoned to their fate to be the victims of victor’s justice here in Berlin to allow the Rodina to survive the fallout from the war.


Lebed found Putin eventually.

He knew the man’s face from several photographs he had seen and was looking too for someone of Putin’s physique. There were a gymnasium inside the complex where the Chekist marked for death was practising his martial arts skills with some of his comrades: Lebed assumed that they were trying to keep their spirits up. To shoot him there in front of at least a dozen, maybe fifteen witnesses wasn’t something that Lebed wanted to do if he was to get out of Karlshorst alive. Instead, he watched and waited.

Putin spent some time with his comrades but eventually separated from them. Lebed remained waiting until his target was presumable heading back to where he had been laying his head and then approached Putin at the desired time when for a few moments they were alone. He could have attacked Putin from distance or maybe struck at him in the night but Lebed wasn’t a coward. He called out the Chekist’s name to get his attention and then withdrew his pistol before pulling the trigger once the barrel was rested against the man’s head. There was a muffled gunshot from the silenced pistol following the explosion of blood and gore before the deceased Putin slumped to the ground.

How Lebed would have liked to confront him with words detailing the treason against the Rodina that Putin had committed. He would have enjoyed hearing the man plead innocence then beg for his life and say that he hadn’t done what he was accused of. Maybe afterwards, when he realised that all hope was gone, there would have come a confession. Yet… there hadn’t been time for that with the meeting between them being so brief inside such a place as Karlshorst. Lebed delivered the richly-deserved punishment, took a good look at the corpse and then concentrated on making his way out of here before the whole place erupted with anger at the death of one of their own.

‘Vengeance will belong to the Russian people’.

Two Hundred & Seventy–Five

April 11th saw East German forces cut off but holding out in Hamburg, Lubeck and Karl-Marx-Stadt all finally surrender control of those urban areas after being under siege for some time now. Relief was not forthcoming and surrenders started to take place during the later part of the day as the situation on the ground turned into a disaster for them. However, this wasn’t the result of a domino effect where events at one of those cities caused the collapse of opposition at another: there were individual circumstances at each which brought about the end of resistance.


Hamburg had been captured three weeks ago after a furious fight which had taken place right in the middle of the city. Its seizure had been a political operation rather than one of military necessity; the Soviets had wanted to give the Bundeswehr what was thought to have been a fatal blow to morale after all the effort made to defend the place while to the East Germans it was to be the biggest city inside West Germany which was to see the beginnings of a ‘new Germany’. After the initial attacking soldiers, frontline Soviet forces and East German reservists, had left for other missions the ‘security forces’ moved in. These were Grenztruppen border guards troops who escorted the Stasi into the city to begin a reign of terror in Hamburg.

When the defending 6th Panzergrenadier Division had been beaten in battle and that Bundeswehr force surrendered, not all of the surviving men of that formation had given themselves up. There had been small parties and individuals who had left the ranks of their comrades before or during the surrender and taken their weapons with them. Hiding out inside Hamburg had at first seemed easy for them with all the chaos but when the East Germans strove to restore order many of those soldiers were caught and faced immediate execution rather than POW status with the Stasi deeming them as ‘terrorists’. Not all of those troops were captured though and then there were other armed West Germans inside the city as well who also sought to avoid capture by the enemy as well as resisting the rule of the East Germans. Those who fell into the latter category were fulfilling a stay-behind role inside Hamburg and had weapons, communications and contacts within the city so that they could launch a guerrilla war against the occupier. Some successes were made though there were fatal consequences for such intelligence operatives as well as those civilians they recruited into their efforts when they were caught.

Hamburg had thus never been truly pacified despite the great efforts of the East Germans to do so. It was a large city with many ruins left over from the fighting which had taken place to seize it leaving many locations where those who resisted operated from. Brutal crackdowns were commenced against civil disobedience and reprisal operations launched against unarmed civilians for guerrilla actions yet those who undertook those acts which caused such reactions from the East Germans remained active even as their numbers dwindled. Then the external situation with the course of the war had changed with Hamburg cut off from its connections with East Germany before being surrounded by French troops. As before, a siege had developed though this time with the East Germans manning the defences to the city and using many of those positions covering the approaches which the defeated Bundeswehr troops had used as well as many captured weapons too.

The Second Siege of Hamburg had brought with it a lot of violence within the city. Radio broadcasts coming from outside to those inside had called for insurrection from the people and while many would have liked to act against their oppressors they lacked weapons plus also feared more reprisals. Regardless to the general pacification of the population, the Stasi acted against the city’s population again and again arrested and shooting anyone they could for the slightest of reasons. As to the Grenztruppen soldiers… these men were like children in a candy shop.

Their time spent in Hamburg had been all about taking advantage of what they could from here when their officers weren’t looking: women, drink and electronic goods at first though later food when the siege started to affect them too as dwindling supplies ran low. Discipline problems among this usually so politically-reliable force started to break as the Grenztruppen were far away from their comfortable home life and they felt like they were undervalued as well as having been forgotten about. When the Stasi acted against the worst offenders for drinking and looting, then stealing food too there were incidents where such secret policemen were shot trying to enforce order. Men deserted and tried to lose themselves in the city; many succeed for a while before facing ultimately deadly fates at the hands of West Germans… but rumours spread among the others that the Stasi was responsible too.

All the while the French Second Army outside the city played a patient waiting game not willing to get sucked into a fight for urban terrain which had so stung the initial troops who broke the First Siege of Hamburg. They attacked outposts, launched targeted artillery strikes and picked careful fights against the defences while not moving in close. Propaganda efforts soon started to be launched against the Grenztruppen with radio broadcasts on their own radio frequencies extolling them promises of surrender as well as spreading tales of the actions of the Stasi as well as the fall of their own country.

That Stasi force was well aware of the situation which they faced. They were stung by guerrilla attacks and the furious responses of the Grenztruppen reacting to attempts to restore discipline among the manpower force which they needed to keep control in Hamburg. Radio messages to Berlin at first told them to hang on and the city would be relieved eventually when new successes on the battlefield came yet those grew less and less believable as time went on. There was a feeling among the top tier of such men that their time was running out with only bad options left to them and they needed to pick the best of those. Maintaining the status quo could eventually see the Grenztruppen mutiny in great numbers and kill their Stasi overlords. Maybe the local population, aided by enemy commandoes slipped into the city, would slaughter them all in one final orgy of violence. Or Berlin might send instructions to lower-ranking men to kill those at the top in a purge to try to restore order here. Death faced the Stasi commanders in Hamburg… unless they surrendered to the Allies and faced the consequences of that. There was a good chance they believed that they would face trials but prison sentences – which maybe they could contest in a post-war environment of German togetherness – were better than a firing squad.

Therefore, the Stasi would surrender Hamburg peacefully rather than let any more blood be spilt.


Not far from Hamburg, on the Baltic side of the lower reaches of the Jutland Peninsula, Lubeck had been put in a similar position to the larger city across on the North Sea coast.

There had been a siege here first against American and Danish troops trapped inside and one which was overcome early in the war only for the French to arrive in Holstein to surround the city: a second armed cordon had gone up around it this time with East German forces inside. The Stasi and Grenztruppen were at Lubeck surrounded by the enemy though here there were also paratroopers and Volksmarine personnel as well. West German intelligence operatives were operating in the guerrilla role were far fewer in Lubeck and there had never been more than a handful of professional NATO soldiers who had decided to make a run for it at the last minute here. Yet, the civilians had been mistreated in Lubeck just as they had been in Hamburg while another similarity with that bigger city were the promises from Berlin of assistance coming as long as managed to Lubeck hold out.

Admiral Hoffmann's declaration of the ‘neutrality’ by the East German Navy was reacted to very fast in Lubeck when the Stasi struck at Volksmarine personnel throughout the besieged city killing their senior officers on sight (no matter what protestations were made) and rounding up all lower ranking men before distributing them to the frontlines defending the city. Naval personnel were split up and spread out so that they wouldn’t all be together; the manpower wasn’t wasted yet the men still weren’t trusted.

The Stasi should have shot such men.

Information of what had happened at Rostock where the Volksmarine had opened the way for NATO to pour in troops had been spread further than just the deceased senior officers with the base established in occupied Lubeck. Junior men heard about it from those of senior rank before such officers were shot and they were then dispersed everywhere throughout the frontlines manning the outer defences of the city. They started to tell what they knew to their fellow East Germans with the result that those who heard such a story could see that their country was falling apart. Stasi men acted late but effectively in eventually going back after those men again and pulling many back out of the frontlines and away from their countrymen but by then it was far too late: word had gotten out that East Germany was doomed.

Discipline problems struck at Lubeck but in a different manner to those at Hamburg. Here, the professional elite paratroopers caught up in the siege started to follow their lead set by the Volksmarine: they stopped engaging French besieging troops in combat declaring ‘neutrality’. The whole defensive position was one where different units were intermixed and so small sections of the outer lines were no longer active in the defence which caused a crippling effect of such attempts to hold on for the senior commanders. Those in charge were men from the Grenztruppen who weren’t best pleased at Stasi reactions to such events and then colluded to follow the lead set by the paratroopers… and started executing those secret policemen who tried to stop them.

East Germans killed East Germans in a blood-letting that only came to a halt when the outnumbered, outgunned and outfought Stasi started throwing down their arms before the victors of the internal fighting then opened discussions with the surrounding French Army. The city had been held as long as military feasible and the port facilities wrecked so they would be of no use to the enemy. Ammunition stocks and food supplies were running out making further resistance and thus loss of life futile. Those who surrendered the city decided that they could do no more here and believed they were making the right choice – just as the American General Shalikashvili had done so weeks ago – in giving up the fight when all hope was lost.


Karl-Marx-Stadt, down in Saxony, was very different to either Hamburg or Lubeck. This was an East German city rather than an occupied West German one without the resultant hostile population and active guerrilla threat. American troops surrounded the city instead of French forces while there was a major Soviet presence at Karl-Marx-Stadt where there had been almost no Soviets at the two other locations.

Left far behind the frontlines as those moved deeper into East Germany and inevitably towards Berlin, Karl-Marx-Stadt ended up besieged. No serious attempt had been made to take the city by the US Seventh Army when it had drove up the autobahn deep into Saxony following that highway taking the right flank of their advance past nearby cities. Only a seemingly-cursory first attack by advance guards elements had been made with strong defensive fire unleashed before the Americans moved onwards relegating the task of ringing the city and cutting it off to second-line units. Groups of armed men, soldiers and intelligence operatives, had fallen back into the city to join the Militia stood-up to defend Karl-Marx-Stadt though it was the presence of the former smaller in number than the latter which made for the length of the siege.

During hostilities, Karl-Marx-Stadt had been chosen as a centralised location for Soviet intelligence operations. Programmes run by the KGB and the GRU – independent of each other, of course – to make use of hostages to benefit the war had been set up in the city with all sorts of prisoners gathered here at secure facilities where interrogations were made and then there came the broadcasts on the airwaves as well as the letters and videos to be sent home. Some of these efforts didn’t go as planned and bodies started piling up though more hostages had arrived for some time before the fortunes of war turned. In addition, signals analysis stations as well as centres for enemy military documentation captured for scrutiny were centralised around the city as the Soviet Army’s military intelligence had also been concentrated in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Well-armed but with limited supplies, the large KdA local detachment put up a very good fight in maintaining the cities defences. The top Militia officials were not fooled like their junior men were though by the lies about the ‘Imperialist invaders’ because they were dealing with some of those closer to home: the KGB (and to a lesser extent the GRU) in Karl-Marx-Stadt. The immediate families of the KdA commanders had been taken hostage with their fates dependent upon the steadfastness of the defences. The outer lines protecting the city were meant to hold until relief came in the form of the Soviet Army launching a counterattack which the spooks were expecting and until then the Militia units would give all that they had.

Hedging their bets, and also deciding that their other hostages really didn’t serve much of a purpose anymore unless that was in the event of the city falling and later being witnesses at war crimes trials, those prisoners from the West were gotten rid of. Shooting parties and then men detailed to burn bodies and scatter ashes eliminated soldiers, diplomats, spooks and journalists all held at Karl-Marx-Stadt. There were many hundreds of them who had been abused at facilities across the city and were now seen as useless mouths who were to be killed and the bodies gotten disposed. Then there came the clean-up operation getting rid of other witnesses – Stasi agents mainly who had outlived their usefulness – as well as paperwork and physical evidence. It was truly a herculean task to do this all the while thinking that the activities here would be exposed by an enemy which might break through the outer defences. It wasn’t just hiding what they had done personally that was the issue for the KGB and GRU officers but also a matter of keeping state secrets hidden; these men had been abandoned to their fate by Ogarkov but weren’t aware of that fact as so did their duty.

The shooting of so many people brought attention from the ranks of the Militia units who while not involved caught glimpses of such a thing. There were unarmed, bound and frightened people shot by the Soviets in Karl-Marx-Stadt including many women too. When questions were asked, the Militia soldiers were told by their commanders that those were ‘enemies of the state’ and to mind their own business. Yet, the KdA commanders then discovered that the Stasi presence in the city was afterwards eliminated too. While such secret policemen weren’t going to be missed, they were supposed to be allies of the Soviet spooks in Karl-Marx-Stadt yet had been the victims of outright murder just like the foreigners held here. Combined with their own treatment in having their families held hostage – who might have been killed for all the Militia officers knew – and then the broadcasts being made by the surrounding Americans, the ‘loyalty’ of the KdA here snapped.

They could no longer standby and obey the orders from such Soviet spooks in their city, especially when there came sightings of many of those arrogant Russians killing East German civilians and stealing their identities: the Soviets were preparing to hide in plain sight if the end came.

The fighting which took place throughout the morning of April 11th in Karl-Marx-Stadt was brutal. The Militia were turned on their threatening overlords with no mercy being given. Shootings went on across the city as parts of it erupted into violence where the well-organised Militia took on armed but unprepared Soviet intelligence officers. The KdA had been thought to have been cowed and deceived into looking outwards and this mistake came at a fatal cost to those who had made such an error. By the afternoon, the gunfire ceased. There were no trials of prisoners taken as all those KGB and GRU personnel, as well as some unfortunate Soviet Army signals and intelligence officers still here, were shot on the spot whether they surrendered or not.

A party of Militia officers went out to meet the Americans under a white flag to see what they would offer in surrender terms…





Two Hundred & Seventy–Six

Extract from:
My War; The Heroic Deeds Of A Soldier, by General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed.
Part 17: An Honourable Retreat

With my mission complete, it was time to leave the German Democratic Republic behind and to join the rest of my comrades in arms in keeping the Motherland secure. The Hitlerite in Berlin wanted, craved for his final showdown with the West and he could have it but good Russian soldiers weren’t going to die there for him when the end came.

My orders arrived from above saying that as soon as the Chekists had suffered their just punishment for their misdeeds I was to take my staff and leave; we wouldn’t be running away though neither would we take our time in getting away. Staying behind and being caught when the collapse came wasn’t something which my superiors wanted due to the knowledge in my head that the agents of the West would want to discover.

There was also the trust placed in soldiers who did their duty that was something mirrored by those above too: we followed orders and they looked after our futures. So much of that had been forgotten in the past but those were times when the changes came for myself and my fellow soldiers to our great pleasure.

Berlin was under siege at that time with the Americans, the British and the vengeful West Germans surrounding the city cutting off as many possible avenues of escape as they could manage to do. Bombs and missiles rained down killing those trapped inside and stopping many leaving. The Americans had pushed their tanks into the eastern edge of the city as well and chaos ruled in places with their helicopters buzzing around everywhere firing guns and rockets.

Nonetheless there were always ways out of there before the end came.

It was Tegel where I was ordered to depart from, in the previously French-administered western part of the city. That airport was a busy place and somewhere under near-constant attack with wounded Russian soldiers heroically being saved facing death there just before salvation could come. Such images shall never leave with me and I shall carry the mental scars with me until the end of my own days – where I shall hopefully die at home in a warm, comfortable bed rather than such ways as those men at Tegel did.

The horrors of the war there were many and some weaker men faced personal traumas from such sights which overcame them: I remembered my duty at all time. There was a place reserved for me aboard an evacuation aircraft and we were soon in the air away from there and leaving Berlin behind.

If circumstances had been different, then I would have fought at the Battle for Berlin. The behaviour of our so-called allies who committed injustice after injustice to rival those who were meant to be on our own side too – I am talking of the Chekists here – made that impossible though.

How could any good Russian soldier fight for a cause that was as wrong as that of that pig Mielke and his ilk which I managed to leave behind to suffer their richly deserved fate? The crimes which they had committed during the war were too great to forgive when all trust was betrayed in a bloodlust not seen since the end of the first Hitlerite forty years beforehand. Some of our own people had done infamous acts, but those ruling the German Democratic Republic were true fascists.

It was not home which I went to but rather into Poland.


After landing at the airfield at Babimost, located near Zielona Gora, I reported to Marshal Igor Nikolayevich Rodionov upon arrival.

I had been reassigned to serve such a fine officer as he was and was pleased that I had been trusted so well. This was a man who had commanded the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan with honour in his conduct when that was a trait that many others had failed to achieve. He was a senior officer who was well-educated in military matters of all forms as well as a steadfast patriot who would never fail in his duty when serving his nation: my respect for him was full.

I received a shock when arriving in Poland. There were new orders for me which would send me back to the German Democratic Republic!

Of course I was concerned – who wouldn’t be? – but Rodionov was someone who inspired confidence in those serving him and his orders to return westwards made sense as soon as those were explained to me. There would be a journey by motor vehicle to the border and then a crossing over the Neisse near Gubin. I was to not just escort Rodionov and protect him from Polish bandits but to fulfil a different mission when crossing the river with him there: diplomacy.

Tracking down the deceased dog Putin after finding out what he was responsible for – though what is called the ‘point man’ for such a thing there in Berlin – had led me to find out many interesting facts about what the Chekists had been up to. That enemy had been defeated yet there were still our professional adversaries to deal with before the Motherland could truly be safe. What I had discovered was to be revealed to them when Rodionov spoke with them when I was to join him in crossing back over the border once again.

Danger was again to be faced yet I was determined to meet it head on like a true soldier always should rather than running away or, worse, acting like a Chekist and fighting from the shadows.

Two Hundred & Seventy–Nine

After initial contact using a short-range radio link-up and then a meeting which took place on the western side of the Neisse under a white flag, the party of Soviets which had first come over the border at Gubin-Guben were taken down to nearby Cottbus. Allied military officers as well as senior intelligence officials scrambled towards that East German town to get there to meet with the Soviets which had come across to begin, in their words, 'negotiations' with only those given personal authorisation by General Galvin allowed to deal with the enemy at this point.

In total, thirteen Soviet military officers and civilians ended up at Cottbus this morning. There was a recently-promoted Marshal of the Soviet Union, a civilian identified as being a junior minister in Gorbachev's long-deposed government and then the lower-level soldiers and civilians including a fierce-looking paratrooper colonel. None of the NATO and Allied personnel involved in meeting the Soviets on the Neisse nor with them during the short journey down to Cottbus was able to point out any of these personalities as having any solid connections to the Soviet intelligence services though among those men of lesser-importance – believed to be interpreters, aides and bodyguards – that wasn't something known with certainty.

The senior military man and that former minister (whose names were on file) were certainly not suspected to be overtly influenced by the Soviet secret services though… which was of course something that those two men knew that the West was pretty sure about.


When contact had been made and the trip requested to meet in a location behind the lines followed by the Soviets had said that they wished to have those 'negotiations', this was at once regarded by NATO senior command as an effort to conduct ceasefire talks. Their best people were sent to Cottbus at once yet those men went with firm instructions too regarding what they could and couldn't say as well as to what level of cooperation was to be given to their new 'guests'. They were not to allow themselves to be played for fools and neither for their actions to endanger the Allied war effort at the moment too.

Richard Dearlove was one of those who had been approved to make his way to Cottbus with haste. This senior officer with the Secret Intelligence Service was already on a list of such intelligence figures available to treat with the enemy in circumstances such as this. There were formalities that went with any talks which could lead to a ceasefire between opposing forces, long before any sort of peace deal could be thrashed out, and for his country having someone like Dearlove there was important. He was an experienced spook who had spent most of the war in Germany working with the military high command as well as learning all that there was to know about the enemy. As an MI-6 officer foreign intelligence was his speciality although he did have a diplomatic cover 'legend' when working in Germany back far behind the frontlines.

Sent to Cottbus to assist there and gain as much intelligence with his eyes and ears as possible, Dearlove was present for the opening comments made by Marshal Rodionov when that Soviet Army officer spoke officially of the request for a ceasefire between Allied military forces and those of the Soviet Union; Dearlove certainly wasn't alone in noting how those of other nations supposed equal in the Socialist Forces alliance were left unmentioned. The 'file' on Igor Nikolayevich Rodionov was large yet by no means extensive. His career highlights were known from commanding the Soviet Fifth Army in the Far East and then several years heading the Soviet Fortieth Army in Afghanistan too. He was a soldier foremost though he also had some political connections before the Moscow Coup late last year. At that point he had been the second-in-command of the Moscow Military District (which covered most of the western part of the Russian SSR) and it was believed he was someone close to Marshal Akhromeyev at that point yet little had been heard of him since. Here in East Germany today he was a five-star ranked officer though he had not long ago been a three-star Colonel-General; this wasn't something insignificant at all.

Those actual initial discussions between NATO military officers – General von Sandrart leading those – and Rodionov covered what the Soviets were asking for and were of a military nature where disengagement of opposing forces not just in Germany but worldwide were covered and only a preliminary issue. Dearlove, like other spooks here with him (the CIA, the DSGE and the West German BND all had officers present), paid attention to the short politician who had come with Rodionov and didn't say anything at all. He had been introduced as Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin which hastily-inquired intelligence files showed had been the former Minister of the Gas Industry. The reason for his presence was left unsaid and so too what was his current role; all those like Dearlove here were told was that the two of them were speaking for Marshal Ogarkov. Dearlove spent some time speculating over whether the presence of Chernomyrdin meant that there were civilians making decision back in Moscow now and therefore whether Chernomyrdin had been sent as a symbol of that but such things weren't easy to gauge when nothing at all was said on this subject.

The Soviet Union, Rodionov told von Sandrart and the assembled NATO figures, wanted the military ceasefire which they were asking for now to be something more longer lasting that just a temporary stand-down of military operations. What was wanted was an agreement to meet for in-depth talks on a peace agreement where diplomats could assemble and discuss such things; Geneva was suggested by Rodionov as a location for a conference as that was considered by him to be somewhere neutral and away from the fighting. In the meantime, what he was asking for on behalf of his country was the complete end of offensive military operations to occur very soon – he spoke of the hope that such a thing could take place by midnight tonight – and then there could come too possible exchanges of POWs. Soviet forces were no longer occupying great swaths of the territory of the Allies – Bornholm in the Baltic was the largest location – and there were no Allied forces within Soviet sovereign territory either. The Allies only had to look, Rodionov reminded them, of the withdrawals made from East Germany and western Czechoslovakia in recent days and while as they spoke what few troops remained in Austria under orders were pulling out fast. Therefore, he stated that such a ceasefire and initial exchange of prisoners could be done with speed; as to the POWs he spoke of wounded men and any women held being first to be repatriated.

Such comments as these were surprising in many ways though not in others.

Dearlove was briefed enough on the military situation to see how what Rodionov was offering would work as their troops in Europe were no longer in Norway, Sweden, Finland, mainland Denmark and West Germany like they had been beforehand. Only on Bornholm and that sliver of Austria near the border with Hungary did they remain inside the border of Allied nations. They had been withdrawing their troops on the eastern side of the East German-Polish border for some days and had no active forces engaged in the Berlin area or northern parts of East Germany anymore either. Their plan to cut-and-run, only now seen for what it was, had worked and so apart from air and sea combat Soviet military forces were no longer actively fighting those of the Allies in fixed engagements that they themselves sought but rather only in defence. Dearlove also at once saw the offer of releasing some POWs as a ploy too to gain the trust of the West with a sincere offer which he suspected they would do their best to carry out but not one made from the kindness of Ogarkov's heart.

von Sandrart did only what Dearlove expected him to do and state that he needed higher authorisation for this yet he anticipated that it would be forthcoming with haste and also gave enough hints to the Soviets here that such initial terms would be accepted. Would any ceasefire have an affect upon Berlin, von Sandrart queried? He was given the answer that events there were apparently beyond the control of the Soviet Union; such a response was one that Dearlove again had been expecting.

But then something unexpected happened…

...that paratrooper colonel whose presence here was noted by his tough exterior demeanour as something similar to Chernomyrdin approached Dearlove and the other spooks asking to talk to them in private whilst the waiting game was played.


There was no clandestine approach made by the Soviet Army's Airborne Troops officer who walked up to them with a young Tank Troops captain to interpret for him. He came over with that fellow Soviet Army officer and stated through that English-speaking captain that he had important information to give to them.

Dearlove knew that he was dealing with a man who had blood on his hands. He had met spooks who had engaged in 'wet-work' (a Soviet KGB term that had entered the lexicon of the intelligence world) before, but this was colonel who spoke to him and his fellow civilian intelligence officers a professional combat soldier of rank who had certainly seen some action. It was a cliché to say that this could be seen in his eyes… yet that was true. That wandering gaze to survey everywhere as a battlefield full of enemies was one element of that yet so too was the firm manner in which he spoke whilst looking at his subject sizing that person up for combat. The way in which the colonel – who didn't give his name – held himself was something else too; he wasn't afraid here even behind enemy lines should the situation go awry and it would come to a fight.

The colonel informed the spooks that the war had been started by Chebrikov, the KGB and the GRU. Those were all now 'mostly dealt with', he stated, with only 'a few Chekists' left. What the West had to 'fear' was others like them not least Erich Mielke in Berlin. Such a man had surrounded himself with 'deceased Chekists' and had committed war crimes and other 'infamous acts' to rival what those Soviet Chekists had done. Dearlove listened as details were relayed of the orders given to kill West German military officers coming from Mielke and so too those repressions against civilians also being the work of such a man. The colonel's own countrymen had 'behaved with depravity' yet they had been 'punished' while Mielke hadn't.

Control over that 'little Hitler' in Berlin was no longer something which the Soviet armed forces had. The colonel explained that his actions had been enough for Ogarkov to 'cast-off' Mielke for the 'safety of the Soviet Union'. One of those 'infamous acts' which the colonel had mentioned was something that Dearlove was a little bit prepared to hear. There had already been some intelligence concerned a clash between supposed allies – the East German and the Soviets – in Saxony over control over nuclear weapons and the colonel confirmed that telling of how Mielke had issued orders for that to take place; he also explained what was behind that.

'Nuclear blackmail', the colonel told them, was meant to have been tried against the West to threaten their cities and break their alliance. There was more than that though: 'Mielke and his ilk' had been given the active support in that endeavour of 'Soviet Chekists'. Why had this happened, the colonel rhetorically asked? His countrymen had been making an attempt to 'bring down Marshal Ogarkov' and replace him with another 'Chekist again' in assisting Mielke. This was the type of man who remained as their enemy and they should understand that he was a 'dangerous madman, a rabid dog'.

The colonel would not be drawn into further discussions with Dearlove and his fellow spooks and departed from their company leaving them with answers, questions and doubts. They had been told some things but wanted to know more as well as being left unsure over whether what they had been told was true. Dearlove hadn't known what to make of the colonel refusing to give his name yet talking to them as he had done with no secrecy revealing what had to be state secrets. He hadn't thought that he was talking to a liar though did express a belief to his colleagues that even if that colonel had been telling the truth as Dearlove believed he had that might have only been a truth known to him.

In addition, there was the matter to consider to that this information was being given to them as it was. Clearly Ogarkov had sent a trusted military officer to talk with them on purpose and make them aware of these apparent actions of not just Mielke but the Soviet intelligence services too. There was more to all of this than just one story to be told…


Such a line of thinking was reinforced when von Sandrart returned to Rodionov with some requests for clarifications of the terms which were being asked for. Did the ceasefire which the Soviets wanted on the battlefield cover Soviet military forces cut off inside East Germany and in the Berlin area too? Moreover, what about the intelligence officers – KGB and GRU personnel – inside East Germany as well: were they covered by the agreement Rodionov wanted to make?

No, came the answer, that wasn't the case at all. Dearlove listened through a translator as Rodionov made an effort to explain how the ceasefire wouldn't cover the geographical area west of the Polish border over which he had come. He stated that all Soviet forces west of the Oder and the Neisse were under 'illegal East German command' and he couldn't negotiate for them.

Afterwards, when von Sandrart went back to speak to General Galvin, Lord Carrington and the NAC over the communications link-up to relay that and therefore receive further instructions, Dearlove kept his eyes upon that colonel as he spoke with Rodionov, Chernomyrdin and some of those others. The Airborne Forces officer remained seemingly on-guard waiting for a fight but at the same time betrayed no nervousness even after just speaking with several Westerners like he had been. Chernomyrdin cut Dearlove a fierce look himself too in something which the British intelligence officer couldn't understand a reason for.

Remaining as an observer, Dearlove played no direct part in the agreement subsequently made concerning the Soviet wish for a ceasefire. NATO's high command had given their assent to this – there was a standing procedure on making an agreement for a military ceasefire under NATO authority between the governments of the Allies, though with conditions attached of course – and von Sandrart and Rodionov set to trash that out.

The intention was that by midnight Central European Time there would no longer be military clashes between Allied and Soviet military forces and preparations would begin for a Second Geneva Conference; Dearlove planned to be there like he had been at the first and hoped that things would be very different than last time.





Two Hundred & Eighty

Thatcher brought her War Cabinet together for a meeting this afternoon due to not just the morning's events in Germany but also other developments as well. The Prime Minister had had the full Cabinet together on other occasions recently yet there still remained matters that it was felt should just be discussed by those at the top levels of the government especially when it came to national security concerns too.


There had been a riot right in the heart of Central London yesterday not far from where the War Cabinet met. A crowd numbering two, maybe three hundred people had massed in Parliament Square and launched a violent protest aiming to first come up Whitehall before being blocking in that attempt and so then moving down Victoria Street and into the Petty France area. For such a small number of people, they had caused an immense amount of damage which had resulted in two deaths occurring, one of those being the accidental killing of the Permanent Under-Secretary of State (PUS) at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the other a young policewoman. These rioters had managed to organise their gathering and assemble themselves before dissolving into smaller groups capable of causing chaos on London's streets.

The briefing on this riot by a group apparently called Class War, an anti-capitalist anarchist group, was given by Sir Percy Cradock rather than Sir Anthony Duff; the MI-5 chief had been asked to resign during the night and the PM's foreign policy & security adviser Cradock was for now addressing the War Cabinet while a replacement was sought. Those anarchists had disguised their identities using masks yet following a wave of arrests many had been identified by the Met. Police as having a 'history'. Rather than being detained during TtW as the subversives and threat to the nation which they were, they had managed to organise their riot during which a thrown projectile had struck the Foreign Secretary's principle civil servant when that man was heading home from work and left him lying dead in the gutter. The Met. Police had 'cracked heads' afterwards, Cradock told the War Cabinet, and London was still standing but that wasn't the point: a well-organised anti-war riot had taken place with no notice of that coming where the intent of its attendees was clearly violence against the organs of the state.

Cecil Parkinson inquired over the fate of such people arrested and mentioned those detainment camps set up before the war for subversives: the now-regular War Cabinet attendee Douglas Hurd said that those arrested would be held elsewhere. The detention camps were being closed as fast as possible due to the conditions within those for many of those held being 'not worthy of Britain' and there were uncomfortable murmurs amongst many at the meeting with this talk of those. No one here objected to the dismissal of the Director-General of the Security Service for he had been responsible for those facilities and look what had occurred? Many of the suspected subversives held were aged Marxist academics and even anti-apartheid campaigners instead of those who truly wanted to damage their country from within and also see it struck at from external threats as well.

There was a general feeling that post-war there was going to come much political drama due to what had occurred with those arrests and the subsequent holding without trial just on idealogical motives of many people of influence. Everyone here was happy now that the blame for that was being apportioned elsewhere.

Away from these troubling domestic incidents, the War Cabinet briefing discussed other matters before turning to the ceasefire talks which had commenced at Cottbus.

Foreign affairs relating to the war were covered in several briefs about the situation on the ground in both Poland and Czechoslovakia. The rebellion against the Soviets inside their country continued without pause from the Poles even when they faced much resistance from the Soviets trying to cross their country heading back home. There had been roadside bombs detonated against retreating Soviet forces and shootings of surrendered Soviet soldiers unlucky enough to fall into rebel captivity; such news wasn't being publicised by the West at the minute as the Poles were still the 'good guys'. No one here in London liked what they heard about that though and they were further aggrieved by even worse stories coming out of Czechoslovakia there with the civil war underway. Slovakia to the east was generally quiet with the Italians still in Bratislava and an independent Slovakian Republic being declared but there was violence to rival that of Poland in Bohemia and Moravia to the west. The multi-sided civil war there continued even after most Soviet troops had finally managed to extricate themselves and escape to Poland while the French finished off what remained of the Czechoslovak Army. Massacres continued there in the Czech-speaking part of that country with those not in uniform being the targets of many death squads roving the country seeing 'justice' for ill-defined past misdeeds.

Better things were being heard from elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain with Hungary and Bulgaria looking for ways to make peace with the West and seeking ways in which they could show that they were no longer subservient to Soviet wishes. Neither country had been officially at war with Britain and the Allies so this wasn't impossible yet there would remain many difficulties in the restoring of proper relations especially with both nations still being one-party authoritarian dictatorships.

Military operations around Berlin were talked about with a briefing given by General Vincent. The Vice Chief of the Defence Staff spoke of how PINNACLE had been launched this morning to start eliminating the outer defences of Berlin with artillery and air strikes conducted at distance before a moment was chosen to start moving forwards with troops to clear away what remained. The urban areas of Berlin were still to remain outside the area of ground operations with the expectation that 'something' would happen inside the city to bring about the collapse of East German resistance there. No one was happy to hear this news because that 'something' had been hoped for here before in London with a large-scale mutiny or mass desertions, maybe even Mielke being toppled somehow, yet it had yet to occur and there were still no signs of that happening.

To have British troops fighting house-to-house inside Berlin was not something desired by the members of the War Cabinet.


As to Cottbus, Christopher Curwen gave a short summary of what his man on the ground there in East Germany had witnessed earlier in the day when contact with made with Soviet representatives. He briefed the politicians on the biographies of Marshal Rodionov and Viktor Chernomyrdin along with all intelligence available concerning what MI-6 and the West believed Ogarkov wanted. As to the contact at Cottbus arranging for a ceasefire, Curwen spoke of how that had been agreed to as a temporary matter due to officially be effective at midnight though in effect almost immediately due to the successful disengagement that the Soviets had managed with their military forces.

General Vincent picked up from there explaining the Soviet offer of releasing some POW's at once when the agreement was made with von Sandrart. There came comments in reaction to this from several members of the War Cabinet with them not liking how that was agreed to in the fashion which it was; Nigel Lawson and Ken Clarke both suspected that the Soviets were using such captives in a callous effort to try and win favour. No one disagreed with them here especially when it came to Curwen's follow-up remarks about his officer in Cottbus having an overt discussion with a seemingly-trusted Soviet Army paratrooper officer where terrible acts suspected of being committed by the East Germans were confirmed.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Norman Lamont speculated that this could be a sign of things to come. He believed that there was going to be an attempt by the Soviets to shift all the blame for the war onto the East Germans as well as their own KGB people left behind in Germany to be captured while the Soviet Army sought to disown the war which they had fought on behalf of Chebrikov and his fellow secret policemen. To soften up the West, the Soviet Army were going to be rather accommodating on the matter of POWs as well handing them over fast and making a big deal about that too as they played the poor innocents forced into a war where all the many war crimes documents committed by them were forgotten and everything could be made good by handing over prisoners with haste. Again, no one argued with this line of thinking: there were nods of understanding that this seemed to be the case.

The PM asked about what had been agreed to at Cottbus this morning alongside the military ceasefire, in particular the discussions there about having a second peace conference at Geneva. Moreover, she asked why the West German von Sandrart had led those talks at Cottbus and not someone from the political side of the alliance like Lord Carrington – the Soviets had sent a politician so why hadn't a senior NATO figure from the civilian side gone to meet with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin?

Agreement at once came here that the issue over the lack of political representation needed urgent review with Britain's allies for the politicians meeting in London didn't like the fact that that had happened. When it came to Geneva, Tom King spoke of how he had already sent David Mellor to Geneva as soon as word came from Germany about arrangements starting to be made. His FCO Minister of State would be doing the necessary groundwork there though he himself as Foreign Secretary would be leading HM Government's official representation there. The War Cabinet discussed briefly what King would say and do when he went to Switzerland.

As had been the case with the attempt early in the war at peace talks which the Swiss themselves hosted off their own back, Britain was going to maintain the position that her allies had on that first occasion that there would be no giving in to unconditional Soviet demands. 'Peace at any price' wasn't something that was going to be agreed to not then and certainly not now. The West had suffered gravely during the war with Britain being at the forefront of damage done militarily, economically and socially with that furthered every day the war went on. Regardless, the Soviets were the aggressor no matter what latest change of government had occurred in their country and were also now a defeated party who would be treated as such. The basic matters to be pressed for and delivered in Geneva, something which the War Cabinet expected all of the alliance to agree to, would be for the Soviets to withdraw back across their own borders into their own country (not to have their troops anywhere inside the sovereign nations of Eastern Europe) as well as arms limitation to be legally bound to and financial reparations to be paid.

The War Cabinet expected that there may be some objections to those points taking different forms from some members of the Allies, but at the same time the major NATO powers allied to Britain – the United States, France and West Germany in particular – would certainly agree to enforcing these upon the defeated Soviets. Political changes inside the Soviet Union or territorial adjustments were far distant goals probably unobtainable with the Soviets being a nuclear-armed state and still fighting beyond not inside their own borders, but those three initial demands were what the War Cabinet would have King push for in Geneva alongside his fellow Allied diplomats.

It was inconceivable that the West would allow for anything less than those, of that the PM and the War Cabinet were certain.

Two Hundred & Eighty–Three

NATO air attacks upon Berlin were killing civilians, both in the eastern and western sides of the city.

In military terminology this was called 'collateral damage'. It was unintentional and not something desired but those deaths still occurred when bombs and missiles rained down upon the city. Those air attacks were focused against military and 'regime' targets inside the city with care taken to make sure that the weapons used only struck where they were intended to rather than against innocents. What would have been the point in killing Berliners? Regardless of all the effort made to avoid such a thing, there were civilians who unfortunately lost their lives in the strikes against Berlin.

Sometimes the weapons used malfunctioned as they came crashing to the ground. Other times there was faulty intelligence upon those targets or the efforts of the air defences caused those losses among civilians. Some where killed when their homes were hit while others lost their lives inside shelters. On other occasions there was a deliberate effort by Berlin's defenders to use civilians as human shields relying upon the fact that NATO wouldn't bomb such places where they were… but the targeteers behind those strikes weren't aware of that fact.

NATO was bombing military targets inside Berlin and therefore the strikes kept coming even when intelligence pointed to civilian casualties occurring during their attacks. There were command posts identified and signal relay stations for the defenders of the city. Other reconnaissance had pinpointed headquarters and accommodation facilities for the internal security forces of the Stasi and the KdA on both sides of Berlin which were again targeted for attack. Launchers for both tactical missiles being fired out against NATO forces surrounding the city and the remaining SAMs which were providing air defence were bombed.

Again and again, these strikes came at night and – in ever greater frequency now too – in daylight as well to wear down the defenders of the city on the inside as well as what was going on around the outskirts too.


Those defenders of the city were busy killing as well… each other now too.

The Stasi had failed to control events originating from the Tiergarten in West Berlin. Those air defence gunners from there who had turned upon their oppressive Ministry of State Security overlords late yesterday had finally been overcome using force when they remained within that open parkland and most of them viciously slaughtered when they had tried to hold onto their positions, but there had been a couple of their number who had managed to get away from there and through the incomplete cordon which had been thrown up around that area. They had told their stories to some other men in uniform which they came across and in a few cases such tales had been retold though of course second- and third-hand versions were heard.

In addition to the spreading of those tales of what happened in the Tiergarten from those directly involved being able to influence events in the city, there were actual witnesses to the machine gunning and mortaring of the Tiergarten from other security troops who were involving in maintaining that leaky cordon around the area. They saw how their fellow soldiers were killed in the manner which they were including the immediate summary execution of not just those who surrendered but wounded men captured as well.

This occurred during the night often when those air defence gunners were dragged away into nearby streets to be killed. Even in the darkness though, such events were seen by men serving with the Grenztruppen and the Hugo Eberlein Guards Regiment. These were supposedly loyal men who had many privileges and relied upon heavily by Mielke and his organs of state control. These soldiers had been out across West Berlin patrolling there and keeping those scared citizens under control; one of those ways was to watch over the collecting and burning of enemy propaganda leaflets dropped over the city.

The soldiers could read what was printed on those leaflets.

From outside the city came the constant rumble of artillery fire and many more aircraft dropping bombs there than there had been inside the city. They noticed too that the Soviets who were usually so prominent within Berlin were either all gone nor or hiding in their own barracks facilities. This came alongside the radio broadcasts that went over many frequencies, including those used by the security troops at times, from the West informing everyone listening that the Soviets had initiated a ceasefire with NATO.

While these security troops who formed the elite force of soldiers designed to maintain order within Berlin were being exposed to the truth and becoming upset by what they were seeing, there were the larger number of armed men as well within the city also being affected in same manner as well.

KdA soldiers and the militarised East Berlin police were in both sides of the city as well spending their time manning roadblocks and the guards on residential buildings keeping people inside them. They too could hear the barrages going on outside the city as the NATO armies blasted away at the defences there, they were tasked to pick up and destroy those leaflets calling upon them to surrender and they heard the broadcasts which came over the airwaves constantly.

Moreover, these were ordinary people tasked with paramilitary duties but still civilians at heart. The level of propaganda they had been exposed to on Stasi orders had been high but many of them knew when to close their ears and just nod along. Ordered to execute those breaking curfew and put others – women and children – into harm's way from falling bombs was part of the duties which they were assigned to do under the threat of having not just themselves but their families too punished for failing to carry those out. Such orders were followed but many of those who carried them out saw the results of these and were silently morally outraged at what they had done before there was often internal rage held against those who had ordered them to do that.

Again, like at Tiergarten, what was needed was a spark to turn this aggression, which was much more wide-ranging that that held by those air defence gunners, into something more. If such security forces all across the city decided that they no longer wished to follow orders then everything would come crumbling down.

Where was the spark to come from though?





Two Hundred & Eighty–Four

The second stage of PINNACLE commenced just over twenty-four hours later from the beginnings of the artillery and air attacks as well as the ground infiltration efforts. In the mid-morning, long after it had gotten light and hopefully when the East Germans had convinced themselves that an attack wasn't going to come today, NATO's armies moved forward against Berlin's outer defences. To the west and to the south the British Second and US Third Armys advanced to contact against those smashed defensive positions while to the east the US Seventh Army re-started it's advance against improvised blockages ahead of them which were nothing on the scale of what was to the west and south.

Troops from Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Chile, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United States and West Germany all moved forward into battle today under centralised command and control. Their aim was to smash through what remained of the East German positions outside the city and close-up against the urban areas smashing all opposition before them.


Standing in the way of this tsunami of tanks, armoured vehicles and infantry were a mixed force of East German troops most of whom would be considered second-, or even, third-rate. There were Grenztruppen soldiers, KdA paramilitary forces, militarised police units and third-line East German Army reservists to the west and south while in the east there were some surviving soldiers of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment there too with this Stasi formation which had once boasted eleven thousand motorised troops but was now down to just a fraction of that number and worn down from heavy fighting.

In peacetime these troops answered to organisations such as the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of the Interior and even the Socialist Unity Party's Central Committee: East Germany had long ago adopted the Soviet notion of divide-and-rule among security forces. Their weapons were old and their training outdated, both of which were far from suitable for facing the NATO armies opposing them. Different commanders from the various bureaucracies were in charge of them spread around the outskirts of Berlin just as they were inside the city itself who had diverse deployment plans and varying levels of access to ammunition and food supplies for these troops. All answered to Mielke in theory yet many were obeying instructions coming down from their usual chain of command even at this late stage where the end was nigh for the East German regime.

Tied to a static defensive posture, the defending troops had been pounded again and again by the forces of the Allies without being able to effectively strike back let alone move from their positions when those were exposed. Men had been marched into trenches and bunkers and told to hold on with the limited ammunition they had been given for their inadequate weapons. Food and water was sent to them on an infrequent basis and those who objected to such things as this, let alone their orders, faced swift and fateful punishment. Many soldiers cracked under the pressure and went mad causing all sorts of disruption up and down the line by killing each other and those in neighbouring positions while others took their own lives.

Now those soldiers deployed as they were were going to have to try to stop the careful but powerful advance of NATO and Allied troops assigned to the PINNACLE mission… and were doomed to fail in such an attempt.


West of Berlin, General Kenny had the British Second Army attack on a wide frontage following a plan of attack to pierce the enemy defences where the infiltration efforts yesterday of his men on the ground – backed up by aerial and electronic reconnaissance too – had shown the East Germans to be weakest. His planning staff had chosen spots to strike at not just where the most-forward positions were weak but where the few mobile forces that the East Germans had behind would struggle to reach. He lined up his for attacking corps commands with reorganisations among them so that a multi-echelon advance could go forward with penetration troops first then the first wave of breakthrough forces followed by second- and third-wave exploitation units as well.

Once PINNACLE got going, General Kenny paid attention to the progress of all of his attacking forces though especially to the British I Corps as they raced across the Doberitz Heath. The progress of the West German IV Corps, the Belgian I Corps and the West German VI Corps was important too yet his attention kept coming back to how the attack led by his British Army troops was doing charging towards and then across the open heathland in the direction of the distant RAF Gatow as well as towards the southern approaches to Spandau (the Belgians were moving towards the latter location from the northwest). The Doberitz Heath had long been a military training area for the armed forces of the Prussian and Nazi militaries and the Soviets in modern times as well. It was open countryside criss-crossed by tracks and narrow roads with solid earth too that tracked vehicles could make use of. There were defensive positions which the East German had dug all across it but those defences had taken a pounding and were now under armoured assault.

The reports from General Inge's headquarters came in throughout the morning and by midday word came that elements of the Tiger Division had reached the other side. Leading tanks with the 4th Armoured Division had reached the other side with that formation plus the other troops assigned (the 3rd & 7th Armoured Divisions, the 5th Infantry Division and brigades of Dutchmen and Chileans) were making their way through the remains of the defences across the open area. The East Germans had mined their wide anti-tank ditches and had extensive trenches manned by light infantry but the 'preparation' of those defences beforehand by artillery and air strikes had smashed them apart. There were further reports of defenders running away to the rear oftentimes gunned down by Stasi forces acting in the Soviet fashion as 'barrage troops', but the good news was that the Doberitz Heath had been crossed.

Such progress by the British I Corps meant that during the afternoon they pushed into West Berlin – knocking down the stretches of the Berlin Wall still standing – into semi-suburban regions there on the western side of the River Havel up ahead. The airfield at Gatow was fought over and later taken by the Gloucestershire Regiment battle-group while on the right British troops meet those attacking Bundeswehr soldiers with the West German VI Corps operating north of Potsdam through a heavily-forested region. On the left, the British I Corps had some of its units strike north once they were across that heathland charging for the edges of Spandau. When combined with the Belgian attack, a salient started to form by the end of the day west of Spandau towards suburban Falkensee. Radio intercepts pointed to East German troops in that area as well as in Spandau being told to hold firm where they were rather than withdraw; General Kenny saw this a double-edged sword. Those troops (estimated to number about three thousands, maybe more as quite a few were placed directly ahead of Spandau) staying in position meant that they could be cut off eventually and would have to conduct a defence of three sides yet at the same time it would have been good news too for them to try to withdraw where they came out in the open to be struck at from their air. Nonetheless, he couldn't expect everything to go perfect with this attack.

The British, Bundeswehr and Portuguese troops with the West German IV Corps further to the north of Spandau operated on the left of the Belgians who were moving through Spandau Forest and instead advanced towards the town of Hennigsdorf which also rested along the Havel. Hennigsdorf was home to twenty-five thousand people and most remained trapped in their place of residence with several hundred too forced to stay at the huge LEW locomotive and railway carriage industrial facility: those civilians were meant to be there as part of the KdA force for this already heavily-bombed industrial facility but were the wives and children of the workers sent to man the frontlines on the edge of the town. Their Stasi guards made sure that those civilians were out in the open now daring the West to attack the facility so a propaganda victory could be scored…

Intelligence from special forces teams on forward patrol ahead of today's attack had spotted such a callous move and so no more air strikes hit the industrial site. There was also no direct fighting for the rest of Hennigsdorf to be done either as the forces assigned to the West German IV Corps were busy moving either side of the town and especially to the north where the road and rail bridges over the narrow Havel Canal were down. Those structures would have been preferred to have been put to use by the approaches to them either side were still something which could be utilised and the attacking troops with the 17th Panzergrenadier Division which fought here took them and entered West Berlin here by nightfall.

The attacks made eastwards by the British Second Army had been no more than a dozen miles forward at the most taking them through East German static defences and inside the boundaries of West Berlin. Care had been taken to avoid urban fighting where civilians (East Germans and West Berliners) were stuck in their homes as those dug-in troops of Mielke's dying regime were crushed away from those. The resounding victory was a credit to the staff work put in with planning, intelligence and logistics and the British Second Army had done very well indeed today… and there was to be similar success elsewhere around Berlin too.


Where the US Third Army attacked south of the city the defences inside the Autobahn-10 ring-road there couldn't stop the multi-national, multi-corps advance here either.

The Bundeswehr and US Army forces – along with a detachment of Brazilians too taking part in what was far from a propaganda effort but a well-trained if small force – struck northwards between Potsdam and the Spanish-occupied Schonefeld Airport. Stretches of countryside but also medium-sized towns lay in this area all of which was defended by across the former rather than through the latter the US Third Army moved. Tanks and tracked armoured vehicles moved in what appeared to immobile defenders to be a tsunami or armour at times and when anti-tank guns and RPGs struck those charging steel monsters little affect was had. Anti-tank ditches were crossed like they were nothing while minefields were traversed by specialist vehicles also armoured blowing up carefully-placed charges with contemptuous ease. Only night-time and urban terrain brought a halt to the US Third Army and ahead of them what men had managed to flee from their weapons and those shots of Stasi blocking troops ran in fear of their lives in the direction of Berlin.

General Chambers found that just like his counterpart British General Kenny, casualties among the attacking troops were remarkably light. Intelligence estimates on the capabilities of the enemy – or, more correctly, lack of capabilities – had suggested that this would be the case but to witness this was something happily unexpected regardless. There were no long lists of dead and wounded among the ranks of the US Third Army yet that wasn't for lack of trying from the East Germans; they had unleashed waves of ultimately ineffective fire against the US Third Army.

The enemy that he had faced was an immobile one though with older equipment and a lack of air cover plus what were found to be severe ammunition shortages. Those soldiers had stayed inside their positions until the very end despite earlier efforts to get them to either abandon them or mutiny in number but at the end of each engagement the East Germans had emerged the losers. In each and every clash there had been the result of a NATO victory with troops under General Chambers command and he was a very happy man at the end of the day even with Berlin's urban areas now directly ahead of his troops.


Schwarzkopf had his US Seventh Army spread far and wide and not condensed tightly around Berlin like those of General Kenny and General Chambers. His Spanish I Corps was at Schonefeld on Berlin southeastern edge, the US V Corps was just inside the outskirts of East Berlin and stuck fast after tough urban fighting, the US VII Corps had pushed forwards along Autobahn-10 as that highway wound it's way northwards behind Berlin… and then the national guardsmen with the US IV Corps were on the Polish border from Cottbus to Gorlitz. Such a wide geographical spread of his troops meant that the weak defences east of Berlin in open ground couldn't be taken full advance of and neither could the matter with numerically weaker defenders not bunched up either. A massive reorganisation was needed shifting his forces around and extraditing parts of the US V Corps from inside East Berlin too: politics had come into play though with some his troops needing to stay where they were due to considerations above his pay grade and the rest needing time to move while still fighting the enemy.

Throughout the day, US Seventh Army forces engaged in PINNACLE fought generally stationary battles to the southeast of Berlin and inside that small portion of East Berlin as well with the national guardsmen staying on the Polish border. Only the US VII Corps – which Schwarzkopf reinforced with the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division and a brigade (the 197th Brigade) from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division temporarily reassigned from the US V Corps – maintained any major forward advance using their mechanisation and the weakness of the enemy. The narrow advance which had gone along the course of Autobahn-10 was widened by attacks made westwards where there was open ground in multiple locations hitting the enemy forces there who could fight against such attacks. At places such as Honow and Hoppegarten, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment with its wheeled armoured personnel carriers, towed artillery pieces and out-of-date ATGM-launchers.; there were some man-portable SAMs as well. These Stasi soldiers were faced with up-armoured M-1 Abrams tanks, tracked M-2 Bradley armoured fighting vehicles and a lot of US Army armed helicopters in the form of Apaches and Cobras. The Americans troops which they fought too were combat veterans who had taken on and beaten the best that the Soviet Army had to throw at them in multiple engagements for a month now.

The East Germans here didn't stand a chance in the moments that they were caught in the open and when withdrawing to populated areas were only saved by the orders stopping the Americans from bringing down civilian structures – full of innocents – atop of their heads when they sheltered in such places.


At the village of Seeberg, next to a crossroads on the autobahn, American troops with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment right at the most northern edge of the US VII Corps area were involved in an 'incident' that had been foreseen with PINNACLE but not thoroughly planned for.

An armoured patrol in tanks and armoured reconnaissance vehicles engaged what they believed was an enemy force attempting to escape from the Berlin area and heading eastwards for the dubious safety of Poland. BTR-70 armoured personnel carriers and BRDM-2 armoured scout cars – wheeled vehicles – fired upon the Americans and they returned that fire overcoming such a weaker force.

Those troopers with the 2nd Cav' detachment were joined by infantrymen from the 1st Armored Division soon enough and discovered that they hadn't fired upon East Germans as first suspected but rather Soviets… KGB men. Those who had survived the barrage of tank shells and ATGMs which had blown up their vehicles, and then the rocket attack by a flight of Cobra gunships to finish them off, all wore KGB uniforms of the Third Chief Directorate. There had been move then sixty of them in nine vehicles which also carried four bound prisoners as well: three of those prisoners had been killed along with most of the KGB men while the survivor identified himself to the Americans as one Oskar Fischer. One of the cavalry troopers was an intelligence specialist and that name was known as the former East German Foreign Minister. There was no doubt a story to be uncovered behind what Fischer was doing with those KGB people and where he was being taken for whatever purpose, but that was something else entirely.

NATO troops had fired upon Soviet forces after the ceasefire had come into affect.

Schwarzkopf, von Sandrart and eventually SACEUR all got involved following this incident. The men of the 2nd Cav' hadn't done anything wrong and no blame could be apportioned to them. They had been fired upon first and returned fire while convinced they were fighting East Germans not Soviets. That case of mistaken identify hadn't meant anything anyway for such a thing was allowed to be done by the terms of the ceasefire agreed at Cottbus if one side fired upon the other first. Moreover, that agreement signed with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin representing the Soviets had specifically excluded their own soldiers left inside East Germany. KGB men too had been engaged in combat not Soviet Armed Forces personnel which the ceasefire covered.

The clash had happened though and there was some concern among NATO commanders and then Allied politicians when they were later informed about it. The engagement at Seeberg was small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things and it wasn't thought that the Soviets were aware of it afterwards (nor might they care when they found out it had been KGB personnel who had lost their military control role) but the incident was still enough to attract attention.

Talks among senior NATO military personnel at once commenced as to how to make sure that no further incidents like this occurred again even with the private realisation that such a thing might be impossible to stop especially when fighting moved into Berlin where there were known to be many more Soviets still trapped there who were abandoned by their leaders but still had hopes of escape.

Two Hundred & Eighty–Seven

RAF Tornado F3s with No. 29 Squadron flew this morning on long-range missions from their base at Lossiemouth in northern Scotland eastwards out over the North Sea and above southern Sweden providing distant fighter coverage for the NATO transport aircraft flying aero-medevac missions out of Szczecin. Several flights where pairs of these interceptors were airborne at different points were kept flying using external fuel tanks and refuelling from VC10 K2 tankers so that they could maintain a watch over those transports flying into and out of Poland. The Tornados flew armed with their usual loads of multiple air-to-air missiles and the aircrews had been briefed to treat this as a combat mission yet no engagements were expected nor sought.

After a month of war, 29 Squadron – while still flying – was able to conduct operations without expecting at any moment to see the appearance of hostile aircraft and therefore the need to suddenly go into combat.


Those unarmed transport aircraft heading into Goleniow Airport outside Szczecin loaded with Soviet POWs wounded in combat and the flying back out again with injured NATO prisoners released by the Soviets did so through most of the morning of April 14th. The task for the Tornados was to be available to assist in defending them if something went wrong and they came under attack. There were NATO airborne radar aircraft over Denmark and several mobile radar stations on the ground in Sweden keeping watch with the Tornados as a reaction force.

Those transports taking part in what was deemed Operation MERCY LIFT were a mixture of different aircraft wearing the markings of several air forces.

The USAF had sent a total of seven C-9A Nightingale aircraft with each capable of carrying forty wounded men into Szczecin and forty back out again. Three similar C-9B Skytrain-2 aircraft flown by the US Navy which had been operating during the war as casualty evacuation aircraft though with a lower capability of passengers were also used by the Americans in this mission. Four French Air Force C-160NG Transall aircraft were on MERCY LIFT missions as well as two more operated by the Luftwaffe. The air forces of Belgium, Canada, Egypt, Morocco and the Netherlands provided nine versions of the C-130 Hercules to transport loaded men and the RAF had another a pair of their own C-130s – Hercules C3 variants – as well.

The twenty-seven aircraft were all making use of the lone runway at Goleniow Airport, one which had been bombed several times during the war but recently seen many repairs done there. They flew from NATO-controlled airfields across East Germany at staggered intervals before entering holding patterns on the western side of the Polish-East German border. Afterwards, Soviet Air Force flight controllers inside Poland took over the control of those aircraft guiding them in to land; English was used to communicate by all those involved including those Soviets.


On the ground the priority was meant to be the unloading and loading of wounded. All sort of vehicles were at the airport near Szczecin which had brought NATO prisoners here and were to afterwards take away Soviet POWs too. Transferring men as fast as possible and with as little discomfort to them as possible was supposed to be what MERCY LIFT was all about.

However, there was still a war on despite the ceasefire. The NATO aircrews were all military officers who were under instructions to take note of everything that they saw without doing any overt intelligence work while those Soviet military personnel paid attention to the aircraft coming in here when they were on the ground. No great revelations were uncovered nor was anything of any real value gained but being up close and personal to the enemy – for both sides – was still an opportunity to observe them going about their business.

One of the US Navy Skytrain jet transport aircraft left Goleniow Airport with an extra passenger: a Soviet Army sergeant convinced the Americans to allow him to defect aboard their aircraft as he was a medical orderly who had been with the some of the patients who vouched for him. No one authorised this apart from the reservist who piloted this particular aircraft and was therefore in command and there was no hint that the Soviets on the ground were aware that that man had decided to flee Poland and head to the West. Senior NATO commanders were not best pleased afterwards at this occurrence as they had an agreement with the Soviets to transfer wounded men… but nothing came of this for the aircrew involved and the defector managed to get his chance at freedom.


Away from the flight-line, senior NATO and Soviet officials met under the Cottbus ceasefire terms and 'managed' the transfer from one side to the other of the wounded. Medical records of those being handed over were exchanged along with medical supplies for the continued treatment of patients who were on certain drugs to deal with their injuries.

Translators were on-hand – speaking in English, French and Russian – to assist in this as comments were made by doctors about certain patients who they felt needed specialist care. In addition, an apology that struck the NATO officers as very sincere came from the Soviets as to the lower number of patients they were transferring than expected. Eight hundred and eleven live POWs were handed over to NATO along with the bodies of another two hundred and seventy-five who had recently been killed. The Soviets stated that attacks by 'Polish bandits' had killed these men who were on their way to be transferred to NATO with almost another two hundred bodies soon to be recovered pending later conveyance too.

Surprise was expressed that a third of the wounded being sent to Goleniow Airport had been killed as that was a rather large number but all the Soviets would say was that the rebel attacks had been very fierce and Marshal Ogarkov himself wanted to pass on his apologies for this.


The RAF Tornados watched as the aircraft flew back from Poland westwards to various locations. Most headed back towards East Germany where they had come from though there were two Swedish and the lone Moroccan aircraft that headed for Sweden. These were all C-130 aircraft laden with wounded soldiers who were to be met on the ground there and at once taken to hospitals waiting for them.

During the flight above the Baltic one of the TP.84s (the designation used for the C-130 Hercules) in Swedish markings declared an in-flight emergency due to several electrical problems. The aircraft was a very long way from its destination at Kallinge Airbase and needed to divert at once for the sake of the aircrew and the passengers. A return to Poland would have been best or possibly a landing on Bornholm; both options were out of the question though and so the aircraft headed for Peenemunde on Rugen where the USAF was operating from.

There was a little bit of frustration on the part of the RAF that they were unable to assist in anyway with that aircraft in trouble though what really could have been done? When the news came that the transport did make a successful landing there relief did came.

At the same time as that issue, aircrews with 29 Squadron were operating with clear skies out ahead of them to the east. There were no reports from the AWACS aircraft supporting them of hostile contacts at all over the Baltic and all contacts detected at long-range over Poland were other transport aircraft pulling the Soviets out of that country and also from the few western parts of Czechoslovakia that the French weren't currently occupying. There were no interceptors coming out of the Baltic Republics and Kaliningrad nor strike aircraft looking to hit NATO warships on the surface of the Baltic. Reconnaissance aircraft weren't darting forward on high-speed runs and intelligence-gathering aircraft which normally kept their distance using stand-off systems to do their own reconnaissance were missing from the morning skies too.

This was all very strange for the RAF who had spent seemingly years, but in reality only a month, engaged in combat missions with the enemy always in the skies even when they lost aircraft at a prodigious rate. The ceasefire was holding though and if it turned into a real peace then 29 Squadron would no longer be over the Baltic and nor would any Soviet aircraft on offensive missions which needed countering either.

Peace was returning to this part of the world.





Two Hundred & Eighty–Eight

The supply of food, or more correctly the lack of food supplies, was what brought down Berlin eventually.


The troops defending the city against the NATO armies surrounding Berlin as well as the citizens inside both sides of the city needed to be fed and the East German authorities were unable to do this. There had been serious shortages getting food supplies to the armed men and the non-combatants for some time now with irregular deliveries being made to fill bellies. With the city cut off and under siege like it was, plus under attack from above, the struggles to manufacture and then transport food where it was needed were just far too great. There was hoarding of some supplies and theft of others. NATO bombs fell upon what few production facilities that there were left and the distribution network was another target for their air strikes. Getting raw materials into the city was also becoming impossible…

Bullets were the focus of those at the top in-charge: making sure that their troops had those was the top priority. While that was important, the supply of food just couldn't be ignored like it was not when there were millions of people – armed and unarmed – within the city all of whom needed to be fed on a regular basis including those who manned the guns from which those bullets flew.

What rations had been issued had first been issued at the rate of once a day to civilians in West Berlin, twice a day to East German civilians in the eastern half of the city and three times a day to defending troops on the frontlines as well as those deployed on internal security duties. This food was generally very basic and often made many people – especially what was given to civilians – very ill with all sorts of medical complaints. As the siege intensified, all civilians went to one delivery a day and armed men twice a day with the quality and quantity greatly decreasing. Some people stole from others while there were small-scale riots as demands were made for more. Punishment of withdrawing of rations was used to try to control both civilians and troops so they would behave and this, of course, had the opposite affect.

Then there came a further cut in rations with civilians being given what food there was once a day every other day and the armed men just getting one issue of rations per day. Commanders of the troops defending the city complained that this couldn't continue if their men were to hold the city and told of how their men were sometimes deserting and on other occasions stealing food from each other or civilians. Those officers who commanded security troops keeping civilians from rebelling issued dire warnings that the people would revolt in numbers more than their demoralised soldiers could handle.

If anyone higher up was taking any notice as to these warnings then nothing was done about this.

Yesterday, when the civilians in East Berlin were supposed to be fed and internal security forces manned their stations to protect and try to bring some order to the planned distribution, no deliveries came. They were told that today that would occur instead and no answers were forthcoming as to why there hadn't been any food yesterday nor how those in West Berlin were going to be fed when they were expecting to be.

Today, no food came.

By the afternoon, messages came down from above that the civilians would be fed tomorrow instead. There was a further message concerning the rations for the security forces throughout both East Berlin and West Berlin: your rations have also been delayed until tomorrow too.


When the inevitable food riots started among the civilians in East Berlin who had crowded ready to be given their rations, many security units moved in to break up the crowds with their usual violent approach… many other units didn't. Officers couldn't control their men to get them to attack the crowds while others ordered their men not to interfere because they worried as to whether their own troops might turn on them. Across East Berlin, the security situation suddenly and spectacularly collapsed.

Down the heavily-populated Karl-Marx-Allee, across Lichtenberg, through Pankow and almost everywhere else in the eastern half of the city the people rioted. They wanted food and they would smash and burn anything that stood in their way of getting that. Security troops who stood fast and others which turned and fled came under attack. Gunfire into the crowds only dispersed them for a time while on other occasions the crowds were so thick that those at the rear pushed forwards unaware that deaths were occurring up ahead of them. KdA personnel were unwilling to join the police in combating the crowds and some of their number led civilians in places to attack the lines of the police.

Who were the civilians fighting? Where did they intend to get the food from which they were rioting to have?

Those questions couldn't be answered because this wasn't an organised rebellion of people led by leaders after a clear set of goals. It was a true riot, one which came from desperation and chaos. Sometimes the civilians could suddenly stop and cease their orgy of violence – long-term hunger meant many were weak – for no apparent reason but most of the time they just continued onwards attacking the symbols of oppression which were in front of them: anyone who stood up to them. Stored supplies of food or some of it in transport when found, moreover just the suspicion that the rioters had food within their grasp, would set off even further bloody conflict which saw the death count rise fast and uncontrollably.

Alerts went out across East Berlin and then through the rest of the city for police reinforcements and other security forces to move against the rioters with haste. Again, there was chaos though this time it was officialdom in chaos due to the confusing nature of reports coming from so many different spots. There was enemy air activity going on over the city at the same time especially around a certain point of West Berlin where attention had to be paid to if the city was to remain resisting.

Thick smoke from fires started and the sound of firing bullets were what would define the afternoon across East Berlin along with the screams of those wounded and the cries of those who were hungry too.


Those riots, which would only grow in scope and spread, would be fatal for the honestly futile chances of Berlin holding out in the face of PINNACLE with so many NATO troops surrounding the city. In addition, once they were going on the East Germans wouldn't be able to deal effectively with what happened early in the evening at the occupied Tempelhof Airbase when American paratroopers, who had been waiting most of the day for the weather to clear up, were air-dropped over that facility after most of the air defences had been silenced.

Berlin was now about to fall.