pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Feb 17, 2020 5:31:58 GMT
 (OOC: "Červený Poplach" is Czech for "red alert".) PROLOGUE To say 1968 was a tumultuous year would be an understatement. The United States was in the midst of perhaps its most serious domestic upheavals since the Civil War; Israel was fighting the War of Attrition with Egypt; China was tearing itself apart as the Cultural Revolution spun out of control; Britain was in the midst of an immigration debate inflamed by Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech; France was the epicenter of a political earthquake rocking all of western Europe as students demonstrated in the streets of Paris; the Vietnam War was spilling over into Cambodia and Laos; Greece's ruling military junta tightened its grip on the reigns of power; Brazil and Argentina were among a number of Latin American nations battered by political unrest; North and South Korea nearly went to war for the second time after a raid on Seoul's Blue House; and South Africa's apartheid regime was tightening the screws on the country's majority black population. But nowhere was there a more dangerous flashpoint for global East-West conflict than the contentious Czech-Soviet relationship-- Alexander Dubcek's ambition to reform Czechslovakia's Marxist government was running smack up against Leonid Brezhnev's determination to maintain Soviet dominance in eastern Europe, and the tension between these two opposing philosophies would come to a head in a showdown that would in turn lead to a wider NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation with the potential to escalate into World War III. |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Feb 17, 2020 14:13:30 GMT
(OOC: "Červený Poplach" is Czech for "red alert".) PROLOGUE To say 1968 was a tumultuous year would be an understatement. The United States was in the midst of perhaps its most serious domestic upheavals since the Civil War; Israel was fighting the War of Attrition with Egypt; China was tearing itself apart as the Cultural Revolution spun out of control; Britain was in the midst of an immigration debate inflamed by Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech; France was the epicenter of a political earthquake rocking all of western Europe as students demonstrated in the streets of Paris; the Vietnam War was spilling over into Cambodia and Laos; Greece's ruling military junta tightened its grip on the reigns of power; Brazil and Argentina were among a number of Latin American nations battered by political unrest; North and South Korea nearly went to war for the second time after a raid on Seoul's Blue House; and South Africa's apartheid regime was tightening the screws on the country's majority black population. But nowhere was there a more dangerous flashpoint for global East-West conflict than the contentious Czech-Soviet relationship-- Alexander Dubcek's ambition to reform Czechslovakia's Marxist government was running smack up against Leonid Brezhnev's determination to maintain Soviet dominance in eastern Europe, and the tension between these two opposing philosophies would come to a head in a showdown that would in turn lead to a wider NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation with the potential to escalate into World War III.
Sounds interesting if potentially very destructive if it ends up with a major war. Not sure if NATO is willing to risk a real conflict over the issue but could be a stronger stance at least and who knows what could result.
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Feb 17, 2020 23:48:47 GMT
PART 1/Guess Who's NOT Coming To Dinner? Ironically, the man who would turn out to be Brezhnev's most serious European adversary had originally assumed the leadership of Czechoslovakia partly with Brezhnev's acquiescence. Alexander Dubcek became First Secretary of the Czech Communist Party in January of 1968 after it became clear the previous First Secretary, Antonin Novotny, was losing support at all levels of the party; Brezhnev, who could have kept Novotny in power with a few well-timed phone calls or the deployment of a tank division or two to the border of what is now the Republic of Ukraine, chose instead to let events play themselves out. Just over two months after losing his position as first secretary Novotny, who also held the post of Czech president, would resign from that position too. There were few if any outward signs at first of the reformist agenda Dubcek planned to implement as new Czech head of government; it wasn't until he launched his "Action Programme" in April of 1968 that the true nature of Dubcek's ambitions began to reveal themselves, and when they did it raised eyebrows on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Among other things Dubcek's program called for greater freedom of religion and a loosening of the ban on opposition parties that had been in place since the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia 20 years earlier. Not surprisingly, this worried the powers that be in Moscow, who worried that Dubcek's liberalization efforts might jeopardize if not outright destroy the Warsaw Pact alliance. In an effort to smooth over potential rifts in the Czech-Soviet relationship, the Kremlin proposed a summit between Dubcek and Brezhnev at the Slovak border town of Čierna nad Tisou to negotiate an agreement that would address some of Brezhnev's concerns regarding Dubcek's reforms. Although many of Dubcek's supporters within the Czech government were wary of Soviet intentions toward their country, Dubcek himself was inclined to accept the summit invitation in the hope that some kind of amicable resolution could be achieved. Many ordinary Czech citizens didn't share Dubcek's optimism on that score; they were sure the summit was merely a ploy to get Dubcek to let his guard down so Soviet troops could steamroller their way into Czechoslovakia and reimpose hard-line Marxist rule. The constant movement of Red Army tanks and infantry on the Soviet side of the Soviet-Czech border didn't help their nerves any. As the days and weeks counted down towards the scheduled July 29th summit date, the Soviet and East German embassies in Prague became focal points for passionate and increasingly large demonstrations calling for the Warsaw Pact not to interfere with Dubcek's reforms. These demonstrations greatly upset Brezhnev, who darkly hinted in a July 7th telephone call to the Czech embassy in Moscow that he might call off the summit unless these protests were quashed. As it turned out, however, Brezhnev wouldn't need to cancel it-- two weeks before the Čierna nad Tisou talks were due to commence, a document found its way to the Federal Directorate of Intelligence Services that would blow the Dubcek-Brezhnev relationship to pieces..... TO BE CONTINUED Attachments:
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insect
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Post by insect on Feb 18, 2020 0:13:03 GMT
I like!!  |
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Feb 22, 2020 8:42:04 GMT
 PART 2/When It Rains, It Pours Even today it still isn't entirely known who tipped off the Federal Directorate of Intelligence Services to the Soviet plans for invading Czechoslovakia, although most of the available evidence points to sympathetic officials at the Soviet foreign ministry or the Soviet embassy in Prague. But when the now-infamous "Danube memo" reached the agency's headquarters early on the afternoon of July 15th, 1968 it unquestionably threw a monkey wrench into Brezhnev's efforts to put out the reformist fire lit by the Dubcek government. Above all else Operation Danube, the proposed Warsaw Pact contingency plan for imposing a military occupation of Czechoslovakia if Dubcek could not be persuaded by diplomatic means to give up his reforms, relied to a significant degree on the element of surprise to work-- and the cat had just been let out of the bag in a dramatic way. Dubcek's security and defense advisers were understandably shocked by the implications of the Danube memo, but their reaction was mild compared to that of Dubcek himself. In a BBC interview twenty years later, his old defense minister Martin Dzur would recall that Dubcek turned positively apoplectic as he read the translation of the memo's outline for how the invasion would be carried out; at one point the Czech leader actually had to be physically restrained from throwing a glass ashtray across his office. Once he finished reading the memo, however, Dubcek's rage gave way to a cold resolve that the Soviet Union would not be allowed to subjugate his country the way the Germans had 30 years earlier. Correctly suspecting that pro-Soviet factions in the Czech security services would attempt to tap his phone lines, Dubcek resorted to using dispatch riders on motorcycles to make the necessary arrangements with his cabinet to plan his next move. Around 8:00 PM local time that evening he went on the state television network CST to deliver a 90-minute address on what he described as "a matter of the gravest importance to our people and the world". What he said next would send shock waves all across both sides of the Iron Curtain; blasting the Kremlin for what he called "an unconscionable betrayal" by its intentions to occupy Czech territory, he announced that Czechoslovakia was severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact effective at 11:00 AM the next morning. These things alone would have been enough to raise eyebrows, but it was what he followed these with that would truly change the game in the nearly quarter-century old rivalry between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; he closed his speech with a request for military assistance from the United States, Britain, and West Germany in defending Czechoslovakia against the invasion threat. Dubcek had just made the first move in a dangerous game of geopolitical chess whose final outcome even Nostradamus couldn't predict.... TO BE CONTINUED |
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Post by lordroel on Feb 22, 2020 9:14:44 GMT
I like!! Second that. |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Feb 22, 2020 13:24:07 GMT
PART 2/When It Rains, It Pours Even today it still isn't entirely known who tipped off the Federal Directorate of Intelligence Services to the Soviet plans for invading Czechoslovakia, although most of the available evidence points to sympathetic officials at the Soviet foreign ministry or the Soviet embassy in Prague. But when the now-infamous "Danube memo" reached the agency's headquarters early on the afternoon of July 15th, 1968 it unquestionably threw a monkey wrench into Brezhnev's efforts to put out the reformist fire lit by the Dubcek government. Above all else Operation Danube, the proposed Warsaw Pact contingency plan for imposing a military occupation of Czechoslovakia if Dubcek could not be persuaded by diplomatic means to give up his reforms, relied to a significant degree on the element of surprise to work-- and the cat had just been let out of the bag in a dramatic way. Dubcek's security and defense advisers were understandably shocked by the implications of the Danube memo, but their reaction was mild compared to that of Dubcek himself. In a BBC interview twenty years later, his old defense minister Martin Dzur would recall that Dubcek turned positively apoplectic as he read the translation of the memo's outline for how the invasion would be carried out; at one point the Czech leader actually had to be physically restrained from throwing a glass ashtray across his office. Once he finished reading the memo, however, Dubcek's rage gave way to a cold resolve that the Soviet Union would not be allowed to subjugate his country the way the Germans had 30 years earlier. Correctly suspecting that pro-Soviet factions in the Czech security services would attempt to tap his phone lines, Dubcek resorted to using dispatch riders on motorcycles to make the necessary arrangements with his cabinet to plan his next move. Around 8:00 PM local time that evening he went on the state television network CST to deliver a 90-minute address on what he described as "a matter of the gravest importance to our people and the world". What he said next would send shock waves all across both sides of the Iron Curtain; blasting the Kremlin for what he called "an unconscionable betrayal" by its intentions to occupy Czech territory, he announced that Czechoslovakia was severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact effective at 11:00 AM the next morning. These things alone would have been enough to raise eyebrows, but it was what he followed these with that would truly change the game in the nearly quarter-century old rivalry between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; he closed his speech with a request for military assistance from the United States, Britain, and West Germany in defending Czechoslovakia against the invasion threat. Dubcek had just made the first move in a dangerous game of geopolitical chess whose final outcome even Nostradamus couldn't predict.... TO BE CONTINUED
Well that's obviously the POD this memo being leaked to the Czechoslovak's. I'm not sure that Dubcek would have reacted that violently, especially the request for support from NATO as that would be a definite red flag to the Soviets. Also by making this public this early what time does he have to secure the loyalty of the army and do what he could to isolate the Soviet forces already inside the country, which were substantial. Is he going to be willing to have the Czech army firing on them if they move from their bases?
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Feb 26, 2020 20:18:08 GMT
 PART 3/Pilsners and Power Plays President Lyndon Johnson's first reaction to the news of Dubcek's speech requesting NATO assistance in the defense of Czechoslovakia was that it had to be some sort of practical joke. He found it difficult to believe a Warsaw Pact state could turn so swiftly and completely on its sponsors in Moscow. It was only when Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms showed him an English-language transcript of the official Radio Prague bulletin announcing Czechoslovakia's abdication of its alliance with the Soviet Union that Johnson began to take the idea seriously; when Secretary of State Dean Rusk told Johnson that the Czech ambassador to the U.S. wanted to see him, it cemented the President's decision to take some sort of action in response to Dubcek's petition. It was 5:43 PM in Washington on the evening on July 15th(10:43 PM in Prague) when Ivan Roháľ-Iľkiv was ushered into the Oval Office to tell Johnson what had brought about Prague's volte face, and it was a meeting neither man would ever forget. As he listened to the Czech ambassador summarize the contents of the Danube memo, the President let out several audible gasps; Vice-President Hubert Humphrey could be heard murmuring "My God!" at least five times in the space of ten minutes. By the time Roháľ-Iľkiv finally left the White House around midnight on July 16th, the question was no longer if the United States would intervene in the Czech-Soviet confrontation, but how. If Soviet troops succeeded in establishing a foothold in Czechoslovakia, how could anybody be sure Moscow wouldn't try to follow that up with an invasion of West Germany sooner or later? Regardless of how things were going in Vietnam or on America's own streets, something had to be done to stop the Red Army from rolling into western Europe. Once Johnson had reached this conclusion, the Texas wheeler-dealer in him took over and he started canvassing the Congressional leadership to enlist their support for aiding the Dubcek government in its struggle with the Soviets. Simultaneously Vice-President Humphrey and Secretary of State Rusk made the rounds of the British, Canadian, West German, Belgian, and French embassies in Washington to debrief them on the information regarding the Danube memo. It took several days of delicate negotiations, but finally a detailed plan for meeting the Soviet invasion threat was in place, and on July 22nd the United States embassy in Prague notified Dubcek NATO would honor his request for defense assistance. Because of lingering unease stemming from the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland almost thirty years earlier, it was decided West Germany should play a secondary role in NATO's response to the Soviets; Bonn's part in what would later be known as Operation Pressgang would be mainly to provide logistical support and gather intelligence data on Soviet troop movements. Most of the actual combat responsibilities would rest with the United States, Britain, and Canada.... TO BE CONTINUED |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Feb 27, 2020 16:00:13 GMT
pats2001 , I must admit I'm a bit dubious that the US would commit to military support in the event of a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as it was accepted to be in the Soviet sphere, or that they could gain support of the rest of NATO, especially W Germany, which would be essential for logistics as it the only NATO country bordering the threatened state. Basically Johnson is risking war, quite possibly a nuclear one, to extract an accepted Soviet satellite from the Warsaw Pact. Plus I would suspect that once news of Soviet plans leaked and then Dubcek made his appeal for western support the Soviets would move ASAP, including the forces they had in the country already.
If Johnson did decide to fight over the issue its going to be messy. The Soviets can't allow this to happen otherwise it exposes the rest of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe to similar actions. On top of the threat that an independent reforming communist government in Czechoslovakia would pose to the established communist system or that a neutral Czechoslovakia would to Soviet war plans. The latter not only denies the Soviets an ability to attack southern W Germany, freeing up NATO forces for battles elsewhere but also greatly complicates movement of WP forces between E Germany/Poland and the Balkans.
Steve
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Mar 3, 2020 1:40:45 GMT
  PART 4/Shot To The Heart, And You're To Blame Contrary to what certain modern Russian political satirists have claimed, Leonid Brezhnev didn't sack the entire KGB or Red Army senior leadership over a bottle of Stolichnaya. But the joke still gives a clue as to just how angry the Soviet leader was that the plans for Operation Danube had been leaked. By the time the first U.S. Air Force C-130 touched down at Prague-Ruzyně Airport on July 24th a dozen deputies of then-KGB chairman Yuri Andropov had been fired from their posts, and Andropov himself might have been dismissed too had it not been for his friendship with and loyalty to Brezhnev. And even the people who did get fired were comparatively lucky; one of the Red Army officers responsible for maintaining operational security for the proposed Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia was executed by firing squad within minutes after Alexander Dubcek finished his speech requesting NATO assistance. Another officer committed suicide, blowing his brains out with his service pistol rather than endure the humiliation of what otherwise would have been an inevitable court-martial. Still determined to bring Czechoslovakia to heel in spite of what had happened, Brezhnev ordered a swift and massive buildup of Soviet forces in the Ukraine in order to send a message to both Dubcek and Johnson that opposition to Soviet control of eastern Europe would not be tolerated. His hope was that the buildup would intimidate NATO and the Czechs into backing down. His gambit backfired spectacularly. For every Red Army unit that rolled into the Ukraine, two NATO units crossed the West German-Czech border. The U.S. Air Force Tactical Air Command, with permission from the Czech defense ministry, began flying combat air patrols over Czech cities to deter Soviet bomber attacks; the British SAS posted two of its best detachments to a Czech army base near Bratislava with the intent of carrying out guerrilla-style attacks behind Soviet lines if war did break out. Canadian, Dutch, and Belgian paratroops joined Czech border guards in patrolling the Czech-Soviet frontier. Even France, which had largely been standing aloof from full participation in the NATO alliance since 1966, committed to furnishing reconnaissance personnel and field medical detachments to Operation Pressgang. Meanwhile, anti-Soviet protesters continued to march in Prague's Wenceslas Square, with some of the bolder spirits among them taking over the now-deserted Soviet embassy and making it the nerve center for their movement; that action served to further enrage an already incensed Brezhnev, who regarded it as an act of terrorism. In East Berlin, GDR ruler Walter Ulbricht feared the same thing might happen to the still-functioning East German embassy in Prague and ordered elements of the Fallschirmjägerbataillon Willi Sänger(Willi Sanger Parachute Battalion) placed on alert so it could take action if necessary to protect the embassy complex. This in turn prompted the West German Bundeswehr to activate some of its own airborne units and deploy them to the West German-Czech frontier to act as a reserve force in the event of an outbreak of war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. What had started as a minor ideological quarrel between Dubcek and Brezhnev was now escalating into a full-fledged confrontation between the world's two foremost superpowers.... TO BE CONTINUED |
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Mar 7, 2020 1:27:25 GMT
 PART 5/Out Of The Frying Pan, Into....What? Today the Willi Sanger Parachute Battalion only exists in history books and the occasional Cold War memorabilia listing on eBay. But in the summer of 1968 it was one of the Warsaw Pact's most elite airborne units, the East German Volksarmee's answer to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. When Dubcek made his fateful decision to oppose Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, it quickly became clear to intelligence officials on both sides of the Iron Curtain that the Sanger Battalion would pay a critical role in any Warsaw Pact response to NATO intervention. Sure enough, on July 30th, 1968 Volksarmee chief of staff Gen. Heinz Kessler activated two parachute companies and a sapper company from the Sanger Battalion and deployed to an army base near Dresden for the purpose of being ready to move into Prague at a moment's notice if any attempts were made to storm the East German embassy in the Czech capital. Accompanying these units were two teams of agents from the Stasi, East Germany's notorious secret police agency. Ostensibly the agents were with the paratroopers simply to assist them in protecting the Prague embassy staff, but there were darker additional purposes to their involvement. They had compiled a list of people to be "liquidated" if war broke out-- and Alexander Dubcek was at the top of that list. Memories of the June 1953 uprising were still fresh in the minds of the Socialist Unity Party leadership in East Berlin, and they were deeply afraid that what one aide to Walter Ulbricht called the "tumor" of the Prague Spring movement might spread across their own borders in time unless East Germany and her remaining Warsaw Pact allies could subdue the Czechs. The agents were also assigned to discourage the paratroops from making any attempt to defect to the West if things went south. If necessary, Stasi chief Erich Mielke told them before they left Berlin, they were authorized to shoot the paratroops as a last resort to prevent them from deserting their posts. While this may seem unnecessarily harsh to modern observers, it was perfectly consistent with the paranoid mindset that shaped the Ulbricht regime's policies at the time of the Czech crisis. Since the 1953 uprising Ulbricht had seen insurrection in every skeptical expression or hesitation to chant a Unity Party slogan; he wasn't eager to have history repeat itself. Accompanying the Sanger Battalion troops' deployment to Dresden was a widespread Stasi crackdown on suspected internal opponents of the East Berlin government. Between the time Gen. Kessler signed the activation orders on July 30th and the time the first Sanger Battalion troops took up their assigned posts on August 1st more than 500 people were arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of disloyalty to the regime, and out of that number at least 270 would later be executed for treason. While official state media did their best to justify the crackdown as a necessary measure to safeguard the GDR against "hooliganism", many younger East Germans saw the regime's actions in a different and far more negative light-- in their eyes it seemed like just one more excuse for a heavy-handed government to stick its nose in their private lives. A seething resentment began to build inside East Germany's under-30 population, a resentment that would reach critical mass just as the larger NATO-Warsaw Pact impasse over Czechoslovakia was ready to explode into armed conflict. The activation of the three companies from the Sanger Battalion prompted the West German Bundeswehr to activate elements of its own 1st Airborne Division and dispatch them to an outpost near Regensburg, from which it was planned they would operate as a backup force for U.S. and British troops in the event the Soviets tried to go forward with Operation Danube. The already tense situation in central Europe was becoming even more so, and the till-now unthinkable prospect of an inter-German civil war now looked for the first time to be a real possibility. In West Berlin, consular offices were jammed with people looking for visas in a desperate attempt to get out of the city before the bullets(or worse yet, missiles) started flying.... TO BE CONTINUED |
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Post by stevep on Mar 7, 2020 11:26:06 GMT
PART 5/Out Of The Frying Pan, Into....What? Today the Willi Sanger Parachute Battalion only exists in history books and the occasional Cold War memorabilia listing on eBay. But in the summer of 1968 it was one of the Warsaw Pact's most elite airborne units, the East German Volksarmee's answer to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. When Dubcek made his fateful decision to oppose Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, it quickly became clear to intelligence officials on both sides of the Iron Curtain that the Sanger Battalion would pay a critical role in any Warsaw Pact response to NATO intervention. Sure enough, on July 30th, 1968 Volksarmee chief of staff Gen. Heinz Kessler activated two parachute companies and a sapper company from the Sanger Battalion and deployed to an army base near Dresden for the purpose of being ready to move into Prague at a moment's notice if any attempts were made to storm the East German embassy in the Czech capital. Accompanying these units were two teams of agents from the Stasi, East Germany's notorious secret police agency. Ostensibly the agents were with the paratroopers simply to assist them in protecting the Prague embassy staff, but there were darker additional purposes to their involvement. They had compiled a list of people to be "liquidated" if war broke out-- and Alexander Dubcek was at the top of that list. Memories of the June 1953 uprising were still fresh in the minds of the Socialist Unity Party leadership in East Berlin, and they were deeply afraid that what one aide to Walter Ulbricht called the "tumor" of the Prague Spring movement might spread across their own borders in time unless East Germany and her remaining Warsaw Pact allies could subdue the Czechs. The agents were also assigned to discourage the paratroops from making any attempt to defect to the West if things went south. If necessary, Stasi chief Erich Mielke told them before they left Berlin, they were authorized to shoot the paratroops as a last resort to prevent them from deserting their posts. While this may seem unnecessarily harsh to modern observers, it was perfectly consistent with the paranoid mindset that shaped the Ulbricht regime's policies at the time of the Czech crisis. Since the 1953 uprising Ulbricht had seen insurrection in every skeptical expression or hesitation to chant a Unity Party slogan; he wasn't eager to have history repeat itself. Accompanying the Sanger Battalion troops' deployment to Dresden was a widespread Stasi crackdown on suspected internal opponents of the East Berlin government. Between the time Gen. Kessler signed the activation orders on July 30th and the time the first Sanger Battalion troops took up their assigned posts on August 1st more than 500 people were arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of disloyalty to the regime, and out of that number at least 270 would later be execute for treason. While official state media did their best to justify the crackdown as a necessary measure to safeguard the GDR against "hooliganism", many younger East Germans saw the regime's actions in a different and far more negative light-- in their eyes it seemed like just one more excuse for a heavy-handed government to stick its nose in their private lives. A seething resentment began to build inside East Germany's under-30 population, a resentment that would reach critical mass just as the larger NATO-Warsaw Pact impasse over Czechoslovakia was ready to explode into armed conflict. The activation of the three companies from the Sanger Battalion prompted the West German Bundeswehr to activate elements of its own 1st Airborne Division and dispatch them to an outpost near Regensburg, from which it was planned they would operate as a backup force for U.S. and British troops in the event the Soviets tried to go forward with Operation Danube. The already tense situation in central Europe was becoming even more so, and the till-now unthinkable prospect of an inter-German civil war now looked for the first time to be a real possibility. In West Berlin, consular offices were jammed with people looking for visas in a desperate attempt to get out of the city before the bullets(or worse yet, missiles) started flying.... TO BE CONTINUED
Sounds rather like both sides are competing to see how large a pile of gunpowder they can build up before someone gets careless with a match. With an additional potential explosion developing in E Germany.
I'm still doubtful that NATO would respond in such a way or that the WP forces in Czechoslovakia wouldn't have responded as soon as Dubcek made his declaration and asked for NATO assistance. I can't see the west being that willing to challenge the Soviets in their own sphere or the Soviets not stamping down quickly.
Steve
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Mar 7, 2020 19:31:25 GMT
The Soviet occupation plan in OTL depended on the element of surprise. Now that the cat's been let out of the bag in TTL, Moscow has to go back to the drawing board to rethink their game plan. Anyhow, Part 6 will be going up in the next couple of days if not sooner.
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pats2001
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Post by pats2001 on Mar 7, 2020 22:46:06 GMT
 PART 6/The Joker In The Deck One unexpected beneficiary of the escalating tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Czechoslovakia was Nicolae Ceausescu, the mercurial president of Romania at the time Operation Pressgang commenced. Since succeeding Gherorghe Gheorghu-Dej in 1965 he'd largely been a bit player on the global stage; even among his fellow eastern European heads of state he was an afterthought. But in the days and weeks after the plans for Operation Danube were leaked, his defiant stance towards Moscow began to draw him considerable attention from the rest of the world, particularly the White House and 10 Downing Street. He passionately denounced the Brezhnev regime's plans to occupy Czechoslovakia and severed diplomatic ties with every remaining Warsaw Pact with the notable exception of Romania's immediate neighbor Hungary. On August 5th Ceausescu held a massive rally in the Romanian capital Bucharest that one British newspaper correspondent would later describe as "modern Romania's coming-out party". Over 100,000 Romanians gathered in what is today known as Charles de Gaulle Square in the heart of Bucharest to show solidarity with the Czechs and listen to a fiery 90-minute address by Ceausescu in which he accused Brezhnev of "murdering" the ideals of socialism and posing a grave general threat to the peace of the world. That address won him the admiration of many in the West and sparked the beginning of an active effort by the United States to court his backing for Operation Pressgang. Seeing the opportunity to boost Romania's international standing and his own personal prestige, Ceausescu was only too happy to grant Washington's requests to support NATO efforts in defense of Czechoslovakia. Two days after the Bucharest rally he announced in a nationally televised press conference that the Romanian armed forces would be at NATO's disposal if war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was an irony the most imaginative science fiction writers would have scarcely dared predict; in might what well be the most critical test of its strength NATO had faced since the organization was established in 1949, it would have the backing of two nations that just a few years earlier had been staunch Soviet allies. Not since Italy's defection from the Axis following the overthrow of Benito Mussolini in 1943 had Europe seen such a dramatic change in a country's foreign policy course. And it didn't take long for the Ceausescu government to make good on its pledge-- on August 10th two battalions of Romanian infantry arrived in Bratislava to assist the British in defending that city, and the following day a Romanian air force reconnaissance unit arrived in Brno to begin monitoring Soviet troop movements. Brezhnev now had two headaches to deal with in eastern Europe.... TO BE CONTINUED |
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Post by stevep on Mar 8, 2020 13:29:53 GMT
PART 6/The Joker In The Deck One unexpected beneficiary of the escalating tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Czechoslovakia was Nicolae Ceausescu, the mercurial president of Romania at the time Operation Pressgang commenced. Since succeeding Gherorghe Gheorghu-Dej in 1965 he'd largely been a bit player on the global stage; even among his fellow eastern European heads of state he was an afterthought. But in the days and weeks after the plans for Operation Danube were leaked, his defiant stance towards Moscow began to draw him considerable attention from the rest of the world, particularly the White House and 10 Downing Street. He passionately denounced the Brezhnev regime's plans to occupy Czechoslovakia and severed diplomatic ties with every remaining Warsaw Pact with the notable exception of Romania's immediate neighbor Hungary. On August 5th Ceausescu held a massive rally in the Romanian capital Bucharest that one British newspaper correspondent would later describe as "modern Romania's coming-out party". Over 100,000 Romanians gathered in what is today known as Charles de Gaulle Square in the heart of Bucharest to show solidarity with the Czechs and listen to a fiery 90-minute address by Ceausescu in which he accused Brezhnev of "murdering" the ideals of socialism and posing a grave general threat to the peace of the world. That address won him the admiration of many in the West and sparked the beginning of an active effort by the United States to court his backing for Operation Pressgang. Seeing the opportunity to boost Romania's international standing and his own personal prestige, Ceausescu was only too happy to grant Washington's requests to support NATO efforts in defense of Czechoslovakia. Two days after the Bucharest rally he announced in a nationally televised press conference that the Romanian armed forces would be at NATO's disposal if war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was an irony the most imaginative science fiction writers would have scarcely dared predict; in might what well be the most critical test of its strength NATO had faced since the organization was established in 1949, it would have the backing of two nations that just a few years earlier had been staunch Soviet allies. Not since Italy's defection from the Axis following the overthrown of Benito Mussolini in 1943 had Europe seen such a dramatic change in a country's foreign policy course. And it didn't take long for the Ceausescu government to make good on its pledge-- on August 10th two battalions of Romanian infantry arrived in Bratislava to assist the British in defending that city, and the following day a Romanian air force reconnaissance unit arrived in Brno to begin monitoring Soviet troop movements. Brezhnev now had two headaches to deal with in eastern Europe.... TO BE CONTINUED
Well Ceausescu was an opportunist as well as a very nasty piece of work as history was to show so that could be embarrassing late down the line for the west but at the moment it seriously undermines the Soviet position. They have not only lost another 'ally' but also land access to Bulgaria, which would greatly weaken their position with regards to Greece and Turkey and their ability to impose pressure on NATO there. It also means Hungary is more exposed, although it still has a common border with the USSR. [Did Ceausescu get permission from Budapest for the overflight of their territory or do it regardless.]
I wonder what the stance of Tito and Yugoslavia is at this time? He could stay neutral and keep his head down or offer support for the Czechs or for Moscow as the break up of the Soviet bloc could be seen as a threat to his own position.
The Soviets and also I suspect the Hungarian and E German governments especially will be very worried about those developments as the entire bloc is looking very fragile and their main concern with Dubcek was already that by allowing criticism of the party in his own country it could encourage people to follow a similar path in their own countries. As such I can't see them taking this lying down and expect some military intervention.
Checking Brezhnev had removed the Soviet forces already in the country in June as a gesture to Dubcek - see Prague_Spring#Soviet_reaction. He could be feeling betrayed now, although the trigger was his own decision to invade Czechoslovakia and its leaking.
Steve
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