People's War

Thirty-nine – Betrayal


The East Germans had a total of nineteen Coalition aircrew in custody. They were hunting for more known to have been downed over the DDR and on the run, but bagging almost twenty of them was considered by the regime to have been quite a success. The country was full of uniformed military personnel, so many of those reservists, and on a couple of occasions, it had been they who had been instrumental in seeing the aircrew captured. State propaganda played up their role in that: ordinary East Germans, patriots to a man & woman, doing their bit in the people’s war. All of those captives had been offered up to be released as part of an end to the Coalition’s air campaign. The goodwill that setting them free – not from hostile governments, but from the people within them – was regarded as far more important than holding them. The injured ones especially would play a role in what was seen as a savvy political move. Of the nineteen, seven were Americans. There were additionally four Britons, three Frenchmen, two Belgians and one each from Denmark, Italy & the Netherlands. All had been spread out across the country, held at various sites less the Americans make one of their own propaganda moves with a big rescue effort to get them all at once. They’d been taken to East Berlin though and the DDR regime was ready to hand them over to the Russians so Moscow could arrange for them to be gotten out and gain its own goodwill in that. However, the Coalition launched that extensive set of follow-up air attacks across East Germany. There was nothing physically stopping the hand-over but, in response, the regime led by Margot Honecker halted the transfer of those nineteen to the Russians. For their own safety, so said an official statement that came out of East Berlin, there could be no hand over of those aircrew.

Cross-German rail traffic relied extensively on East German participation. Not just through the Inner-German Border but also inside West Berlin too there were rail workers for the DDR regime who kept the trains running. Those links had been shut ahead of Operation Allied Sword getting underway when East Germany fully sealed its borders. Waiting over in West Germany, near to Brunswick and close to Checkpoint Alpha, were several freight trains laden with essential food and medical supplies destined for West Berlin. The government in Bonn had put together the relief convoy and had planned to send the trains direct to that isolated city with a joint West German-DDR cooperation undertaken. The skies were closed, so too the roads, but the East Germans were prepared to see a rail convoy (something which they could fully control) make that journey. Just like the prisoner transfer, the passage of those freight trains was cancelled pretty much at the last minute. It was too dangerous for that convoy of relief supplies to make the trip with the DDR not willing to put its rail workers at risk: such was the reasoning made in another official announcement.

East Germany shut down those two avenues of seeing a return to pre-conflict normality not just because the country was heavily bombed overnight when the widespread belief had been that that had come to an end. Honecker and the Politburo did so also because the United States quite deliberately, openly too, scuppered the peace deal being worked upon in an effort made by both Bonn and Moscow working in unison. When he was running for election the next year, seeking a second term, it would be said during that campaign that President Cuomo acted out of a personal motive against the involvement of Chernomyrdin. The conflict in 1995 with East Germany figured heavily in that presidential race and the revelations which were backed up by leaked internal documents didn’t come as much of a surprise at that stage. Yet, in early July ‘95, when it did happen, there was a significant shock at what was done. Cuomo had his secretary of state go up to New York where the UN was. Chancellor Schäuble and Chernomyrdin had both sent their foreign ministers to there where they were going to use that international body to provide the framework for what they had set up. Those foreign ministers were seeking to bring neutral countries onboard. When the US SecState arrived though, she let it be known that her country was fully opposed to that, would take measures against others who supported it and also veto any UN action. The East Germans couldn’t be trusted, so was the reasoning, and they were trying to take the West German and the Russians, and thus anyone else who they could bring with them, for fools.

Chernomyrdin had agreed to work with Schäuble only through the UN. The latter had wanted for Russia to make use of its victor rights from WW2 where those related to East Germany but his counterpart in Moscow had preferred to see things done under a UN mandate. Nuclear inspections, the sending of peacekeepers into the Czech Republic and the DDR getting rid of its ballistic missile force were considered by Chernomyrdin to be more that Russia alone could handle. Schäuble had gone along with that though not with wholescale naivety. He had known that the Americans would do something… just not do what they did so effectively, so fast and also without care as to who knew that they were prepared to kill all talk of peace. Once the SecState did what she did, following presidential instructions to the letter, that was the end of that. The Russians pulled out of the diplomacy that the West Germans had brought them in to see done. It was pointless to try and carry on. Chernomyrdin himself would later make a statement from Moscow bemoaning the American position where they wanted to continue to see peace in Europe destabilised, but Schäuble was quicker off the mark. He spoke to the media early in the morning after the night of air attacks across in the DDR and linked the two events – what happened in New York and the further bombing – together. Diplomacy had failed once more, he said, as the American-led Coalition was determined to do everything to carry on with its war.


News camera crews based in West Berlin had on the first night of the air campaign shot some excellent footage from vantage points of explosions on the other side of the Berlin Wall when the DDR capital was bombed. There had been no repeat of those images on subsequent nights due to the Coalition not striking in East Berlin again. On the third night though, a CNN team in the American sector of West Berlin had gone to the southwestern corner and recorded footage of what happened outside in the direction of Potsdam. They didn’t get anything of good quality and viewers weren’t really able to see what they were looking at either. Yet there were big fireballs recorded once again. With night #4, Western media teams got nothing from inside West Berlin looking out when seeking to broadcast images of air attacks. The few others inside the DDR itself also weren’t able to gain live footage either that night too. Only the following morning were they escorted out of the ‘protected accommodation’ that they were in and taken by their handlers to various locations across the country did they see the aftermath. Images from bombed-out sites was recorded but it had none of the sex appeal that huge explosions broadcast live did. However, where there were more camera crews outside of airbases being used by the Coalition in West Germany and other European countries, there was footage during the night taken of aircraft lifting off and more of that of them returning too including some daylight images. News that jets were flying and presumably heading eastwards was broadcast in real time. The general public were made aware of what was going on via that medium long ahead of that being confirmed.

It wasn’t until the next morning that official statements were made from Coalition governments. There was confirmation made of what was already known: there had been further air strikes made against East Germany. From out of the MOD in London, a spokesman highlighted the activity on the ground around the nuclear sites and thus explained the reasoning for the heavy targeting of them. It was a concise and accurate statement with solid justification provided for those air attacks and what was deemed the supporting ones to make sure that the mission there wasn’t something that the DDR could defend against. Supporters of Operation Allied Sword were convinced by that, and too by additional remarks made by other spokespeople, ministers and leaders in further countries. As to the opponents of the ongoing military action, they really couldn’t have given a damn about what was said. There was no justification in their eyes, none at all. They only saw betrayal.

In West Germany, the subsequent outpouring of anger that was seen in public followed that belief. There had been a chance for peace, with East Germany willing to go the extra mile, and in reply came first the egregious actions taken at the UN and then those bombs dropped once more upon their fellow Germans. A statement out of East Berlin said that more civilian casualties had been caused – no details given – during the renewed air strikes. That inflamed things more. Protests and demonstrations took place in West Germany with a lot of that directed towards the big Coalition military bases on their soil. The sense of betrayal was wider than just within that one country. The anti-war movement in Coalition countries was just as outraged by what happened. The numbers of people who agreed with them, who had previously been supportive of the air campaign, increased due to defections from that camp too when the loudest voices against the conflict again and again made that claim of betrayal.