People's War

Seven – WMDs


Assassinating the Czech president, framing the prime minister of that small country for murder and throwing everything at getting a favoured candidate into power there in the nation which neighboured East Germany was all not lightly done. Several years beforehand, there had been an effort to put the young Nicu Ceaușescu into power in Romania. That had been a foolish, vanity exercise that had rightfully failed due to the haphazard nature of it all. The DDR regime hadn’t been serious enough there – though even if they had, the attempt would still have been doomed in all honesty – because it wasn’t essential to the survival of East Germany. Seeing a leadership change in the Czech Republic was though. It needed to work.

Since the Seventies, the wheels had been coming off the national economy. East Germany had been propped up by Soviet subsidies then massive, eye-watering loans from West Germany too. During the Special Period post-’89, none of that was available. Belts were tightened nationwide with luxuries forgone. The economic sanctions imposed by the West hurt, but it was hurt already atop of the gaping wound that was the national financial situation. The DDR’s economy just couldn’t function properly. The weapons smuggling, which moved to general state-backed criminality in moving non-military goods, had started back in the Eighties and expanded significantly during the Nineties. East Germany might smuggle a crate of missiles but there would be a container of grain too. Food, medicines, fuel, industrial equipment… the country had to go out and get all of that either cheap or, better yet, without paying for it all. Serious effort had to be undertaken to cover up what was done, sometimes negating the value of what had been stolen making the process more difficult and costly going forwards. Notice was taken all over the place among foreign governments, international organisations and investigative journalists of what was going on. Denials from East Berlin came but they were less and less convincing every time. Access to needed goods was slowly shut down. Changes in governments within Russia, as well as Belarus and Bulgaria, brought with them allies whom East Germany turned to. They weren’t willing to do what they did for nothing though. What had seemed fortuitous at first turned sour, with Russia especially. Chernomyrdin wanted a bigger slice, he in fact wanted everything that the DDR had been getting its hands upon. Too much dependence upon his regime had been shifted too quick, leading to East Germany getting stuck in the quicksand that was Russian state corruption.

What it couldn’t steal, the regime had to buy. The sanctions were gotten around using false buyers: either private companies or individuals abroad. Payment was never in East German Marks. Foreign currency was needed and that had to be of the valued & convertible kind. Sellers wanted their payment using Deutschmarks, US Dollars, Pound Sterling or French & Swiss Francs. That illegal smuggling effort organised by the state had started out with the intention of gaining such currency solely for that purpose though that was before a lot of it was diverted into personal hands: those acting as criminals took that to its natural conclusion and became what they pretended to be. Not enough foreign currency came in – the books were cooked right to explain away the absence – and East Germany really began to feel the shortage come 1995. That was compounded upon by the actions of Havel and, to a lesser extent, the West German Parliament as well. With regards to the latter, West Germany had been for decades buying the freedom of East Germans. In a process known as häftlingsfreikauf (prisoner’s ransom), political prisoners in the DDR were released across the border in exchange for payment in valued Deutschmarks. Parliamentarians in Bonn finally put an end to that. The humanitarian argument was used by Schäuble try to keep it going but the chancellor was overruled. East Germany was using that money to stay afloat, to finance criminality and to carry on oppressing millions more of its citizens. As to the Czech President, he helped highlight East German activity to those who had for so long desired to look away by using his popularity outside of his country as a noted warrior against communism to make everyone aware of what the DDR was up to. His speeches and lobbying brought attention to illegal activity that was gradually shut down. When he went to Poland to arrange for that informal Czech-Polish defensive pact, Borusewicz there agreed that Poland would help put the squeeze on East Germany. Ships carrying cargo that entered Polish ports often had elements of that bound for East Germany no matter what the paperwork said about ultimate destination. Through Szczecin a lot of the smuggling into the DDR started because foreign companies were banned for sending goods to East Germany directly. Yet neither of those two presidents knew how just much the Szczecin route was relied upon and the closing it down really hurt East Germany with a near immediate effect. Havel had got wind of the matter due to the Moldauhafen anchorage at the Port of Hamburg. Under a ninety-nine year lease arranged back in 1929, Czechoslovakia (and thus the Czech successor state who took over the lease) had access to their own berths there. East German smuggling went through Moldauhafen like it did through Szczecin, before the Czechs and the West Germans together worked to shut that down at the end of ‘94. Szczecin’s importance had grown more than they knew. Furthermore, trucks, canal barges & rail cars laden with goods often went through East Germany between Poland and Western Europe with movements going both ways. Cargo disappeared where it was most often not on a manifest but there were also noticeable thefts. The latter became more and more visible with Borusewicz already seeking to see than end before Havel presented an agreement to allow for Polish freight to move through the Czech Republic. West German companies were open to the idea, willing to shift routings, and the Czech economy would also benefit. While the focus there was on illegal goings-on, there were also the legitimate factors involved where East Germany made money in the open from transit fees but also secondary spending: none of that had been subject to Western sanctions. Havel and Borusewicz were working on getting that set up when the former took that flight where he fell seriously ill.

What was wanted in East Berlin was a Czech government that would stop all that was being done to cause serious damage to the DDR economy that was already on the verge of complete collapse. A sticky plaster would be applied, so the hope went, with the halt to the death by a thousand cuts that the ideologically-driven Havel was doing. More that than, down the line there was the aim that the new leader installed in Prague would be more favourable to East Germany in other ways. Trade between the two countries was wanted with an eye on exploiting that Czech economy rather than seeing each getting a fair deal out of things. Their Candidate X had an idea of patriotism that involved getting himself rich: him first, country a distant second. It would take more than even that to turn things around long-term for the DDR but it was a start. Margot Honecker and her Politburo were getting desperate. They told themselves that they had a good plan and the outcome was likely to see success. Stasi chief Schwanitz held back a ‘Plan B’ option just in case though he never intended that to come into play.


The first half of 1995 witnessed eyes finally being fully opened among Western intelligence services, and thus their governments, when it came to what East Germany was involved in alongside various unsavoury allies with the procurement of weapons of mass destruction. The DDR never had a WMD programme when part of the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact. There was no ‘nuclear sharing’ – like what NATO did in preparation for war – nor was the country allowed to have any independence in acquiring weapons of such nature. The Soviets never would have allowed it, not with memories still fresh of Hitler’s attempt at full-scale genocide. There was the technical know-how though and East Germany had much of what was needed to arm itself with WMDs should it set about doing so. The DDR was like other nations, West Germany included, who could, if the political will was there, and foreign opposition not actively in-place, with the ability to become a nuclear power. Erich Honecker had authorised that beginnings of a WMD programme in 1991. It wasn’t chemicals nor biological weapons that the Stasi set about seeing that East Germany could be armed with but nuclear weapons instead. Armed with such weapons, no foreign invasion to depose the regime would ever occur. When it had been set up, Margot Honecker had actually been opposed to the idea. Only a select inner circle of the Politburo knew and she had been the strongest voice against it all. Her concern was that the West, maybe the Russians too working with them, would put a stop to the DDR joining the most exclusive of clubs that a nation could join. Her husband had overruled such suggestions. The country must be able to defend itself with the threat of nuclear force, he had argued, though he did declare his intention that there would never be the actual use: to possess them meant that they would never have to be employed, didn’t it?

The secrecy was quite something when it came to the effort to arm itself. Iraq and Libya were joint partners, as they were with an associated missile programme, and within their countries, there were even more ruthless measures taken to ensure that the knowledge was closely held. The trio worked together though each was firmly intended to shut the other two out at the very end and take everything for themselves. Duplicitous final goals aside, there was much cooperation done in the meantime. Real progress was made towards assembling nuclear weapons that could be fitted towards military hardware that each nation employed already and planned to in the future too. East Germany supplied the uranium. It came from domestic sources at the Wismut facility in Saxony. Their allies helped in other ways with more materials with some quite underhand, violent means to acquire what was needed. The DDR leadership as well as Gaddafi and Saddam both were eager throughout the years for things to be completed. Just how long could all of this take!? It did take a long time though. To rush it all was impossible. The secrecy and thus the inability to undertake tests slowed things down dramatically. In April ‘95, Margot Honecker was briefed upon the progress. She was told six more months were needed before East Germany could become a nuclear power. Her position with regards to such weapons had changed. She saw the need for them that her deceased husband had. To have them, to tell the world that East Germany had them, would ensure the survival of the regime against any attempt at the foreign invasion she had begun to fear was one day likely from the West who wanted to see the DDR regime thrown into the ashes of history.

That same report she read there in East Berlin was read first in Tel Aviv and then later in Washington, London and Paris. Mossad operatives all over what they thought was a conventional Libyan missile programme – with the reach to hit Israel – came across the Iraqi and then East German connections to that. Further investigation uncovered the desired payload. The discussions that were had in Tel Aviv were similar to those had there more than a decade before when it came to Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor: the national policy was to strike ahead of capability less an enemy gain usable nuclear weapons. That was soon realised to be more difficult than thought though considering how far along everything was and the dispersed nature of things. There was activity down in Libya but also in Iraq and especially East Germany. Shimon Peres (someone demonised in East German propaganda for his premiership of Israel) went to the Americans with what he knew. Not everyone back in Tel Aviv agreed with that, believing that it should be an Israeli-only matter, but he looked at what he saw as the bigger picture. If Israel stamped out what was going on physically in Libya, plus Iraq as well, the East Germans would only continue. Who knew if one day the crazy, anti-Semites there would pass their nuclear weapons technology onto another Arab regime? That was unlikely but so was the very real East Berlin–Tripoli–Baghdad alliance. Only the Americans could really put a stop to the whole thing. Cuomo would later make the decision to not tell the Israelis that he shared what they told him with the British and French: Peres had regarded the matter as between him and the 42nd President. That was done because Cuomo was briefed by his intelligence people that those two countries were already biting at the edges of getting a look-in towards a possible East German WMD programme. What Israel had uncovered confirmed what they had suspected. In London and Paris there had been a lot of wishing that they were wrong, that they were barking up the wrong tree, due to what flimsy evidence they had that the DDR might be involved in a nuclear weapons programme. When the Americans told them that they were right all along, after several years of politely telling them that they were paranoid, there wasn’t any ‘I told you so’ directed back towards Washington. The situation was too serious for that. It had actually been said by members of the Cuomo Administration to concerned European counterparts that East Germany was more likely to steal (from out of the former USSR) rather than create its own nuclear weapons: they were wrong there in Washington but there was no celebration of that in Britain & France.

It was in nobody’s interest for East Germany to have such weapons, let alone for the Iraqis and Libyans to be involved as well when they were led by such madmen as Saddam & Gaddafi. The Israelis did find out that Washington had been blabbing though the reaction wasn’t much in the end. They were more concerned about what came back as a consequence of that unauthorised sharing of information. The United States had its own eyes on missile activity in Iraq that was then revealed to Peres. It would be noted by yet unsaid by the British foreign secretary that if only all of them had put their heads together early on, working in unison, there would have been a real chance to nip the whole thing in the bud at the start. All of the pieces fitted together. What they had all uncovered only made sense then. Suspected thefts of nuclear material all over the place including plutonium from a Swedish civilian nuclear reactor. Professors in nuclear physics with unexplained absences from the Humboldt University in East Berlin. Extensive security around an unknown state military facility at Trebbin within the DDR. A major, unexplained effort by the Iraqis to silence a defector who’d reached Jordan who had a background in missile warhead technology. Disappearances of Libyan PhD students in various fields where their value for Gaddafi wasn’t exploited as it might have been. All of these little pieces, and so much more, fitted together in that jigsaw to point to what the Israelis having their hands on in terms of that report to East Germany’s new leader as being true. Before anyone in the West could approve any action, there was further proof required though. Peres agreed to wait too. Back home, there was a desire to start bombing but he said that Israel would hold its punches. Not for long though, just a little while. He did so because the Cuomo Administration wanted to be sure before it acted. Waiting also meant that when Israel did strike, it wouldn’t be alone and could really put an end to the whole thing rather than just see the danger delayed a few years. So Peres waited. And he waited some more. His impatience, those of his colleagues, was pushed to the very limit. When was action going to be taken? Washington urged caution. Come the following month, East Germany tried to change the leadership of the Czech Republic to one suitable to its own needs. Western attention focused on that yet the WMD issue still hadn’t been solved. That six month time limit had been chipped away at while, as Peres’ defence minister put it, Cuomo tried to discover his manhood.

When Margot would talk with Kim Jong-il?

Good summary of the situation in all ways to be honest.




Damn, I should have had that in earlier on. I'll look for a later connection.


They really are becoming desperate as the walls close in.
Its all going to be exposed and people will believe it.
It will a a 'Coalition' rather than NATO in the end.  

But West Germany might think otherwise.

Eight – Final straw


In birth at the beginning of 1993, the Czech Republic inherited a portion of the armed forces of the former Czechoslovakia. There had already been a rapid downsizing post-’89 of what had been a large military force during the communist years and that continued following the split with the new Slovak Republic. Conscription remained in-place yet it wasn’t fully enforced. Unit disbandment, unity and reorganisation took place. Equipment was placed into storage and military facilities closed. The officer corps was slimmed down significantly and so too was the technical base of non-commissioned officers. The Czech Republic no longer needed the mass of manpower and firepower that had once been available during the years of the Warsaw Pact. By mid-1995, the Czech Armed Forces were a shadow of what they once had been and there was a wide belief that what remained was nothing more than a paper tiger too. Major exercises hadn’t been undertaken in a long time, equipment & munitions was left without care in warehouses (a lot of that stolen to be sold on the black market too) and morale was rather low. Candidate X, the East German-backed contender for the vacant presidency, had a good following among the military. He had long appealed to those in uniform, of the officer class especially, with his message of the need to ‘restore order’ nationwide. Enforcing discipline among the people in times of woe was a message that cut through there. NCOs and what conscripts did serve their country were less impressed with such rhetoric though how deep that unease went was something that wasn’t measurable. Before his death, Havel had approved governmental measures – coming from Klaus – to make further cuts to military numbers. The president had wanted to see the Czech Republic join NATO and an armed forces slimmed down even more than they were but with more capability was the intention. Yet, disputes had taken place as to what that meant and whether the cutbacks were the right way ahead. At the same time, during the early months of ‘94 there had also been a deployment made of military forces to the country’s northwestern border where the frontier ran with East Germany. Soldiers were sent to aid customs enforcement by freeing up those non-militarised personnel from patrol duties. Troops were tasked to ensure that only legal cross-border traffic went through and that the rampant smuggling came to a complete close.

Czech soldiers had been sent to what history had once called part of the Sudetenland. No one in the Czech Republic called the border region with East Germany that name though, not since the end of World War Two and the forcible ethnic cleansing that had taken place there to rid the area of Germans. On the Czech side of the Ore Mountains, with East Germany’s region of Saxony over on the other side, there were a good number of soldiers out there by the middle of May. There had been few encounters by them with the smugglers they were sent to combat. The mission was questioned by most of those involved who believed that it was all a political stunt. Still, they were able to get some unofficial exercises underway and move in large-scale manoeuvres where for some time beforehand, ministers in Prague hadn’t wished to see any of that done. A three-star general led that deployment to the not-Sudetenland. He was a supporter of Candidate X and the two of the, general & politician, had a mutual acquaintance within the defence ministry who arranged a meeting out in the field. It was one not authorised by Prague for the general to take and he shouldn’t have done what he did. That was just the start of his illegal behaviour though. Candidate X won him over to his side and gained the backing of the general for what he said was the presidency being denied to him. It was wrong that he was being locked out of power, it was wrong that in a time of crisis when the West was attempted to smear & slander patriotic Czechs that a cabal of corrupt politicians there in the capital were willing to see all of that happen. A hypothetical plan of action was drawn up to change things. Candidate X then asked if that hypothetical could become a reality…? What if they could save their country together?


May 17th witnessed an attempted coup made in the Czech Republic. Soldiers moved against Prague aiming to install in there a new president. A divisional-sized element of troops went towards the city aiming to seize control. Orders ran to those below the general at the top that those involved were on their way to restore order to the nation against traitors working to see the nation fractured and sent into anarchy. Everything happened very fast with that process: there was no time for questions, not with the future of the country at stake! Columns of armoured vehicles – OT-64 wheeled personnel carriers rather than tanks – as well as many trucks sent almost ten thousand soldiers away from the border regions and towards the capital. It was a night-time movement with subunits sent also to locations outside of Prague where the government buildings were. Seizures were planned to take place of military bases as well as the main national airport. On paper, it was a good plan. In reality though, things were different. There was a lot of confusion during the rush deployment over routings which took place in the darkness. Those involved weren’t as motivated as they should have been when involved in such an endeavour. When it came to rules of engagement, the soldiers were instructed to only open fire on those who directly opposed them and who could be regarded as hostile. Talk of ‘foreign conspirators’ acting against the Czech Republic was in the mission orders but that was too vague along with what constituted too to be ‘traitors’ allegedly working with them. Radio silence was meant to be enforced during the movement so as to take enemies of the nation by surprise. That was rapidly broken though by junior officers seeking clarification when they came upon stumbling blocks as well as those seeking directions. Shots were exchanged early on during the takeover attempts of selected facilities outside of Prague before the main body of troops, led by the general himself, were able to reach the capital. He was called upon for permission to open fire and with subordinates too starting to refuse to fire upon fellow Czechs when it actually came down to it. The force stumbled onwards in the face of setbacks, just slower than planned.

Klaus and others managed to flee Prague. He and his government were supposed to be caught sleeping with the nation waking up to a new president who had come to restore order while the prime minister was already in custody. The ‘noise’ that was made during the approach over the airwaves and also reports from military posts in the way of the advance on the capital gave warning though. There was a rush from loyal troops to facilitate the evacuation of Klaus and move into place to defend the city. The prime minister had wanted to stay, declaring that that to flee meant giving in, but he was bundled into a helicopter at the insistence of the defence minister who knew that he had few soldiers at-hand. Prague would fall and he didn’t want to be responsible for seeing Klaus captured. What was done in the short time available was to instead make a stand, even a doomed one, so that those seeking to overthrow the legitimate government would have to fight for the city. They, other Czechs and the whole world would then know that blood had been spilt. That was important if the confusing but clearly abhorrent coup would face proper opposition down the line. Prague was reached in the early hours of the following morning. The entry made was several hours behind schedule following a series of navigation errors, breakdown and general f*ck-ups on the way. There was fighting right in the heart of the city. Czech commandos from the 6th Special Brigade, along with conscripts who served as the garrison force, put up resistance to try to stop the inevitable. They weren’t aware of the defence minister’s line of thinking about making a stand for the sake of making a stand. Instead, they fought to defend their country’s rule of law. Quickly, heavy firepower was made use of. Prague Castle would become a battlefield and so too many other buildings in the centre of the city. Casualties mounted dramatically. Czechs awoke to their city having become a battlefield. The defenders were finally overcome before midday. They held out longer than expected yet in the end, their numbers were too few to stop the inevitable. The seizure of the city was a complete mess though. The troops involved put up quite a poor show of themselves. All of the years of the Czech Armed Forces being run down had mattered.

Candidate X arrived in Prague. In an entirely illegitimate fashion, he had himself installed as the new president. His inauguration was in no way how it was supposed to be as per the constitution. Few political backers were on-hand and it was bayonets, not the votes of parliamentarians, who put him into power. His televised claim afterwards that he was the nation’s rightful ruler came right before another broadcast made from Pardubice where Klaus was. Over in that smaller city to the east of Prague, the prime minister was at a military airbase where his evacuation had taken him to. Klaus denounced the seizure of power made in Prague and denied that there was any legitimacy to the man in the capital claiming authority. He said that it was treason which had put Candidate X in power, treason aided by East Germany too. Klaus called upon all Czechs to resist the coup and to stand with the legitimate Czech government. Those of his countrymen he called upon to side with him included the armed forces as well. He promised that Prague would be liberated and those who had taken it in doing what they had would face punishment.


There was an explosion of hostility from outside the Czech Republic at what happened.

East German fingerprints were all over the violent seizure of Prague even if there was no direct evidence that they had an actual physical presence there when the city was taken. The previous exposure of Stasi activities in assassinating Havel and trying to frame Klaus for murder was fresh in the minds of those who witnessed from afar the sudden action taken by Czech soldiers rebelling against the recognised government. Images came out of Prague where there were international media crews already there due to recent ongoing events. Again, while it was Czechs fighting Czechs with not a single figure from the DDR regime present, it was widely understood that East Germany was behind everything that was going on. That was unacceptable for governments as well as many of their peoples. To many, it was the final straw in what they were willing to accept from those in East Berlin who were defying all international norms and behaving outrageously. Government meetings were held in foreign capitals and there was also contact between them too. Klaus’ government, first when it was at Pardubice and the following his movement to the city of Olomouc, was contacted. Western governments affirmed that they recognised his authority. The Poles were in contact as well where there was the offer of more than just words but direct assistance: Havel and Borusewicz had made that arrangement between them of mutual defence.

The world continued to watch as the aftermath of the seizure of Prague played out. Candidate X and his position as president wasn’t just challenged by Klaus and those with him who had gotten out of the capital in time. The initial plan of action taken to launch the coup had run with the belief that once Prague was taken and the new president declared, the rest of the country would fall in-line. Military units were expected to side with those who held Prague. That didn’t happen as it was meant to. There were those who did so, who supported the apparent restoration of order, but they were in the minority. The rest came down on the side of the legitimate government where they declared their allegiance to the elected government. The rebellion had been denounced by Klaus and he had called upon Czechs, in uniform as well as civilians, to support his authority. Czech military forces across the country responded to that call. The first shots of the civil war had been fired when Prague was taken and there were quickly more of them. Across the country, shooting incidents took place. The country moved into the stage of an undeclared civil war. No one wanted that, certainly not even the DDR regime, but it began regardless of the wishes of Czechs and others outside.

Second Prague Spring becomes Prague War.

It certainly has.




It was all supposed to be over so quickly too!


It will indeed.