Post by artraveler on Dec 12, 2021 7:49:34 GMT -8
This is an essay I wrote in 2014 for a graduate class covering the Cold War.
Cold War,
Without Option
The Cold War is over, the major players have gone home to write their memoirs and comfort themselves that they avoided a much more catastrophic hot war that potentially could have killed hundreds of millions. The Cold War, like many others, was fought in many places in many nations, by unidentified men and women on both sides who will not write memoirs or leave much in the way of recorded histories. One of the most critical fronts of the Cold War was Germany the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic were, for the most part; unwilling actors in a game they could only make small contributions to play and could never win.
The 1970s were crucial for both the West as led by the United States and the East as led by the Soviet Union. The United States President, Richard Nixon, who was intent on ending the Vietnam War and in the USSR under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev as the established totalitarian ruler of European Communism. In Germany the changes from the conservative American centric policies of Adenauer began with the election of the first Social Democrat Willie Brandt. In East Germany Erich Honecker administered a Soviet friendly regime; for the next 20 years Germany was a center of attention for the Cold War and the potential site for a hot war. How did the struggle between the two superpowers manifest itself in Europe and more importantly between the two Germanys?
With the end of the Second World War Germany was divided and in shambles politically and economically. According to the agreement between the allied powers factories in the German Ruhr Valley and other parts of Germany were to be dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union as compensation for the assets lost, by the USSR, to the Nazis. As the antagonism between the US and Soviet Union grew post-war, General Lucius Clay as deputy to General Eisenhower halted the deportation of factory materials to the East from the allied zones of occupation. This arbitrary violation of the accords gave the Soviets reason to come back to their statist roots for the next 40 years the standoff between the “free” west and the “unfree” east was set.
In April 1947 Stalin assured George Marshall that there was no urgency to settle the future of postwar Europe. Marshall, however, was not assured and using the blueprint of the Truman Doctrine of military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey proposed a similar plan to rehabilitate Europe. The Marshall Plan committed the US to nothing less than the economic rehabilitation of Europe and did not make any distinction between areas under allied or Soviet control, “the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War”.
Similar to the allied occupied zones much of the Soviet zone was devastated by the war. Factories were ruined, the political infrastructure was destroyed, and the Soviet army was the only authority. The Soviets created a new socialist government in the Soviet zone with Walter Ulbricht as the titular head of the new government but always under the control of Moscow. Basic services were slowly restored, however the contrast between the free market west and the command economy of the east were stark.
Economic concerns were a focus of Soviet concerns during the 1970s. The Soviet economy made small upturns during the early 70’s taking with it the economies of all of the Warsaw Pact nations. The high point was the signing of the Soviet/West German Treaty of Renunciation of the Use of Force in 1970. This treaty coupled with Brandt’s efforts to seek reduced tensions with Warsaw Pact nations lowered tensions made much of the 1970’s economic recovery, East Germany was still not the Socialist heaven on earth, but it trended better. However, the intrinsic errors of a command economy could not be avoided. The consumer goods produced were often so inferior that they became sources for humor and ridicule in both east and west. The Trevant, for example, came to be known as one of the worst automobiles ever produced, made of recycled plastic the best that could be said of it was that it was the most basic transportation.
In 1969 a new Chancellor directed West Germany, Willie Brandt, former mayor or Berlin and believer of a stable association with the East. The division of the Germanys seemed to be a political reality for the foreseeable future, however, Brandt believed that, “A carefully controlled flow of people, goods, and ideas across Cold War boundaries might lower tensions, expand relationships, and over the long term moderate the authoritarian character of communist regime” This policy became known as Ostpolitik or new Eastern policy; becoming a vehicle for normalization between West Germany and the nations of the Warsaw Pact. In 1970, in the spirit of Ostpolitik, East Germany invited Brandt to Erfurt and, for reasons passing understanding, gave him a hotel room overlooking a public square. To their mortification, hundreds of East Germans gathered to cheer their visitor. Perhaps an early indication that Communist/Socialism was not the popular political system it professed itself.
Brandt’s goal was stabilization of relations with the East. In December of 1972 the West German and East German governments signed the Basic Treaty recognizing that East Germany was a sovereign government, yet still German and West Germany would enter into formal relations with other East European nations; other treaties followed, affirming borders and establishing or confirming formal relations with most of Eastern European countries that even 30 years after WWII continued to feel threated by Germany. Thus, serving to diminish the need for authoritarian regimes and setting the stage for a larger policy of détente between the superpowers.
In this Nixon and Kissinger were at first apprehensive but later assumed the lead in relations with the Soviets and China. Not only the end of the Vietnam War and victory, of a sort, for the US, but a list of issues on a global scale, as Brandt’s issues were on a European scale; an increase of trade, recognition of China, strategic arms limitations, and a new policy of leveraging Communist Moscow and Beijing against each other. On the larger stage, stolen from Brandt’s Ostpolitik, “It was a performance worthy of Metternich, Castlereagh, and Bismarck, the great grand strategists that Kissinger, in his role as a historian, had written about, and had so admired.” In this regard it was the tail, West Germany and Willie Brandt, wagging the dog, the United States and Soviet Union.
Erich Honecker was the second and last leader of East Germany. A committed Communist he was imprisoned during the Nazi era and after the war worked his way up in the East German government. By the late 1960s he was working in close collaboration with Walter Ulbricht and was responsible for the planning and building of the Berlin wall in 1961. Although, Ulbricht and Honecker differed on few policies they remained allies and agreed on the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They agreed on a tough policy towards the West, particularly West Germany and the status of Berlin. On the critical issues of the East, “They felt thwarted by West German economic power, on which they were to a degree dependent. They were virtually unknown and unrecognized outside the Soviet bloc”
The new German government in the west under Willie Brandt presented a new face of the “fascist” west, Brandt and his policy of Ostpolitik deeply troubled Ulbricht and Honecker. Formally, they claimed that nothing had changed in Bonn or the west, yet events in the Cold War were beyond their control. By 1971 a measure of détente, the foreseeable end of the Vietnam War and greater autonomy on the part of the Brandt government brought the fall of Ulbricht government with Honecker in his place, all approved by the patron of East Germany the USSR.
Starting in 1968 and continuing until 1991 the United States and NATO conducted an annual training exercise named REFORGER, return of forces Germany, this exercise was taken in large part because of the Vietnam war. The US Army was faced with a problem of rotating troops to Vietnam, yet also had considerable commitments to NATO. To solve this problem experienced troops from Europe were sent to Vietnam rather than raw replacements fresh out of basic training. Thus, combat troops stationed in Germany and the rest of Europe were less trained in the basics of land warfare and presented a potential opportunity for the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations.
To counter the perceived Soviet threat, the United States utilized exercises like REFORGER, LARIANT ADVANCE, and with ABLE BAKER, steadily increased the quantity and quality of nuclear forces in Europe in the form of Pershing missiles in Europe many of which would be under the nominal control of the West German military. While, “many in NATO were not happy about the capability of West Germany to act with nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact aggression they accepted the political reality.” The French, Belgians, Dutch and British agreed that some limited German control of nuclear weapons was desirable as a part of the deterrent. The stationing of Pershing missiles in West Germany with one third of them under German control changed the complexion of Soviet war planning for the next 15 years. The Soviets never gave up operational control of nuclear weapons to any Eastern European allies until the breakdown of the Soviet state in 1991 when Ukraine, for a short time became the third most powerful nuclear armed nation in the world.
In response to NATO the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact. In theory to protect Soviet aligned nations from aggression on the part of NATO, specifically Germany. In fact, the Warsaw Pact armies became an extension of the Soviet army, the occupier changed faces, but the result was the same.
The Soviets suffered a humiliating defeat in 1962 with the Cuban Missile crisis. Soviet ICBMs were limited to a handful of missiles that were prone to exploding on the launch pad, making them more dangerous to Soviet Missile Force than the US. The nuclear abundance and ability to deliver to targets deep within the Soviet Union of the US cowed the Soviet leader; Khrushchev was replaced in 1964 with the dual leadership of Kosygin and Brezhnev.
They decided to build up both nuclear and conventional forces. Throughout, the rest of the 60s and early 70s Soviet power reached its highpoint. In 1966 the Soviets introduced the SS-11 missile system immediately followed by the SS-9 and SS-13. By the early part of 1970 the Soviets could claim 1300 ICBMs with the US at 1054, parity if not marginal superiority had been reached. Later the Soviets would introduce the SS-17, 18, and 19 each with MIRV, (multiple, independent, reentry, vehicle). In 1968 the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia to end a short-lived uprising. The presence of massive numbers of Soviet troops in Poland, East Germany and other Warsaw Block nations served as a continual threat to the people and leaders of all step too far out of line and there will be blood.
At the end of 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This action would have many of the same consequences for Soviet Armies in Eastern Europe as the Vietnam War did for the US. Soviet armies were built on conscripted troops whose training was centered on numbers rather than expertise. As with the US in Vietnam better-trained troops were slowly transferred from garrison duty in Europe to combat duty in Afghanistan. The US build up during the Regan years could not be countered and contributed to the fall in 1989.
Germany was the focus of cold war intelligence and Berlin was an epicenter for conflict between the superpowers. Almost as soon as the WWII was over intelligence agencies from all the major powers were working to improve their governments geopolitical standing by offering asylum for Germans, whether Nazi or not, if they had skills or knowledge that could be useful. A large part of the Cold War was fought between our Germans and their Germans. Many books and movies have been written about this time and to greater or lesser extents portray the conditions during the cold war. Some of the most informative movies include, The Third Man and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. These movies focus on the immediate period after the end of WWII and the building of the wall.
Other books and movies like Ian Fleming’s James Bond tended to sensationalize the intelligence efforts of both English and American intelligence agencies. In the 1970s John Le Carre offered a more credible view of intelligence, with the publication of the quest for Karla books, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People. It was a time that Le Carre, describes as, “half angels, chasing half devils, and nobody knows who the goodies are” It was also a time of unrest throughout the West as students, radicals, socialists and communists sought changes to the status quo.
During this time intelligence agencies of the NATO nations continued a vigorous stance towards the East. The REFORGER exercises included an intelligence training element for CIA, MI5 and German Federal Intelligence Agency, BND or, Bundesnachrichtendienst, and in general conjectured the sudden presence of massive numbers of Soviet and GDR agents in West Germany intent on last minute intelligence gathering and sabotage before a massive land attack on the North German plain or the Fulda Gap. These exercises continued through 1991 and always included the steps to be taken by the West to counter aggression on the part of Warsaw Pact nations. With the dismantling of the wall and the massive pull back of Soviet armies in occupied nations the need for RFORGER and other similar exercises ended. However, the plans are still on the books in the Pentagon and updated yearly to match current capabilities.
The US continues to keep forces stationed in Europe and relies on a more flexible nuclear deterrent policy. American nuclear policy is still driven by a forceful presence of nuclear weapons and continues to be based on the original triad of ICBMs, nuclear capable bombers and submarine based nuclear weapons. Although, the name has changed from SIOP, Single Intergraded Operations plan, to OPLAN 8010, Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike, the intent is the same.
American war planners never intend to respond to a Soviet strike or a nuclear strike by any nation, but plan to avoid a nuclear “pearl harbor” by preparing an overwhelming first strike that would prevent the Soviets or others from retaliation. Intelligence gatherers, CIA, DIA, NSA and military would, on the appearance of preparations for a first strike would go to the president and request permission to launch an American first strike. The real deterrence of the Cold War and currently is not MAD, (mutual assured destruction) but the American posture of assured destruction as a strategic reality that kept Soviet forces contained. Technology and nuclear abundance keep the Soviets in their own limited hegemony for nearly 50 years.
With the fall of the wall and unification of East and West Germany the GDR domestic intelligence service, Ministry of State Security, or Stasi led by the almost unseen and unknown outside of intelligence circles Markus Wolf dissolved almost overnight. Protesters stormed the Stasi headquarters and ransacked files. Twenty-five years after the fall Germans are still attempting to put together how the Stasi worked. In 1989 there were at least 190,000 formal and informal agents paid by Stasi or 1 of every 90 people in the population or 1%.
When it comes to espionage Stasi took intimidation to new levels. Stasi practice was to destroy a target’s personal life. The methods, however, were much more subtle than the word implies. The Stasi perfected their ability to torture people indirectly—a kind of psychological death by a thousand cuts, “Stasi agents would then begin a series of bizarre and unorthodox moves, designed to delicately frighten and manipulate the target into anxiety and paranoia; taking pictures off the wall or moving items in the house: small, often nearly imperceptible offenses that former officers said would demoralize the opposition by invading their private spaces without overtly threatening or harming anyone.” This kind of intimidation was much more nuanced than that used by the Soviet KGB, GRU or even the American CIA all of which were more of a blunt instrument rather than a subtle knife to intimidate and harass.
On a train in East Germany two students are openly smoking pot in front of an East German policeman, who observes and does nothing. Mass demonstrations against the government and the system in East Germany began at the end of September and continued thru November 1989. Marxism was and is an ideology of the young, trained in university by Marxist instructors like Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci. In 1989 when the wall came down, many if not most, of the East Berliners who marched and celebrated the fall were still Marxists. The new left believed that Soviet Communism was a betrayal of Marxist theory but were unwilling to surrender the comfort of the idea of the perfect socialist state.
In another part of East Germany students, homemakers, and workers are demonstrating at the wall, while Soviet troops are withdrawing from the area. Honecker is desperate for stability and asks for Soviet assistance to put down civil disobedience, Soviet leaders rebuff Honecker’s request. There will be no repeat of the events of 1953. For the first time in his political life Honecker is on his own and alone. He has no recourse to outside military force and his internal police, and his military are helpless against the sea of people approaching the wall. Erich Honecker, East Germany's head of state resigns on October 18, 1989. Two weeks later it was all over, the wall fell not with a bang but a whimper.
Over the last twenty-five years we in the West take for granted the moral and ethical bankruptcy of Communism demonstrating its weakness as an economic and political system. Today it is difficult for generations that have grown up without the threat of Communism to understand how seductive it was. For the Cold War generations Marxism was not an esoteric form of despotism but a persuasive explanation of how the world works, however, “the evidence seems clear that a society in which the educated are closely allied with the governing class is capable of a brilliant beginning but not of continued growth and development. Such a society often attains heights of excellence early in its career and then stops.” Such was the case of East Germany and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union.
The vast majority of Marxists chose to define themselves as the new left; a form of elitist rebellion or rather an intellectual elite more characterized by fashion then action. However, in Europe many supported by Soviet intelligence services, KGB and military intelligence actively took action and killed, wounded, kidnapped, and bombed in pursuit of their political goals. The Soviet response to unrest in the 1980s by Gorbachev was Perestroika and Glasnost, openness and relaxation in an effort to bring a more human face to Marxist culture. Thus, “The critical moment for the Communist regimes will come when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.”
With the clear vision of hindsight, it is obvious that, of all the satellite countries, Eastern Germany occupied a special position with respect to outside identification. Not only did the Eastern Germans find it easy to identify with the free and thriving Western part of their nation, but also, thanks to the presence of West Berlin, they did not feel completely cut off from the rest of humanity. Only in East Germany, therefore, was the immediate hope, brought to fruition by the relaxation after Stalin’s death and Honaker’s incompetence, linked to a strong outside identification, and hence the greater probability of discontent exploding into an actual successful uprising.
The Cold War created a special set of circumstances for Germany, East and West. Brandt’s softening of relations with the East and reconciliation with the nations of Eastern Europe helped set the stage for rapprochement on the larger scale between the US and USSR. The larger confrontation between the US and USSR while worldwide in scope was also played out in the relations between the two Germanys, the Bonn government and the rest of Eastern Europe. The possibilities for a major conflict that would have been fought on German soil, especially in the 1950s, was always in the mind of German leaders, East and West. Perhaps the break in the Cold War in the fall of 1989 was due more to the conclusive realization that Germans on both sides of the wall had more to lose than either could ever gain by war.
Bibliography
Childs, David. "Obituary: Erich Honecker." The Independent, May 30, 1994: 4.
Ferguson, Niall. War of the World. New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
Futrell, R Frank. Ideas, Concepts and Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the US Air Force, 1907-1964. Maxwell AFB: United States Air Force, 1972.
Gaddis, John L. George F. Kennan. New York, New York, 2012.
—. The Cold War. New York, New York: Penquin Book, 2006.
Gilbert, Felix and Large David C. The End of the Euproean Era 1890 to Present, Fourth Edition. New York, New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
Hill, Charles. Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft and World Order. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, Kindle Edition, 2010.
—. Trial of a Thousand Years. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2011.
Hitchock, William. Bitter Road to Freedom. New York, New York: Simon & Suhuster, 2008.
Hoffer, Eric. Ordeal of Change. New Jersey: Hopewell Publications, Kindle Edition, 2006.
Huntington, Samuel p. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, Kindle Edition, 1996.
Le Carre, John. The Karla Trilogy. New York, New York: Penguin Group, Kindle Edition, 2011.
Lundestad, Geir. The United States and Western Europe since 1945. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Perret, Geoffrey. A Country Made by War. New York, New York: Random House, 1989.
Varon, Jeremy. Bringing the War Home. Berkley, CA: Universty of California Press, 2004.
Wargas, Robert. PJ Media. November 12, 2014. pjmedia.com/lifestyle (accessed Novermber 12, 2014).
Cold War,
Without Option
The Cold War is over, the major players have gone home to write their memoirs and comfort themselves that they avoided a much more catastrophic hot war that potentially could have killed hundreds of millions. The Cold War, like many others, was fought in many places in many nations, by unidentified men and women on both sides who will not write memoirs or leave much in the way of recorded histories. One of the most critical fronts of the Cold War was Germany the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic were, for the most part; unwilling actors in a game they could only make small contributions to play and could never win.
The 1970s were crucial for both the West as led by the United States and the East as led by the Soviet Union. The United States President, Richard Nixon, who was intent on ending the Vietnam War and in the USSR under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev as the established totalitarian ruler of European Communism. In Germany the changes from the conservative American centric policies of Adenauer began with the election of the first Social Democrat Willie Brandt. In East Germany Erich Honecker administered a Soviet friendly regime; for the next 20 years Germany was a center of attention for the Cold War and the potential site for a hot war. How did the struggle between the two superpowers manifest itself in Europe and more importantly between the two Germanys?
With the end of the Second World War Germany was divided and in shambles politically and economically. According to the agreement between the allied powers factories in the German Ruhr Valley and other parts of Germany were to be dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union as compensation for the assets lost, by the USSR, to the Nazis. As the antagonism between the US and Soviet Union grew post-war, General Lucius Clay as deputy to General Eisenhower halted the deportation of factory materials to the East from the allied zones of occupation. This arbitrary violation of the accords gave the Soviets reason to come back to their statist roots for the next 40 years the standoff between the “free” west and the “unfree” east was set.
In April 1947 Stalin assured George Marshall that there was no urgency to settle the future of postwar Europe. Marshall, however, was not assured and using the blueprint of the Truman Doctrine of military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey proposed a similar plan to rehabilitate Europe. The Marshall Plan committed the US to nothing less than the economic rehabilitation of Europe and did not make any distinction between areas under allied or Soviet control, “the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War”.
Similar to the allied occupied zones much of the Soviet zone was devastated by the war. Factories were ruined, the political infrastructure was destroyed, and the Soviet army was the only authority. The Soviets created a new socialist government in the Soviet zone with Walter Ulbricht as the titular head of the new government but always under the control of Moscow. Basic services were slowly restored, however the contrast between the free market west and the command economy of the east were stark.
Economic concerns were a focus of Soviet concerns during the 1970s. The Soviet economy made small upturns during the early 70’s taking with it the economies of all of the Warsaw Pact nations. The high point was the signing of the Soviet/West German Treaty of Renunciation of the Use of Force in 1970. This treaty coupled with Brandt’s efforts to seek reduced tensions with Warsaw Pact nations lowered tensions made much of the 1970’s economic recovery, East Germany was still not the Socialist heaven on earth, but it trended better. However, the intrinsic errors of a command economy could not be avoided. The consumer goods produced were often so inferior that they became sources for humor and ridicule in both east and west. The Trevant, for example, came to be known as one of the worst automobiles ever produced, made of recycled plastic the best that could be said of it was that it was the most basic transportation.
In 1969 a new Chancellor directed West Germany, Willie Brandt, former mayor or Berlin and believer of a stable association with the East. The division of the Germanys seemed to be a political reality for the foreseeable future, however, Brandt believed that, “A carefully controlled flow of people, goods, and ideas across Cold War boundaries might lower tensions, expand relationships, and over the long term moderate the authoritarian character of communist regime” This policy became known as Ostpolitik or new Eastern policy; becoming a vehicle for normalization between West Germany and the nations of the Warsaw Pact. In 1970, in the spirit of Ostpolitik, East Germany invited Brandt to Erfurt and, for reasons passing understanding, gave him a hotel room overlooking a public square. To their mortification, hundreds of East Germans gathered to cheer their visitor. Perhaps an early indication that Communist/Socialism was not the popular political system it professed itself.
Brandt’s goal was stabilization of relations with the East. In December of 1972 the West German and East German governments signed the Basic Treaty recognizing that East Germany was a sovereign government, yet still German and West Germany would enter into formal relations with other East European nations; other treaties followed, affirming borders and establishing or confirming formal relations with most of Eastern European countries that even 30 years after WWII continued to feel threated by Germany. Thus, serving to diminish the need for authoritarian regimes and setting the stage for a larger policy of détente between the superpowers.
In this Nixon and Kissinger were at first apprehensive but later assumed the lead in relations with the Soviets and China. Not only the end of the Vietnam War and victory, of a sort, for the US, but a list of issues on a global scale, as Brandt’s issues were on a European scale; an increase of trade, recognition of China, strategic arms limitations, and a new policy of leveraging Communist Moscow and Beijing against each other. On the larger stage, stolen from Brandt’s Ostpolitik, “It was a performance worthy of Metternich, Castlereagh, and Bismarck, the great grand strategists that Kissinger, in his role as a historian, had written about, and had so admired.” In this regard it was the tail, West Germany and Willie Brandt, wagging the dog, the United States and Soviet Union.
Erich Honecker was the second and last leader of East Germany. A committed Communist he was imprisoned during the Nazi era and after the war worked his way up in the East German government. By the late 1960s he was working in close collaboration with Walter Ulbricht and was responsible for the planning and building of the Berlin wall in 1961. Although, Ulbricht and Honecker differed on few policies they remained allies and agreed on the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They agreed on a tough policy towards the West, particularly West Germany and the status of Berlin. On the critical issues of the East, “They felt thwarted by West German economic power, on which they were to a degree dependent. They were virtually unknown and unrecognized outside the Soviet bloc”
The new German government in the west under Willie Brandt presented a new face of the “fascist” west, Brandt and his policy of Ostpolitik deeply troubled Ulbricht and Honecker. Formally, they claimed that nothing had changed in Bonn or the west, yet events in the Cold War were beyond their control. By 1971 a measure of détente, the foreseeable end of the Vietnam War and greater autonomy on the part of the Brandt government brought the fall of Ulbricht government with Honecker in his place, all approved by the patron of East Germany the USSR.
Starting in 1968 and continuing until 1991 the United States and NATO conducted an annual training exercise named REFORGER, return of forces Germany, this exercise was taken in large part because of the Vietnam war. The US Army was faced with a problem of rotating troops to Vietnam, yet also had considerable commitments to NATO. To solve this problem experienced troops from Europe were sent to Vietnam rather than raw replacements fresh out of basic training. Thus, combat troops stationed in Germany and the rest of Europe were less trained in the basics of land warfare and presented a potential opportunity for the USSR and Warsaw Pact nations.
To counter the perceived Soviet threat, the United States utilized exercises like REFORGER, LARIANT ADVANCE, and with ABLE BAKER, steadily increased the quantity and quality of nuclear forces in Europe in the form of Pershing missiles in Europe many of which would be under the nominal control of the West German military. While, “many in NATO were not happy about the capability of West Germany to act with nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact aggression they accepted the political reality.” The French, Belgians, Dutch and British agreed that some limited German control of nuclear weapons was desirable as a part of the deterrent. The stationing of Pershing missiles in West Germany with one third of them under German control changed the complexion of Soviet war planning for the next 15 years. The Soviets never gave up operational control of nuclear weapons to any Eastern European allies until the breakdown of the Soviet state in 1991 when Ukraine, for a short time became the third most powerful nuclear armed nation in the world.
In response to NATO the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact. In theory to protect Soviet aligned nations from aggression on the part of NATO, specifically Germany. In fact, the Warsaw Pact armies became an extension of the Soviet army, the occupier changed faces, but the result was the same.
The Soviets suffered a humiliating defeat in 1962 with the Cuban Missile crisis. Soviet ICBMs were limited to a handful of missiles that were prone to exploding on the launch pad, making them more dangerous to Soviet Missile Force than the US. The nuclear abundance and ability to deliver to targets deep within the Soviet Union of the US cowed the Soviet leader; Khrushchev was replaced in 1964 with the dual leadership of Kosygin and Brezhnev.
They decided to build up both nuclear and conventional forces. Throughout, the rest of the 60s and early 70s Soviet power reached its highpoint. In 1966 the Soviets introduced the SS-11 missile system immediately followed by the SS-9 and SS-13. By the early part of 1970 the Soviets could claim 1300 ICBMs with the US at 1054, parity if not marginal superiority had been reached. Later the Soviets would introduce the SS-17, 18, and 19 each with MIRV, (multiple, independent, reentry, vehicle). In 1968 the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia to end a short-lived uprising. The presence of massive numbers of Soviet troops in Poland, East Germany and other Warsaw Block nations served as a continual threat to the people and leaders of all step too far out of line and there will be blood.
At the end of 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This action would have many of the same consequences for Soviet Armies in Eastern Europe as the Vietnam War did for the US. Soviet armies were built on conscripted troops whose training was centered on numbers rather than expertise. As with the US in Vietnam better-trained troops were slowly transferred from garrison duty in Europe to combat duty in Afghanistan. The US build up during the Regan years could not be countered and contributed to the fall in 1989.
Germany was the focus of cold war intelligence and Berlin was an epicenter for conflict between the superpowers. Almost as soon as the WWII was over intelligence agencies from all the major powers were working to improve their governments geopolitical standing by offering asylum for Germans, whether Nazi or not, if they had skills or knowledge that could be useful. A large part of the Cold War was fought between our Germans and their Germans. Many books and movies have been written about this time and to greater or lesser extents portray the conditions during the cold war. Some of the most informative movies include, The Third Man and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. These movies focus on the immediate period after the end of WWII and the building of the wall.
Other books and movies like Ian Fleming’s James Bond tended to sensationalize the intelligence efforts of both English and American intelligence agencies. In the 1970s John Le Carre offered a more credible view of intelligence, with the publication of the quest for Karla books, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People. It was a time that Le Carre, describes as, “half angels, chasing half devils, and nobody knows who the goodies are” It was also a time of unrest throughout the West as students, radicals, socialists and communists sought changes to the status quo.
During this time intelligence agencies of the NATO nations continued a vigorous stance towards the East. The REFORGER exercises included an intelligence training element for CIA, MI5 and German Federal Intelligence Agency, BND or, Bundesnachrichtendienst, and in general conjectured the sudden presence of massive numbers of Soviet and GDR agents in West Germany intent on last minute intelligence gathering and sabotage before a massive land attack on the North German plain or the Fulda Gap. These exercises continued through 1991 and always included the steps to be taken by the West to counter aggression on the part of Warsaw Pact nations. With the dismantling of the wall and the massive pull back of Soviet armies in occupied nations the need for RFORGER and other similar exercises ended. However, the plans are still on the books in the Pentagon and updated yearly to match current capabilities.
The US continues to keep forces stationed in Europe and relies on a more flexible nuclear deterrent policy. American nuclear policy is still driven by a forceful presence of nuclear weapons and continues to be based on the original triad of ICBMs, nuclear capable bombers and submarine based nuclear weapons. Although, the name has changed from SIOP, Single Intergraded Operations plan, to OPLAN 8010, Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike, the intent is the same.
American war planners never intend to respond to a Soviet strike or a nuclear strike by any nation, but plan to avoid a nuclear “pearl harbor” by preparing an overwhelming first strike that would prevent the Soviets or others from retaliation. Intelligence gatherers, CIA, DIA, NSA and military would, on the appearance of preparations for a first strike would go to the president and request permission to launch an American first strike. The real deterrence of the Cold War and currently is not MAD, (mutual assured destruction) but the American posture of assured destruction as a strategic reality that kept Soviet forces contained. Technology and nuclear abundance keep the Soviets in their own limited hegemony for nearly 50 years.
With the fall of the wall and unification of East and West Germany the GDR domestic intelligence service, Ministry of State Security, or Stasi led by the almost unseen and unknown outside of intelligence circles Markus Wolf dissolved almost overnight. Protesters stormed the Stasi headquarters and ransacked files. Twenty-five years after the fall Germans are still attempting to put together how the Stasi worked. In 1989 there were at least 190,000 formal and informal agents paid by Stasi or 1 of every 90 people in the population or 1%.
When it comes to espionage Stasi took intimidation to new levels. Stasi practice was to destroy a target’s personal life. The methods, however, were much more subtle than the word implies. The Stasi perfected their ability to torture people indirectly—a kind of psychological death by a thousand cuts, “Stasi agents would then begin a series of bizarre and unorthodox moves, designed to delicately frighten and manipulate the target into anxiety and paranoia; taking pictures off the wall or moving items in the house: small, often nearly imperceptible offenses that former officers said would demoralize the opposition by invading their private spaces without overtly threatening or harming anyone.” This kind of intimidation was much more nuanced than that used by the Soviet KGB, GRU or even the American CIA all of which were more of a blunt instrument rather than a subtle knife to intimidate and harass.
On a train in East Germany two students are openly smoking pot in front of an East German policeman, who observes and does nothing. Mass demonstrations against the government and the system in East Germany began at the end of September and continued thru November 1989. Marxism was and is an ideology of the young, trained in university by Marxist instructors like Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci. In 1989 when the wall came down, many if not most, of the East Berliners who marched and celebrated the fall were still Marxists. The new left believed that Soviet Communism was a betrayal of Marxist theory but were unwilling to surrender the comfort of the idea of the perfect socialist state.
In another part of East Germany students, homemakers, and workers are demonstrating at the wall, while Soviet troops are withdrawing from the area. Honecker is desperate for stability and asks for Soviet assistance to put down civil disobedience, Soviet leaders rebuff Honecker’s request. There will be no repeat of the events of 1953. For the first time in his political life Honecker is on his own and alone. He has no recourse to outside military force and his internal police, and his military are helpless against the sea of people approaching the wall. Erich Honecker, East Germany's head of state resigns on October 18, 1989. Two weeks later it was all over, the wall fell not with a bang but a whimper.
Over the last twenty-five years we in the West take for granted the moral and ethical bankruptcy of Communism demonstrating its weakness as an economic and political system. Today it is difficult for generations that have grown up without the threat of Communism to understand how seductive it was. For the Cold War generations Marxism was not an esoteric form of despotism but a persuasive explanation of how the world works, however, “the evidence seems clear that a society in which the educated are closely allied with the governing class is capable of a brilliant beginning but not of continued growth and development. Such a society often attains heights of excellence early in its career and then stops.” Such was the case of East Germany and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union.
The vast majority of Marxists chose to define themselves as the new left; a form of elitist rebellion or rather an intellectual elite more characterized by fashion then action. However, in Europe many supported by Soviet intelligence services, KGB and military intelligence actively took action and killed, wounded, kidnapped, and bombed in pursuit of their political goals. The Soviet response to unrest in the 1980s by Gorbachev was Perestroika and Glasnost, openness and relaxation in an effort to bring a more human face to Marxist culture. Thus, “The critical moment for the Communist regimes will come when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.”
With the clear vision of hindsight, it is obvious that, of all the satellite countries, Eastern Germany occupied a special position with respect to outside identification. Not only did the Eastern Germans find it easy to identify with the free and thriving Western part of their nation, but also, thanks to the presence of West Berlin, they did not feel completely cut off from the rest of humanity. Only in East Germany, therefore, was the immediate hope, brought to fruition by the relaxation after Stalin’s death and Honaker’s incompetence, linked to a strong outside identification, and hence the greater probability of discontent exploding into an actual successful uprising.
The Cold War created a special set of circumstances for Germany, East and West. Brandt’s softening of relations with the East and reconciliation with the nations of Eastern Europe helped set the stage for rapprochement on the larger scale between the US and USSR. The larger confrontation between the US and USSR while worldwide in scope was also played out in the relations between the two Germanys, the Bonn government and the rest of Eastern Europe. The possibilities for a major conflict that would have been fought on German soil, especially in the 1950s, was always in the mind of German leaders, East and West. Perhaps the break in the Cold War in the fall of 1989 was due more to the conclusive realization that Germans on both sides of the wall had more to lose than either could ever gain by war.
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