When the north-south offensive begins to develop NORTHAG can be expected to regroup, in an attempt to check it, on an east-west position west of the Rhine, between Bonn and Maastricht. No chances can be taken here. There will unquestionably be sufficient fresh Warsaw Pact formations and air resources to break through. At least three hitherto uncommitted divisions from 20 Guards Army will be available for a start. Success in this operation will lead to the rolling up of CENTAG from the rear and the collapse of the NATO defence of the Central Region.
This must be complete by D + 7, at which time the only permissible pockets of continuing resistance (disregarding Berlin, if it has not yet been ordered to capitulate, and Hamburg) will be in the Bavarian Alps.
On D-day three Soviet divisions, from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, will start moving through Austria into Italy. No Italian resistance is expected. This force may also, if necessary, furnish means of opening a flank attack on CENTAG through Bavaria.
It is to be assumed that political pressure on the French government, with the guarantee that Warsaw Pact action will proceed no further than the stop-line, will cause France to refrain from hostile action and withdraw II French Corps from Germany.
The collapse of AFCENT (as well as the elimination of AFNORTH and AFSOUTH) will reduce Allied Command Europe to impotence and cause the disintegration of the Alliance. The United States will accept a ceasefire on or very soon after D + 8, after which discussions can be initiated.
The neutralization of the Federal Republic of Germany, with the liquidation of hostile elements among the people and such population transfer as may be necessary, together with the dismantling of industrial plant for removal, or its destruction in situ, for all of which instructions have already been prepared, will proceed forthwith.
The plan for the invasion of the Central Region of NATO by the Warsaw Pact, of which this is a summary, assumed as a necessary condition a high degree of continuing control over the countries and peoples of Eastern Europe. This was quite likely to be threatened.
CHAPTER 11: Over the Edge
By 2 August 1985 the four corps composing the Central Army Group in the Central Region of Allied Command Europe were already in their forward position in the CENTAG sector. This ran from near Kassel in the north, at the junction with I Belgian Corps on the right of the Northern Army Group, to the Austrian frontier south of Munchen.
The four corps of the Central Army Group lay from north to south as follows: III German, V US, VII US, II German.
II French Corps, stationed with some supporting army troops in south-west Germany, was still not under command to Allied Command Europe. It was not even certain how the French government, given its pronounced left-wing orientation in the recent past, would, in the event of hostilities with the Warsaw Pact, regard its obligations under the Atlantic Treaty. Relations between the French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG, however, were close and cordial, and communication between the two, though discreet, was fairly free.
At the end of July the personnel of an armoured division, the first of the divisions earmarked for USAREUR, had been flown in from the United States. By nightfall on 2 August it had almost completed the drawing of its prepositioned combat equipment, including more than 300 XM-1 tanks. Some of its units, at least, had fired-in their guns at Grafenwohr before dispersal in the area north-west of Wurzburg, under command to V US Corps.
It was V US Corps’ sector, running north and south through Fulda, which was considered critical in CENTAG. The Demarcation Line with the East bulges out here in a bold westward curve towards the bend in the Rhine near Frankfurt-am-Main, at its closest no further from Frankfurt than 100 kilometres, with only another forty kilometres to the Rhine. Furthermore, in the hill country of the Thuringer Wald there is an important gap around Fulda itself, with the terrain becoming ever more readily negotiable as it opens down into the Rhine-Main plain. The distances are all short here. There is not much ground to trade for time and little opportunity for mobile operations.
The area forward of the Fulda valley favoured the defence, offering ample choice of good positions for tanks and ATGW, with considerable depth to their fields of fire. Unfortunately the distance from the Fulda valley to the frontier is no more than fifteen kilometres.
Behind the Fulda valley to the west is the high mass of the Vogelsberg, to the north the wooded country along the autobahn through Bad Hersfeld to Kassel, to the south the inhospitable terrain of the Hohe Rhon. As a good example of the course of events in a critical sector we shall be giving considerable attention to the action of V US Corps. Its commander’s mission was simple: to keep the Soviet forces east of the Frankfurt plain and as close to the border as possible.
Lieutenant General Harold J. Selby, Commanding General of V US Corps, was an old hand. Just too young for service in the Second World War, he had got into the Korean campaign right at the end. Later on he had seen plenty of service in armoured cavalry in Vietnam. His total of seven years’ service in Germany had included, besides a tour on the operations staff in HQ AFCENT, command of a regiment and of a division before he was given the command of V Corps in 1983.
Each of his two original US divisions had been increased in strength to 15,000 men with over 300 tanks each and nearly 500 ATGW. In addition to the armoured cavalry regiment deployed along the border in the corps sector there was a further squadron of armoured cavalry in each division. Besides the self-propelled 155 mm and 8-in divisional artillery, each division also had an additional artillery group and nearly fifty anti-tank helicopters. His third division, newly arrived in Germany but containing many officers and men with previous experience in the theatre, was at lower strength and had not yet shaken down, but it was by no means without promise.
The two forward divisions knew their areas well. Each was so disposed as to take care of one of the two most likely axes of attack — to the north of the Vogelsberg through Bad Hersfeld and Alsfeld into the plain north of Frankfurt, and south of the Vogelsberg through Fulda and down the Kinzig river valley through Hanau towards Frankfurt. The corps commander expected action on both axes but was convinced that one or the other would be chosen for the main effort. He knew that his overriding task was to establish the direction of the main thrust before the smaller force opposing it was overwhelmed.
Intelligence here was critical. Since his arrival in the corps the Commander had made a minutely detailed study of the terrain and planned a very thorough intelligence operation covering every approach. What he could not cover with his own sensors he asked to have covered for him by CENTAG. To help him find out what he wanted he relied on the reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence resources available at every level of responsibility, from intelligent young men with binoculars and a radio in a hole on a hill far forward to the input from highly sophisticated satellite systems in space. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) had been designed to handle a vast volume of intelligence material coming in from sources as varied as satellite systems, reconnaissance vehicles, both manned and unmanned, ELINT (electronic intelligence), SIGINT (signal intelligence) and battlefield surveillance of all kinds, and to funnel it all into processing centres for analysis, correlation, assessment and distribution. The corps commander, however, was too old a hand to place exclusive reliance on processes not within his total control and on systems vulnerable to counter-measures. His principal instrument for the assessment of the enemy’s intentions was to be the strong engagement he intended to fight in the covering force area up against the border, forward of the Hanau and Fulda rivers. His final judgment, which, like all fighting soldiers, he knew must in the last resort be purely intuitive, whatever aids he had, would depend on his interpretation of that action.