The combined arms operations, moreover, upon which the battle-fighting method of the Red Army fundamentally depended, had been anything but a complete success. The Allies had operated, as it were, in the interstices of the method, separating components whose strength lay in their interdependence. The four main elements of the combined arms concept — manoeuvre, fire suppression, organic defence and combat support — had rarely been allowed to operate together in anything like the degree of harmony required.
For all these and other reasons the strategic programme had fallen so far behind that there was now a real danger of that massive Western build-up which it had been so important to forestall. Unaccountably, troop reinforcement over the US air bridge had continued and the Soviet Navy had been unable to prevent the safe arrival of heavy equipment by sea. More reinforcements were on the way. From the military point of view the question had to be asked: how much was there now to be gained by going on with a plan which had already failed?
The political consequences of incomplete military success in Germany were to be far-reaching. The military might of the Warsaw Pact had not been defeated. Far from it. What had happened, however, was almost as important as defeat. The Red Army had been shown not to be invincible. As awareness of its limitations began to spread so hope began to rise in places where, up to now, only an occasional display of brave and fruitless dissidence had relieved the grey uniformity of a hopeless resignation.
National revolt was still a long way off but the seeds of it were already being sown as, in spite of the strictest censorship, the news went swiftly round that all was not well with the offensive of the Warsaw Pact in Germany. From mid-August onwards growing partisan activity, with widespread sabotage and the disruption of rail communications through satellite countries, began to present an increasing problem on the lines of communication. This occurred first where, from the point of view of military supply, it mattered most — Poland. The same thing also began to happen in Czechoslovakia, and to a lesser extent in Hungary and Romania.
Allied assistance to partisan forces, already some months in preparation, was immediately forthcoming. In the last year techniques of the Second World War, which some had feared might be allowed to lapse entirely, had been revived. The very large expatriate communities, particularly of Poles and Czechs, and to a lesser extent of Hungarians, in the United States, and of Poles born in Britain to ex-soldiers of the Second World War who had settled there, had been combed for recruits. Detachments of some size were already in an advanced state of training and were now, with munitions, weapons, communications equipment and supplies, being lifted surreptitiously by air into their own countries. Their principal task, in addition to the raising of now no longer wholly unjustified hopes of future deliverance, was interference, to the maximum degree, with rail and road communications.
As the US air bridge had so dramatically shown, the personnel of military formations could readily be replaced by air. The Soviet airline Aeroflot had for years been organized for, and practised in, the task of personnel reinforcement, and in the ‘exercises’ which had preceded invasion had been fully mobilized for it. Some freight movement, too, even of heavy loads, was possible by air, but very large tonnages of fuel and munitions could not be handled so easily, still less the large numbers of heavy equipment, the tanks, SP guns and BMP, which were needed as unit replacements, and least of all the entire provision for an armoured or motorized formation moving up to relieve another which was exhausted and depleted in the battle. Road movement could help, though with all the disadvantages of wear and tear upon equipment the essential means of transport for combat formations remained the railway.
Great improvements had been made in the last few years in the rail support system within the Warsaw Pact. Gauges had been unified, equipment standardized, tracks multiplied. Long stretches of permanent way nevertheless remained open to interference, only secure under close and continuous watch, a heavy drain on military manpower. Partisan attack, over the very long stretches involved, was becoming a great and growing problem, absorbing in protective duties increasing numbers of formations which should have been moving up to the front.
The Soviet Union had always enjoyed the advantages of relatively short land lines of communication between the area of probable operations in Europe and the home base. The United States had the Atlantic Ocean to cross, involving much longer distances and less secure transit in slower and less efficient load carriers. Air transportation had modified the position and reduced the disadvantage to the US. It could not entirely remove it. This was a situation that the Soviet Union had always sought to exploit (with a success that throws an interesting light on the gullibility of some Western politicians) in any discussion on mutual force reductions. The advantage of land over sea routes would always persist, but the action of determined partisans, maintained in the face of measures of repression and reprisal whose very brutality underlined the importance of what was happening, was already doing much to reduce it.
In absolute terms, moreover, the mass and volume (to say nothing of the cost) of all that was required, particularly in fuel and munitions, to maintain an army in field operations at an intensive rate against a similarly equipped opponent, was now very great. It had taken a quantitative jump since the Second World War. Warfare in the Middle East in the seventies had shown this very clearly, if on a relatively small scale. It was just no longer possible, at the rate at which stocks could now be exhausted, to sustain intensive operations of war for months on end. Head — and equipment — counts were no longer the true measure of an army’s capability. Formations in large numbers could be a liability rather than an advantage unless they could be kept effectively in action.
The Soviet war-fighting philosophy, from whatever origins it may have been evolved, was in the circumstances of the 1980s exactly right. It enjoined the initiation of total and violent offensive action, swiftly followed through to the early attainment of a valuable objective. The position of military advantage thus secured would then be exploited by political means. Speed was everything. The corollary was that failure to secure the objective in good time must result in a thorough-going reappraisal, in which to continue to press towards the same end might very well be the least sensible course.
In the operation in the Central Region, at its sharpest point in the Krefeld Salient, the Warsaw Pact advance never got any further than Julich. The newly arrived US corps, equipped out of Convoy CAVALRY, was already by 16 August building up on the western flank. This posed a threat which, taken in conjunction with the northward offensive of the Northern Army Group, could mean nothing other than a halt to the advance and an enforced change-over to defensive action (for which the Red Army was not well suited) or to withdrawal.