It was only in the extreme south that offensive operations were still in active progress. The Southern Army Group, with II French Corps, II German Corps and about a division of Austrian troops, all under French command, and a heavy concentration of Allied tactical air forces in support, had crossed a start-line between Nurnberg and Munchen on 17 August in an advance directed on Pilsen. It had moved into Czechoslovakia on the 20th and was now making slow but steady progress. Of the troops opposing it none were Czechoslovak. Instead, SOUTHAG was now facing Soviet divisions out of 8 Guards Army and the Thirty-eighth Army from the Carpathian Military District.
On 21 August the southern advance was brought to a halt, at least for the time being, with its left flank, where II German Corps was deployed, south-west of Cheb. It has since become clear that the Central Group of Soviet Forces was concerned at the possibility of invasion of the GDR from the south and was under orders to resist it strongly if it came. It can also be safely claimed that the forward thrust of the Southern Army Group threw the operations of the Warsaw Pact in the Central Region of NATO considerably off-balance and thus helped to expedite its withdrawal in the northern plain.
Three momentous weeks had passed since that morning of 4 August when the world woke up to find itself once more with a major war on its hands. Only a pocket, if an important one, of Federal territory was still in the enemy’s hands. Though still very much at war the Federal Republic was able to look cautiously around and make a first assessment of the damage. Bremen was in ruins. Hannover was very badly damaged too, particularly on the east and south. Probably on account of the speed of the action the damage in other cities was not as great. Kassel, Nurnberg and Munchen had all suffered, and the great cities of the Rhineland had not been spared, though the spire of Koln cathedral had again surprisingly survived. But though the future was obscure and peace was not yet in sight, the worst seemed to have been averted, for the time being at least. The invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Warsaw Pact had failed and the Atlantic Alliance had survived.
CHAPTER 22: Home Fires: The Domestic Scene in a Televisual Society
Hostilities had opened in Europe after a period in which every country in the Western Alliance had, to some degree or another and each according to its own particular needs and inclinations, done something to offset the result of years of general public disregard of the possibility of war.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the country most exposed, it had been necessary to move with circumspection. The inescapable requirement to make some provision for the evacuation of forward areas near the border with East Germany, where early fighting would be sharpest, and the need to take account of refugee movement flooding westwards, had to be met in such a way as not to diminish confidence in the policy of forward defence or in the protection given by NATO. Carefully and unobtrusively a great deal had been done. Arrangements for the evacuation of children and the provision of emergency stand-by services in depth were generally allowed to be not incompatible with an official policy which encouraged people to stay where they were in a war emergency. There was realistic, discreet and thorough planning for what was to be done if they failed to do so. The provision for the handling of a very big flow of population from the forward areas, much of it panic-stricken under air attack, for its marshalling, guidance, reception, dispersion and maintenance, was both extensive and sound. The development of the Territorial Army, which with its three Territorial commands of five military districts had made impressive progress from the late seventies onwards, furnished an invaluable supporting structure for the operation of emergency services. Its communications, engineer, police and service units, working in close harmony at Federal and Land level with civil and paramilitary border police, all under a staff and command system reflecting the usual efficiency of German military practice, proved of inestimable value. In the same years, civil defence measures — including some provision of shelters, emergency stores of food and medical supplies, hardened stand-by communications and sources of power — had also made progress. A more generous financial provision in Federal and Land budgets in the previous five years was well justified in the event.
In France there was less inclination to provide for civil defence than in the FRG. The argument was freely used that to do so would only diminish confidence in the deterrent effect of the country’s preparedness to defend itself (which included a built-in nuclear capability under national control). It certainly saved the French government a good deal of money.
The French nuclear capability was never used, however. Under a Popular Front government the nuclear element in the defence programme had been allowed to fall behind, but even if it had not been, there was no question but that in a bilateral exchange with the USSR, without US intervention, France would be the loser. Soviet propaganda played upon this. The Soviet Union made it clear that there would be no area bombing of French cities but that precision attack could be expected from the air on any port or other target actively operating in an Allied military interest. A nuclear response from France would result in a rain of weapons of mass destruction upon her cities.
There was, in fact, considerable Soviet conventional bombing of French ports and communications complexes. Since, however, penetration by hostile aircraft was for the greater part of their journey over land and through several belts of air defence, the damage that was done, where it mattered most to the Allied war effort (above all in the Western ports), was not intolerably great.
Quite as much hindrance, and possibly even more, to the prosecution of the war in France came from civil disturbance. War with the Soviet Union stripped the mask from many professing Euro-communism in France, as in Italy and other countries. An impressively well-prepared Peace Movement burgeoned on the streets at once. Demonstrations, strikes and sabotage led to frequent clashes between communist and Gaullist sympathizers and a growing strain on the police, in whose support troops sometimes had to intervene. Widespread avoidance of call-up was accompanied by a sharp rise in petty crime. Food and petrol rationing, introduced on mobilization, never worked and perhaps were scarcely expected to. On the whole, nevertheless, France moved towards a war footing without intolerable upheaval, largely because the overwhelming majority of the French people were seen to be plainly in favour of resistance to the Soviet initiative.
Conditions were much the same in the Low Countries, with the added pressure of the immediate danger of invasion in both Belgium and the Netherlands, and, in the case of the latter, the burden of partial occupation by the enemy within a very few days. Resistance in Holland was slow to get under way in the Second World War, due to the habits formed over a long period of neutrality. When it found its feet it was formidable. In the Third World War there were many still in Holland who remembered how it had been before. Underground movements began to come into being as soon as the country was ordered to mobilize. From the time Soviet troops first crossed the frontier they felt the strength and dourness of Dutch resistance and replied with a savagery far exceeding what was still remembered in Holland from the Germans. It was fortunate indeed for the Dutch that this occupation by a wartime enemy of a very different sort lasted only a few weeks.
Britain, once again free from invasion and occupation by an enemy, had its own problems. An account is given in Chapter 4, ‘Awakening Response in the West’, and in Appendices 1 and 4, of the growing awareness, in the seven years before the outbreak of war, of the reality of the danger to the Western Alliance from the USSR, of the dangerously weak state into which the defences of the United Kingdom had been allowed to fall, and of the country’s exposed position as the bridgehead for US reinforcement. In the matter of civil defence, growing pressure from the public, spearheaded in the first instance by unofficial bodies such as the National Emergency Volunteers (see Appendix 4), finally compelled a reluctant government to take the threat more seriously. Government spending on civil defence (at style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; color: black'>£2 million per annum in 1978, just one-twentieth of what had been allocated ten years earlier) was sharply increased, until by 1983 it was approaching the 1968 figure. The legislation on army reserves (see Appendix 1), introduced as a result of constant pressure from Chief Constables on the Home Office, provided for the re-establishment of what was known as TAVR II — a part of the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve of particular relevance in the management of a national emergency — in a general increase in reserve forces. Further legislation included, in 1983, a Civil Protection (Emergencies) Act, which rationalized and extended emergency planning at all levels and introduced a phased system of alerts. A national civil defence exercise held in August 1984 led to a widespread improvement in procedures and brought out the clear lesson — borne out a year later — that law and order would provide the acutest problems.