Greetings

[Porpoise]

12

The news was getting worse. A cruise ship had been hit by a missile from a Soviet submarine in the North Sea, although the Soviets were on CNN blaming NATO and for all I know they could have been right. Hundreds of tourists drowned, hundreds more floating on rafts between ice bergs, covered in oil like those pathetic penguins after the Exxon Valdez and all I could think of was, who the hell takes a cruise in North Sea? That's unfair, of course. It wasn't like they were cruising through a war zone to see the sights, they'd just been caught by surprise in the wrong place at the wrong time while trying to escape to safety.

The Finns were asking for assistance in defending against the Soviet invasion but there was little we could do. Norway refused to allow its ground forces beyond the Norwegian border and Sweden was stubbornly maintaining its neutrality, refusing overflight by NATO air forces. Finland was on its own. That said, they were putting up a stubborn defense.



More troubling to me were the latest reports from northern Germany. The West German 6th Panzergrenadier Division had taken positions north of the Kiel Canal and the Jutland Division was about to join them. Denmark was officially cut off from the rest of Europe. I heard afterwards that Olsen confidently predicted the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army would be halted at the Kiel Canal and no one expressed any doubts. Wishful thinking is holds a powerful attraction in the human mind.

South of Denmark the West German 3rd Panzer Division was trapped in a pocket between the Elbe river and Bremerhaven. This included the West German Lehr Brigade, the armored training and demonstration unit. Fully equipped with the latest weaponry and manned by veteran instructors and the cream of the conscripted crop. They were still strongly resisting the Soviets, but cut off from resupply it was only a matter of time before they ran out of supplies and ammunition. Beyond that the Dutch and British continued to fall back before the advancing Soviet armies.

In the years prior to World War One the German Staff Corps developed a plan for conquering Western Europe called the Scheliefen Plan, named after the General who developed it. It didn't go as well as hoped but as it turned out the first attempt was just a rehearsal. Twenty five years later the German army had another go and called it the Manstein plan. This second attempt went much better. What both plans had in common was to use the French-German border as the pivot in a big swinging right hook along the North Sea coast. Now it looked like the Russians were going to try the same thing.

In Southern Germany the attacks had been static. Lots of artillery and missiles and demonstration attacks but hardly any advances at all. The Fulda Gap remained in NATO control. The Russians had identified NATO's weak left flank and were throwing everything they had into a strong right hook to capture North Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium. Without the vital ports to reinforce and resupply from the USA, sooner or later NATO would run out of ammunition, fuel and troops. Then it would be a short stroll into Paris and onwards to Spain.

Of course, now we know the Soviets had no intention of advancing beyond the French border, at least not initially. Soviet and French diplomats had secretly negotiated a non-aggression pact. Spain had only been a member of NATO for a few years and were threatening to withdraw from "...a conflict not of our making, nor in our interest."