The Lawspeaker
08-08-2009, 01:50 PM
The Soviet Threat to Sweden during the Cold War (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465)
Introduction
In the summer of 2005, a study called Danmark under den kolde krig [Denmark during the Cold War] was published in Denmark.[1] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn1) In Sweden, this publication caused the biggest stir by accepting Ola Tunander’s theory that it was American submarines that – with the consent of some of those in central positions – violated Swedish waters in the 1980s. The Danish military also had a number of other views on the study and, in the autumn of 2005, the Danish military historian and retired Brigadier General Michael Clemmesen gave a lecture at the Swedish National Defence College in which he, among other things, gave an account of the plan for the Polish so-called Coastal Front’s attack along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea with the aim of occupying Denmark within two weeks. At the end of this lecture, he said that only a small number of units in the Baltic military district were involved in this operation and asked himself what their mission could have been. There were a few of us who made a mental note of this question and, since then, I have – with the support of Professor Kent Zetterberg at the Swedish National Defence College – devoted myself to trying to ascertain whether it is possible today to get a more factual answer to the question of the Soviet threat to Sweden during the Cold War, i.e., during the period 1945–1989/91.
The conditions for doing this appeared to us to be significantly worse than they were for the Danish researchers. Why this is will be explained in greater detail in the next section. Neither they nor we have had access to the various Russian (the former Soviet Union’s) security authorities’ archives regarding the Cold War era. In those cases where they have actually ever been opened, documents for the period up to and including the Second World War have primarily been available. For this reason, I have had to refer to open sources and interviews with former Soviet armed forces officers or others with an insight into Soviet society. There were, however, many books written by Soviet defectors around 1990 and the task I had taken on voluntarily was easier than I thought.
Some basic information
The Swedish Governments’ aim with our so-called policy of neutrality and our strong military defence for a small state was for us to be able to keep out of any Great Power conflict in the event of one of these, again, affecting our immediate surroundings. At the end of this essay, I will return to this choice of alternative and how this has turned out, in retrospect, in comparison with the alternative, i.e., joining NATO like Denmark and Norway. As they say, it is easy to be wise after the event.
From the middle of the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine that either of the two superpowers would deliberately start a war that could lead to a dual between them involving the use of nuclear weapons. There was, however, the possibility of a misjudgement or escalation from a small, local war. From the beginning of the 1960s, the Soviet Union adopted a pre-emptive strategy that led to the risk of this. What were the innermost thoughts of the US? (For an answer, see "The Creation of SIOP-62" by William Burr, The National Security Archive (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB130/index.htm).)
The policies pursued by the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact during the Cold War are summarised in the Danish study as follows:
As the Soviet Union chose the offensive as a strategy in its war planning, this became a considerable potential threat to Denmark, Norway, the Federal Republic of Germany and other states that would come into direct contact with the eastern war machine. If, in its security policy, the Soviet Union had chosen a more defensive policy, such as that introduced by Gorbachev in 1987, in which they restricted themselves to defending their own areas in the event of a war, the Warsaw Pact would have been perceived as considerably less of a threat.[2] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn2)Sweden belonged to these ‘other states’, although it was separated from the Soviet Union by Finland and the Baltic Sea. I should perhaps also remind the reader that the intrastate border between the Communist GDR and West Germany ran west of Skåne. Only someone wishing to ignore the aggressiveness of the intelligence operations conducted against our country and the subversive political activity, which was of the same type as in the European NATO countries, could have perceived the situation differently. ‘From an intelligence point of view’, said a former officer of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence directorate, ‘Sweden was regarded as an enemy’. (See as an example from the 1980s Document 1 (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=47459&navinfo=46465), obtained from General Kronkaitis.) I am not asserting that the Soviet Union had the political intention of starting a war to conquer Western Europe at a suitable time, only that it pursued policies that could be perceived as threatening and, at times, risky.
In an earlier paper, I touched on the ideas we ourselves had regarding the so-called threat Sweden faced during the Cold War, and how this resulted in operational defence doctrines and defence preparations.[3] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn3) The Danish study got me interested in testing the accuracy of these ideas. General information can be gleaned from the study, such as the view over time of the use of nuclear weapons. There are, on the other hand, few significant details to clarify the actual military threat to Sweden and the other Nordic countries.
This is connected with the Warsaw Pact’s command structure and its ‘firewalls’ for operational planning. The latter appear to have continued all the way to the General Staff in Moscow who were (are?) divided into operational planning cells for the various strategic areas that the military geographical world is, according to the Russian model, divided into, the so-called Teatr Voenny Destvij [Theatre of Strategic Military Actions – TSMA]. Groups such as this left the Centre to conduct exercises with the regional staffs within the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Only very senior officials, and few non-Russian officials, had any knowledge of the operation order for higher units. The operation orders were handwritten and only a few copies existed. No one knew what applied within neighbouring TSMAs. So that this could work in the event of war breaking out quickly, sealed envelopes containing orders were held by commanders throughout the entire command hierarchy. This, of course, entailed a major risk of poor coordination during implementation. On the other hand, the concentration of force was a principal axis for each operational area overall.
Denmark belonged to the continental Western TSMA, while the other Nordic countries belonged to the Northwestern TSMA. There are some signs that the border between these TSMAs may have been somewhat fluid in order to allow operational flexibility, or may have changed over time. In the latter case, the southernmost part of Sweden may, at the beginning, or in the event of some war contingencies, have belonged to the Western TSMA. In this case, this would apply at the time of or in the event of Skånelanden becoming a part of the operation against the Baltic straits.[4] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn4)
Thus, the Danish study’s archival sources and witnesses from the Central European countries have few or no details of operational planning in respect of the Nordic countries in general. The available sources regard Skåne (a Polish exercise in 1954) and Southern Norway, which, from the end of the 1970s, was indicated to be a secondary target for the Polish Coastal Front after the occupation of Denmark. Therefore, we cannot obtain any details from the documents that remain in the Polish and the former East German or Czechoslovak archives or from the witnesses from there who took part in the meetings and exercises in the same manner in which the Danish researchers acquired about the plans for their country, which belonged to the same TSMA as these countries.
When mobilising, each Soviet military district would set up a front. The border within the Northwestern TSMA between these two military districts (fronts), Leningrad and the Baltic, was at latitude of about 60°. It is unclear where the land border was in the actual Soviet Union between the Western TSMA and the Northwestern TSMA in the Baltic. In The Voroshilov Lectures, there are two illustrations with different boundaries defined.[5] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn5) In one illustration, the boundary is in the Gulf of Finland, i.e., close to the latitude of 60° and, in the other, between Latvia and Lithuania. Was this just a mistake or was this changed over time, or did this depend on which of the TSMA’s operations the initially deployed units were involved in in each separate situation? It is also one thing drawing boundaries for peacetime planning and another in the emergency situation when war breaks out when the allocation of units and boundaries must be adapted to the actual situation. We can, however, establish that the immediately battle-ready two divisions in Kaliningrad Oblast travelled, on one occasion, in convoy on the Polish front on a map and, in other cases, they had the task of landing in the southernmost part of Sweden.[6] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn6) The latter may have been the case prior to the 1960 plan.
Upon the reunification of Germany, the high level of combat preparedness (hours) of units in Central Europe and the abundant use of tactical and operational nuclear weapons during staff exercises for the Western TSMA were revealed. Researchers have asked themselves whether these exercises were an expression of the actual operational planning (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=15726&navinfo=15365). Through, among other things, the Danish study and testimonies in the international Parallel History Project (PHP)[7] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn7) it must be considered proven that this was the case. For a member of the armed forces, it is also natural to test the feasibility of one’s plans when carrying out exercises, particularly in those cases where the units involved in these exercises also participate in them. There were rivers that could represent the Rhine and islands that could represent those of Denmark. After Action Reviews were held after the exercises and sometimes led to changes to the plans. I have a copy of a handwritten plan from the PHP for the utilisation of the Czechoslovak People’s Army in the event of war (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=16239&navinfo=15365) (1964 edition) signed by the Supreme Commander of the Soviet armed forces, which tallies with the information about exercises from witnesses.
The pre-emptive Soviet strategy
During the so-called period of détente from the end of the 1960s, the Soviet Union intensified its rearmament particularly with regard to the Northern Fleet, which replaced the Baltic Fleet as the Soviet Union’s most prioritised Navy. The Central European Warsaw Pact countries’ armed forces were also modernised in order to be able to deal with their offensive missions within the framework of a new strategy.
This strategy meant that, when they deemed there were signs of an imminent NATO attack, the Warsaw Pact (admittedly, the Soviet Union) would pre-empt this so as to, as quickly as possible, render NATO’s deployment of nuclear weapons and American reinforcement from across the Atlantic difficult. The operational plan meant that the Western TSMA would be able to attack westwards from Czechoslovakia to Poland on a wide front and be able to reach the Atlantic coast in a few days. At the same time, they would attack from Hungary through neutral Austria towards northern Italy and the Mediterranean. A common thread runs through a meeting of the inner circles of the Soviet military at the beginning of the 1950s to Marshal Zhukov’s secret Berlin speech in 1957 (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=14861&nav1=1&nav2=3&nav3=5) to the decision in 1960 to adopt a pre-emptive offensive strategy. The meeting I mention was held just before the fall of Beria in 1953 and described in the memoirs of Stalin’s spymaster Pavel Sudoplatov:
Beria ordered me to, together with the chief of the GRU, General Zacharov, the chief of the navy’s intelligence operations, Vorontsov, and the commander of the long-range bombers, Marshal Golovanov, to come up with suggestions within a week as to how the American strategic air superiority and the American nuclear bases could be neutralised. He wanted a plan for putting the Americans’ lines of supply to Europe out of action, including ports and air bases. The following week, when we gathered in Beria’s spacious office in the Kremlin, the Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, Admiral N Kuznetsov, was present… with a different perspective on the meeting. He said that emergency operations should be classified in accordance with the characteristics of modern war, and, he asserted, modern conflicts tend to be short and achieve ultimate decisions. On the basis of my plan, he asked the question: Given that we have limited resources, where should our priorities lie – in a pre-emptive attack that would, perhaps, sink three or four aircraft carriers at the Atlantic ports or in the Mediterranean or in blowing up naval bases to prevent the flow of troops? Based on his naval perspective, he asserted that, in the long term, we could, by depriving the Americans and British of their superiority with regard to aircraft carriers, shift the balance of power to our advantage and thereby increase the overall effectiveness of our submarine force. General Zacharov, who later became Chief of the General Staff, remarked that the idea of pre-emptive strikes against the enemy’s strategic installations was an original idea in the art of warfare and one which he suggested that we should seriously further develop (my emphasis).[8] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn8)
In March 1957, Marshal Zhukov gave a secret speech in Berlin to the officers of the Russian group in East Germany (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=14861&nav1=1&nav2=3&nav3=5).[9] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn9) He probably wanted to strengthen the fighting spirit of this forward deployed group now that West Germany was going to rearm and nuclear weapons were deployed in the European NATO countries. (Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko and Defence Minister Georgy Zhukov were there to sign a defence agreement with East Germany.) In his speech, he emphasised that it was the Soviet Union that would strike first. As soon as there were signs of NATO preparing a strike in Europe, the Soviet Union would pre-empt this with a quick offensive right to the Atlantic. It was the well-equipped second echelon from the Belarusian and Baltic military districts that would be responsible for this. In the operation to counter the Hungarian Uprising the previous year, the force proved that it could be deployed in 46 hours. It was therefore this period of time that this forward deployed group would have to be able to hold its ground if – despite everything – the Western powers were to suddenly strike.
In reply to a question on why they could not get the same good armament, the Marshal said that it was important to let sleeping dogs lie. They were under constant observation from the other side of the border. He also discussed the fact that some of them had been too open with their East German colleagues. They just couldn’t be trusted. Some of them had defected to the West. It was vital to keep plans a secret from them. Although he spoke about the new nuclear weapons as the weapon that would destroy the opponent’s armed forces, he also said that they perhaps did not need to be used in the attack right to the Atlantic.
It was perhaps not such a great surprise that Zhukov of all people conveyed a perception such as this. He was, of course, a product of the ground forces, which had, historically, been the priority element of the continental power’s armed forces. Not everyone was delighted that the army was to be reduced, the navy to be expanded and the independent Strategic Missile Troops were to be prioritised. In addition, the Defence Minister had ideas about organising special sabotage forces within the framework of the GRU, which would have the primary task of making it more difficult for NATO to use nuclear weapons, ideas that he had ‘forgotten’ to brief his political colleagues on.
Already during the war, Zhukov had been seen as a potential rival for supreme power. (His home telephone would be tapped right up to his death.) Despite this, Khrushchev restored him to favour and appointed him Defence Minister. He had, of course, supported Khrushchev’s two-year long power struggle within the collective leadership after Stalin’s death. When, however, Khrushchev was made aware of Zhukov’s decision to organise these GRU forces (Spetsnaz), he got cold feet and regarded them as a possible instrument for a military coup and takeover. Zhukov was once again sent into domestic exile.[10] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn10) The new military doctrine was presented at the meeting of the Supreme Soviet on 14 January 1960 with heavy emphasis on the use of nuclear weapons.[11] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn11) The Soviet Union had quickly made up ground on the American lead and during the early 1950s they began to make operational nuclear weapons. The strategy was communicated to the Warsaw Pact’s defence ministers at a meeting at the beginning of 1961 and Marshal Sokolovsky’s detailed operational plan was submitted in the summer of 1962. I will return to this view of nuclear weapons further on in the section The European Nuclear War, which provides an overall discussion of this problem.
I will also provide an overall account of the Spetsnaz organisation later. Because, even though Zhukov disappeared, his organisation did not. It would be developed into a brigade at each front (military district) and fleet along with various units controlled from the ‘Centre’ for very secret and advanced missions. In connection with this account, I will also add to the submarine question[12] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn12) in those respects where the new facts have emerged from the sources I have now studied.
The Soviet strategic view of the Nordic region
Continental Europe or what the Soviet Union called the Western TSMA was therefore the strategic area that was at the centre of all thinking regarding how a military confrontation between the superpowers could be prevented, break out or accomplished. Great importance was, however, also attached to the Nordic region, i.e., the Northwestern TSMA, due to its flank position in relation to the Continent and NATO’s sea communications across the Atlantic. For the Soviet Union, Scandinavia was also an area over which air and, later, missile strikes could be directed not just at the satellite states and communications with them, but also directly at the Soviet Union’s heartland. The direction was what could be called the Soviet Union’s ‘soft underbelly’, an important area in its neighbourhood that it had no control over.[13] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn13)
http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/images/clip_image002_000.jpg
Illustration 1. The Soviet view of the 1980s with regard to threats coming from across Scandinavia. (Illustration from Lars Ulving’s Rysk krigskonst [Russian Art of War], Figure 2.27.) In the 1950s, the threat consisted entirely of strategic nuclear bombers with a need for support from tactical aircraft based in the Nordic region.
In The Voroshilov Lectures, there is a description of how, in the mid-1970s, the Soviet General Staff Academy regarded the Nordic area from military strategic points of reference. It says, among other things, that the Northwestern TSMA consists of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and the Northwestern Soviet Union and surrounding waters. It is explicitly stated that Finland and Sweden are neutral. As regards the Western TSMA, it is also said that ‘the Danish sounds are of vital operational importance. Here, close cooperation is required between ground and air forces and the Western Fleet’ (=The Baltic Fleet). The description of the Northwestern TSMA’s strategic characteristics continued:
The Northwestern TSMA at its western boundary meets the Atlantic Ocean TSMA, where large groupings of NATO naval forces are deployed. Important air and sea routes across the Atlantic Ocean connect America with Western Europe. Operations conducted in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly in its northeastern parts, will have close connection with operations carried out in the Northwestern TSMA, and will have great impact on the general strategic situation on the European continent.
In the south, the Northwestern TSMA borders the Western TSMA, where the most active NATO countries, primarily West Germany and England, are located. Strong NATO armed force groupings are deployed here, which is at the same time the centre of the main economic regions of West European countries. Lines of communication of worldwide significance pass through this area. Operations in the Northwestern TSMA will have to be coordinated with operations in the Western TSMA in terms of unified concepts and strategic political aims.
http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/images/clip_image002_001.jpg
Illustration 2. The Soviet Theatres of Strategic Military Planning in the 1970s.
As discussed above, the Northwestern TSMA occupies an important strategic position between the West European TSMA and the oceanic TSMA of the Atlantic Ocean. In the context of NATO plans, the countries outside the USSR in the TSMA will be used as NATO´s bridgeheads for military operations directed to the east. That is the area where NATO has already deployed forces which will be employed to protect its northern flank to the Western and Atlantic Ocean TSMAs.
The main naval forces of the Warsaw Pact countries are deployed in the Northwestern TSMA. This area will provide favorable conditions for Warsaw Pact naval forces to get access to the northern and central Atlantic Ocean, which is under NATO control and influence. This action will isolate Norway and Denmark and provide suitable opportunities for the Northern and Baltic Fleet of the Soviet Navy, as well as for Poland and the German Democratic Republic, to accomplish missions for the purpose of destroying the main groupings of NATO forces operating in the Western TSMA.[14] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn14)
With a strategic view like this of the Nordic area, we undeniably get the impression that the Nordic area would be affected by any Soviet operation – and at an early stage – in any war on the European Continent. The question is how a militarily non-aligned Sweden would be dealt with in an operation like this in the Northwestern TSMA. A Sweden that would undeniably become isolated, along with Norway and Denmark.
(The article continues and the site contains a treasure of information. Cold War enthusiasts should really dig in here. I stumbled upon this completely by accident)
Introduction
In the summer of 2005, a study called Danmark under den kolde krig [Denmark during the Cold War] was published in Denmark.[1] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn1) In Sweden, this publication caused the biggest stir by accepting Ola Tunander’s theory that it was American submarines that – with the consent of some of those in central positions – violated Swedish waters in the 1980s. The Danish military also had a number of other views on the study and, in the autumn of 2005, the Danish military historian and retired Brigadier General Michael Clemmesen gave a lecture at the Swedish National Defence College in which he, among other things, gave an account of the plan for the Polish so-called Coastal Front’s attack along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea with the aim of occupying Denmark within two weeks. At the end of this lecture, he said that only a small number of units in the Baltic military district were involved in this operation and asked himself what their mission could have been. There were a few of us who made a mental note of this question and, since then, I have – with the support of Professor Kent Zetterberg at the Swedish National Defence College – devoted myself to trying to ascertain whether it is possible today to get a more factual answer to the question of the Soviet threat to Sweden during the Cold War, i.e., during the period 1945–1989/91.
The conditions for doing this appeared to us to be significantly worse than they were for the Danish researchers. Why this is will be explained in greater detail in the next section. Neither they nor we have had access to the various Russian (the former Soviet Union’s) security authorities’ archives regarding the Cold War era. In those cases where they have actually ever been opened, documents for the period up to and including the Second World War have primarily been available. For this reason, I have had to refer to open sources and interviews with former Soviet armed forces officers or others with an insight into Soviet society. There were, however, many books written by Soviet defectors around 1990 and the task I had taken on voluntarily was easier than I thought.
Some basic information
The Swedish Governments’ aim with our so-called policy of neutrality and our strong military defence for a small state was for us to be able to keep out of any Great Power conflict in the event of one of these, again, affecting our immediate surroundings. At the end of this essay, I will return to this choice of alternative and how this has turned out, in retrospect, in comparison with the alternative, i.e., joining NATO like Denmark and Norway. As they say, it is easy to be wise after the event.
From the middle of the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine that either of the two superpowers would deliberately start a war that could lead to a dual between them involving the use of nuclear weapons. There was, however, the possibility of a misjudgement or escalation from a small, local war. From the beginning of the 1960s, the Soviet Union adopted a pre-emptive strategy that led to the risk of this. What were the innermost thoughts of the US? (For an answer, see "The Creation of SIOP-62" by William Burr, The National Security Archive (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB130/index.htm).)
The policies pursued by the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact during the Cold War are summarised in the Danish study as follows:
As the Soviet Union chose the offensive as a strategy in its war planning, this became a considerable potential threat to Denmark, Norway, the Federal Republic of Germany and other states that would come into direct contact with the eastern war machine. If, in its security policy, the Soviet Union had chosen a more defensive policy, such as that introduced by Gorbachev in 1987, in which they restricted themselves to defending their own areas in the event of a war, the Warsaw Pact would have been perceived as considerably less of a threat.[2] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn2)Sweden belonged to these ‘other states’, although it was separated from the Soviet Union by Finland and the Baltic Sea. I should perhaps also remind the reader that the intrastate border between the Communist GDR and West Germany ran west of Skåne. Only someone wishing to ignore the aggressiveness of the intelligence operations conducted against our country and the subversive political activity, which was of the same type as in the European NATO countries, could have perceived the situation differently. ‘From an intelligence point of view’, said a former officer of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence directorate, ‘Sweden was regarded as an enemy’. (See as an example from the 1980s Document 1 (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=47459&navinfo=46465), obtained from General Kronkaitis.) I am not asserting that the Soviet Union had the political intention of starting a war to conquer Western Europe at a suitable time, only that it pursued policies that could be perceived as threatening and, at times, risky.
In an earlier paper, I touched on the ideas we ourselves had regarding the so-called threat Sweden faced during the Cold War, and how this resulted in operational defence doctrines and defence preparations.[3] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn3) The Danish study got me interested in testing the accuracy of these ideas. General information can be gleaned from the study, such as the view over time of the use of nuclear weapons. There are, on the other hand, few significant details to clarify the actual military threat to Sweden and the other Nordic countries.
This is connected with the Warsaw Pact’s command structure and its ‘firewalls’ for operational planning. The latter appear to have continued all the way to the General Staff in Moscow who were (are?) divided into operational planning cells for the various strategic areas that the military geographical world is, according to the Russian model, divided into, the so-called Teatr Voenny Destvij [Theatre of Strategic Military Actions – TSMA]. Groups such as this left the Centre to conduct exercises with the regional staffs within the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Only very senior officials, and few non-Russian officials, had any knowledge of the operation order for higher units. The operation orders were handwritten and only a few copies existed. No one knew what applied within neighbouring TSMAs. So that this could work in the event of war breaking out quickly, sealed envelopes containing orders were held by commanders throughout the entire command hierarchy. This, of course, entailed a major risk of poor coordination during implementation. On the other hand, the concentration of force was a principal axis for each operational area overall.
Denmark belonged to the continental Western TSMA, while the other Nordic countries belonged to the Northwestern TSMA. There are some signs that the border between these TSMAs may have been somewhat fluid in order to allow operational flexibility, or may have changed over time. In the latter case, the southernmost part of Sweden may, at the beginning, or in the event of some war contingencies, have belonged to the Western TSMA. In this case, this would apply at the time of or in the event of Skånelanden becoming a part of the operation against the Baltic straits.[4] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn4)
Thus, the Danish study’s archival sources and witnesses from the Central European countries have few or no details of operational planning in respect of the Nordic countries in general. The available sources regard Skåne (a Polish exercise in 1954) and Southern Norway, which, from the end of the 1970s, was indicated to be a secondary target for the Polish Coastal Front after the occupation of Denmark. Therefore, we cannot obtain any details from the documents that remain in the Polish and the former East German or Czechoslovak archives or from the witnesses from there who took part in the meetings and exercises in the same manner in which the Danish researchers acquired about the plans for their country, which belonged to the same TSMA as these countries.
When mobilising, each Soviet military district would set up a front. The border within the Northwestern TSMA between these two military districts (fronts), Leningrad and the Baltic, was at latitude of about 60°. It is unclear where the land border was in the actual Soviet Union between the Western TSMA and the Northwestern TSMA in the Baltic. In The Voroshilov Lectures, there are two illustrations with different boundaries defined.[5] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn5) In one illustration, the boundary is in the Gulf of Finland, i.e., close to the latitude of 60° and, in the other, between Latvia and Lithuania. Was this just a mistake or was this changed over time, or did this depend on which of the TSMA’s operations the initially deployed units were involved in in each separate situation? It is also one thing drawing boundaries for peacetime planning and another in the emergency situation when war breaks out when the allocation of units and boundaries must be adapted to the actual situation. We can, however, establish that the immediately battle-ready two divisions in Kaliningrad Oblast travelled, on one occasion, in convoy on the Polish front on a map and, in other cases, they had the task of landing in the southernmost part of Sweden.[6] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn6) The latter may have been the case prior to the 1960 plan.
Upon the reunification of Germany, the high level of combat preparedness (hours) of units in Central Europe and the abundant use of tactical and operational nuclear weapons during staff exercises for the Western TSMA were revealed. Researchers have asked themselves whether these exercises were an expression of the actual operational planning (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=15726&navinfo=15365). Through, among other things, the Danish study and testimonies in the international Parallel History Project (PHP)[7] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn7) it must be considered proven that this was the case. For a member of the armed forces, it is also natural to test the feasibility of one’s plans when carrying out exercises, particularly in those cases where the units involved in these exercises also participate in them. There were rivers that could represent the Rhine and islands that could represent those of Denmark. After Action Reviews were held after the exercises and sometimes led to changes to the plans. I have a copy of a handwritten plan from the PHP for the utilisation of the Czechoslovak People’s Army in the event of war (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=16239&navinfo=15365) (1964 edition) signed by the Supreme Commander of the Soviet armed forces, which tallies with the information about exercises from witnesses.
The pre-emptive Soviet strategy
During the so-called period of détente from the end of the 1960s, the Soviet Union intensified its rearmament particularly with regard to the Northern Fleet, which replaced the Baltic Fleet as the Soviet Union’s most prioritised Navy. The Central European Warsaw Pact countries’ armed forces were also modernised in order to be able to deal with their offensive missions within the framework of a new strategy.
This strategy meant that, when they deemed there were signs of an imminent NATO attack, the Warsaw Pact (admittedly, the Soviet Union) would pre-empt this so as to, as quickly as possible, render NATO’s deployment of nuclear weapons and American reinforcement from across the Atlantic difficult. The operational plan meant that the Western TSMA would be able to attack westwards from Czechoslovakia to Poland on a wide front and be able to reach the Atlantic coast in a few days. At the same time, they would attack from Hungary through neutral Austria towards northern Italy and the Mediterranean. A common thread runs through a meeting of the inner circles of the Soviet military at the beginning of the 1950s to Marshal Zhukov’s secret Berlin speech in 1957 (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=14861&nav1=1&nav2=3&nav3=5) to the decision in 1960 to adopt a pre-emptive offensive strategy. The meeting I mention was held just before the fall of Beria in 1953 and described in the memoirs of Stalin’s spymaster Pavel Sudoplatov:
Beria ordered me to, together with the chief of the GRU, General Zacharov, the chief of the navy’s intelligence operations, Vorontsov, and the commander of the long-range bombers, Marshal Golovanov, to come up with suggestions within a week as to how the American strategic air superiority and the American nuclear bases could be neutralised. He wanted a plan for putting the Americans’ lines of supply to Europe out of action, including ports and air bases. The following week, when we gathered in Beria’s spacious office in the Kremlin, the Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, Admiral N Kuznetsov, was present… with a different perspective on the meeting. He said that emergency operations should be classified in accordance with the characteristics of modern war, and, he asserted, modern conflicts tend to be short and achieve ultimate decisions. On the basis of my plan, he asked the question: Given that we have limited resources, where should our priorities lie – in a pre-emptive attack that would, perhaps, sink three or four aircraft carriers at the Atlantic ports or in the Mediterranean or in blowing up naval bases to prevent the flow of troops? Based on his naval perspective, he asserted that, in the long term, we could, by depriving the Americans and British of their superiority with regard to aircraft carriers, shift the balance of power to our advantage and thereby increase the overall effectiveness of our submarine force. General Zacharov, who later became Chief of the General Staff, remarked that the idea of pre-emptive strikes against the enemy’s strategic installations was an original idea in the art of warfare and one which he suggested that we should seriously further develop (my emphasis).[8] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn8)
In March 1957, Marshal Zhukov gave a secret speech in Berlin to the officers of the Russian group in East Germany (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=14861&nav1=1&nav2=3&nav3=5).[9] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn9) He probably wanted to strengthen the fighting spirit of this forward deployed group now that West Germany was going to rearm and nuclear weapons were deployed in the European NATO countries. (Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko and Defence Minister Georgy Zhukov were there to sign a defence agreement with East Germany.) In his speech, he emphasised that it was the Soviet Union that would strike first. As soon as there were signs of NATO preparing a strike in Europe, the Soviet Union would pre-empt this with a quick offensive right to the Atlantic. It was the well-equipped second echelon from the Belarusian and Baltic military districts that would be responsible for this. In the operation to counter the Hungarian Uprising the previous year, the force proved that it could be deployed in 46 hours. It was therefore this period of time that this forward deployed group would have to be able to hold its ground if – despite everything – the Western powers were to suddenly strike.
In reply to a question on why they could not get the same good armament, the Marshal said that it was important to let sleeping dogs lie. They were under constant observation from the other side of the border. He also discussed the fact that some of them had been too open with their East German colleagues. They just couldn’t be trusted. Some of them had defected to the West. It was vital to keep plans a secret from them. Although he spoke about the new nuclear weapons as the weapon that would destroy the opponent’s armed forces, he also said that they perhaps did not need to be used in the attack right to the Atlantic.
It was perhaps not such a great surprise that Zhukov of all people conveyed a perception such as this. He was, of course, a product of the ground forces, which had, historically, been the priority element of the continental power’s armed forces. Not everyone was delighted that the army was to be reduced, the navy to be expanded and the independent Strategic Missile Troops were to be prioritised. In addition, the Defence Minister had ideas about organising special sabotage forces within the framework of the GRU, which would have the primary task of making it more difficult for NATO to use nuclear weapons, ideas that he had ‘forgotten’ to brief his political colleagues on.
Already during the war, Zhukov had been seen as a potential rival for supreme power. (His home telephone would be tapped right up to his death.) Despite this, Khrushchev restored him to favour and appointed him Defence Minister. He had, of course, supported Khrushchev’s two-year long power struggle within the collective leadership after Stalin’s death. When, however, Khrushchev was made aware of Zhukov’s decision to organise these GRU forces (Spetsnaz), he got cold feet and regarded them as a possible instrument for a military coup and takeover. Zhukov was once again sent into domestic exile.[10] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn10) The new military doctrine was presented at the meeting of the Supreme Soviet on 14 January 1960 with heavy emphasis on the use of nuclear weapons.[11] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn11) The Soviet Union had quickly made up ground on the American lead and during the early 1950s they began to make operational nuclear weapons. The strategy was communicated to the Warsaw Pact’s defence ministers at a meeting at the beginning of 1961 and Marshal Sokolovsky’s detailed operational plan was submitted in the summer of 1962. I will return to this view of nuclear weapons further on in the section The European Nuclear War, which provides an overall discussion of this problem.
I will also provide an overall account of the Spetsnaz organisation later. Because, even though Zhukov disappeared, his organisation did not. It would be developed into a brigade at each front (military district) and fleet along with various units controlled from the ‘Centre’ for very secret and advanced missions. In connection with this account, I will also add to the submarine question[12] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn12) in those respects where the new facts have emerged from the sources I have now studied.
The Soviet strategic view of the Nordic region
Continental Europe or what the Soviet Union called the Western TSMA was therefore the strategic area that was at the centre of all thinking regarding how a military confrontation between the superpowers could be prevented, break out or accomplished. Great importance was, however, also attached to the Nordic region, i.e., the Northwestern TSMA, due to its flank position in relation to the Continent and NATO’s sea communications across the Atlantic. For the Soviet Union, Scandinavia was also an area over which air and, later, missile strikes could be directed not just at the satellite states and communications with them, but also directly at the Soviet Union’s heartland. The direction was what could be called the Soviet Union’s ‘soft underbelly’, an important area in its neighbourhood that it had no control over.[13] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn13)
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Illustration 1. The Soviet view of the 1980s with regard to threats coming from across Scandinavia. (Illustration from Lars Ulving’s Rysk krigskonst [Russian Art of War], Figure 2.27.) In the 1950s, the threat consisted entirely of strategic nuclear bombers with a need for support from tactical aircraft based in the Nordic region.
In The Voroshilov Lectures, there is a description of how, in the mid-1970s, the Soviet General Staff Academy regarded the Nordic area from military strategic points of reference. It says, among other things, that the Northwestern TSMA consists of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and the Northwestern Soviet Union and surrounding waters. It is explicitly stated that Finland and Sweden are neutral. As regards the Western TSMA, it is also said that ‘the Danish sounds are of vital operational importance. Here, close cooperation is required between ground and air forces and the Western Fleet’ (=The Baltic Fleet). The description of the Northwestern TSMA’s strategic characteristics continued:
The Northwestern TSMA at its western boundary meets the Atlantic Ocean TSMA, where large groupings of NATO naval forces are deployed. Important air and sea routes across the Atlantic Ocean connect America with Western Europe. Operations conducted in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly in its northeastern parts, will have close connection with operations carried out in the Northwestern TSMA, and will have great impact on the general strategic situation on the European continent.
In the south, the Northwestern TSMA borders the Western TSMA, where the most active NATO countries, primarily West Germany and England, are located. Strong NATO armed force groupings are deployed here, which is at the same time the centre of the main economic regions of West European countries. Lines of communication of worldwide significance pass through this area. Operations in the Northwestern TSMA will have to be coordinated with operations in the Western TSMA in terms of unified concepts and strategic political aims.
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Illustration 2. The Soviet Theatres of Strategic Military Planning in the 1970s.
As discussed above, the Northwestern TSMA occupies an important strategic position between the West European TSMA and the oceanic TSMA of the Atlantic Ocean. In the context of NATO plans, the countries outside the USSR in the TSMA will be used as NATO´s bridgeheads for military operations directed to the east. That is the area where NATO has already deployed forces which will be employed to protect its northern flank to the Western and Atlantic Ocean TSMAs.
The main naval forces of the Warsaw Pact countries are deployed in the Northwestern TSMA. This area will provide favorable conditions for Warsaw Pact naval forces to get access to the northern and central Atlantic Ocean, which is under NATO control and influence. This action will isolate Norway and Denmark and provide suitable opportunities for the Northern and Baltic Fleet of the Soviet Navy, as well as for Poland and the German Democratic Republic, to accomplish missions for the purpose of destroying the main groupings of NATO forces operating in the Western TSMA.[14] (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465#_edn14)
With a strategic view like this of the Nordic area, we undeniably get the impression that the Nordic area would be affected by any Soviet operation – and at an early stage – in any war on the European Continent. The question is how a militarily non-aligned Sweden would be dealt with in an operation like this in the Northwestern TSMA. A Sweden that would undeniably become isolated, along with Norway and Denmark.
(The article continues and the site contains a treasure of information. Cold War enthusiasts should really dig in here. I stumbled upon this completely by accident)