Military History: Russia’s Cold War Plan To Crush France (In 7 Days)

The Nazis conquered France in six weeks, in one of the most spectacular military victories in history.

Had the Soviet Union gone to war with the West in the early 1960s, it also planned to blitz France. But unlike the Germans, the Soviets planned to do it in a week, according to the Warsaw Pact’s 1964 war plan, discovered in the military archives of the former Czechoslovakia.

Was this an example of military might or military megalomania? For a system that professed not to believe in God, the Soviet plan appears nothing short of miraculous. Put simply, all the Soviets and their Eastern European allies had to do was launch their offensive from Czechoslovakia, smash through southern Germany, cross the Rhine River, and then drive into southern France. All this to be accomplished in about seven days, or as long as God took to create the Earth. And even He needed to take a rest at the end.

The Soviet plan was nearly as ambitious. It called for the Czech First and Fourth Armies to push for the Franco-German border, while the Soviet Eighth Guards Army advanced on their northern flank and the Hungarians on their southern flank. Paratroopers would seize crossings over the Neckar and Rhine Rivers. The Warsaw Pact tanks and mechanized infantry were expected to thrust about 700 miles from Czechoslovakia to Besancon, about 150 miles northeast of Lyon, by D+8. From there, the Soviets could thrust north to Paris and the Channel ports, or south to the Mediterranean ports such as Marseilles.

To strike from Czechoslovakia to Besancon would require the Red Army to travel around 60 miles per day. To put this in perspective, one of the most rapid advances in history was made by Rommel’s Afrika Korps in June 1942, when German mechanized units routed the British Eighth Army and advanced 350 miles in 10 days, or 35 miles per day. Even during the 1940 German blitz that devastated France, Rommel’s famed 7th Panzer Division advanced only 85 miles in five days.

Read the Remainder at National Interest

Cold War Files: The Cold War’s Deadliest Battleground

When young Americans are taught about the Cold War, we learn that it was exactly that — a decades-long standoff based on the threat of war, one without mass casualties, tanks and guns. Sure, there were spies, assassinations and intrigue, but even history teachers who cover proxy wars tend to leave out one whopping chapter: Angola’s role as surrogate battleground.

During the Cold War, Angola saw the second-largest American deployment of covert aid.

Only Afghanistan’s mujahideen got more aid from the U.S. And the conflict in Angola was very bloody: By the time the Americans and Soviets backed away, in 1991, hundreds of thousands of people had perished. Angola’s ensuing civil war, which ended in 2002, killed 1.5 million, according to some estimates. Turns out the Cold War wasn’t so cold.

It all started with a coup in Portugal — the colonial rulers of Angola — that ushered in a wave of Portuguese decolonization of its African territories. The transition was abrupt, and its sudden power vacuum prompted a violent three-way bid for rule. The U.S. threw its support behind Angola’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, and the Soviets backed UNITA’s enemies, the Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA.

The Soviet Union and the U.S. weren’t alone in their meddling. Cuba — led by an ideological imperative to help install a Marxist regime in power — partnered up with the Soviets and poured some 50,000 troops into Angola. The U.S., meanwhile, sidled up to apartheid South Africa to send its troops into Angola. Despite all the spending, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied involvement in the southwest African country to Congress for years. With the American public reeling from Richard Nixon’s resignation and the conclusion of the disastrous Vietnam War, the CIA did what it does best: It kept its involvement in Angola secret.

Why Angola? Many scholars argue it was far more than a battle for hearts and minds — the ideological alignment of the powers and their proxies was shaky at best. Instead, the superpowers saw a chance to deplete the other side of weapons and munitions and to maintain physical control of a country valued for its diamonds and oil. The U.S. saw Soviet dominance-by-proxy of Angola as catastrophic, says Keith Somerville, a scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It would give them power over parts of the Cape shipping route around the tip of Africa as well as the export of a whole range of minerals — uranium, copper, platinum, coltan and diamonds — from its next-door neighbors, he says.

In the end, the Cold War subsided and the superpowers pressured the warring parties into signing peace accords in 1991. The MPLA won the mandated elections (its leader, José Eduardo Dos Santos, is still in power today). The U.S. abandoned UNITA and established formal diplomatic relations with Angola. UNITA, in retaliation for its loss, reignited a war that raged on until 2002. No doubt foreign meddling prolonged and deepened the conflict — including by leaving Angola with the highest number of land mines in the world — but for many, the persistence of war long after Soviet-American withdrawal shows that the “core issues were there” and foreign powers “exacerbated the situation with arms and ammunition,” says Alex Vines, Africa researcher at Chatham House.

 “Everything changed” after the Cold War “in terms of the way major powers looked at Africa,” Somerville says. Trade became the name of the game. After all, Angola is the second largest oil producer in Africa, after Nigeria. Even today, though, UNITA feels slighted. During Hillary Clinton’s visit to the country as Secretary of State, UNITA expressed dismay that it did not receive a sit-down with its former Cold War backer. Her likely thoughts: Got oil?

Read the Original Article at OZY

Military History: Was The Russian Military A SteamRoller From WW2 Until Today?

Joseph Stalin supposedly claimed that “quantity has a quality all its own,” justifying a cannon-fodder mentality and immense casualties. The problem is, Stalin never actually said that, but it fits our stereotype about the Russian military so neatly that everyone believes he did.

When it comes to war, Russia is commonly perceived as favoring quantity over quality and winning mainly by overwhelming its opponents with hordes of poorly trained soldiers. You can hardly find any account of Russia’s wars that does not use terms like “hordes,” “masses,” and even “Neolithic swarms.” Quantity, it is believed, made quality almost irrelevant.

German generals propagated the myth of a Red Army comprised of faceless masses of troops, motivated only by NKVD rifles at their backs and winning only through sheer force of numbers. Many Western histories accept this view, and it is standard fare in Hollywood, notably in the 2001 Enemy at the Gates.  The story was also standard fare during the Cold War, when the intelligence community frequently overestimated the quantitative side of Soviet capabilities while belittling its quality.

True, some analysts argued for a more nuanced approach. For instance, Michael Handel in 1981 wrote that “To claim that the USSR is emphasizing quantity over quality in military equipment is to foster a dangerous misconception” [emphasis in the original]. We also know that the “missile gap” and “bomber gap” were artifacts of faulty intelligence analysis.

However, when you crunch the numbers, it turns out that Russian superiority has not been as great as most people believe. In fact during World War II, the U.S. Army often had about the same numerical advantage over its enemies as did the Red Army. A better understanding of the past might shift our perceptions of the present.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

Military History: 10 Amazing Military Deception Operations

Deception operations have been employed in warfare throughout history, with the earliest mentions being in works like Virgil’s Aeneid describing the Trojan Horse during the Trojan War. The Greeks invented smokescreens for use during the Peloponnesian War, and there are countless other examples of deception tactics that have both worked and failed. This list comprises some of the more important uses of deception that successfully tricked the enemy throughout the history of warfare.

10. Maskirovka
Russia, Battle Of Kursk, World War II

 

Maskirovka is a broad military doctrine of Soviet deception developed throughout the early 20th century. Its primary focus is denial, deception, and surprise. The practice utilizes several means of fooling the enemy, ideally suggesting to them that a smaller force is awaiting them “over the hill.”

It was most successfully employed at the Battle of Kursk during World War II, when a relatively large force of Germans unwittingly attacked what they believed to be a small force of Russian troops, which actually numbered more than four times their own. The Russian forces were able to achieve this, in part, by spreading rumors throughout their own ranks as to their capabilities and strength, which spread to the Germans through their counterintelligence collection means. Ammunition and supplies were moved only under the cover of darkness, while camouflage was utilized to conceal anything of military value. Additionally, the Soviets employed fake airfields, which enticed the Germans to bomb dummy aircraft, further confusing their assessment of the Soviet military strength and capabilities.

Prior to the battle, the Germans underestimated the Russians’ strength, thinking that they had fewer than 1,500 tanks and 400,000 men ready to fight. Unfortunately for German intelligence, the Russians’ deception worked, and they confronted more than 1.3 million fighting men, more than twice the estimated number of tanks, and nearly 3,000 aircraft. The resulting battle destroyed the German offensive and earned the Soviets their first victory against the Germans along the Eastern Front. For the remainder of the war, the Germans would be on the defensive all the way to Berlin.

The doctrine is still being used, most recently in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the taking of Eastern Ukraine.

9. Bluffing
England, Battle Of Fishguard, War Of The First Coalition

In 1797, during what has been called “The Last Invasion of Britain,” French Revolutionary forces crossed the North Sea and faced the British at the Battle of Fishguard, which wasn’t really a battle at all. Having previously landed successfully a few miles west of Fishguard with nearly 20 boatloads of troops, 47 barrels of powder, and 50 tons of cartridges and grenades, the French were ready to take the town.

France’s Commodore Castagnier sent a single French ship to reconnoiter the bay while flying the British colors. As soon as the ship was spotted by the British, they fired a single blank from a 9-lb gun. While the port had eight of these large cannons, they were severely understocked and had only three rounds. The French ship immediately hoisted the French colors and fled the bay. The British may have fired the cannon to signal the ship in some way, but regardless of their intention, they caused the French to reconsider their target and turn away from Fishguard. Had they not fired the initial blank to bluff the French scout ship, the port would likely have been taken.

8. Trojan Coffin
The Normans, Castle Siege

 

Many stories of the fabled 11th-century Norwegian King Harald Hardrada have been told throughout the years, detailing his bravery and ingenuity at combat. During his conquest on the road to becoming the king of Norway, Harald laid siege to an unnamed castle by camping outside and establishing his men for the upcoming battle. He also had erected a small tent a ways outside the main camp, where he lay sick and possibly dying. Before any battle took place, it was reported that the great king had perished from his illness, and his men ventured toward the castle to tell the news of their commander’s demise. They addressed a large gathering of priests and requested that they allow their fallen commander to be buried within the city.

The priests believed that they would receive rich gifts for accommodating the bereaved fighting men and acquiesced. They formed a large procession and took Harald’s ornate coffin into their castle, along with a small group of his men. Once they’d crossed the threshold and entered the castle grounds, Harald’s men immediately barred the gate, called the remaining men to battle, and the good King Harald himself leaped from the coffin and declared that everyone be killed. The castle was taken, and Harald’s legendary exploits continued toward the conquest of England.

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Cold War Files: The Russian “Alfa” Attack Sub

The Soviet Union began the Cold War well behind the United States in submarine technology.

Although the Soviets acquired several of the most advanced German submarine types towards the end of the war, the United States had amassed a wealth of experience in submarine and antisubmarine practice from the Pacific War and the Battle of the Atlantic.

Combined with other technological advantages, the United States leapt out to a significant lead in submarine tech (especially nuclear submarines) in the first two decades of the Cold War.

In particular, early Soviet nuclear submarines struggled to compete with the West in stealth and reliability. After the first few designs came to fruition, the Soviets decided to undertake a combination of brute force and extremely risky high technology.

The brute-force part meant building a submarine that could move faster and dive deeper than any Western counterpart. The high-tech part meant innovative hull design, reactor design and material manipulation.

The result was the Type 705 Lyra (known as Alfa in NATO), a submarine that the West regarded as a profound, if short-lived, threat to its undersea dominance.

The brute-force part meant building a submarine that could move faster and dive deeper than any Western counterpart. The high-tech part meant innovative hull design, reactor design and material manipulation.

The result was the Type 705 Lyra (known as Alfa in NATO), a submarine that the West regarded as a profound, if short-lived, threat to its undersea dominance.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring