The Cold War: A MILITARY History (11 page)

These examples from the very early days of NATO show one of the underlying strengths of the Alliance: not that bureaucratic conflicts – which might today be termed ‘star wars’ – were avoided, but that they were always resolved. It would have been too much to expect that the various national susceptibilities would not have resulted in some bruising discussions, but somehow the will was always there to find a solution.

The organization did not, of course, remain static: it changed to meet altered circumstances in national organizations and to match political and military developments within the Alliance. Thus the national ‘share’ of appointments had to be adjusted to include the Germans in 1955, again in 1966 to cover the departure of the French, and yet again in 1982 to accommodate Spain, although Spain did not enter the integrated command structure.

In the late 1960s two events increased yet further the importance of the UK to the Alliance. The first was the move of many USAF air bases from France to the UK as a result of General De Gaulle’s diktat; the second was the adoption in 1967 of the strategy of ‘flexible response’. As a result the
British
Isles became of major significance as a base for offensive and defensive operations, and their security became a matter of great concern to the Alliance. A new NATO command was therefore established on 10 April 1975, when Commander UK Air Forces (CINCUKAIR) took post at High Wycombe, England. CINCUKAIR was ‘double-hatted’ as Commander-in-Chief RAF Strike Command, and, although only a major subordinate commander (MSC), he reported directly to SACEUR.
^fn8
This brought British airspace firmly under NATO’s control in war, but failed to cause the sort of political and public reactions which had made the decisions on the naval commands in the Atlantic and Mediterranean so difficult in the 1950s.

When NATO was set up there were two principal subordinate commands (PSCs) on the Continent: Land Forces Central Europe and Air Forces Central Europe. The air-force headquarters was subsequently disbanded, but was resurrected in 1975 as Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), although a directive by NATO’s Defence Planning Committee that it should be moved from Ramstein in southern Germany and collocated with AFCENT at Brunssum was successfully resisted by the air forces until well past the end of the Cold War.
¹

Physical moves were also made. As has already been described, the French decision to leave the integrated military structure also involved a large-scale movement of NATO facilities from France to Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For different reasons HQ IBERLANT was transferred from Gibraltar to Lisbon, Portugal, in 1966, and HQ Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH) from Malta to Naples in 1971.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

As an alliance involving numerous capitals and many major military headquarters spread over a wide geographical area, NATO was worth little if all these could not communicate with each other over routine matters, in crises, when implementing contingency plans and, ultimately, in war. Great emphasis was therefore placed on telecommunications systems, which, in the 1950s and 1960s, and in keeping with the technology of the times, were provided primarily by a huge network of landlines leased from the various PTTs,
^fn9
combined with a number of point-to-point radio links.

This resulted in a somewhat fragmented and haphazard system, and the
next
step was to bring this under control, which resulted in a NATO-wide communications system linking NATO Headquarters in Brussels with the capitals of all the member nations and to each of the major NATO commanders. The requirement for this system – designated the NATO Integrated Communications System (NICS) – was identified in 1965; the system was approved in 1971 and entered service in manageable segments from the mid-1970s onwards, becoming the largest infrastructure-funded project
^fn10
undertaken by the Alliance, having been estimated to have cost some £500 million by 1985.

The backbone of the NICS was provided by a number of different communications systems, of which the most dramatic were based on satellites. Indeed, NATO was one of the earliest major organizations to use satellites, thus refuting the widely held image of its being a slow-reacting organization which was almost always behind the times. NATO first trialled mobile ground stations operating to a US satellite in a system known as NATO I in the 1960s, and then the Alliance’s first wholly owned satellites were launched in 1970–71 (the NATO II programme), followed by four more in 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1984 (NATO III).
^fn11
The ground elements comprised two transportable earth stations in NATO I, twelve static earth stations in NATO II, and twenty-one static and a number of mobile stations (for use in contingency plans) in NATO III.

These telecommunications systems provided numerous facilities for the Alliance, including fully automated telephone and telegraph systems covering the entire NATO area, but there were many other systems at lower levels, one example being the Allied Command Europe’s ACE HIGH system, which was installed in the late 1950s to provide the circuits necessary to carry alert messages and to provide the links necessary to enable SACEUR to implement his ‘tripwire’ retaliation strike plan. The backbone of the system comprised forty-nine long-range radio links, with a further forty line-of-sight microwave links providing access into national systems. The system extended from northern Norway through central Europe to eastern Turkey, and, while NATO controlled the overall system, each nation was responsible for providing the manpower and administrative support for the stations within its boundaries.
^fn12
In addition, both MNCs had their own signal groups – e.g. the Central Region Signals Group (CRSG), which served AFCENT – to provide NATO telecommunications.

There were two significant features of these large communications networks. First, the commitment of large sums of money indicated the extent to which the nations relied on the Alliance. Second, the multinational manning of the units providing the system showed that soldiers, sailors and airmen of the different nations could work together both efficiently and amicably at unit level.

fn1
The chief-of-staff was the senior serving military officer in the national armed forces – i.e. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff (US), Chief of the Defence Staff (UK), etc. When the chiefs-of-staff attended in person, the committee was designated the NATO Military Committee in Chiefs-of-Staff Session.

fn2
The top rank structure and the NATO ‘star’ system are explained in
Appendix 4
.

fn3
A full list of NATO and Warsaw Pact commanders-in-chief is in
Appendix 5
.

fn4
To this day (1998) there is a large UK military staff in Washington and a slightly smaller US staff in London who continue to provide this unique ‘Anglo-Saxon’ link.

fn5
As always, there were exceptions to every rule. Thus, Commander UK Air Forces was actually known (incorrectly) as CINCUKAIR and, although an MSC, reported direct to SACEUR and not through a PSC. Similarly, Commander-in-Chief Channel (CINCHAN), although nominally a PSC, was actually treated as an MNC – an anomaly which ceased after the end of the Cold War.

fn6
This command was intended to be the operational headquarters for US navy long-range anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, which would be allocated in war.

fn7
It did not become fully operational until March 1953.

fn8
UKAIR was also unusual in that it was the only single-service (i.e. all air force), single nation MSC.

fn9
PTT (Post, Telephone, Telegraph) was the generic term for the telecommunications agencies, which almost to the end of the Cold War were government-owned – e.g. the Bundespost (West Germany) and the General Post Office (UK).

fn10
Infrastructure-funded projects were paid for out of a commonly agreed annual NATO budget; the only alternative source of funding was national.

fn11
A NATO IV system was ordered in the late 1980s but did not come into service until after the Cold War had ended.

fn12
ACE HIGH was built at a time when France was part of the integrated military structure and several stations were, therefore, on French territory. The French continued to provide a full service at these stations through to the end of the Cold War and beyond.

6

The Warsaw Pact

IT IS SCARCELY
surprising that in the early post-war years the Russians, and through them the remainder of the Soviet Union, should have been apprehensive at the prospect of a rearmed Germany. They had been invaded three times from the west in the previous forty years, and the German occupation had not been a pleasant experience. Then, in the aftermath of victory in 1945, Stalin thought he perceived the rise of yet another anti-Soviet coalition, led by the Unites States, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, and – at that time – the sole possessor of the atomic bomb.

Stalin therefore set about creating a Soviet-controlled bloc in eastern Europe, which, by combining a series of ‘class brothers’, would form a protective shield for the USSR. Accordingly, the defence arrangements of each of these countries were linked to the USSR in a series of bilateral treaties which were imposed on each of them in turn, while their armed forces were trained in the Soviet manner and armed with a mixture of outdated Soviet equipment (including US and British equipment supplied under Lend-Lease) and captured German stocks. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, an ethnic Pole who had risen to the highest ranks in the Red Army, was appointed minister of national defence in Poland in 1949, and other Soviet officers were placed in similar positions of responsibility in other ‘satellite’ armies.

The formation of NATO in 1949 undoubtedly came as a shock to the Soviet Union, but little was changed in the Soviet-bloc military arrangements until the death of Stalin in 1953. The new leadership then placed the forces of the Soviet Union and the satellites on a much more organized basis, and was looking for some overall co-ordinating vehicle when the Western powers decided to admit a rearmed Federal Republic of Germany first to the Western European Union and then to NATO.

The latter event spurred a quick reaction from the Soviet leadership, and on 14 May 1955 a conference was held at Warsaw, where Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia
, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union joined together to form the ‘Warsaw Pact’. The members’ commitment was set out in Article 4:

In the event of armed attack in Europe on one or several States that are signatories of the Treaty by any State or group of States, each State that is a Party to this Treaty shall in the exercise of the right to individual or collective self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations Organization, render the State or States so attacked immediate assistance … by all the means it may consider necessary, including the use of armed force.
^fn1

At the diplomatic level, establishing the Warsaw Pact achieved a number of significant Soviet goals. The pact was publicized, in the first instance, as a direct reaction to the admission of West Germany to NATO by a group of nations who had every reason to fear German rearmament. On the diplomatic and propaganda fronts, however, it also established a treaty organization in eastern Europe which paralleled NATO in the west, and, as was to be seen, it also led the USSR to believe that it had a legitimate right to exercise control over the countries of eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact agreement itself did not cover the stationing of Soviet forces in non-Soviet countries; this was subsequently the subject of separate bilateral treaties signed later (and amended from time to time):

The signatories of the Warsaw Pact went on to establish a joint command of their armed forces, although the participation of the East German armed forces in the joint command was not included in the original treaty, possibly because they were already a virtually integral part of the Soviet forces stationed in their territory. Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact forces was absolute, and the commander-in-chief was always a Soviet army officer, with his headquarters in Moscow.
^fn2
The deputy commander-in-chief and the chief of the Joint Staff were also Soviet officers, as were the three deputies who served as commanders-in-chief for the joint naval, air and air defence forces.

The highest elements of non-Soviet national representation within the military framework were the various ministers of national defence (all military officers, on the Soviet model), who ranked as deputy commanders-in-chief. But, to ensure compliance with Soviet requirements yet further, Soviet officers, usually of colonel-general rank, were integrated into the defence ministries in each of the Pact countries, under the title ‘senior representative of the commander-in-chief’.

The suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising was a purely Soviet affair, but the operation had a substantial effect on the Warsaw Pact. Viewing this in conjunction with earlier actions against riots in East Berlin and Poland, it was clear to the ‘northern tier’ of countries (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland) that, unless the leadership policies in the Soviet Union changed dramatically, they would never be allowed any significant independence from Moscow. On the other hand, Moscow was pressed into making some meaningful accommodations, including revisions to the bilateral treaties on the stationing of troops, while the numerous senior Soviet officers who had been imposed on many of the satellite armies since the end of the war were at last removed and returned to the USSR.