"Cold War: how was perceived in the Warsaw Pact countries?" Topic

A discussion about why playing NATO vs Warsaw Pact made me think…

I was trained for this "game" during my military service in a NATO country (1987-88)… one year before (1986) I visited Hungary and I have vivid memories of other boys of my age dressing a different uniform, drinking beer in bars and waiting for the inevitable "hot war"…

I wonder if on this board there are wargamers living in Eastern Europe / former USSR countries, that can tell me if they have a similar memory / historical perception of the period… were they told that the NATO would have attacked them? Or to prepare for an invasion? Did you feel prepared to fight or scared (as we were?)? Did you think it could happen?

And finally, do you play Cold War scenarios? Curiously I always wanted, but never did (even if I have about one hundred of Warsaw Pact microarmour painted and based, ready to roll…)

When I was assigned to a submarine in Norfolk we would game at Campaign Headquarters. Once we had a group of sailors off a Soviet merchant ship come in and watch and they were amazed we were fighting battles from WWII and someone was even playing Nuclear War.

Interesting question.

I remember my mum telling me that she, as a child, knew they were going to win the war as God was on their side (her dad was in 30 Corps), but as an adult realising the other side were probably thinking/believing exactly the same thing…

I was in an Air Cav Troop in Northern Germany during the mid to late 80s and we had a BW partnerhip unit flying PAH-105s. After training, we would have a couple of beers together and it surprised me when they once said they had an unofficial partnership with contacts in a DDR MI-24 unit on the other side of the fence. According to these guys, if the balloon went up with the Soviets trying to invade the west, the DDR would fight the Soviets.

Talk about an interesting gaming scenario.

had a recent hot conversation with a Polish person in London , whoi denied the warsaw pact ever existed … and that if it did it was only in the imagination of the west …

GeoffQRF wrote:

I remember my mum telling me that she, as a child, knew they were going to win the war as God was on their side (her dad was in 30 Corps), but as an adult realising the other side were probably thinking/believing exactly the same thing…

Good planning on the part of the Western Democracies, then, choosing a bunch of Godless Communists as the next enemy.

I knew we were going to win the Cold War after I spent a month in Leningrad (as it then was) in 1980, and witnessed Soviet incompetence at first hand. Then I decided that the West's main military problem was not resisting the Soviet aggressor, but helping the USSR disappear down the plughole of history with as little incidental damage as possible. It was all very well getting terrified by the threat briefings from people like JDSC, but if a country can't sort out its plumbing properly, it's unlikely to conduct a military campaign efficiently.

Of course, this was before the UK became almost entirely reliant on plumbers from Poland…

All the best,

John.

The Cold War turned hot during my school skiing trip to Bulgaria in 1984, when some Bulgarian KGB bastard stole my Observer's Book of Aircraft from my hotel room!

My version of the Cold War turning hot
link

"…if a country can't sort out its plumbing properly, it's unlikely to conduct a military campaign efficiently."

Things did not get better as the Soviet Union continued to disintegrate and the Russian Republic stood up.

In '92, we stayed in what was the former Intourist monstrosity of a hotel (built in '70), the Hotel Leningrad, in St. Petersburg; I don't recall now what they'd renamed the place. Our group had to "cross-level" light bulbs between the rooms, since at least two rooms (where our females were staying) had no working bulbs at all.

In Moscow, we were put up in the Academy of Sciences hotel, which is in two towers on *differnt* sides of the street! As hot water in Moscow is generated by district rather than by individual building, not only the hotel's hot water, but that of buildings in a couple of blocks' radius, was out of service for the entire time we were there, and predicted to be out for several weeks. It was summertime, so that was not intolerable, but you just had to shake your head at this model of Soviet efficiency.

I don't want to even try to remember the awful hotels outside the major cities. It felt too much as if one had been dropped into a post-apocalyptic movie.

There was the amusing incident in Zagorsk, though. The hotel had a cabaret downstairs, which seemed to be the only entertainment in town, at least for the local thugs, all ex-KGB types. The big bosses, with their over-made-up mistresses and throngs of hard boys, came in each night and simply took over the best seats, regardless if someone was occupying them or not.

One of our party was a US Army military intelligence lieutenant colonel, at the time stationed in the UK as an exchange officer. She was a brilliant historian and a good intelligence officer, but to be frank, she was not the most attractive woman. Truly not. Chivalry prevents me from saying more; use your imagination.

The big boss of the local big bosses got well lubricated with vodka and tried to put the make on our LTC (he was really well lubricated). Now our group was heavy on former combat arms officers, but most were retired and past the sell-by date. Others were retired agency types who would not have been of much use. There was the odd executive from English Heritage; Phil Barker and Sue Laflin-Barker; and other "civilians". The most useful might have been two Swedish officers, one a commander of a bicycle battalion (they bought up as much beer as they could carry in whatever hotel we were in each night and took it to their room…).

But there were lots of really, really big, hard men in cheap suits in the way. A confrontation would have been ill-advised, and we had seen previously how much help the militia would be. (In St. Petersburg, a teenager broke into a room two of our younger officers were actually in at the time, grabbed a wallet, and ran down the corridor. He was nabbed by the security on the floor, but as his dad was a militia colonel, he just laughed as he was sent on his way--minus the wallet, which security returned.)

Fortunately, we had a couple of escorts from the Ministry of Defense. One was a young, very athletic type, who would only identify himself as an officer of reconnaissance troops. Yup. He was there to keep a very close eye on all of us who had previously been, or currently were, intel types. He did not pry though, and was a pretty good lad. He jacked up the hotel manager immediately (who was quaking in his shoes: can't offend the local chief thug, but can't deny the security services); got on the phone to the local militia; and within minutes, the place was crawling with senior militia types and more underlings than there were thigs. They cleared the cabaret and closed it.

I have always wondered what happened to relations between the mob and the militia after that; I had the impression that the militia had just been waiting for the right time and the right reason to clean house.

Again, that was in '92, and it made me wonder why I'd been writing and teaching about the Soviet juggernaut all those years.

Allen

According to these guys, if the balloon went up with the Soviets trying to invade the west, the DDR would fight the Soviets.

Talk about an interesting gaming scenario.

I once played in that sort of scenario with modern microarmour and the Challenger 2000 ruleset. It was set in 1990. Each player played a different nation with about a company's worth of troops. You earned victory points and each nation received points for different things happening (not necessarily things they caused.) For example, the British player received points for killing Soviets and when Germans, East or West, were killed by anybody; the East German and Polish players had 2 sets: 1 if they remained loyal to the Warsaw Pact and another if they chose to defect; the Soviet player received points for dead NATO forces, etc. There was an airfield that was one of the key objectives and worth a lot of points. The game was a riot.

I commanded some West German territorials armed with the uber-powerful M48A5. I knew I had no chance to penetrate any Warpac tank from the front, so I set up in ambush positions facing west. I figured I'd shoot them in the rear after they flew by my positions!

The Warsaw forces advanced with the East Germans on the left and Poles on the right, followed up by the Soviets (in the back to keep an eye on their "allies" and herd them forward if needed. The British commander, over an unsecured radio, started calling for the Poles to defect. The Poles didn't respond, but the Soviet got pretty suspicious. The East Germans got lucky and immediately spotted my ambush in their sector, but didn't open fire, preferring to charge on westward at full speed. I didn't get any points for killing East Germans, so I too held my fire. On the right, a Soviet SP artillery battery raced by one of my ambush positions, so I trundled out. Since I was firing on the move, I only had a low chance to hit and, of course, missed. The artillery kept on going and outran my M48s!

The Poles finally responded (noncommittally) to the British overtures, but their reply wasn't "Nyet" enough for the Soviets. The Soviets opened fire on the suspected traitors. The East Germans kept racing west, not firing on anybody, by now obviously heading for the airfield. The Soviets, visibly irate at another traitor, sent in his helicopter-borne infantry company in a race to beat the East Germans to the airfield. He made one key error: he took the direct route to the airfield and flew directly >over< the East Germans. The East Germans chose that point to open fire, and the Soviet learned just how nasty a company's worth of BTRs AA mounts can be to transports at point blank range!

I think the East Germans made it to the airfield and defected successfully, but I don't remember who actually won. But I had a blast playing!

I played in a microarmor game in a convention on a British Forces base in northern Germany once when a Soviet/Russian delegation was visiting the base. They wandered by the mini convention, and the cold war mini game we were playing was explained to one officer. He nodded, then asked "And how is my side doing?".

In Tirana, Albania in 2007, I had a heated discussion with an Albanian military officer who insisted Enver Hoxha was a patriot who wanted only the best for his country, and Albania would have better off if he had lived longer and stayed in power longer. A minority view, but it still surprised me.

The use of carbon paper for making copies (and you'd better have brought your own), long after copy machines had been in use in the west (trying to cross the border was a nightmare of wasting time as everything had to be "copied" via carbon paper), and the security on copy and fax machines in the country is what I remember. Their society was literally falling apart.

That and the fact that all smart western visitors bought lots of cheap $2 USD calculators along as gifts (for all the nice looking girls they'd meet).

It was sometime in the middle '70s that a Soviet spy buoy was found off the US sub base in Conn. What was interesting was that all the "chips" in the device (which was built to record sounds such as the prop blade sounds of entering/leaving US subs) were all commercially sourced Hong Kong toy chips used for talking dolls that were made there. No Soviet ability to produce and source their own.

No well informed person from the '70s on thought that the Soviets were a threat (other than an accidental war) as technology buried them. I still recall studying Andrei Amalrik's "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?" as an undergrad in 1972. Amalrik may have missed a few things in his book, but he was dead on for most.

Dan

Still not really getting any responses from Polish/Russian members though.

Took a trip to East Berlin in the early 1980's and had to wear my class A uniform. I remember traveling down an escalator in an East German Department store and noting the faces of those traveling up the opposite direction. About 1/3 were your typical East Berliner who had seen most everything so a US soldier was noting special. Another 1/3 had hatred in their eyes and the final 1/3 had either great big smiles or a look of stunned pleasure at seeing a real American.

There was the amusing incident in Zagorsk, though. The hotel had a cabaret downstairs, which seemed to be the only entertainment in town, at least for the local thugs, all ex-KGB types. The big bosses, with their over-made-up mistresses and throngs of hard boys, came in each night and simply took over the best seats, regardless if someone was occupying them or not.

Mine, on a visit to Bulgaria (selling medical supplies) our liasion officer took us out to the best resturant in town, kicked everyone else out (regardless of what stage in their meal they were at) and we sat down for a meal in the otherwise empty resturant. I suppose it was done to show what power he had – but we did get some very nice Russian shotguns out of it and a couple of bottles of vodka.

The only problem was having to have two sets of passports as the USA would not let us in if we had been seen to be visiting Eastern European countries.

I'll try to add some thoughts…As some of TMP members might recall, I was in army in 85-87, 9 km from Finnish border in a restricted zone. I was mainly D-30 howitzer operator, last 6 months I was junior sergeant in reconnaissance/fire coordination unit of our division, mainly dealing with radios and telephones. I took part in numerous large scale drills, amd in one of them (DOZOR in 1986) was able to meet warpac soldiers and officers.

Even when I was a child, I wasn't really afraid of war. generally, propaganda image was that only actions of CPSU and mighty army of SU are standing between war and MAD, but this stand was pretty strong. When I was older, I heard some interesting information from my father, who was a propagandist apart of his main job of chemical engineer – he had to visit state enterprises and lecture the workers with latest stuff that he was allowed to disclose ( you'll be laughing, but he got into this "business" bcs propagandists had access with nice books that you couldn't get otherwise.
So, in 1983 I've already heard from him, that some people in CPSU were feeling that Afghanistan, helping communists world wide and attempts in Star Wars parity might break the state. On the other side, those who were preparing the info for propagandists didn't consider nuclear or conventional war inevitable. Actually, they were thinking that conflict with China was more realistic.
I don't think SU was really that keen on world dominance. If progressive forces worldwide will (with some help ;)) overthrough imperialistic tyrants – so be it, but no nuclear strike and MAD unless attacked. Remember, we have created "death hand" which was/is supposed to operate AFTER SU suffered nuclear attack.
On the other side, my officers were pretty sure that the war will not happen bcs. Europe and USA were too keen on comfort they had. While Russians could to certain point eat 200 g of bread a day, live in cold flats and wear the same coat for 20 years if it "was necessary" , they doubt that the same thing would work in the West. Therefore, the goal, as I saw it in late 80s was to keep Nuclear triad ready, and keep the rest of the huge army in semi-readiness state. For some reason, the drills/system of training were aimed at prolonged war. Huge reserves of ammo/uniform, enormous amounts of outdated equipment were stored in perfect order.
All units were mixed – i.e. it was typical to send recruits from Asia to the North, and vice versa. We received more training than average infantry unit deep in Russian territory. Soviet group in Germany, VDV(paratroopers), marines were getting more training then us, and subs/pilots/nukes operators etc were professionals, with practically no conscripts.
From warpac armies I've seen, DDR/Czech were the best. Not sure which side they could be – these talks were not popular at that time, as you might understand ;)
One thing I've noticed is that warpac recruits were trying to evade army at all possible costs, at that time it was really strange to me (in a few years I saw it in SU and it is still a huge issue in Russia).

Russians actually had plenty of their own electronics build in end 70s-first half of 80s, including some plants that should be able to operate after nuclear strike. However, if you can buy a chip and evade building a plant – why not?
A final decision to use imported electronic components was made end of 90s, there're still some plants working but their technology level is ca 10 years behind modern trends.
OK, dinner gentlemen. Will post more later ;)

Barin1, please post more, it's exactly what I was looking for…

Ochen xorosho Barin, spaseebo.

at school once a week I had one hour of "initial military training" discipline, taught by retired captain of the 2d rank. I thanked this man when I was in army bcs. he was not following dumb program he was supposed to unleash upon boys and girls, but tried to give us some real knowledge that might be needed later. We were assembling/disassembling AK, had some pneumatic/small caliber shooting, orientation in forests, etc. I remember him making fun of a lector we had who was telling some horrors about Bermude triangle mysteries saying that he was there for 4 years in his sub and never saw any monsters or aliens ;)
The school has a bomb shelter in a basement, in good order. I think during 10 years at school I was there 3 or 4 times…so there was no hysteria about nuclear armageddon.
He was the first who got me introduced to several concepts SU was following in weapon design and warfare.
I remember him showing M113 and BMP-1 on a classboard and asking us what is better in our opinion. Sure we were pro-BMP. He smiled and said: "Do you think americans didn't understand that their APC is that higher than ours? Sure they did, but you will have hard times getting contracted personnel in BMP, but you will surely do as you're told. And if real war happens, you might be bombed out of existence before your back will start to ache."
While there were specialized units for de-rading and de-gasing of armor, those, who got in a heavy radiation zone were supposed to fight till they can and die. Personnel package that I was issued in army contained several strong drugs that were supposed to ease the pain and nausea and allow affected soldiers to sell their lifes dearly. One of these drugs was indeed a strong opiate drug, so as far as I know it is no longer issued at drills, only if the danger of war would be real.
This concept was starting to change after Chernobyl, where radiation was not that lethal as it was rumoured to be…

In USSR there was a wide network of pre-army training centers (DOSAAF) where you can learn to drive a lorry, tractor, or, like me, operate a coded teletype unit. Never got a chance to work on it in the army, I suppose bcs. I argued with my officers too much and didn't want to become a CPSU candidate – so wasn't 100% reliable ;)
A significant part of military units were so-called "limited personnel" units. They had a backbone of officers and about a hundred conscripts, who's task was to keep all stuff in working order and prepare it for the regular drills and conserve it later. My unit was of this kind, so each 5-6 months we were getting full stuff numbers mobilized from Karelia or Leningrad for marches and shooting.I saw some of them 5 times during my service, and I have to say that on average they were better, than conscripts. For sure, there were units were these "temporary recruits" were used for building of general's houses, but most of it started after 1988.
In one way or another more than half of industry was military-related. For instance, pancake plant could be quickly prepared to make some stamped details for AK, and I'm not even talking about cars/railroad/plane plants.
There was a significant number of specilaized plants, that were working only for war.Typically, personnel there was getting 2-3 times more than their colleague in civil services. They were priviliged class to some point…

Was guarding the borders of freedom in West Germany all through the 80's. We gamed all sorts of hot war scenarios for micro armor. I finally sold off my Soviet MRR several years ago as we had gotten out of playing. We had grown tired of the rule sets out there so made our own. For realism they kicked major but. Unfortunately we had a Navy guy that played and the games eventually drew out to 16+ hours of game play over 2 days. Our little group could field a Soviet MRR, a Polish ITB (Don't ask -lol-) 2nd BDE 3rd AD, Brit Tank BDE, West German Pz/PzGdr BDE, A Canadian Mech Inf Co., not to mention more helicopters and aircraft you could shake a stick at.
We had some good battles. Interestingly enough, a few years ago at work they hired a few new maintenance guys, One of them happened to have emigrated from Russia and we got to talking and he was assigned to the 8th Guards Army, 27th MRD in the late 80's so we actualy faced each other across the wire, so to speak.

A woman I knew grew up in Leipzig and was in her late-teens when the Wall came down. All through her school years she had been taught that East Germany had always been separate from the West and that it had been allied to the USSR during WW2 and had fought against the Nazis! She honestly believed this to be the truth until re-unification opened her eyes. With that almost DPRK-like level of youth-indoctrination it's difficult to know which way East Germany would have gone.

Barin, what was the general mood in the early-mid 1980s? In the west we seem to have generated the fear of the big, bad Soviet monster that could come crashing across Germany whenever it wanted, hence the need for lots of money spent of defence. How was the west viewed by the 'man in the street'?

I think the whole idea of red monster crushing through your wall was very exaggerated. If you have a look at a bunch of
herontocrats who were sitting in the central committee of the CPSU, you can't get the impression that they were interested in world domination. A man on the street was absolutely not interested in starting the war that might end the world just bcs. a man from London street wasn't interested in communism. You have to take into account huge losses we have suffered in civil war, years of repressions and WWII. To take a decision that might start a hot war was too difficult. Remember a case with Rust, german amateur pilot who had crossed the border on his Sessna and landed in Moscow? He was followed for several hundred km, but nobody was willing to give fighter pilot the command to shoot. I guess those, who could give such an order, still remembered the case with South Korean Boeing. Granted, looks like in case of Boeing it was a specially orchestrated incident, that put at risk lifes of civilians, but still. The pilot, following Boeing asked twice for a confirmation to attack, as he saw passengers in the plane…
I'm pretty sure, that there were plans prepared for overrunning Europe, but it was not going to happen bcs. Brezhnev had a head ache. This march would be a reaction, not action. Even Caribbean crisis happened when at first US medium range nukes were deployed in Turkey.
According to the legends of the maneuvres that I took part in, we were always defenders, then counterattacking. May be it was different for the troops, stationed in Germany, not sure. In one of the scenarios we were defending from US/Canadian paratroopers, who attacked USSR from occupied Finland!
Average Russian was already pretty sure that party was lying to him, he just wasn't aware of the true extent of this. Therefore our leaders could rely on the people to defend the country, but not running over Europe. I read some documents, that were collected by KGB in 1968 during Czechoslovakia operation. A significant number of soldiers were openly reporting to their officers, that USSR is acting as bad as USA – lying propaganda, and crushing those, who don't agree to your rule.
At school, I had several friends whos parents were employed in various embassies and consulates. Some of these kids were in the west too, and as our school had advanced English course, we were able to meet British kids of labour unions, visiting Moscow. Let's say I was quite aware that average worker's life in UK wasn't as bad as it was described on our TV.
A significant part of Cold War and arms race we still have at the moment is connected to military production industry. Just have a look at these billions…I think a big part of the answer lies somewhere there ;)

Thank you Barin:)

"The only problem was having to have two sets of passports as the USA would not let us in if we had been seen to be visiting Eastern European countries."

Nonsense.

Dear Barin,

Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. It would be hard to over state the fascination that many of us have in hearing about 'the other side of the hill…' during the 80's.

I was in the British Royal Navy myself and loved to talk to Federal German Navy officers and sailors who had joined from the People's Navy after the reunification of Germany. Generally they were pretty pleased to be serving on 'Western' type ships and boats.

It would be interesting to hear from any BundesWehr presonnel who had been incorporated from the DRG army and had served on both T55's or T72's and are now in Leopards, or perhaps been in BMPs or BTR's and are now serving in in M113's or Marders…

Kind Regards,

Sparker

Barin,

You wrote, "According to the legends of the manouvres that I took part in, we were always defenders, then counterattacking." Sure, but does that mean much for intentions? In an aggressive war, couldn't the Soviet commanders just order the "counterattack" part?

Anyhow, thanks for your insights and memories. I remember reading Hacket's Third World War in high school, and "Suvorov's" Inside the Soviet Army. Scared me near to death.

I think any commander 'can' manipulate the information stream to order the bit they choose to act on. It's not a question of 'can'.

Extremely interesting insight Barin, thank you very much.

"Sure, but does that mean much for intentions? In an aggressive war, couldn't the Soviet commanders just order the "counterattack" part?"

Soviet grand strategic posture was primarily one of war avoidance (to avoid a repeat of WW1 & WW2), but its strategic posture in the event of a war, whoever started it, was all out attack. The experience of WW2 was that overall and percentage losses were much lower when attacking then defending, hence the need to maintain large conventional forces in Germany. This could of course look a bit aggressive the NATO….

The NATO decision to pack western europe with battlefield nukes in the early 80s to offset the Sov conventional force superiority was of course desparately dangerous as it potentially scuppered the Sov strategic response and if anything made a pre-emptive attack more, not less, likely particualrly during the Andropov era.

Anyway, we managed to survive that (despite that little wobble in Sept 83). Isn't hindsight wonderful.

As an S2 once remarked to me " would they want with 200 million more stroppy Europeans?".

@ Sparker – it happens, that English branch of a corp I'm working at the moment is located in Portsmouth, and lots of my colleagues, especially 8-10 years ago were from RN, so I had some very interesting long evenings with them. One of the nicest story was told by a guy, who served on a destroyer or smth. similar, and when they were roaming Mideterranean side by side with "Moskva", they once attacked the carrier with potatoes… Could have started a WWWIII ;)
But I thought that Cold War was really over when I had Portsmouth harbor with carrier and some attack craft right in front of me…
@Oberst Radl – yes, as I wrote earlier it might be that the goals of the units, located in various theaters of war were different. Our potential enemy, in my case, was far away. As for Suvorov, we had a discussion here some years ago. He took training course from special units, like spetsnaz GRU, and to make it scary, lied that it was common for all sergeant training schools. I remember that I had to write, that even that I was a sergeant, I wasn't capable of killing a dozen of marines with my small finger in 2 seconds. The guy had to make a living, so he basically wrote what was expected from him. A real sergeant school for gunners or infantry may be was giving you 5% of man-to-man combat, you had more or less acceptable training of your speciality – better for gunners or radio operators, worse for infantry – and lots of very important stuff like marching, program of Communist Party and signing military songs. At least in our unit, most of the training – speed loading/operating of howitzer, small arms shooting, etc, was done in place.