Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

[lordroel]

Dec 10, 2018 20:44:46 GMT James G said:

(307)

March 1985: Oklahoma

Another good update James G

[James G]

Dec 10, 2018 21:08:03 GMT crackpot said:

Kursk 2.0 ...but with the Russians playing the roles of Manstein and Model.


Many a country song will imortalize the battle of the Red River. Garth Brooks is an Oklahoma boy. 22 years old at this time. If he lives he’ll tell quite the tale.

Oh, it will go down in history as a big defeat. The last high-water mark before the end.
Worse are happening elsewhere too.

Dec 11, 2018 4:59:49 GMT lueck said:

the American forces in the section destroyed two motor rifle divisions and both degraded and push the rest of 7th tank army away form the southern shoreline of the red river. the army now can attack from their positions south of the red river instead of doing a combat assault over the river. james, does the soviet army units in this sector have a backup defensive line or are we looking at them trying a mobile defense because of them bugging out.

They are just f***ed to be fair. They'll play a role later on and, thinking on it, it would be the fire brigade role for plugging holes in Texas rather than holding anywhere.
Collapse and defeat is happening elsewhere at the same time.

Dec 11, 2018 14:49:16 GMT crackpot said:

Why would they? To do so would be to imply that the attack would be fail and that sort of talk is defeatist! This was to be a smashing offensive to defeat the capitalists once and for all.

By now, there will be 'defeatist' talk in Moscow.

[James G]

(308)

March 1985: North & East Texas

The Twenty–Eighth Army undertook their supporting attack to coincide with the main attack elsewhere. They advanced eastwards across North Texas, crashing into national guardsmen positioned south of Dallas–Fort Worth. The aim was to get a tank force deep into the Americans rear and turn either north or south once clear – it depended upon how events transpired – to crush American defenders then caught been those who broke free and those at the frontlines. The 4th Guards Tank Division (often known as the Kantemir Division) had been brought to reinforce the Twenty–Eighth Army and undertake that breakthrough role while elsewhere, the rest of the field army made a general attack. Tanks with the Kantemir Division achieved that breakthrough… and went to their doom.

The 30th Infantry Division – with national guardsmen from across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia – couldn’t stop the penetration which came when the Soviets conducted a similar offensive which they had done in Oklahoma only through on a smaller scale in Texas. A motorised rifle division broke the way open, crashing through part of the armored cavalry regiment out front, and the mass of tanks followed. This occurred near the small town of Chalk Mountain, which lay between Stephenville to the west and the Brazos River behind. The 30th Infantry withdrew once its lines were torn open. It fell back northwards rather than be wholly crushed asunder. Beside them, the 31st Armored Division (the other division with the US VI Corps) conducted localised counterattacks coming up from the north and made the effort to close the gap and smoother the Soviets. It was too late though. The Soviets moved forwards. Their tanks raced towards the river ahead. Rear-area American troops were in the way during the mad dash forward. Soldiers with them were suddenly riflemen when they usually drove trucks, cleared rubble and provided fuel & stores. They fought as best as they could with some doing well yet others not very good at all. The Soviet infantry vehicles and self-propelled guns with the tanks helped to blast apart these men and also cause fantastic amounts of destruction. The fighting units of the 30th Infantry had saved themselves, yet they would have trouble fighting again for some time without all which they lost in terms of support elements. At the river, the Soviets ‘bounced’ it. The waterway wasn’t defended nor was it particularly wide. American troops blew up certain pre-wired sections of pontoon bridges but there were others who didn’t get the word in time and saw their bridges taken. Armoured bridging units came with the Kantemir Division as well for they had that river in-sight before they set off. The advance continued. The towns of Cleburne and then Alvarado were overrun. These lay along the course of the Highway-67 and there were American supply units concentrated around it. American aircraft poured in and the Soviets tried their best to defend against these attacks. Their progress was slowed by them though. There had been a hope that by sticking to and near this road, when there were all those lightly-armed troops about, the Americans would ease off with heavy air attacks in fear of friendly fire losses. That had happened elsewhere earlier in the war. It wasn’t the case here. Nonetheless, Interstate-35, which ran lateral across the line of advance, was reached. That was crossed over and the Soviets had cut the links between the Third United States Army’s US VIII Corps further north and the rest of the VI Corps by breaking through this far.

Midlothian was the next small town along. Getting to there was something that the Kantemir Division was left unable to do. Their advance as far as Alvarado had taken all day (the motor rifle troops spend six hours of the morning opening up the gap) and night came. The Americans put more aircraft in the sky, all of which zoomed towards the Soviet tanks and the rest of the division. There was confusion as to which way the attack was to go in the dark when navigation errors occurred (road signs were long ago taken down) and the lead units got lost. Through the night, while the Soviets tried to get their bearings and fight off the onslaught from above, tired men fought onwards. The tanks were no longer lancing forward and the infantry was doing a lot of the work with small groups of Americans – infantrymen protecting men carrying man-portable missiles – were encountered. Dawn came on the second day and so did American tanks. The 1st Armored Division (the Old Ironsides) moved in. They belonged to the Seventh US Army’s VII Corps and this wasn’t their operational area by far, but they had been transferred late yesterday to the Third Army due to this emergency and only a screen attack being conducted against the rest of their corps. Once there was light in the sky, when the Soviets were going to get going again but still without an idea as to whether to make that flanking turn yet, the Old Ironsides arrived. A huge fight commenced. The strength of the American attack quickly made the commander of the Kantemir Division realise he wasn’t fighting scattered light national guardsmen any more. He turned his division away from the attack, giving ground and pulling back while sacrificing small detachments as rear-guards, while now moving south. The intention was to turn back around again, going clockwise, and come at the Americans when he was ready. This was always going to be complicated but made worse by being dreamed up on-the-fly and attempted to be conducted when there was already confusion as well as enemy control of the skies. US Air Force jets and also Cav’ helicopters attached to the Old Ironsides gave timely and accurate reports on what the Soviets were up to. The Americans thus had the upper hand and made use of that. The Old Ironsides moved to cut this off and orders went for the 31st Armored Division to assist too. The aim was to trap the Soviets between the two of them and take the Kantemir Division apart.

In the Texan countryside between Burleson and Mansfield – Fort Worth was less than ten miles away – the Kantemir Division got caught in that trap. Aid came to them in the form of what was left of the 207th Motorised Rifle Division, who had made that breakthrough the day before, and they partially linked up with the tank division out front. The American national guardsmen failed to stop them again yet the Soviet link-up was tenuous and again under unfriendly skies. As the Soviets tried to keep the pair of divisions together, fighting side-by-side, two-on-two against the Americans, the way back home was closed shut when the Brazos River crossings were lost. What supplies of ammunition and fuel which had come forward already was all that there was going to be. That night and into the next day, the Soviets fought on. Now they were trying to escape rather than conduct a sweeping, war-changing offensive operation. The Americans wouldn’t let them go. A brigade of light national guardsmen from Arkansas – veterans of many fights and having spent time in the rear re-rolled for anti-tank tasks – was brought into join the battle and replaced part of the 31st Armored in fixing the Soviets while the Old Ironsides did much of the work. Darkness on the third day brought an end to the 207th Division. Still the Kantemir Division fought and into the early hours of the fourth day. Their fight now was almost static after their fuel was gone and eventually the bullets ran out too. Hope was held onto that relief would come, that the Twenty–Eighth Army would send someone to save them. No one was coming though. Rather than surrender and face the consequences, the Kantemir Division’s commander shot himself. He was a political general, someone who had been a real rising star. He didn’t want to witness his men marching off into captivity nor the fate of his own in the future. His deputy chose to give in instead of doing that. With him, the four thousand remaining men gave in and became POWs.


The failure of the Twenty–Eighth Army to save both the Kantemir Division and the 207th Division, and do much else too with their wide-ranging frontline limited attacks, led the Americans to make a general attack several days later. The VII Corps was transferred to the Third Army and subsumed elements of the VI Corps, plus its Area of Operations (AO), when doing so.

All down the eastern side of Texas, from the Red River in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, the Americans went over on the offensive.

The VII Corps pushed west and struck deep through North Texas. By the end of the month, they had forced the Twenty–Eighth Army back as far as Jacksboro and Stephenville. Defeat was inflicted upon the Soviets in all instances where they stood where two more of their already-weakened divisions were overcome along with many supporting assets. Complete collapse was averted only by withdrawing with haste and losing countless rear-guard units. Yet the Twenty–Eighth Army was finished. The VIII Corps took less ground when attacking the Cubans in Central Texas yet the national guardsmen did close to within a dozen miles of Austin. The 42nd Infantry Division – New Yorkers – were unlucky not to get that far and only missed out through no fault of their own in that effort. Along the Gulf Coast, in the wider area between Houston and the Louisiana state line, greater progress was made than occurred elsewhere.

General Schwarzkopf’s V Corps had waited and waited for this opportunity. Chomping on his cigar and out among his men was the image he put on for the visiting media teams (all of whom were under tight control) but ‘Stormin’ Norman’ as history would know him spent the majority of the past several months with his planning & operations staffs ready for the day the V Corps was allowed to finally attack. Reinforcements with two important Army of the United States units had come – no one else in the Third Army received any combat ARUS formations – and been integrated with his veteran men. Instructed to liberate Houston and as much of the Gulf Coast as possible, Stormin’ Norman had somewhere else in his sights too: San Antonio. The 14th Cav’ led the way. Helicopter gunships escorted fast-moving columns of scouts and tanks which burst through positions of the Soviet Eighth Tank Army (once a proud unit; now nothing what it was before) and lanced forward. The 5th & 24th Infantry Divisions followed them with the 6th Armored Division behind. Advancing through East Texas north of Houston at first, the V Corps swung to the southwest and then around behind the city rather than entering the VIII Corps’ AO area away to the west. Soviet, Cuban, Revolutionary Mexico troops were all in the way at certain points of the advance. None stopped the attack. Air support came – though not enough as far as Stormin’ Norman was concerned – but the majority of the action was on the ground. For six days the V Corps ran wild. Interstate-10, which linked San Antonio and Houston, ran across the line of advance towards the Gulf of Mexico and this became an ad hoc defensive line for Soviet forces trying to stop the US Army. Around that emergency position, the V Corps was held up for a day but by first light the following morning, they were moving again. Stormin’ Norman couldn’t get an advance going towards San Antonio. He was unable to spread out his forces that far and needed to concentrate them in the end. He’d go after that city next month. For the rest of March, he fought the enemy where it was located behind Houston. Third Army HQ wanted all organised hostile units defeated first and foremost. V Corps did just that and in the process reached the Gulf of Mexico. The Houston Pocket was thus formed but Stormin’ Norman broke that rather than see a siege develop. News coming from Mexico of what happened there meanwhile was alarming in terms of fighting close to a city but that didn’t turn out to be as concerning (for his men; not those caught up in the Mexico Massacre) as first thought due to the one-sidedness of what happened down there. Full focus was on Houston and enemy troops around it anyway. They were crushed and not allowed to dig-in. National guardsmen from Georgia and Louisiana – attached to his two infantry divisions – each moved into the city at the end of the fight. They found out why the Mexico Massacre happened by seeing what they did in Houston. Discipline held with 48th & 256th Brigades here: they could have easily lined-up and shot-down many, many captives.

However, outside the city, there was a breaking of discipline with the 6th Armored when men with that division heard some (true) rumours and acted on this. In a war crime which certainly didn’t rival Houston but nonetheless was still an outrage, ten dozen plus Revolutionary Mexico captives were shot when in captivity and with no capacity to resist. Millions died in Mexico’s cities; over a hundred POWs died outside and American city. It was all the same though where people were killed when they shouldn’t have been. When he found out, Stormin’ Norman was remarkably unimpressed. He had the men responsible detained and commanders relived when they made excuses about enraged men acting out. This wasn’t the heat of battle where such things will always happen but something very different indeed. Other officers were ordered to give testimony against their comrades to military police investigators with the corps commander making sure that happened. Unpleasantness aside, Houston was gobbled up along with a big chunk of the coastline stretching southwest away from there. 14th Cav’ forward elements were within fifty miles of San Antonio and eighty miles from Corpus Christi by the end of the month. Propaganda from New York was all about the Oklahoma victory and ‘sights’ from the Houston urban area, yet the troops under Stormin’ Norman were not that far from the Mexico border and their commander would argue that he had won a far greater victory than had been seen up in Oklahoma.

[James G]

All four Soviet field armies have just been forced to withdraw or crushed through March. There are no more the North American side of the ocean.
What will be the Mexico Massacre is up next.

[forcon]

Good update. Though the American war crimes don't rival those of the Soviet-bloc, it's good that they were dealt with. Hopefully all those Soviet war criminals will also be tried, though some are impossible to reach.

[redrobin65]

Excellent update. Seems like Mexico is going to get hammered.

[raunchel]

I must confess, the Mexican Massacre really doesn't sound good at all.

[James G]

Dec 11, 2018 20:50:34 GMT forcon said:

Good update. Though the American war crimes don't rival those of the Soviet-bloc, it's good that they were dealt with. Hopefully all those Soviet war criminals will also be tried, though some are impossible to reach.

Thank you.
This has been going on a lot in many places but this just was too much.
Soviets with blood on their hands will be cleaning up and getting gone if they have any sense!

Dec 11, 2018 21:47:46 GMT redrobin65 said:

Excellent update. Seems like Mexico is going to get hammered.

It's people will, for the actions of their leader, though he is 'unlucky' enough to be in the way of this.

Dec 11, 2018 22:11:24 GMT raunchel said:

I must confess, the Mexican Massacre really doesn't sound good at all.

It really isn't. There is a reason but this will still be a horrible thing to do.

[James G]

(309)

March 1985:

The Congressional leadership from the House and the Senate was, like the very top of the US Government, aware that there remained regular communications with the Soviets over the Hot-Line. Neither the majority of Congress nor the American public had any idea that this was ongoing though. It was done only because it was absolutely necessary. There had already been an exchange between the two countries of nuclear weapons and there had been the use of such weapons by each against other countries since then. In New York and Moscow, no one wanted to see Washington and Leningrad repeated again. If it had been revealed, the expected outrage in Congress that Glenn and the others believed would occur would be something along the lines of ‘you are sending them poetry once an hour while they are occupying our country and killing our people: send a nuke down the connection and blow them all to hell!’… or something like that. Emotion would get the better of common sense. Keeping this quiet was done instead. There was the belief that it would never be revealed too.

Poetry was sent down the Hot-Line back-and-forth between the two countries at war. Every other hour, one side would send the other extracts of the works of Shakespeare, Twain, Chekov and Dostoevsky. This was a test to make sure that the communication system was in working order. Using teletype machines, connected by both a fixed trans-Atlantic link and also via satellites, these had been sent before the war and continued to be during it. Messages were sent in native languages and translated at each end. There was no direct voice link on the Hot-Line – fiction be damned – though, of course, when not using this link, phone-calls could still be made via other links. Moreover, through intermediaries in neutral countries, both governments had exchanged other messages about further matters too. The Hot-Line was for nuclear issues though and both kept it that way. Text communications over the Hot-Line had been made on September 17th last year. These were used since on the occasion of American nuclear attacks made on the Korean Peninsula, Soviet strikes with thermonuclear weapons in China and also following an accidental non-nuclear explosion above an ICBM field in Siberia. The messages were terse and formal. Very little information was exchanged and things were left until the very last moment with the nuclear attacks and in the case of the partial-launch & airborne blast (two hundred feet up) in Siberia there came a message within the hour: only after the Soviet leadership knew what had occurred and, in fact, before the Americans were even aware.

Pre-war, the Hot-Line connected terminals at the Pentagon and the Kremlin. Since then, despite each building still standing, there were more terminals for incoming & outgoing messages installed. Their installation and where these were located was a secret from the other side. This information wasn’t shared with the other for fear it could be targeted. Why hide this? The countries were at war and they weren’t about to share any secrets with the other unless there was no other choice at all. Both the Americans and the Soviets each had terminals installed for the Hot-Line at airborne and ground stations. While airborne aboard an EC-135R (there were several new ‘R’ models; all recently-converted former tankers after all but one EC-135G Looking Glass aircraft were lost on the war’s first day when on the ground), Glenn sent Vorotnikov a message over the Hot-Line on the morning of March 25th.


The gist of it was this:

American nuclear strikes are about to take place in Mexico.

These will be of a strategic nature.

They are not targeted upon any Soviet forces: efforts have been made to deliberately avoid this eventuality.

The United States is taking this action because it is necessary and reserves the right to do so again at a time of its choosing.

The missiles will soon be in the air.


Vorotnikov received the message by the time those missiles from American ICBM fields were flying. He and the members of the Defence Council were at once moved to safety. This wasn’t a process which could be done in an instant. Long before he could be truly said to be safe, those missiles had already hit their targets. Once those were confirmed, the Soviet leadership knew what this was all about. They had been discussing this issue concerning Mexico themselves and it had been put to them of the danger that the leadership of Revolutionary Mexico had led them into. Now the fears of some members had been shown to be true. Information flowed in for many hours afterwards about those strikes and it was realised that there would no longer be an issue with independent actions taken by the leader of that erstwhile ally of theirs. In addition, whomever replaced him would have far fewer people to rule over. As had been in the case of their North Korean ‘allies’ too, Soviet nuclear weapons weren’t fired at the United States in retaliation. Among everything else which came in response worldwide to the Mexico Massacre, this was something noted among many other countries who were supposed to be allied to the Soviet Union too. It would be a defining moment for several.

[James G]

Targets and the why - already revealed in previous updates - shall be covered tomorrow.
I got bit by the writing bug hard tonight.

[eurowatch]

Dec 12, 2018 0:01:23 GMT James G said:

Targets and the why - already revealed in previous updates - shall be covered tomorrow.
I got bit by the writing bug hard tonight.

May I ask when you Will go back to the European theatre? I want to read about the EDA's undoubtetly glorious victory over the commies.

[lueck]

so the soviet union just throw everyone but themselves under the American nuclear bus. the Cubans are going to realized that the strikes against mexico are large enough to finsh cuba as nation forever.

[lordroel]

Dec 12, 2018 3:35:04 GMT lueck said:

so the soviet union just throw everyone but themselves under the American nuclear bus. the Cubans are going to realized that the strikes against mexico are large enough to finsh cuba as nation forever.

The must also know, when the Americans are done with Mexico, they will be next either being hammed by air ore invaded.

[James G]

Dec 12, 2018 0:44:48 GMT eurowatch said:

Dec 12, 2018 0:01:23 GMT James G said:

Targets and the why - already revealed in previous updates - shall be covered tomorrow.
I got bit by the writing bug hard tonight.

May I ask when you Will go back to the European theatre? I want to read about the EDA's undoubtetly glorious victory over the commies.

Within days. I have a lot to write on that. It'll be a big war, continent-wide: several updates worth.

Dec 12, 2018 3:35:04 GMT lueck said:

so the soviet union just throw everyone but themselves under the American nuclear bus. the Cubans are going to realized that the strikes against mexico are large enough to finsh cuba as nation forever.

Yep, they'll save themselves in the end.
Cuba, poor Cuba.

Dec 12, 2018 4:15:14 GMT lordroel said:

The must also know, when the Americans are done with Mexico, they will be next either being hammed by air ore invaded.

The Americans hit them hard with conventional air attacks already - Havana is a pile of rubble - but an invasion would be hard and costly. Nukes are cheaper and quicker.

[James G]

(310)

March 1985: Mexico

Guadalajara was the de facto capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Mexico. This Mexican city which lay west of where the Mexico City – still the de jure capital remained – had once stood and was the centre of power for the regime led by Tirado López. History had been rewritten when it came to the Second Mexican Revolution and Guadalajara had a significant role in that. The city was honoured as the birthplace of that revolution and the whole revolution itself was officially written around that. The specifics of the economic collapse, the falling apart of law-&-order, the civil war and foreign outside intervention had a different history now. With the latter, that foreign intervention was significantly downplayed when it came to Tirado López and his initial emergence. It was no longer referenced to any significant degree. It had all been about Mexicans themselves, the history said, rather than the efforts undertaken by Nicaragua, Cuba and the Soviet Union to bring about all what happened. American intervention against the communists was overplayed and the lengthy civil war was blamed on them. Moreover, the war which Revolutionary Mexico was currently fighting was the sole fault of the United States too, all leading back to where they had acted against the Mexican people for centuries and then launched a nuclear attack upon Mexico City.

The regime made Guadalajara a model city for the revolution. This was for show at home and to the watching world too. Extreme measures had been taken to do that. The social and economic changes in the city from how it was before the revolution and now during wartime were striking. There had been ‘redistributions’ of wealth, people and power. The number of people who had called Guadalajara home had dropped early in the revolution yet grown significantly after a time. Across the Mexican countryside, people had left – of their own free will or encouraged to do so – to go to cities such as this one. There was work in the cities. There was food. There was order. It had been a bad choice for many. Revolutionary cadres from the regime’s internal security force had been trained up and organised by foreigners to be used to keep the regime in power. They were doing a very good job. The last flames of resistance to the new order had long ago been extinguished. Only in parts of the countryside was there active opposition to the regime and that was patchy at best. Elsewhere, informers yet also the very real threat of a violent death kept people in line. They were fed lies, intimidated and had their emotions whipped against the gringos. On the domestic front, the regime of Tirado López was effective and wasn’t going to be toppled by any internal force.

Guadalajara was a city at war like the rest of the country. American air attacks had been made against it. The frequency and intensity of these had increased since the New Year. From afar, missiles had been fired and there had also been a couple of overhead raids when FB-111s flown by the US Air Force had conducted low-level strikes. Regime targets – government buildings – had been hit and so too had military facilities around Guadalajara. Communications links and the power supply had too been bombed. This all helped the regime and their propaganda. When the power was out, when food rations were cut once again and all of their promises made for this bright new future which Mexico had yet to come, that could all be blamed on the war and here was the proof of that. That future which the promises made from Guadalajara said was one which would only come when the war ended. Full employment, full stomachs and a full restoration of all ‘rightful’ Mexican territory (that north of the Rio Grande) would come then. Meanwhile, the many sacrifices had to be made. The city was devoid of military-aged men not in uniform. They were all off fighting for their nation… or dead somewhere with their families being unaware of their fate. That war was a war being won: half of the United States was apparently occupied and the hated country to the north about to collapse any day now. The people had a leader which was fighting for them though to make that all come about. A personality cult around Tirado López had started slow but exploded in recent months. He was the hero which Mexico needed, the propaganda ran, and the only man who could give them what they needed. It was said that he personally had fired the first shots of the revolution and commanded it single-handedly to the victory which had come. Tirado López had authored the country’s constitution, one of the most progressive and liberal in the world (in theory) which gave so much to Mexico’s people – its women and minorities had legally-assured fantastic rights – and would deliver them their dignity. Foreign interest from around the world came to Guadalajara to see this despite the country being at war. The city was home to a dozen plus embassies and almost two dozen more unofficial representations (trade missions, cultural offices etc.) and there were visitors to the city to see this Revolutionary Mexico which was here and apparently thriving.

Guadalajara was thriving… right up to the very second it was eliminated in nuclear fire at ten o’clock in the morning of March 25th 1985. Six other Mexican cities, all full of civilians, suffered the same fate.


There had come intelligence information to the US Government back in February about the activities of Revolutionary Mexico inside Texas and New Mexico when it came to how they were treating civilians. Many, many outrages had occurred beforehand on American soil with the troops of all of those foreign armies killing civilians in anti-guerrilla operations, unorganised massacres and such like. There hadn’t been a deliberate and organised targeting of civilians who posed no danger nor interfered with military operations though. There hadn’t been the time to do that nor the motivation by the Soviets, the Cubans nor the others. They had a war to fight and the United States retained its nuclear arsenal. Revolutionary Mexico had its troops sent north controlled fully by the Soviet high command. They used such men with abandon to undertake suicide missions on the attack and in defence. A lot of them were gassed when chemical weapons were used as well, many caught up by Soviet nerve agents when the wind went the wrong way too. Throughout the rear, Revolutionary Mexico troops were used extensively as well. The Soviets relied on them for security duties as well as physical labour. It freed them up to concentrate on the fighting they were doing at the far end of an extraordinarily long supply chain. There wasn’t meant to be an independence shown by Tirado López’s regime when it came to his troops operating on American soil yet this had gradually occurred. Revolutionary Mexico was remarkably adept at getting away with many things it did while their busy allies looked the other way. It was always a slow, steady process. First there were all of those ‘Mexican traitors’ shot when caught – all refugees who’d fled the civil war and thought they had found safety in the United States – and then came the organised looting came done on an industrial scale. Any American civilians in the way were mistreated: they were beaten, robbed, raped and killed. The killings especially targeted Hispanic-Americans where they were often declared to be more of those ‘Mexican traitors’ despite it being very clear they weren’t. Complaints had been made against this behaviour from Soviet military officers yet also Cubans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Very few of these people were the cartoon character villains in current American propaganda. They objected to what they saw on a personal level yet also because it only fueled the resistance. They did many horrible things themselves but this was different. The complaints weren’t listened to from above. The KGB was instrumental in making sure that Revolutionary Mexico did what it did. They had their reasons for this and none of those were for the long-term future good of Mexico. It helped to have ‘real’ bad guys around.

Tirado López had been in San Antonio back in January. When inside the city, despite all of the security around his visit, his party had been shot at with bullets killing a couple of his flunkies. He took this rather personally. Instructions were given upon his return to Guadalajara that the security situation in both Texas and New Mexico was to be corrected. Once the war was over, the intention was that those two states would join Revolutionary Mexico as new and fully-integrated parts of that nation. The KGB had assured him of that whereas from Moscow and Havana there had been neither denials nor confirmation of such a future. Tirado López believed he would get both though, hopefully more from a collapsed United States too. There could be no resistance allowed there. As was the case back in his own country, resistance was dealt with by bringing people into the cities and out of the countryside. They would be easier to control once together. On this, that ignored that he had been shot at when inside a city yet such contradictions in his logic weren’t something that anyone in his regime dared to politely point out to him. American civilians were herded into the cities and big towns. The security situation in rural areas, which his army was responsible for, improved with this. Success came in that. Tirado López had the intention of then doing something with all of those people, the millions of American civilians in Albuquerque, Austin, Brownsville, El Paso, Houston, Laredo, San Antonio, Santa Fe and others. What that was, he hadn’t gotten around to deciding yet. One thing it wasn’t was an organised slaughter of them nor purposely starving them to death. The Americans saw these civilians being penned in the urban areas though. They witnessed the people dying from hunger and disease. From looking at aerial pictures and from the debriefing of Green Beret teams deep in occupied territory, all that came was the sight of the people dying with many more soon to follow. President Glenn had asked for proof that Revolutionary Mexico actually intended to kill these people.

Then he received it. NISS intercepted Soviet communications where this was discussed. The military and intelligence services of the Soviet Union were aware of the forced concentration of people and they believed, just as the Americans did, that these people were going to be killed on purpose. This was reported up the chain-of-command and onwards to Moscow. American interpretation of what they heard was that the Soviets were saying it was happening, not speculating on this. It was a matter brought to the Kremlin and the Defence Council in the end where warnings were made that Tirado López was going too far with this but the Americans didn’t know of that. All they knew was that the Soviets were saying this was true. It was brought to Glenn. Still, the president wanted more. There was only one response which could be made in his eyes and that of the rest of the very top of the US Government and to do that required more proof. Tirado López’s regime was making use of the diplomatic services offered by the Swiss to several countries at war who had no official contact with the other. Switzerland had a Mexican Interest Section with its own Permanent Mission to the United Nations’ offices in Geneva (the UN was making much use of Geneva plus Vienna alongside the HQ in New York due to the position of the latter in the American’s de facto capital) and contact was made by the Americans with them there. Answers were demanded and accusations called upon to be denied. The response was rather undiplomatic: included within the swearing was refusal to respond. One member of the diplomatic party for Revolutionary Mexico there in Geneva spoke to the Americans aside. He knew he was risking his life but he did so because he retained his humanity. He unintentionally put the lives of millions of his countrymen in his own hands too. The Americans were told that this was the intention. It wasn’t a lie from the man involved, he was just as mistaken as the Soviets were. Tirado López was considered by many of his countrymen to be the epitome of evil. When telling the Americans, the diplomat believed that his actions would see that stopped. He was ever-so tragically correct.

With agreement from his Cabinet, the National Security Council and the very top of the Congressional leadership, Glenn ordered that planned action to be taken. America would stop the killing of millions of its own civilians by killing millions of civilians of Revolutionary Mexico. It didn’t have to make sense to everyone: it made sense to those in New York. They were thinking beyond the response from what was left of that country they were about to drench in nuclear warheads and to their already nervous Soviet allies. There was more to this that just stopping the genocide against trapped American civilians.

This was about eventually bringing the war to an end.


Seven Minutemen ICBMs flew southwards from the Malmstrom AFB missile fields spread across central Montana. Each carried a trio W78 thermonuclear warheads with a blast yield of 350 kilotons.

Guadalajara was the target of one of those missiles. The six others struck the cities of Chihuahua, Hermosillo, Leon, Morelia, Puebla and Saltillo. Two warheads didn’t reach their targets to explode above them but the other nineteen did as advertised. All seven targeted cities were obliterated with no warning coming ahead of that. The Mexico Massacre counted among its many victims Tirado López himself when he was caught in one of the three Guadalajara blasts.

Three more cities had each been initially selected for likewise destruction. Monterrey, Torreon and Veracruz all escaped when at the last-minute, Glenn opted to not fire upon each. This wasn’t for a humanitarian reason concerning Mexican civilians. The Soviets had major military activity around Monterrey and Veracruz while recent intelligence showed the presence of many American military captives in Torreon. Last September had seen the United States kill their own people when Americans were caught up in Mexico City – illegal volunteers for the civil war taken prisoner & brought to Mexico City plus many misguided people who’d chosen to visit the then-heart of the Mexican Revolution for political reasons – and they didn’t want to repeat this. Torreon’s people were spared due to POWs in their thousands bring transported through there. Not blowing apart Monterrey and Veracruz meant not killing thousands of Soviets using weapons of mass destruction.

These nuclear detonations across Mexico devastated the country. The death toll from immediate and after-affects would be estimated afterwards to be between five and eight million but the true figures would never be known. Condemnation came worldwide yet also from inside the United States too: in the latter, no matter what was going on, this was all too much for many when they were told. The KGB had the Peace Committee in El Paso make much out of this too. It was too late for any effect on that issue though. Governments worldwide had already protested at nuclear attacks, chemical warfare strikes, invasions of neutral nations and all of the conventional fighting ongoing. This was something different… but even then, the Mexico Massacre was still put into context among many other events such as the China War and the now ongoing Euro-Soviet War, those two separate conflicts from the American/Allied vs. Soviet conflict. All of that attention worldwide missed what happened in Torreon. No one there knew they had been on and then taken off that target list for a nuclear strike. Revolutionary Mexico started to collapse all around them yet dedicated officers on the ground, enraged and eager for revenge, conducted a forced march of the captives in their hands. American POWs numbered twenty-eight hundred: a number far lower than NISS had told the president there were there. Outside of the city, another massacre took place. Each and every prisoner – taken in battles won and lost by several armies yet all in Revolutionary Mexican hands – was shot and dumped in a mass grave. Elsewhere through the country, similar but smaller events took place where retribution came.

The regime of the now vaporised Tirado López was falling though and that was what was of greatest importance in regards to the war.