James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 22:49:27 GMT
Two Hundred & Ninety–One
Multiple radars monitored the progress of the lone Soviet passenger jet which flew from Legnica on a southwestern course towards and then above Switzerland. There were several E-3 airborne radar aircraft active this morning tracking that Tupolev-154 Careless jet-liner as well as mobile ground stations from the NATO side while the Swiss military did the same with their own radar installations. Fighter aircraft didn't close to visual range with the three-engined aircraft laden with Soviet diplomats, translators and security staff but they too tracked the aircraft as it flew out of western Poland, across East Germany before rounding Czechoslovak airspace and heading down across the southern part of West Germany. Geneva was the aircraft's destination with the Careless expected there and those on the NATO side hoping that the jet-liner didn't live up to it's NATO code-name and have an incident occur where it would need to land short of Switzerland somewhere in Germany.
That would certainly bring about a diplomatic mess as well as logistic problems too.
Thankfully for all involved, the Careless made it to Geneva without incident and the aircraft wearing the markings of the Soviet Air Force touched down at the international airport there before midday. Those aboard left their aircraft to get started on the preparations for the Second Geneva Peace Conference that was due to start later in the day and – hopefully – continue until a lasting settlement to the ceasefire currently in-place could be arranged.
Marshal Rodionov and Viktor Chernomyrdin were among the last of the official representatives to arrive in Switzerland. During the night there had been many flights into the city from locations across the West all laden with top-tier diplomats arriving for the upcoming peace conference. From the NATO countries and nations part of the Allies, foreign ministers and senior figures from governments came to Geneva and spent the night in various hotels around the city which was teeming with Swiss security personnel.
There were journalists in Geneva too. Television, radio, print and 'alternative' journalists from all around the world who had come to be here while the peace conference was going on. Their nationalities varied as too did how they behaved: some would play by the rules while others wanted to do their own thing. There were professionals and amateurs among them all eager to get a story, the story in the fastest manner possible using all means at their disposal to get that.
Spies lurked in Geneva as well. There were some, a select few, who were overt spooks: declared intelligence officers. Those were in the minority though for most of the spies in the city now were trying to stay in the shadows. What they wanted to know was what everyone here was talking about not in public by out of earshot of others. Some worked for the various diplomatic teams protecting them from the intelligence operations of others like them while more were ready to act in an openly hostile manner to go further than any journalist would in getting the inside scoop on the various discussions ongoing.
The Swiss had their military personnel in Geneva to offer protection for those meeting yet there were other soldiers too who wore many different uniforms. These men weren't armed and were generally of senior officer rank attached to the many delegations here. Their views were meant to be listened to by the diplomats when the peace talks got underway though many feared that they would be ignored for the sake of political posturing.
The British Foreign Secretary Tom King had arrived during the night with several officials from the FCO; in Geneva he met with David Mellor and further civil servants not jut from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office but several other 'government departments' too including MI-6 officers. He was to head HM Government's delegation while in Switzerland for the peace conference and every quickly found that there were far too many people here all supposedly with an input into what was to be discussed for his liking. The intelligence services and the MOD had a large number of personnel here and there were even far too many officials from the FCO – his own department! – in Geneva as well.
Instructions were issued for many people to return home to the UK. King was concerned that there would be too many voices trying to influence matters and also cluttering up conversations as well as the security threat coming from such a delegation open to hostile foreign intelligence operatives. All that mattered was that the interests of his country came first not political fiefdoms or personal ambitions of others jockeying for influence.
In preparation for when the peace conference begun, King and his top-level advisers went over their strategy for making sure that Britain had a major say in events here as well as the outcomes of the negotiations with the Soviets. Working together with the country's allies was important but again, he stressed that securing the national interest in both the short- and medium-term was what had to override everything else. There wouldn't be the case where the Soviets would be able to play certain delegations off against each other yet at the same times the wishes of other Allied nations couldn't be allowed to damage Britain in anyway either. He pointed out that there had been talk overheard of the negotiating positions of other nations already where too much focus remained upon the still on-going fight against the East Germans to liberate Berlin: that was something that he didn't wish to affect the talks in a negative way as it was an entirely separate matter to securing a peace with the Soviets.
When it came to the Soviets, King stated how he intended to follow the decisions reached by Cabinet consensus when back in London. Rodionov and Chernomyrdin – mouthpieces of Ogarkov – were not going to get away with blaming the war on the dead such as Chebrikov nor be allowed to push the wholly false notion that their country struck first in self-defence. A war of aggression, illegal under international treaties signed by the Soviets, had been launched and their country would have to pay the cost for that. War criminals were to be handed over, financial reparations needed to be paid, all prisoners taken in wartime (military and civilian) needed to be returned, Soviet military forces needed to leave the sovereign territory of the 'captive nations' in Eastern Europe and there needed to be legally-binding treaties on future Soviet offensive military strength.
These were key demands that needed to be met by the Soviets yet at the same time King wanted the other delegations here to all abide by those as they had previously pledged to do during their wartime alliance. To start trading away some of these demands now couldn't be allowed to be done otherwise all the lives lost and all that treasure spent would be for nought.
Britain's top diplomatic representative in Geneva was ready to join with his colleagues from many other nations in beginning the first stages of the peace talks with the Soviets where negotiations were meant to be unified and from the position of strength that the Allies had… such was the wish of King and the British government back home.
Two Hundred & Ninety–Two
As Tom King did, the heads of the other diplomatic delegations at Geneva had instructions from their government to best serve the interests of their own countries in negotiations for a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. There was plenty of talk of the 'common cause' and 'forceful unity' yet each nation had its own agenda that needed meeting as well because the war had affected all in different ways.
Chuck Grassley, the US SecState, came to Geneva directly from Mount Weather after meeting with Acting President Bush and the National Security Council there.
The will of the United States, as the pre-eminent military and economic power in the West, was to be imposed upon the Soviets during the talks to establish a peace treaty: such was Grassley's brief. To this he had no objection as the United States had suffered gravely in terms of lives and treasure in the war and such costs were of a long-term nature too. There were the wishes of the country's allies to take notice of and to aid where possible though only as long as they didn't contradict those of his.
There had been extensive discussions during the time Grassley had been at that underground facility in northern Virginia. The current state of the remaining military capabilities of the Soviets had been addressed with the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Carl Vuono and National Security Adviser General Colin Powell reminding everyone that not all Soviet forces had been lost in the war just the most capable ones and those deployed forward. That was something to consider when talks commenced with them especially since their nuclear arsenal was completely intact. The state of the Soviet economy was discussed at length with what intelligence there was upon how it had fallen apart internally and the end of foreign trade. There were further intelligence briefings upon the security situation inside the country and the political upheavals were talked about by Professor Condoleezza Rice.
Bush made it clear that the American people were expecting that now that fighting had ceased with the Soviets the war could be concluded in what would be a fair manner but one which would be easily identifiable as to the benefit of the United States. The country needed to emerge the victor from the conflict… and for everyone to know this. Grassley had understood what the Acting President meant and where that came from yet he still had his reservations about that. Much of what Bush said concerned hostility directed towards him for the peace treaty agreed with the Cubans where many Americans felt that Cuba had got away with its cowardly, Pearl Harbor style attack upon the United States and Bush didn't want to see that happen again. There was also the feeling that the SecState had that the Acting President was thinking of the stalled Republican Primaries and the election this coming November too.
The demands that Grassley would put to the Soviets on behalf of his country mirrored those of the British and other governments with the Allies agreed to during the course of the war: what were being deemed in NATO circles as the Five Demands. War criminals were wanted, reparations were to be paid, POWs returned with haste, the Soviets were to pull out of foreign lands beyond their borders and agreements on future weapons deployments & the size of the Soviet military were to be made. There was no talk of changing the political system inside the Soviet Union or territorial adjustments as many people would have liked to see, just those Five Demands to be made to the Soviets to end the war on terms which were rated as being fair and what the people of the West would want.
Jean-Bernard Raimond had been instrumental in the wartime agreements made between NATO first and then the Allies as to those Five Demands.
The French Foreign Minister had spent little of the war at the Quai d'Orsay (the Foreign Ministry in the heart of Paris partially burnt out in an arson attack right on the eve of war in a Soviet psychological warfare attack) but rather on the move across Europe, the America's and through parts of Africa too using French diplomacy for the war effort. Many of those countries making up the Allies were involved in the war due to French influence and even if they didn't contribute much directly to the war effort their presence gave the Allies much moral justification and helped in other matters away from fighting men and financial support.
Using his wide diplomatic experience – Raimond was more of a diplomat than a politician – establishing a series of goals that the Allies could agree to which were reasonable had been his initial concept and he had strove to get acceptance of those when the war was ongoing. President Mitterrand had trusted Raimond to make sure that the image of France was presented in such a manner as one of the key powers of the war so that the Americans didn't gain all of the glory; the French president himself had been busy with internal matters pertaining to the war as well as providing much support to the West Germans and thus European unity.
Therefore, when Raimond had taken the short journey down to Geneva (by train instead of an aircraft), France was fully behind that set of ideas that were to be presented to the Soviets with no deviation from them. There was always the possibility of watering some of them down in effectiveness if the ceasefire was threatened by Soviet intransigence yet even if such a thing as that occurred – which no one seriously believed it would seeing as the Soviet military was beat – those key demands would still be met and publicly announced to the world at the end of the Second Geneva Peace Conference.
The West German Foreign Minster Hans-Dietrich Genscher had had a very difficult war as he had watched his countrymen be killed and his nation fought over as viciously as it had been. There had been certain moments early in the war when he and the rest of Chancellor Kohl's government had feared the worst and talked in secret of the possibility of terms for a peace treaty imposed upon them which they might have had to accept. Such matters were in the past now and the situation was reversed with the Soviets beaten instead of victorious as they had once seemed, yet there was still much worry that Genscher – and the rest of the West German government – had when it came to bringing an end to the war.
There was still fighting going on inside Germany.
West Berlin remained to be fought over but like all Germans, Genscher regarded his country as one despite the Inter-German Border imposed by outsiders at the end of the Second World War and the series of illegal regimes ruling in the eastern parts of the German nation. That ongoing conflict was still killing Germans and doing even more damage to the country than already had occurred during the NATO-Soviet clashes throughout West Germany. ABOLITION for Genscher and the West German government was something which they had agreed to and taken part in yet there was plenty of regret with some of the affects of that which had occurred inside East Germany: the American air and missile attacks upon industrial facilities there especially which had occurred outside the NATO chain of command.
There was a constitutional requirement on the part of the West German government to reunify the country. East Germany was legally recognised but reunification was a goal enshrined in law and something which their people wanted. That was why Bundeswehr troops were still fighting and dying outside Berlin so that there could come a unity even if it had to be achieved by the utter physical destruction of the East German regime.
Genscher and his colleagues would have preferred to be holding talks with the East Germans too – even the murderer that was Mielke should that have been the case – rather than just the Soviets. The reunification of their country without any more deaths was what was wanted.
Those Five Demands which were being sought by the Allies at Geneva were to be followed by Genscher and the diplomatic delegation which he lead there, but at the same time there was the desire to see German unified too. Reunification was more important than several – not all – of those as far as West Germany was concerned. Many of West Germany's allies were not of the mind to see Germany reunified yet much of the ground-work for that had already been done through the AMCC organisation at work inside East Germany with most of its functions working for the long-term interests of a reunited Germany.
Genscher, and his government back home, went to Geneva with an agenda that didn't wholly mirror those of their allies.
Other foreign ministers and their diplomatic parties who went to Switzerland as part of the worldwide alliance that was the Allies followed the line of the Five Demands too. This was what was stated to their own people and their allies.
Yet, at the same time, there were some at Geneva who like the West Germans had other matters to consider and were prepared to allow the modification of some of them to bring the war to an end. No secret plans were made to stab their allies in the back but national interest was what had to be factored in when thinking of the immediate-term peace treaty with the Soviets plus the post-war world too.
The Swedes had worked with Raimond in calming some of the worst excesses in notions for a peace that would be acceptable with the Soviets when the war was ongoing particularly after the scale of ongoing war crimes had been revealed with direct evidence of those. For their foreign minister seeking a revenge upon the Soviets and trying to impose a Versailles-style diktat was far from a good idea especially when the military strongman that was Ogarkov launched his coup d'etat. The Five Demands were acceptable to Sweden and what their delegation in Geneva would join with their allies in hoping to achieve though there was some Realpolitik on their part when it came to reparations and limits imposed upon the Soviet military. Of more importance was getting POWs and other civilians taken hostage back, setting up an international framework to prosecute war criminals and also making sure that Eastern Europe was free: Poland especially in the latter case.
Canada and Italy both had their delegations ready to make a major input in ensuring that Eastern Europe were released as 'captive nations', this included an aim on the part of both to see that any Soviet influence in Romania was gone too to bring down that regime. Canada had a long-established interest in giving democracy and sovereignty a chance throughout Europe on humanitarian grounds in addition to making sure that Canadians wouldn't have to die as they had done in the last three world wars now fighting in Europe. The Italians had just 'freed' Slovakia and aimed to see that country as one of many independent nations there so that their own national security wouldn't be imperilled as it had been when a Soviet dominated Czechoslovakia was used as part of the staging ground for the invasion of Austria. However, Canada was also still rather unhappy when it came South Africa's role in the war as part of the Allies and free to do as it wished with empire-building among it's hostile neighbours. Their Minister for External Relations Joe Clark was in Geneva with a remit from his government to make sure that that country didn't gain anything from this war.
The Norwegian and Danish delegations were under instructions from home to make sure that the Soviets paid dear for the war. Both countries, the latter in particular, had experienced invasions and partial occupation where their people who were unfortunate enough to face that occupation suffered far too much. They were both fully behind the Five Demands especially on limits to Soviet military capabilities while at the same time not going to allow their allies to forget that the Soviets had behaved just as terribly as the East Germans when it came to crimes against civilians in occupied lands so wanting war criminals to answer for what they had done. Austria, so ravaged by Soviet deserters rather than officially-organised repressions of civilians, focused upon making sure their neighbours were free of any form of Soviet presence so that another invasion couldn't happen to them again.
Europe's smaller nations who were part of the Allies – Ireland, the Low Countries, Spain and Portugal – were all fully committed to the Five Demands in public though had private concerns and national interest too. All wanted the war over with after the losses in terms of lives and money, plus damage to the social structures as well, but there were other factors to consider. Ireland had been stung by the unprovoked attack undertaken by the Soviets and was very keen on limiting Soviet offensive capabilities as well as seeing Eastern Europe free of Soviet influence. Belgian and Luxembourg were NATO members but they too had been taken aback by the callous manner in which the Soviets had fought the war against them and their people and wanted everything possible done to make the Soviets pay for what they had done and be unable to do this again. The Dutch were now aware that their allies knew how they had voted to leave the war and even with a change at the top in their government they were still being treated in a manner many compared to that of a son who had turned against his father; the position of the foreign minister in Geneva was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their allies in making the Soviets pay for what they had done. Spain and Portugal both wanted their troops home and to see the financial costs to them of the war paid in reparations foremost yet attaining justice against Soviet war criminals were also very important to them.
The war had been a world war with countries around the globe involved despite the focus being in Europe where most of the fighting had taken place. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Singapore had all been directly attacked in Asia by the Soviets with military strikes while nations such as Australia and Mexico had suffered at the hands of Soviets terrorists before the conflict aiming to weaken them. There were other nations who had joined the Allies because their ships had been attacked on the high seas by Soviet submarines while many governments had had their arms twists by American or French diplomatic pressure; some had even joined the war to be on the side of the victors and have access to the spoils. Every single one of these nations was theoretically an equal member of the Allies with its views meaningful even if many hadn't sent a single soldier to the war in Europe but had provided food, fuel or even diplomatic support during the war. They all had their own interests and were officially following the lead of the larger, NATO countries in how to negotiate with the Soviets yet there would be their influence too in Geneva.
All told, sixty-eight Allied delegations were in Switzerland ready to meet as equal partners, the Allies, with... just the Soviets on the other side of the negotiating table.
(Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Federal German Republic, Finland, France, Gabon, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Irish Republic, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, St. Lucia, Sweden, Thailand, Tonga, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela)
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,799
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 22:55:22 GMT
Two Hundred & Ninety–Three
Friday April 15th saw the last of widespread, organised East German resistance occur at Berlin. There would be stragglers afterwards who would take some convincing to give up the fight, but today came the utter collapse of the effective opposition to NATO and Allied forces engaged in recapturing West Berlin and seizing East Berlin too.
The collapse came about due to several factors.
The East German inability to control their own rioting citizens in eastern parts of the city was important but so too was the spread of mutinous refusals from internal security units to deal with that issue. Moreover, the soldiers on the frontlines had been outfought by the attacking invaders and could not longer stop them even when the urban terrain would favour their defensive efforts. Complete NATO control of the air made their ability to fly men about in helicopters (the Americans especially) around and into the city behind the ever-shrinking perimeter further weakening the defences. The combination of all of these would see Berlin fall.
Those attacking soldiers with the British Second Army to the west were generally operating on foot throughout the day. They made use of lighter helicopters in places yet the infantry was in the main dismounted on foot with their armoured vehicles and tanks operating in the fire support roles.
In the centre, the Belgian I Corps and the British I Corps combined their efforts to move slowly into the Spandau area from either flank pushing men through open ground wherever it could be found and then trying to carefully take out opposition to their efforts without resorting to killing thousands of West Berlin civilians held hostage. Snipers, explosive booby-traps and the positions where machine guns & man-portable rocket-launchers were located became their opponents. It took a lot of self-control for the fighting men with the many formations under command attached to this part of corps command to not blast any sign of resistance with every weapon at-hand especially when the enemy was concentrated in residential buildings. Losses mounted when these were moved against slowly and carefully yet very quickly reports went up the chain of command that the opposition was less fierce than feared. Fewer and fewer of the enemy were encountered making a stand and surrenders came much more easily than beforehand. Civilians were now streaming out of the Spandau area after all intelligence had previously pointed to them being kept where they lived by force of arms; when questioned, there was talk of the Grenztruppen soldiers in the Spandau area shedding their uniforms and ditching their weapons.
The very centre of Spandau lay at the confluence of the Havel and the Spree where those two rivers that ran through the Berlin met. A link-up was made there in the late afternoon by British soldiers with the 4th Armoured Division and Belgians with their 1st Infantry Division. Everywhere west of there was now surrounded yet with little opposition to stop further inroads being made in that direction to eliminate what hold-outs wanted to remain fighting when all hope was lost. To the east were industrial areas and the (in)famous Olympic Stadium over downed bridges. Chilean soldiers under British command were first across the Havel on the left bank of the Spree while more Belgians went eastwards along that river's right bank. Those soldiers from Chile soon ran into trouble where denser opposition was met and British troops fast caught up with them along with many tanks rumbling over floating pontoon bridges, but in the industrial areas of Ruhleben and then in the forested Schanzenwald free-fire rules came into affect so that anyone who wanted to fight very quickly came to regret such a decision. As to the Belgians, they sent some men into the historic Spandau Citadel to see if anyone there wanted to make a fight of it – no one did – while putting most of their attention in a northeastern direction aiming to beat the French to Tegel Airport.
Those French soldiers were under the command of the Bundeswehr IV Corps which also had British and Portuguese troops assigned. The West Germans led the way here in pushing into the previously French-controlled sector of West Berlin again engaging the enemy in some places but finding elsewhere that there was no one to stand in their way. The Belgians managed to reached Tegel before the French, causing some upset there, yet a lot of French attention was focused upon reaching the Quartier Napoleon where their troops assigned to Berlin had been based pre-war. All around them the West Germans, the British and the Portuguese were taking large portions of the city back under control as the French pushed ahead with that goal in mind.
Coming up from the direction of Potsdam, the West German VI Corps – including the lone brigade of the reorganised Dutch – moved into West Berlin through the trees of the Grünewald first. Sporadic, if sometime fierce, defensive fire met them and there was a lot of careful return fire but the Bundeswehr was very practised at this now as well as making use of gaps which opened up among the enemy when units suddenly melted away seemingly into thin air. Their men reached the Olympic Stadium just before the British got there while also pushing westwards through the day into heavily-populated parts of West Berlin between their starting positions in the west and the Americans holding onto Tempelhof Airport across to the east. Few Stasi men in uniform had gone near the British, the Belgians or the French, but the Bundeswehr soldiers here did meet some of those who had an inexplicable wish to be part of a last stand when faced with West German professional soldiers: if the Stasi wished to die in such a manner their wish was granted by soldiers who knew all about what such people had been up to.
By nightfall, General Kenny was able to see on his tactical maps that almost all of West Berlin was now in NATO hands. The US Third Army operating from the south had moved into their assigned sectors and where his troops had done the same they had taken almost all of their objectives. There were a few parts of the city left unoccupied right at the very heart of Berlin but opposition there, when his troops moved that way tomorrow, was likely to be very minimal indeed. It was almost time to celebrate…
The US Third Army under General Chambers' command faced a similar situation as it advanced deep into West Berlin. Opposition came sometimes strong in isolated spots yet generally what defensive fire was faced was minimal and desultory. Even around Tempelhof where the paratroopers were on the ground with an operation designed to act as a magnet for the enemy there was little actual direct combat met with the East Germans.
The four operational corps under command all couldn't realistically be lined up together side-by-side for the advance due to space considerations; the US III Corps remained behind in reserve leaving the West German V Corps to the right, the US XI Corps in the centre and the US II Corps on the left. Infantry, of which there was plenty especially in terms of American national guardsmen, moved forward with tanks and armoured vehicles in direct support. Many soldiers were being flown about in helicopters above landing in small parties everywhere sometimes in parkland or atop buildings – with the latter men would step out of Blackhawks and Hueys as those machines hovered a feet or two above flat rooftops instead of landing due to concerns over weight.
Making a physical connection with Tempelhof was one of the main objectives for the day with the US Third Army and that task was allotted to General Sullivan. The US II Corps pushed for the Mariendorf area with the Teltow Canal up ahead across the line of advance and engaged the enemy where he was met. Civilians streamed towards and through their lines this time un-harrassed by murderous, cowardly fire directed against them to stop that and the waterway reached soon enough. Once that was crossed in a series of crossings that saw some engagements, the airport grounds were soon reached.
Everywhere else to the west of where the US II Corps went northwards, there was again scattered opposition as well as plenty of surrenders taking place. East Germans surrendered less to West Germans than they did to US national guardsmen but there were still many of those incidents too. There was no fight left in the East Germans anymore as a rule with only die-hards who wanted to make a stand a rare sight and surrounded before being tackled. By nightfall, like the British Second Army, the US Third Army had most of West Berlin under control now.
Away to the east, the US Seventh Army had concentrated overnight facing East Berlin with the Spanish I Corps being brought back closed to where the US V & VII Corps were rather than as they had previously been westwards. Schwarzkopf had the Spanish and General Burba's command advance up along both banks of the Spree with the US V Corps pushing towards Karlshorst and Lichtenberg beyond. There were exchanges of fire here in this southeastern part of Berlin but as it was elsewhere there were other areas where no opposition was met too.
The KGB complex in Karlshorst attracted attention and was reached during the day where it was found to be empty where only until very recently all intelligence had pointed to be what were in affect refugees unloved by their country now gathered. Further US Army troops entered the densely-populated Lichtenberg and witnessed the ongoing food riots taking place: there were occasions where Americans soldiers here had to provide protection for East German troops who surrendered to them rather than face the still violent crowds of civilians. Those KdA paramilitaries and the 'toy soldiers' with the Friedrich Engels Guards Regiment (the Americans were very dismissive of the fighting capabilities of that latter) ran towards the US Army eager not to be lynched.
Every care was taken by the 3rd Armored Division to not fire upon civilians who were out of control here but it did happen in a few isolated spots when the Americans had no choice but to defend themselves when the hungry people they met were ready to attack anyone. Some intelligence pointed to East German Stasi officers intervening to cause such occurrences yet at the same time other evidence pointed to such people running for their lives. Thankful these were small if violent affairs and not a general pattern.
The US VII Corps was ordered to advance inwards from its positions outside the city securing all avenues of escape. Here again American soldiers came across defending troops who had haste in their surrender and requests for POW status as the Stasi-controlled Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment melted away into a horde of frightened men; Generalmajor Manfred Doring, the regimental commander, among them. The road and rail communications links near Biesdorf were as far west as the US VII Corps reached by nightfall with no further opposition left ahead of them.
All of Berlin except the very centre and areas to the northeast now remained under East German control and 'control' was far from an accurate term for that. Civilians were still rebelling, troops were refusing to obey orders or surrendering and NATO armies were pouring forwards.
Erich Mielke still remained in his capital as his dreams collapsed and his worst fears came true.
Two Hundred & Ninety–Four
Slowly, ever-so-slowly, Britain was putting itself back together domestically.
The ceasefire with the Soviets had been holding since the beginning of the week and the continued fighting with the East Germans had been limited to Berlin. More than a month of war hadn't seen the worst fears of thermonuclear holocaust unleashed and the country had managed to weather the storm of conventional attacks which had taken place. There was much urgency from the top down with the authorities to get things 'back to normal' as best as could be despite some ongoing restrictions to people's daily lives; Britain's dire economic state needed a bandage applied at the lowest levels while the social implications of the war needed to start to be addressed.
The British people were needed to get back to work, back to school and back to doing what they had been before World War Three broke out.
No one in Britain was interested in seeing mass unemployment and children not in school. From the politicians to the working families, this was something that couldn't be allowed to continue now that the war was coming to an end and the direct threat to the country no more. All that this had brought was domestic unrest and the financial ruin of so many. The routines of everyday life for people were what kept the country alive and functioning as a modern state; to have much of that halted as had been the case had been a wholescale disaster.
At the end of World War Three, Britain didn't find itself in the same situation as it did at the end of the Second World War. There wasn't widespread damage done to cities and millions of men in uniform who needed to be demobilised. Industrial facilities had been bombed in some places, especially ones related to defence, but most were still standing. The transport network had been attacked by enemy action too yet most of it was still there ready to be brought back into everyday use. There were many soldiers fighting in Germany and two hundred thousand young men had been conscripted into the armed forces early in the war (who had not and now wouldn't see any action); these men would return to their old lives soon enough with not too much haste. There was food in the country, some fuel available for domestic transport, electricity was running and people were not restricted with travel.
All of the ingredients to get the country up and running again were there… yet so too were all of the reasons why that was slow to get underway.
Economic factors remained a massive stumbling block with the London Stock Exchange closed still and international trade generally suspended. Both of these were very important with Britain being a trading nation where imports, exports and the transfer of goods through the country provided employment and income. There was still plenty of war-weariness among many people too who had no interest at the minute in investing overseas from Britain or from aboard into the country.
There were parts of the country where crime had been at times very severe from robberies to arson to assault & murder. Looting had taken place in some areas while there were gangs of street criminals still active in certain urban areas. The police remained overstretched and far too often relied upon military support. Far too much crime had occurred for proper investigations to be made and those arrested had hardly faced a fair trial where they had the chance to defend themselves; conversely many who did see the inside of a court weren't charged for most of the crimes which they had committed. Prisons were overcrowded and understaffed with temporary jails having been established in many places where conditions were far from what they should have been.
Many lives had been lost in the war and there were grieving families up and down the nation. Soldiers who had died aboard or at home defending the nation left behind loved ones who were distraught and in many instances still without the bodies of those killed to bury; wounded fighting men were in military hospitals nationwide. Moreover, there were civilians who had been killed and injured by the war as well when attacks had come on the British Isles with relatives who were left grieving for them.
The majority of the Transition to War restrictions had been lifted during this week by the government eager to get things 'back to normal' aware as they were of the economic situation that the country was in.
Certain areas around military bases were still no-go areas, international travel was difficult to say the least, media restrictions were still in place and attempting to make a public protest was not a good idea. This was the limit of lingering TtW affects which would inconvenience the public though with others restrictions out of the public eye.
The television, the radio and the newspapers were returning to their normal fashions pre-war with only war and security matters subject to censorship; there was a demand for soap operas and Page 3 girls especially. Sports events were soon to restart with the possibility of spectators being allowed to attend some while others would occur behind closed doors for a little while. Jobs were being made available as employers benefiting from the war boom needing employees even if the conventional stages of the war were ending as they were anticipating a rush of orders to replace lost and used military equipment. There was plenty of construction work available too with repairs to damaged parts of the country already underway and those with experience in such trades needed fast.
For people to work their children needed to go to school and public transport needed to be running for the workers while businesses too needed to move their goods around. As part of the continuing 'back to normal' message that the government was putting out – the slogan was being used quiet a bit now with patriotic overtones – education was to restart, buses & trains were running and petrol rationing for private cars and commercial uses was underway. This was not an easy thing to do but it was slowly taking off. Food, drink (non-alcoholic liquid) and cigarettes were back on the shelves in shops when it could be transported to them; this was all available off ration now – some price controls remained – to be brought with the wages from workers.
The 'back to normal' plan for the country had to work or the miracle which the government was hoping to find to repair the economic damage done to Britain wouldn't mean anything. In addition, what had the war been fought for, what had so many of Britain's soldiers died for, if there wasn't a functioning country left afterwards?
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 23:01:08 GMT
Two Hundred & Ninety–Five
To have each of the diplomatic representations in Geneva from the Allies each involved in independent negotiations with the Soviets wouldn't work out… not with sixty-eight delegations. Common sense had prevailed in the build up to the conference in Switzerland with agreements made among the Allies that there should be a limited number of 'lead' negotiators involved in talking with the Soviets who would represent the wishes of all of these nations for sake of practicality.
Many national government had wanted to have their chief diplomat as one of the chosen lead negotiators for various reasons to do not just with wanting to make sure that their interests were served but for prestige purposes as well. There was therefore plenty of negotiations among the Allies first when it came to who was to do most of the talking in Geneva leaving those left out of that to be present for nation-specific reference and then the planned later signing of the agreement reached with the Soviets.
Of the larger and influential countries, the United States, Britain, France and West Germany in particular all wanted their diplomats at the heart of the negotiations due to their contribution to the war effort and because they had suffered so gravely at the hands of the war of aggression launched by the Soviets. Moreover, there was the long-term implications to be considered by these countries too with regards to Marshal Ogarkov's regime and to make sure that he or any successor he might have wouldn't again soon be able to launch another RED BEAR westwards.
At the same time, nations such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in Scandinavia who had all been directly invaded as West Germany had been, as well as Austria too, believed that their diplomats needed to be intimately involved in dealing with the Soviets. Moreover, there were the other European nations – part of NATO and not – plus those further afield like Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia who had a marked interest in concluding this war and stopping a repeat too. There were the smaller nations also involved – for example Venezuela, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Singapore to name just a few – who also had suffered during this war and where was the fairness in leaving those nations out of the direct negotiations because of their size when the Allies were all meant to be equal in this war and its conclusion?
The diplomatic headaches to make sure that these countries were all represented fairly at Geneva by the Allied negotiation team for the peace treaty were vast and full of problems.
The number of six had eventually been settled upon: half a dozen lead diplomats would represent the Allies in dealing direct with the Soviets. The Americans, the British, the French and the West Germans would all have be at the forefront of the talks along with the Belgians (chosen to represent European interests) and the Japanese (for the rest of the world).
Not everyone was best pleased with this and concessions had to be made but otherwise the talks in Geneva would never have got underway. There was the feeling that with too many lead negotiators involved the Soviets might manage to undermine Allies unity and there again was the issue of practicality too when it came to making the decision to chose just six diplomats to deal directly with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin.
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The first stages of the Second Geneva Peace Conference had gotten underway last night when diplomats from both sides met with each other formally. There was some discussion concerning the transfer during the week of badly wounded POWs from both sides to the other which had occurred at Szczecin and then there had come the opening statements made as to what terms the Allies wanted to see in a peace treaty and the Soviet response to this. The Five Demands had been key to what the Allies presented and they had been countered the Soviets with their own terms for bringing the war to a formal conclusion.
When the two opposing sides met again this morning – Saturday April 16th – what composed the formal position of the Soviet Union as to how Rodionov and Chernomyrdin saw the war as ended would dominate discussions… much to the chagrin of several Allied diplomats who didn't like how all of a sudden the losers of the conflict were setting the agenda and also making their own demands!
Rodionov and Chernomyrdin were requesting that along with the exchanges made of POWs by both sides – the only one of the Five Demands from the Allies which they agreed to without hesitation – that all deserters who had fled to the West during the war be returned to them. They offered to send back people who had deserted to them from soldiers to civilians but wanted their own citizens back as well. Such people, the Allied negotiators were told, had betrayed the Soviet Union by their actions and were wanted by their country to face what was deemed 'rightful justice'.
In addition to this, there was another request made (never a demand, of course) that a 'neutral zone' be established throughout Eastern Europe where the former countries of the Warsaw Pact – possibly excluding East Germany – would not have the presence of any military forces at all from either the West nor the Soviet Union once the war was officially over with. This was to include Poland, Czechoslovakia (the Soviets spoke of it still as one country) and Hungary. Alongside this there was a further request when it came to the Barents Sea, eastern parts of the Baltic and the Black Sea too recognising them as areas where neither side would establish offensive naval forces that would apparently 'endanger the peace' following the end of the talks in Geneva. Rodionov and Chernomyrdin asked that there be legally-binding guarantees in the peace treaty which they stated that hoped to sign with the Allies concerning this and stressed that the only aim was to make sure that no future conflict could break out in Europe due to there being such a neutral zone on land and at sea where the military forces of both sides wouldn't be lined up against each other as they previously had been.
When it came to the fate of Germany, the Soviets spoke of how there were still international treaties pertaining to Germany dating back from the end of World War Two. The county, along with Berlin too, had been divided into zones of occupation. The Allies now occupied almost all of Germany and so Rodionov and Chernomyrdin spoke of how the future of that country needed to be addressed with their involvement. They were concerned that the West Germans were now going to unify their country and that was something which the Soviets felt had plenty of implications that needed to be carefully considered.
With regards to the Five Demands which the Allies had delivered as their firm statements concerning a formal end to the war, Rodionov and Chernomyrdin spoke of their objection to several of those. They wanted to return POWs with haste and made reminders of how it was they who had first raised this issue at Cottbus then they who had led the way in starting that process through the exchanges made at Szczecin. Moreover, they were prepared to have Allied POWs shipped out of their custody through such places as Kaliningrad and even the Crimea – their own sovereign territory! – as fast as possible with no restrictions upon military aircraft or ships entering those places which the Allies would need to transport such men.
There was plenty of agreement from the Soviets too when the Allies wanted the withdrawal of all remaining military, intelligence and political influence to leave Eastern Europe yet there was a stressing that this couldn't be done 'at once' as demanded due to the logistics of that. When the Allies had mentioned Afghanistan and Mongolia too as foreign countries where there were Soviet troops present, Rodionov and Chernomyrdin stated that the Soviet government had agreements with those nations concerning the stationing of their forces there to maintain the independence of such countries. Maybe there could be something done with regards to Afghanistan, but certainly not Mongolia.
War criminals: the was a recognition that war crimes had been committed by Soviet citizens yet Rodionov and Chernomyrdin made statements assuring the Allies that these had been authorised under the regime of Chebrikov who was no longer in power. Many crimes against POWs and civilians had also been in fact committed by the East German regime too; even if Soviet soldiers and security personnel had done those then there had been chain-of-command issues where the East Germans were ultimately responsible. In addition, the Soviet Union had evidence which it could present affirming these claims it made against the East Germans which it was keen to provide to the Allies. There were already prosecutions underway against Soviet citizens for taking part in war crimes with justice already being melted out against such perpetrators, Rodionov and Chernomyrdin pointed out. The Soviet Union was to follow its international obligations there and prosecute its own citizens who had done such things as well as see them punished.
The list of names which had been delivered by the Allies yesterday of such people which they wanted to see handed over to the West was unacceptable in many instances. Marshal Korbutov was not responsible for the alleged offences which he was accused of by the Allies as supreme commander in Europe as those underneath him had acted on their own or followed orders issued by the East Germans without his knowledge and other times against his will. There was ignorance on the part of Rodionov and Chernomyrdin as to who a certain Vladimir Petrovich Alganov serving with the KGB in Poland was or a Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin with the KGB in East Germany was either: perhaps these were 'working names' which figures with the discredited Committee for State Security had its personnel use and the Soviets could only act upon information if it was more up-to-date. Overall, there wasn't going to be an acceptance on the part of the Soviet Union to hand people over to the Allies to face 'victor's justice' on evidence which was hearsay when there was already a wave of criminal charges and justice being delivered by the Soviets themselves who had every right to try their own citizens. Should the Allies want to try for war crimes certain POWs, especially from the Soviet security services, which they already had in their custody in Germany, then that was a different matter which there was no objection to but Soviet citizens, many of whom might be innocent, weren't going to be handed over to the Allies just because they were demanded. As a final note when it came to war criminals, the Soviets asked whether those they believed were responsible for committing illegal acts against Soviet prisoners in Finland and Cuba perpetrated by official sources or what civilians had done in Denmark were sought for prosecution by the Allies. Surely the Allies had to understand that in response to duplicity the Soviets were acting as they were when it came to this issue and weren't ready to accede to such demands made like those made when those related injustices weren't up for discussion?
When it came to financial reparations which the Allies were demanding, Rodionov and Chernomyrdin stated that such a process would be open to abuse but more so argued over questions of legality. During the conflict there had been lawful attacks against the military infrastructure of the West by Soviet military forces and what had been struck at had either been carefully targeted as own a military nature or mistakenly hit when it was not. The civilian ships the Allies spoke of: how was the Soviet military not to have known they weren't at that point, hadn't previously, or weren't in the future to be laden with military goods? Power stations: again these were legitimate military targets because they supplied energy to military facilities as well as civilians. The list went on with such claims from the Soviets that there were lawful reasons to strike at targets in the West whilst open warfare was going on and there shouldn't be any need for them to pay any form of reparations for conducting such attacks during wartime. Furthermore, the financial claims were drawn up on a cost basis by the West and as far as Rodionov and Chernomyrdin could see these were inflated anyway… perhaps the Allies should consider that war profiteers were active within their countries as they had been in the Soviet Union before such people faced 'rightful justice'.
The Allied demand concerning future restrictions on the size and capabilities of the Soviet Union were rejected outright by Rodionov and Chernomyrdin. They spoke of how they had come to Geneva at their own urging after the Soviet side had initiated first a ceasefire and then peace negotiations – giving a moral victory to the West and suffering both national and international humiliation themselves – and now the Allies wanted to further humiliate the Soviet Union by trying to impose such a thing! This wasn't something which could even be considered as their country was surrounded by hostile nations and a deterrent factor against foreign aggression needed maintaining. There was a possibility that there could be further discussions upon strategic nuclear forces in the immediate future – after all the INF treaty had been negotiated but not signed – where the Soviet Union was prepared to accept free and fair concessions yet Rodionov and Chernomyrdin stated that those were negotiations which they wouldn't have with the Allies here at Geneva concerning an end to the war but rather at a superpower-to-superpower level outside of these discussions.
Tom King had been most angry when these statements were made by the Soviets where they were attempting to set the tone of the negotiations by having the Allies react to their 'requests' and refusing to budge on other issues. He was in particular concerned over the continued reference to the East Germans as blame was placed on them. This was just what he had feared would occur in Geneva and talks before the conference with Britain's allies had addressed this worry before it became a reality.
In the meeting with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin, where King had been one of the six lead negotiators, there had been a steadfast attitude on the representatives of the Allies in the face of such behaviour from the Soviets. Away from those face-to-face talks, when diplomats spoke in private King soon found that the unity of the Allies in sticking to the Five Demands and not allowing the Soviets to dominate the talks wavered…
The top secret, encoded messages which the Foreign Secretary sent back to London were going to upset many there.
Two Hundred & Ninety–Six
Whilst the diplomats argued in Geneva, PINNACLE came to a final conclusion in Berlin.
NATO and Allied troops entered the last remaining unoccupied areas of the city right in it's historic heart. The very centres of West Berlin and East Berlin came under the control of their main bulk of soldiers moving forwards in the daylight to secure areas infiltrated during the darkness by special forces troops. There remained some opposition often in the form of snipers and improvised mine obstacles from die-hard regime loyalists making final stands, yet there was little coordination in this defence: advancing troops slipped between the gaps and went up against such defenders from the flanks and behind too.
A lot of attention was focused upon avoiding friendly-fire incidents now at this very late stage of the war with troops of so many nationalities combining to close-in upon the urbanised centre of Berlin. The war had seen countless bloody incidents of such a nature but no one wanted to see anything like that occurring right now at the end of the conflict just before the fighting came to an end. Along streets and through large buildings men often held their fire when they saw others and tried to establish voice or radio contact rather than resorting to shooting first. This slowed the advance down yet it was something that no one was objecting to if it meant that the lives of their allies weren't lost due to what many believed would be unnecessary haste.
Unofficial races occurred throughout the day; there was competition to have one's soldiers reach a certain place before those of a different nationality. The West Germans wanted to reach the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building before anyone else whereas the Americans were focused upon securing 'regime targets' such as the bombed Stasi headquarters along the Frankfurter-Allee (US intelligence wanted access to the records reportedly buried beneath the rubble) and the Hohenschonhausen prison. Specialist units assigned to missions such as these were escorted by intelligence officers as well as camera crews too for the interests of national security and propaganda respectively. Officially, Berlin was being 'liberated' yet to many the city was in fact being conquered and the right of the conqueror was being exercised.
The citizens of Berlin were being freed and reacted to that by emerging from their homes to generally welcome the troops pushing deeper and deeper into the city. In West Berlin the last six weeks had been a living nightmare following the sudden CENTRE operation to take the enclave in one swoop. They had faced a brutal occupation where the repression had driven many to despair and then in the final few days of East German control there had come rumours that the Stasi was going to kill them all for no reason at all but spite. Their oppressors were suddenly gone though and liberation had come so they flooded into the streets cheering the NATO troops who slowly moved forwards. Across in East Berlin there were some similar scenes were East German civilians welcomed the arriving American and Spanish troops that advanced through their city though there were no wild scenes of celebration. Rumours had swept this part of the city that the US Army was going to slaughter them and while many people had dismissed that it was believed by a few. These people were all still hungry and were quick to converge upon trucks bringing food with disorder breaking out in many places only stopped by the Americans using rubber bullets and tear gas; they hadn't wanted to do such a thing but there was the very real need to act in such a manner against an unruly population.
Throughout the city, civilian officials of the East German regime along with quite a few collaborators from West Berlin (there had been plenty of these despite post-war efforts to play down the numbers and influence) did not have the best of days. Some waited in their homes to be arrested, others were attacked by vengeful mobs while more made hasty efforts to eliminate evidence of their wrongdoings recently and throughout the years. None knew what liberation/occupation would bring for them personally and there was plenty of fear in such people.
The last defenders of Berlin were scattered everywhere throughout the city in small groups and sometimes alone. They wore many different uniforms and plenty of those were suddenly cast away fearful of what the invaders would do to them but also civilians too. Weapons were either put down when the enemy was met and calls for surrender made while others abandoned their posts and fled with those to protect themselves. A few defenders, even here at the end, chose to make a fight of it and would pay for such a decision with their lives. They were fast surrounded then pulverised with gunfire from troops who had fast learnt how to fight in this urban environment. There were quite a few instances of these last defenders of the city being shot after capture too: those who caught them had seen their fellow soldiers killed on what they regarded as the war's last day and those East Germans who had fought to the very end were regarded as murderers who deserved a firing squad at best or maybe a bayonet between the ribs when they lay wounded. These scenes were plentiful across the city but took place generally out of sight with no official sanction. Many soldiers were in trouble with their officers afterwards for doing what they did yet plenty more were given stern warnings and told not to do it again by indifferent superiors.
There were people inside Berlin, not just buildings, that the Allies were after as the conquered the city.
Recently, especially during the past few days of pushing into Berlin, intelligence had flooded in from defectors and escaping civilians concerning certain figures from the military, intelligence and political fields whom were of an interest to the Allies. Some were wanted for war crimes, others for their official positions. Getting these people alive for trials and interrogations was an important part of PINNACLE yet confirming that such figures were dead and hadn't escaped was important to so that the files on them could be closed.
Soviet citizens which were encountered within Berlin were all regarded as combatants for they were not covered by the Cottbus ceasefire agreement with Ogarkov's regime. KGB, GRU, military and diplomatic personnel were all to be detained no matter what their stories so that afterwards the wheat could be separated from the chaff. Those who the advancing soldiers came across were taken into their custody with many opting to surrender themselves to the soldiers rather than wait to be caught: there was plenty of mob justice going on where anyone 'Russian' was likely to face injury or even death at the hands of enraged civilians. Bodies of other people identified as being Soviet were found and collected by specialist NATO units eager to confirm their identities so they could be buried properly at a later date but also noted as no longer being active and thus needing to be sought.
It was East Germans whom the spooks from intelligence services of the West accompanying troops into Berlin wanted to find more than Soviets though. There were high-profile figures and lower-ranking, near-anonymous people as well all of whom were hunted down throughout the city.
Werner Grossmann – Markus Wolf's successor as head of the Stasi's foreign intelligence arm the HVA – was sought for the knowledge sure to be in his head concerning East German foreign intelligence operations abroad along with several key figures within his organisation too. The deposed Honecker's (Erich and Margot) were last-known to be alive and inside Berlin; the SED Party Boss for East Berlin, Gunter Schabawski, who was a key ally of Mielke, was sought too. Generalleutnant Karl-Heinz Drews was someone else being looked for as the overall military commander of Berlin who intercepted communications had revealed ordering the deaths of NATO pilots shot down over the city. Another East German military officer who was being hunted was the Deputy Minister of National Defence and head of the Grenztruppen by the name of Generaloberst Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten; he was wanted not just for war crimes committed by men under his command when they were used as occupation forces in West Germany but for other offences relating to the Berlin Wall and the fortifications of the Inter-German Border.
The big prize though was Erich Mielke. Everyone was looking to find him with the manhunt now fully underway as Berlin was in the hands of the Allies and there shouldn't be anywhere for him to hide.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 23:08:42 GMT
Two Hundred & Ninety–Seven
Brigadier Mike Jackson made sure that the troops under his command behaved themselves and remembered their duties as soldiers with the British Army during the last day of fighting inside Berlin. He was not prepared to see the 32nd Light Brigade bring dishonour on the British Army, his country or himself by allowing prisoners to be shot nor any form of laziness to occur. Like his men he was tired but also relieved that the fighting was over with but he wouldn't allow for duty to be forgotten.
Part of the 5th Infantry Division, his brigade had entered West Berlin first from the Spandau area yesterday and then moved into Charlottenburg today. This borough of the city was in the British Sector and had long been an affluent area with middle-class homes and major shopping districts. The people who lived here were all West Germans as far as Jackson was concerned who had suffered grave injustices under a hostile occupation: his men were reminded of that before they moved through the area just in case anyone wanted to treat civilians like they were the enemy.
The three battalions of dismounted infantry under Jackson's command were all regular units – the 1 R ANGLIAN, 2 COLM GDS and 2 SCOTS GDS – with his brigade support elements being reservists forming ad hoc engineering, signals, supply and transport groups. These men hadn't seen much of the war but where they had Jackson had been proud of them for even when all were either abroad in Cyprus and Gibraltar or at home on stand-by alert during the first two weeks of the war they had kept both their spirits and training up. During the combat engagements in which he had led them on the Inter-German Border and afterwards inside East Germany during ABOLITION there hadn't been a moment to fault such soldiers. Regardless, carelessness causes costs and Jackson wanted none of his men to let him down and so made sure they understood that they would have to answer to him personally should they let him down.
Very few encounters with enemy die-hards were met in Charlottenburg. There was some sniping first thing in the morning and then there was a nasty bobby-trap bomb encountered at the historic Charlottenburg Palace which needed careful disarming, but the enemy was elusive and so Jackson's soldiers had other matters to deal with before going after them.
There were civilians who flocked to them in jubilation but who also wanted food and medical assistance. Many were in a distraught state yet weren't violent in their haste to be given access to the supplies to alleviate the hunger and illnesses which they suffered. There were some West German medics with Jackson's rear-area forces which he made sure came forward to assist with civilians who needed their care though at the same time he was forced to keep his own specialists back just in case they were needed should his soldiers need attention. Bombs had fallen on Charlottenburg from NATO aircraft – not many, but some – and all of them clearly wouldn't have exploded as they were meant to; enemy action might suddenly pick up too.
News came on the radio that ahead of him, to the west down the wide Bismarckstrasse and past the open space of the Tiergarten, the Bundeswehr had soldiers at the Brandenburg Gate at around the Reichstag building. He was happy for them and glad that they were able to fly their flags and celebrate liberating their country, but his men had other duties to attend to.
Jackson had followed orders and brought his men into Charlottenburg to make sure that the area was liberated and that there were no opposing forces who wanted to go underground and make the post-liberation bloody. Residential and commercial buildings throughout the area needed to be checked to make sure that there weren't East German soldiers or Stasi men with guns or bombs hiding in there. There was the grounds of the Charlottenburg Palace as well as the two university sites, the zoological gardens and a large shopping centre which also needed to be searched. Moreover, sections of the U-Bahn network, which had been closed during the conflict, had to be entered as well.
The enemy certainly remained in the area and was trying to vanish with men reportedly casting off uniforms and trying to blend in with civilians either hoping to forget their duties or strike back in a form of urban guerrilla warfare. This couldn't be allowed to happen and his soldiers had to find such people.
That task was a large and demanding one and part of the reason why Jackson wanted his soldiers to keep their heads and not get caught up in any form of celebrations. It was also something that couldn't be done though without the assistance of the civilians of Charlottenburg. The area was too big with far too many places for an enemy determined to hide himself to do so and plan to strike unexpected so Jackson was relying upon the people who lived here to assist his men.
There were never enough German-speakers with the British Army to go around and many were in intelligence-roles yet many of Jackson's soldiers had spent time in West Germany on peacetime service so that there were many with basic skills at communicating in German. Many people here in West Berlin also spoke some English too. Furthermore, helping in gaining assistance from the locals came from the people here only until six weeks ago had regular contact with British soldiers from the Berlin Infantry Brigade: these people generally had good regard for the British Army or at least knew that they weren't here to terrorise them.
Information was sought as to where East German soldiers who had abandoned their posts might be found. Had anyone seen soldiers casting off their uniforms and heading somewhere to secure themselves? Or had such people already been seen or heard when hidden? These were the questions asked of the locals put in the most polite ways and often asked after such civilians had wanted to express their gratitude for being freed as well as telling of how they had suffered under occupation. Many times false leads or mistakes were made when it came to the information given: this couldn't be helped. Nonetheless, Jackson knew that it kept his soldiers busy and would also make sure that the people which they sought would be hiding or fleeing to avoid efforts to find them rather than fighting.
Some of the information paid off either by design or fortune. There were engagements with East Germans who had made preparations to fight a guerrilla war. Many of these hadn't put much thought into how they were going to do that and quickly would have realised the hopelessness of trying to achieve such an aim, but Jackson was under orders to roll up such people fast. There were other East Germans which his soldiers encountered too who were not planning to be guerrillas but had deserted instead – with or without weapons – as they planned to escape being made prisoner: Jackson's soldiers came across these too so they could be detained. There were exchanges of gunfire and some hand-to-hand fighting but at the same time quite a few personal surrenders were made without violence being needed as Grenztruppen soldiers and even KdA paramilitaries decided not to make a fight of it.
Casualties among Jackson's men occurred because of this and he was upset by those yet knew that they were bound to occur; he would grieve later for their losses but fight now.
When talking with West Berlin's citizens, Jackson's soldiers were informed too about the identities and actions of collaborators which had occurred. This was a difficult subject which had caused political problems throughout the war when encountered within West Germany. Officers like him had received much official guidance on the matter but also been told unofficially as well to use their own judgement in many cases as where liberation occurred in any wars there were always such allegations. This was meant to be an issue to be dealt with by the West German authorities who had their intelligence officers roaming throughout liberated areas in the Federal Republic proper and further men already detailed to West Berlin as well. Jackson had his men listen to what was said and react to that when it was deemed appropriate. Serious allegations were to be acted upon at once with the accused detained and initial witness statements taken so that the accused wouldn't be lynched and witnesses lost in confusion. Where what seemed like wild allegations were made these were supposed to be listened to and less action taken.
The balancing act here resulted in many judgement calls being made.
Jackson had trusted men like his brigade chief-of-staff Major Viggers and the TA Captain from the Royal Military Police assigned make many on the spot decisions allowing further West German action yet this was very difficult to do in the midst of other duties. Mistakes were always going to be made with innocents smeared and deaths occurring in mob justice. There were some cases where young women were dragged into the street by their fellow civilians to be beaten, have their heads shaved and in a few extreme cases murdered when accused of giving sexual favours to the occupier. From the way Jackson understood it maybe there had been some consensual cases but what had really occurred was coerced behaviour from the occupier towards young women that a lot of people back home might equate with effective rape as the women had done what they had for food or to stop violence against themselves or their families. He had his men intervene where this was witnessed though knew too that such scenes took place out of sight of his soldiers as well.
Liberation for everyone in West Berlin wasn't the happy event it should have been. Jackson needed more Redcaps fast as well as West German paramilitary police forces who were supposed to be on their way because he didn't want to keep having his soldiers intervene when there were still other tasks to do.
Away from searching for the escaping enemy and taking on those who still wanted to fight, Jackson had some of his soldiers securing certain buildings. That actions by the Bundeswehr at national monuments was important for them yet he knew that many of their soldiers – just like other NATO fighting men – were seizing facilities that didn't have such propaganda value. There were temporary barracks complexes, weapons dumps, command posts and such like in Charlottenburg as there were throughout West Berlin that the occupier had used. Many of these were still full of intelligence material that had to be gathered up while others needed to be searched for weapons that might end up in the wrong hands soon enough. The occupation had come with severe measures inflicted against civilians here in West Berlin, Jackson knew, that had begun since that first day that the East Germans had rolled in. The Stasi had been active first followed by the occupying troops with also the presence of the Soviet intelligence services as well; in addition there had been some Polish troops, those who had at first overrun the Allied garrisons and then later defected on the North German Plain.
Residential areas like Charlottenburg had been home to many facilities where the occupier had used for their purposes because they had been using the West Berlin civilians as human shields to avert bombing missions. Jackson had to send his men into those again on intelligence-driven missions – acting on information from locals though there were a few patrols sent from 'strategic intelligence' – where not everything checked out due to mistakes, misunderstandings or even the occupiers having decamped from such places before the final battle for Berlin came.
Charlottenburg was still standing like most of the city was yet it was a war zone where the 32nd Brigade would be engaged in wartime missions for sometime now. Jackson and his soldiers were very busy with no end in sight even if they were no longer firing upon the enemy in fixed battles.
Two Hundred & Ninety–Eight
During an early morning telephone call over what Tom King regarded as a secure line back to London from the British Consulate in Geneva to Downing Street, the British Foreign Secretary had been told that he should expect that today's negotiations with the Soviets would go differently than they had done yesterday with 'major concessions' expected to be made. He was told that there was a courier on his way here to provide him with more information in the form of documents concerning that matter yet that messenger wouldn't arrive until later in the day.
King afterwards conferred with one of the British Army officers attached to the NAC who was here in Geneva and someone he had warmed to about this; the Foreign Secretary told Lef-tenant Colonel Robert 'Bob' Stewart that he believed there were still-smouldering holes in the ground across Europe were Soviet communication intercept stations had once been. Whatever intelligence London was sending out to him fast by hand surely could have come over the telephone here to Switzerland? Colonel Stewart affirmed that there were minimal enemy eavesdropping facilities left active but the intelligence must have been that important that he believed London was taking extreme precautions. In addition, the military officer who King knew would give anything at the minute to return to service in the field even at this late stage of the war rather than be here in Geneva said that it couldn't have been time-sensitive information but general background information gained by secret means and from how he understood the intelligence world there was always an overwhelming desire to protect sources among spooks so therefore relating that over the telephone could have put that source at risk.
Either way, both men agreed that they would find out soon enough but before then they would be meeting with the Soviets to see if what they had been told was true.
*
Yesterday's behaviour by the Soviets at the Second Geneva Peace Conference had come as a rude surprise to many. Far too many of King's fellow diplomats from the Allied nations believed that the Soviets were going to roll over and allow the West to demand whatever they wanted with ready acceptance given. King couldn't see into the future but he had never subscripted to that theory and had made sure that the War Cabinet back in London understood that before he left for Switzerland. What he had been expecting was plenty of blame to be laid at the feet of the East Germans – which he had been perfectly correct about – and the Soviets trying to claim that they had been forced into this war by so-called NATO aggression just as they had done last time here. Those excuses for the war hadn't come though there had been the standard 'whataboutism' (as the Americans liked to call such a thing) expressed by the Soviets when it came to certain bad treatment of POWs and an undertone in what Rodionov and Chernomyrdin had to say where they treated as everything that their country had done before Geneva as something in the past and not immediately relevant to the here-and-now.
When it came to their requests made as to what the peace treaty should contain, King had understood that they had bargaining positions which they were prepared to water down so that in the standard form of diplomacy which they were using they could point to their concessions and ask for some from the Allies in turn. Their mention of the future status of Germany had shown how that was intended and behind the bluster King could see how that was believed by the Soviets to be the start of diplomatic horse-trading in Geneva where they were attempting to show that they could be 'reasonable' following on from the Szczecin POW exchange.
Talking after the formal sessions with the Soviets had ended for the day, King had had meetings with his fellow diplomats last night in a series of informal gatherings. The Americans, the French and the West Germans had all been spoken to where King had expressed his views and listened to theirs while other chief diplomats with the Allies had too been engaged with, including the Commonwealth nations. Even if there were some politicians here acting as foreign ministers with limited diplomatic experience – himself included – all had staffs who were supposed to know their business and be on-hand to advise and inform those politicians as to the game which the Soviets were playing. This was similar to how Soviet diplomats had acted throughout the Cold War and the diplomacy which had gone on during the Third World War should have shown too this was what was to be expected.
However, King was disappointed to find that far too much notice had been taken of what the Soviets had had to counter the Five Demands with. Their assurance that they wanted to conduct POW exchanges with haste had seduced several diplomatic delegations with the thought of getting so many captured military personnel back along with the statement that they had no objection to war criminals already in Allied custody being charged. Along with that was the blame heaped upon the East Germans who – up until yesterday anyway – had continued fighting with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin blaming them for many heinous acts. That neutral zone where Eastern Europe wouldn't be home to military forces from NATO nor the Soviet Union had had a positive affect on others while there was some understanding for the protestations that the Soviets shouldn't suffer a national humiliation while they still had what they had called legitimate national security concerns with regards to their borders therefore not agreeing to any limits on their armed forces. Some diplomats spoke in private about not forcing something similar to the Treaty of Versailles or even a Treaty of Brest-Litovsk upon them because this could give rise to recriminations down the line.
Of course, not everyone was agreeing with some or all of what the Soviets had to say but Allied unity, spoken of so highly before yesterday, was on shaky ground.
And then the was the West Germans. The Soviet mention of reunification of their country seemed to have ignited their feelings on the matter. There had been incidents throughout the war, especially recently, where actions on the part of the West Germans had shown that they were seeking to reunify their country in a de facto sense. There was plenty of ill-will from several countries to this due to memories of the past but at the same time a lot of sympathy for them too after all that the West Germans had suffered during this war while also making sure that any future invasion westwards wouldn't be launched from East Germany no matter what came of peace talks. That had all been left unsaid… until yesterday when the Soviets spoke of it and now it was all that the West Germans wanted to talk about. Genscher and his diplomatic party expressed concern over Soviet statements about war criminals and how long it would apparently take them to pull out of Eastern Europe but their focus was now on a de jure reunification; they believed that when Chernomyrdin had mentioned that he was giving Soviet green light to that and now they wanted the Western powers of World War Two – Britain, France and the United States – who like the Soviets legally had responsibility for such a thing to agree to this too.
Reunification, reunification, reunification: it was all the West Germans wanted to talk about.
While there was plenty of behaviour which King found to be damaging to the Allied cause, there still remained some unity. Grassley and Raimond were firm in sticking to the Five Demands like King was instructed to do so and joined him in trying to refocus attentions of their fellow diplomats on what needed to be done. The Soviets needed a firm but just punishment for their causing of this war that had cost so many lives and the Five Demands had long been agreed to by the Allies as a whole. They were playing games and trying to get away with what they had done with the possibility that if they did so there would come another attempt again in a few years time to do this all over again.
Reminders were made how it had been previously agreed that the Soviets weren't to be pushed too far to bring their whole country down and allow civil war to break out there – a human tragedy of epic proportions like that might sound appealing to some to forever stop a Soviet threat but the cost for the rest of the world would be too much – and threaten the Allies in other ways such as nuclear proliferation or encouraging the territorial ambitions of some of the Soviet Union's neighbours. That didn't mean that the Soviets could be allowed to get away with what they had done nor be left believing that they hadn't really lost either; this was very important and, again, all previously agreed to.
The Allies had to stay united.
*
Back at the formal peace talks today (Sunday April 17th), that news that King had received from London turned out to be true with important concessions being made by the Soviets and demanding little in return. They were still unwilling to agree fully to the Five Demands but what they had to offer today after yesterday's behaviour came as quite a surprise to many.
War criminals: the Soviets were willing to hand over military and intelligence personnel to an international tribunal that they would play a part in establishing. This would have to be located in a neutral location – Switzerland was favoured – and under UN supervision not that of the Allies. They were still interested in seeing claims pressed against what they said had been war crimes inflicted by Cuba, Denmark and Finland against Soviet POWs as well as stating that Marshal Korbutov was not to be handed over, but they had broken from their previous position on the matter.
Deserters and defectors: no longer were these people being sought by the Soviets for repatriation as Rodionov and Chernomyrdin had asked for yesterday. In exchange, they said that the (trickle) who had come their way from the Allies wouldn't leave the Soviet Union unless they wished to return to their home countries.
Eastern Europe: there would be a pull-out as soon as possible from what Soviet forces remained in Poland as well as parts of Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well. There was no longer talk about the length of time that this would take to achieve only mention made by the Soviets that through Poland, as before, their intention was to send POW's back westwards and have theirs sent eastwards.
Germany: the reunification of Germany was again brought up by the Soviets stating that they had no objection to it talking place, especially if it meant the end of the East German regime. Rodionov spoke of the East Germans in very unfavourable terms using guttural language fast translated here for the Allies in what their diplomats believed was a calculated move on that matter.
The issues of reparations and military restrictions were non-negotiable though: Rodionov and Chernomyrdin were not budging on these. The latter spoke seemingly in an off-guarded fashion when he said that there was no money that the Soviet Union had to give while the former again spoke of threats to sovereign territory while looking directly at Sosuke Uno, the Japanese Foreign Minister. To the Allied diplomats these were deliberate acts from the Soviets implying that they couldn't pay reparations because their country was in a state of economic collapse while also trying to play on fears of Japanese revanchism.
In dialogue between the two sides where Eastern Europe was discussed, the Allied diplomats spoke of Poland and the continuing presence there of Soviet forces. There were accusations made that since the Allied-Soviet ceasefire the Soviets had been fighting the Poles who were in rebellion against the government that the Soviets were keeping in-place in Warsaw. The Allies wanted this to stop and the Poles to be responsible for their own affairs with no further armed support of the regime headed by General Jaruzelski and propped up by Soviet manpower. Rodionov and Chernomyrdin countered that the KGB had been keeping General Jaruzelski in power and their post-Chebrikov government wanted nothing to do with him or had any territorial ambitions upon Poland (the latter not mentioned by the Allies). Moreover, it was in Poland where tens of thousands of NATO POWs were being held awaiting exchange. It was a well-known fact, the Allies were told, that the encouragement given by the West to the Poles to revolt had led to scenes were those POWs being held had been killed by Poles rather than being repatriated.
What the Soviets would like to see now that they had made the concessions which they had was a peace treaty; Rodionov and Chernomyrdin spoke of how they saw matters as being concluded with those statements of theirs about war criminals, deserters & defectors, Eastern Europe and the fate of Germany. There was no further point in arguing about financial reparations, military force limits or the expressed desire to leave Poland to its own affairs because they had addressed those. What they wanted was to know when a treaty could be signed so that POW exchanges could take place and diplomatic relations eventually restored.
Later in the evening, once discussions had concluded for the day without any further substantial exchanges of views made, King met with the courier from London. Some of his fellow diplomats were at the same time getting similar information too he learnt and upon receipt he understood why the Soviets had conceded so much today as they had and why they were so eager to get a peace treaty signed.
Their nation, their multi-ethnic and illegal empire, was falling apart.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 23:16:27 GMT
Two Hundred & Ninety–Nine
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were all 'soviet socialist republics' (SSRs) which were a constituent part of the supposed voluntary federation which formed the Soviet Union. They were located in the western part of the Soviet Union along the Baltic – giving rise to the names 'Baltic Republics' or 'Baltic States' – and joined with twelve others to create the empire over which Marshal Ogarkov now led and was desperately trying to hold together. The history concerning how these three nations which had been independent between the First & Second World Wars before they were occupied and then forcibly linked with the rest of the Soviet Union was fraught with claims and counter-claims. Soviet official history maintained that their people had freely joined the Soviet Union in 1940 while to exiles and liberation campaigners – who enjoyed much support in the West – that had been an illegal move.
As with the rest of the SSRs in the border region of the Soviet Union, Ogarkov was wholly determined that they should not succeed from the country and such was the reason why he had brought hostilities with the Allies to an end so that this wouldn't happen. His plan had to bring peace abroad so that unrest and dissent at home could be stopped and the union would remain united.
There were plenty of people though who wished to see the Baltic Republics break away and become free, independent states… and they were putting a lot of effort into seeing that happen.
It had started two weeks ago when there had been a march in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius organised by independence protesters brutally crushed by MVD (Ministry of the Interior) paramilitary soldiers which had been followed afterwards by rioting inside that city and then afterwards in Kaunas and Klaipeda. Independence and human rights had at first been the calls from a small number of underground agitators but when the rioting had come it had been from ordinary citizens often hungry but at other times ready to strike at organs of state control. MVD soldiers had lost control at times and gone too far in dealing with protesters leading to an ever-growing cycle of violence which had had a knock on affect with the logistics of supporting the war effort through neighbouring Poland.
Attempts had been made with the assistance of the KGB in silencing the news first from Vilnius and then from Lithuania only to see failure with stories from there spreading far and wide into Latvia and up to Estonia too. Marches for independence and human rights began in those two SSRs to be met with armed repressions and then rioting which spread afterwards; the situation in Lithuania was repeated in the two other SSRs with alarming coincidences in how they occurred.
Ogarkov had very quickly come to the conclusion that this wasn't coincidence but rather design. He had ordered MVD troops from further afield – paramilitary units from the Belorussian SSR rather than those based locally – into the Baltic Republics to engage the rioters and seen their protests crushed while trying to investigate what had gone on there. His belief had been that the first protests were allowed to happen, the moves made against them designed to fail and then encouragement made to allow the news to get out so that further unrest could develop. He believed that this was happening elsewhere in the country down in the Caucasus with Chekists having motives to see unrest spread to threaten his regime all at the expense of the country's national unity in this time of war.
Official statements from Moscow for internal and external publication blamed 'US agents' for the unrest. It was an easy accusation to make blaming everything on foreigners and an attempt to not allow those who heard of the troubles to speculate on what really had been causing the unrest with regards to the frustrations of the people in the Baltic Republics. The country had still been actively at war with the West when that occurred though soon enough there was further trouble which Ogarkov didn't have official Soviet media sources make comment upon.
Protests, rioting and then overt sabotage of vital national infrastructure started to occur in the Baltic Republics after a short pause. Ogarkov was arranging for a disengagement with the Allies in the lead-up to the ceasefire at that point and struggled to keep his full attention on what was going on. When he did receive reports which detailed what was happening his concern became very real. Many cities throughout the Baltic Republics were fully in the hands of what were best described as 'rebel forces'. Militia units had sprung up, some showing levels of organisation, in many places where the organs of that state had been overthrown with Soviet officials killed. There were leaders of these who weren't allied yet properly with others in nearby locations but were making similar demands all calling for the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Ogarkov sent the Soviet Army against them this time.
He had troops which had been halted on the borders with Poland attack Vilnius and Daugavpils (the latter in Latvia) in combined arms assaults where Soviet soldiers fought Soviet civilians. Soviet Navy personnel in Klaipeda and Liepaja were sent against rebel grounds there on the coast while at Tallinn and Tartu in Estonia troops from the Leningrad area moved fast against them. Communications between the rebel groups were patchy and their weapons limited: they didn't stand a chance against what was thrown at them. However, in doing this Ogarkov had therefore been forced to give up on the MVD security forces and the secret policemen of the KGB because he couldn't trust them to rely upon soldiers from the armed forces. The military units employed did their tasks but they suffered serious rates of desertion during their movement to contact to only compound earlier losses where men had run away from their duty. Reports reached Ogarkov of some of the brutality used and the fire-power unleashed when they operated which meant that the death rates across the Baltic Republics of civilians were extremely high. He would have much preferred that the MVD and the KGB had been used because they wouldn't have killed so many people nor blown apart parts of those cities yet he had had no other choice.
Another pause came in the unrest across the Baltic Republics but, like before, when trouble started again it was stronger again the next time around.
Those rebels from before were amateurs compared to those who made their move on the Friday just gone. Underground groups who had clearly been organising for some time now came out into the open and struck against the State. The cities were avoided by men who had military and security forces training but all regarded themselves as Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians rather than Soviets. They struck in outlying regions where road and rail links were erecting barricades and roadblocks. Power and water supplies were cut to the populated regions nearby along with telephone links as well. They had transport and hiding places set up so that when they were engaged by troops Ogarkov fast had ordered against them, if they couldn't win the stand-up fights they made they could make an effective withdrawal. These rebel groups stood their ground when attacked; they didn't flee like those who had come before them. It was as if a shadow army had sprung to life from nowhere ready to fight and win all throughout the Baltic Republics.
Ogarkov couldn't believe it when he heard the first reports – where could they have come from? – but when enough of them came in he turned his rage against the Chekists again. He was certain that they were behind all of this somehow for whatever latest nefarious reason they had this time to see Soviet control challenged through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Who else could be too blame?
At the same as violent attempts to gain independence for the Baltic Republics, there were political moves with the same agenda in the Ukrainian SSR, the Moldavian SSR and the Crimean ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). Ogarkov had been made aware for some time of the plots and plans of Communist Party officials in those places to reaffirm their positions following first Chebrikov's assumption of power and then his own. He had been trying to formulate a political settlement while also having KGB elements he believed still loyal work against the most extreme elements there… either the KGB had failed or they had actively worked against him. Either way, there had come moves from Kiev, Chisinau and Simferopol to not gain control of the country as a whole but to instead break away.
Politicians in the Ukraine and Moldovia had declared their independence while in the Crimea and attempt to do so had been stopped by ethnic Russian politicians there at the last minute over the wishes of Ukrainian-supporting Crimeans. There had been gatherings of politicians and street protests where independence was on the mind of those involved where they wished to establish their own countries outside of the Soviet Union. They pointed to articles of the constitution which affirmed their right to do so and there was plenty of public support for this; as was the case in the Baltic Republics, people here were marching in defiance of the State!
The Soviet Union couldn't survive as a country with such a thing happening among its SSRs. Ogarkov had removed Chebrikov and brought the war to a finish to stop something like this from happening but here it was occurring throughout these vital regions of the nation.
Ethnic clashes were taking place throughout the Caucasus.
Within the Armenian, Azerbaijian and Georgian SSRs armed civilian groups were fighting each other as well as the State authorities. This was spreading now through the mountains up into the southernmost regions of the Russian SSR there in the Chechen, Dagestanian and Ossetian ASSRs dragging in Cossacks as well. The reports and intelligence summaries of who was fighting who let alone why made confusing reading for Ogarkov trying to get to the bottom of it all so he could begin to figure out what to do, but it seemed that every day new developments occurred and so events were moving too fast to keep up.
Soviet citizens down there were fighting for independence in places but otherwise fighting against each other for reasons indeterminable. All sought to clash with organs of the State yet their main focus was the hatred for each other. MVD and KGB forces in the area had been depleted by murderous attacks against them that some reports compared to actions which had taken place against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. The cunning of those fighting there as well as their brutality was increasing everyday while the chances of any form of settlement to bring this all to a stop were now becoming almost impossible as the cycle of violence continued.
The latest reports said that at least two thousand might be dead already… and that was a low estimate from what Ogarkov regarded as unreliable sources.
The problems in the Caucasus – as well as other ongoing troubles in the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs – had been rumbling on for a while yet they now came on top of the troubles in the Baltic Republics and down throughout the southwestern parts of the Soviet Union. The country was falling apart with attempts at succession and ethnic strife on an unprecedented scale that Ogarkov could not bring under control. He couldn't rely in any way on the security forces with the games which the Chekists were playing to further their own ends and now both politicians revolting and the armed forces going to far.
His plan had been to secure a peace with the West in Geneva so he could turn his attention to domestic problems but the attitude of Allied diplomats in Switzerland had been showing no sign of comprise from them. He had offered them a lot with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin instructed not so see the country humiliated and also beholden to the West. Giving them back their POWs as fast as possible, allowing Germany to reunite and allowing them to do as they wished with whatever Chekist war criminals they already had in their custody had been his goal there, yet they wouldn't play along and wanted even more!
Then there was Poland too. Every day Soviet soldiers were being killed there fighting against the Poles with the soldiers guarding NATO prisoners while also positioned to block an advance by the Allies eastwards towards the Soviet Union's borders… the latter a task which Ogarkov knew would be impossible should it come to that. He wanted to bring those troops home, have discipline re-instilled in them and use them now in place of the MVD and the KGB to deal with unrest across the nation.
Therefore, Ogarkov had sent those new instructions to Geneva late last night informing them to speed up the process of gaining a fixed peace with the Allies. He had told Rodionov and Chernomyrdin to give the West much – but not all – of what they wanted but to of course not let them know the reasons behind this. Ogarkov was concerned that if the West, in particular the Americans knew everything that was happening within his country, they would make every effort possible to see the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Of that he was certain.
Three Hundred
Official confirmation come from General Schwarzkopf's US Seventh Army forward headquarters to RAF Gatow that Operation EASTERN PROMISES was a success just after ten o'clock on Monday morning. General Kenny and his staff at the British Second Army's own forward headquarters celebrated the news of this achievement though there was a little jealousy that the Americans, not they, had managed to get their hands on Erich Mielke.
Nonetheless, he was in Allied custody now and no longer a fugitive.
EASTERN PROMISES had begun yesterday afternoon when an occupation patrol in the Pankow district in the northern part of East Berlin had been approached by a man in civilian clothes. These were US Army soldiers with the 174th Mechanized Infantry Brigade – former POWs as well as some long-serving USAR officers too – on patrol searching for East German hold-outs but who instead met a Russian-speaking man who demanded to talk to their senior officer. The 174th Brigade commander, then General Watts as US VII Corps commander, became involved along with top-tier intelligence officials from the US Army due to what the Soviet man had to say.
He identified himself as a KGB officer leading a party of his fellow spooks who wished to defect to the United States and intended to use what he had called 'bargaining tools'; intelligence documents were mentioned first but then soon enough there came the claim that the East German leader was in their custody and they wanted to use him too for the exchange. The Soviets wanted to defect straight to US Intelligence, not to anyone else, and would give what physical documentation which they had, would speak to debriefers and also hand over Mielke as well.
When Schwarzkopf was informed he brought in the CIA and DIA liaison officers with his US Seventh Army staff as well as sending the news upwards through two separate chain-of-command structures: NATO and the American military. The decision was put to him as the senior officer on the ground (though he had plenty of 'guidance') as to how to proceed and Schwarzkopf made the deal. The KGB officer was released from temporary custody and set free into Pankow without being followed even when there was a lot of talk about doing that. A meeting had been arranged at a certain location at a certain time where the defection of the Soviets would take place and Mielke handed over; there were also to be methods of communication to allow last minute changes to occur.
Through the NATO chain-of-command, permission for Schwarzkopf to do as he did had came from a hasty meeting of the NAC in Brussels. Many staffers with the North Atlantic Council were with the diplomatic delegations in Geneva talking with Rodionov and Chernomyrdin though the Permanent Representatives were still there with their work overseen by Lord Carrington. Some talk was made of ordering an interrogation of the KGB officer and a series of invasive armed sweeps through Pankow to locate Mielke rather than see an exchange made for him though there was little actual support for this once it was considered a bit more.
Who was to say that the man in custody wasn't just a 'front' for others and who didn't actually know anything? Maybe Mielke wasn't in Pankow? Were there enough troops in that borough to conduct a massive search? What was the point in doing this when a peaceful handover of Mielke was due to come the following morning? Such were the questions asked and therefore permission came for a deal to be made instead.
The offer by the KGB in Berlin wasn't something which those back in the United States liked at first hearing either. This was hostage-taking again committed by the KGB with the East German leader being ransomed for the freedom of others. When Bush and the NSC discussed the matter there was talk of allowing a deal to be made and then reneging on it; other ideas where to focus electronic intelligence activity as well as aircraft on reconnaissance missions above East Berlin and try to locate the Soviets before hitting their location with special forces troops getting rid of them, taking any documentation they might have and recovering Mielke dead or alive…
Cooler heads prevailed in the end where it was thought best just to play the hand dealt by keeping the promises made and see if Mielke was going to be delivered to them gift-wrapped. Maybe later the KGB defectors here could be discarded at a later date but no harm was seen in letting them hand over Mielke when all they wanted in exchange was a promise of defecting to the United States.
The exchange had initially been agreed to take place at a church located off the Heinrich-Mann-Strass but there came a change of venue less than an hour before the meeting. Plenty of covert American military surveillance activity had been focused upon that building yet all was for nought with a realisation coming later that they had been played there by the KGB. Instead a new venue was announced at that late stage with the Soviets choosing an abandoned building that was once a communal bathhouse/sauna. All other elements of the agreement already made were to be stuck to from the numbers of KGB men who wanted to defect to the presence of secret documentation as well as a bound prisoner too.
The US Army had Green Berets supported by uniformed DIA officers turn up at the location to meet with the KGB. Both sides were armed and there was some tension though everyone seemed to want to get on with things as fast as possible with no drama. The prisoner which the KGB had was handcuffed and gagged yet made quite a scene for an old man as he was; the Americans took him into their custody while also fast assuring themselves of his identity by comparing his face to photographs and quickly taking his fingerprints to match against records which they had. Then it was time to leave that venue with the nervous Soviets going with Mielke – who was now in American custody – away from the meeting place to a nearby sports field in a road convoy. Helicopters were met there whisking the defectors, Mielke and his guards away first heading for Tempelhof but soon afterwards more distant lands.
Once Mielke was aboard that helicopter only then did the messages go out over the radio that EASTERN PROMISES had been achieved.
General Kenny was briefed afterwards that Mielke was on his way to an airfield near Bremen across on the other side of Germany. He was being held by men on temporary assignment to the Allied Military Control Commission rather than the US Army or any intelligence agency. The man was a war criminal with no legal authority to rule over East Germany – which was no more anyway – and the West Germans who were running the AMCC would be dealing with him now.
It would have been nice to see him brought in chains to the Tower of London, General Kenny had mused, but he understood why the political decision on high had been taken to give him over to de facto West German control even though the AMCC was meant to be an Allied organisation. He assumed that there would later be a trial, maybe even an international one, with Mielke being lucky to get a prison sentence handed down… or maybe they'd even try to have him executed? General Kenny wasn't sure how that would work out but for now that matter was over and done with.
No tears were going to be shed for the man either way.
Three Hundred & One
Extract from: My War; The Heroic Deeds Of A Soldier, by General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed. Part 21: Bloody Homecoming
The war had brought forth traitors everywhere. Time and time again, those who wished to betray the Motherland came out of the shadows at our country's time of need and sought to harm us all.
I was tasked to put a stop to their activities and set about doing that when I returned to the Motherland from my duties in Poland; I did all that I could.
It was to the Baltic Republics where my orders sent me. Throughout the region there had been unrest fomented by foreign agents whilst the war was ongoing and then in the last days when the conflict was still officially underway there had come an outbreak of secessionist violence. Traitors were seeking to break these regions away from the Motherland with the support of outsiders assisting them, yet it was their will to betray the country that brought everything crashing down there in the end.
The men I lead into action in Lithuania were all combat veterans like myself and we conducted intelligence-led missions against the traitors attempting to secede from the Motherland. Such people were elusive and lived among a tangled web of lies but when found they were confronted and justice was delivered to them. Through the forests, the countryside and into towns & villages too we engaged the traitors where they were found. They had access to much heavy weaponry and were competent in the use of missile-launchers to our combat armoured vehicles and supporting helicopters.
Good Russian boys died horrible deaths at the hands of these traitors.
The engagements made were often confusing and would repeat themselves over and over again. Counter-insurgency war is what occurred in Lithuania and this was an experience which I must admit I would never been keen to repeat again. Portions of the local population gave their support to the secessionists in misguided attempts to save themselves. This cowardice from what had previously been loyal servants of the Motherland would cost them great in later years under the illegal regimes which followed but at the time those there did not have the benefit of hindsight.
Into Latvia and Estonia too the conflict against the traitorous rebels spread. Great battles were won where my men overcame opposition at the front only to be stabbed in the back from the rear. I am talking of the Chekists who were active in the Baltic Republics at that time, those who displayed heinous acts of betrayal against the Motherland. They worked with the secessionists feeding the traitors intelligence as well as providing arms and continued reinforcements. How can a war be successfully fought when such people are at work in the rear like they were?
Rezekne, Liepaja, Taurage, Parnu, Riga, Narva and Vilnius: we won those battles and killed hundreds of traitors carrying arms but we were stabbed in the back afterwards by Chekists.
There were Soviet citizens in the Baltic Republics and I believe that the vast majority wished to remain part of the Motherland. Lies have been spread following the war where falsehoods about supposedly free elections showed that the opposite was true; those were conducted in a climate of fear and were fraudulent. We had the support of so many ordinary people despite the presence of traitors everywhere as we fought the secessionists. How were we able to be so successful as we were at times if it was not for the local people not just providing us with information but giving other support too?
Following orders, all traitors when captured were punished justly and within the law. We executed those who took up arms against the Motherland and who agitated for the secessionist movements. There was nothing wrong with this in a moral sense nor legally either as the law stated that this was the punishment for their crimes. There are now claims that wrongdoing was done by soldiers under my command as well as myself but those are further lies perpetrated by the guilty as well as their supporters in foreign countries who assisted in all of the unrest.
We did our duty and I join my former veterans of the fighting in having no guilty attached at what occurred. They say that victors write the history books and I know personally how true that is.
What do we have now in the Baltic Republics? A collection of failed, illegal states where poverty and injustice is rife. Look at how loyal subjects of the Motherland were treated by the traitors after the so-called independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? There is the former Kaliningrad region too illegally attached to the abomination which is Lithuania. That region was legally part of the Motherland and stolen by the secessionists with foreign support!
Traitors who betrayed the Motherland enrich themselves across the Baltic Republics not at the expense of their own people and make wild claims about the history when the region was part of the Motherland. There is a constant stream of falsehoods coming from them concerning events in the past which they fabricate evidence of to a high degree and fool the gullible. The murders which they committed against captured Soviet soldiers, the injustices which speakers of the Russian language suffered then and now have to face are covered up and further filthy lies are told.
Many of us know the truth though and we shall never forget.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 16, 2019 23:21:16 GMT
Three Hundred & Two
The third day of negotiations in Geneva were delayed until the afternoon. Both sides requested that the morning's session be cancelled due to what the Allies called 'diplomatic reasons' and the Soviets deemed 'an ongoing situation'.
Both sides wanted the delay due to the same factors: news coming out of the Soviet Union with regard to the internal situation there.
When the delegations got back to the negotiations there was a clear difference than from beforehand noticed by the other as to how matters had been handed yesterday and the day before. Compromise was on the agenda where previously there had been a steadfast refusal to grant the others all that was wanted, especially on the part of the Allied diplomats at Geneva.
The Allies had been involved in talks away from Switzerland with contact between heads of government taking precedence over those between foreign ministers at the peace conference with the Soviets. Bush, Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl and several others had discussed what intelligence was coming out of the Soviet Union with the violent unrest spreading further throughout that country and the political efforts made in the Ukraine and Moldova to secede from the country. Electronic interception of communications and overhead satellite images were where most of this information came from rather than direct observation with very little first-hand intelligence from any agents on the ground.
It was not the objective of the Allies to see the destruction of the Soviet Union. Acting President Bush, Prime Minister Thatcher, President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl might have liked the idea of that on paper but the reality of a collapse such as that was not regarded as something desirable for the futures of their own nations in the long-run. The concern was that but maintaining a hard line in Geneva Ogarkov would either be forced to withdraw his representatives – making a peace impossible and the Allies therefore being forced to maintain their mobilised armies – or his country would fall apart around him when certain figures there decided that concessions made to the West would be fatal for the Soviet Union.
Toppling Ogarkov was not in the interest of the West. He was a military strongman who stood a very good chance of keeping his nation together if he was able to focus upon that. Maybe some outlying regions may secede – American and British intelligence believed that the situation in the Baltic Republics had gone too far – but generally the nuclear-armed state (with immense stocks of conventional weaponry too which the West also didn't want to see fall into the wrong hands) could remain as one. There was also the thinking that Ogarkov was not the 'adventurous' type like Chebrikov had been and wasn't soon to repeat his predecessors attempt at foreign invasions.
Instructions were thus sent to Geneva for the Allied diplomats there to come to an agreement with the Soviets as soon as possible.
There was an attempt to keep Rodionov and Chernomyrdin up-to-date on the situation back home through couriers sent with information from Ogarkov to them as Ogarkov worried over Allied communications intercepts. This failed due to the logistics of getting Soviet Army officers across the Geneva in a timely fashion as between Switzerland and the Soviet Union lay nations either part of the Allies who refused to give rapid clearance for flights and other countries too who were not currently on good terms with Moscow and didn't want military overflights to occur. Coded transmissions thus had to be sent and this was soon seen to be the best thing to do as events were moving very fast back home… the worries over interception of the messages were still there though.
Ogarkov had told his diplomatic delegation in Geneva – the general and the politician – to solve whatever issues there were remaining with the Allies too. There were still some red lines that he wouldn't see crossed yet at the same time there were things that the West wanted which could offset them not getting all that they wanted.
When the negotiations got underway, there came rapid agreement from both sides where the previous stumbling blocks were overcome.
POW transfers were to begin as soon a possible with those held in Soviet custody across western parts to Poland escorted to the border with East Germany and handed over to NATO. Other Allied prisoners held inside Soviet sovereign territory were not to go through naval facilities on the Baltic or from Crimea (the Soviets didn't say why this was the case and the Allies pretended not to know either) but would be flown out of captivity. Rodionov and Chernomyrdin agreed with their counterparts from the Allies that civilian aircraft would fly POWs from both sides back and forth through the western USSR to Denmark and Germany. These would be military-chartered flights but only unarmed airliners in civilian colours would be used with expediency the key.
An independent body set up in a neutral location would determine the fates of war criminals, it was agreed, where all claims would be considered. The Allies acceded to the previous demand from the Soviets to consider their own allegations against countries in the West in exchange for the Soviets placing no restrictions on whom the Allies could ask to try in prosecutions.
All Soviet military forces were to leave Eastern Europe with haste and there was a timetable set of sixty days for this; no exceptions would be made by the Soviets in this withdrawal. In exchange, the Allies were to withdraw what few troops they already had inside northwestern Poland as well as from Slovakia. Allied troops were to remain in East Germany and the Czech part of the defunct Czechoslovakia though there were concessions made by the Allies that there would be a draw-down of their numbers, especially in the Czech region.
Similar to how there was agreed to be an international court to prosecute war criminals, an agreement was made to organise one concerning financial claims that the West had against the Soviet Union for economic damage done during the war. This would concern damage caused to civilian-only facilities, installations and ships engaged in trade not direct military targets. If claims were proven of blame then the Soviet Union would not pay financial penalties to civilian claimants directly but to the governments of those countries in which that destruction to civilian targets had occurred.
Military restrictions were not to be imposed upon the Soviet Union now or in the future. This concession from the West came in response to Rodionov and Chernomyrdin agreeing that the unsigned INF Treaty agreed last year before the Moscow Coup would be honoured as it was then with international supervision of the terms of that agreement to oversee the destruction of the strategic weapons mentioned. A reunited Germany without any form of objection from the Soviets was linked to this agreement over weapons with promises made that neither Germany nor Denmark and Austria would be housing any form of strategic weapons in the future; Scandinavian nations and Turkey were unmentioned here.
Soviet participation within international bodies to settle war crimes allegations and financial reparations – along with an agreement to abide by the decisions made by those – would mean that there would be a halt to efforts still ongoing at the United Nations to suspend their country from that organisation. This had begun during the war and had been gathering momentum but it was to be opposed by the Allies across the board allowing the Soviet Union not to be a pariah internationally.
The Second Geneva Peace Conference came to a conclusion with handshakes and an interim document signed stating what the peace between the Allies and the Soviets would entail. There was to be a final agreement signed soon enough with Ogarkov letting it be known he would meet with several heads of government from the West to sign that peace treaty yet all negotiations were now finished with.
Behind the smiles on the faces of the Allied diplomats who made the agreement with the Soviets there were other feelings. Allied unity had held in public but not in private with their leaders back home giving in to Soviet demands when those in Geneva had had them on the ropes.
There were to be recriminations in many countries afterwards.
Three Hundred & Three
Tom King had been negotiating in Geneva on behalf of the UK officially and representing the interests of several Commonwealth countries with the Allies unofficially through his responsibilities as Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary. He had been granted much leeway by HM Government before the talks with the Soviets got underway to agree to peace terms with the their representatives using his own judgement. Consultation was expected with the War Cabinet in London yet there had been instructions given to him that he was trusted there speaking and acting on behalf of his country.
Then Thatcher had come to an agreement with her fellow leaders from several other countries – the United States, France and West Germany in particular – concerning easing up on the hard-ball approach at the last minute. The reasoning behind that was sound, King would agree, but he and his delegation of experienced diplomats had suddenly been forced to heed to what he was told was 'political necessity'. There had been a feeling among those in Geneva like him that at one point the Soviets were about to agree to all of the Five Demands in full – maybe even further concessions – before word came from the several Allied governments to compromise with regards to certain terms to get a peace deal with the Soviets.
King was a widely-experienced politician; he had been an MP for almost twenty years and before that a soldier. His government experience had come as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport, Employment and Northern Ireland (in that order) all in the past five years before shifting to the FCO following Geoffrey Howe's sudden resignation in February. He understood how there were great pressure domestically and international worries about ending the war and not pushing the Soviets into a corner or bringing about a total collapse of their nation. In fact, he had been one of the leading voices calling for restraint before Geneva and made sure that there had been no demand for territorial modifications or internal political changes forced upon the Soviets when many had wanted those to be imposed.
But, he had been cut out at the last minute in high-level talks and his advice not sought; instead he had been ordered about and instructed to change tack without his opinion on the matter being heard.
Military restrictions could have been imposed on the Soviet Union, King believed. Their armed forces had been crushed during the war with defeats on land, at sea and in the air. Their whole combat doctrine, their warfighting strategy formed over so many years had been found to be at fault and that was something which he regarded as very important. He maintained the belief that even among the post-war chaos that would come, the Soviets would learn from their errors in a military sense. Should there come a time when war commenced again, which he earnestly hoped it wouldn't, the Soviets would know what not to do next time around. However, with restrictions in place over their offensive military forces this would be very difficult for them. There had been some arguments made to him in Geneva when discussing this with Grassley and Raimond too that trying to replace all of their military losses would cripple the Soviets for a generation and make the likelihood of a future war impossible, but he wasn't so sure about that. Either way, to impose military restrictions upon the Soviets had been something he favoured highly and something agreed before the peace talks with the War Cabinet on advice from British military experts in uniform and from academia.
All of a sudden that key demand had been sidelined at the last minute in the rush to achieve a settlement there at the negotiations.
Ken Clarke was another member of the War Cabinet left unhappy by certain events in Geneva. He had been only consulted afterwards like the rest of his colleagues after the Prime Minister had spoke to her fellow heads of state on the issue of securing a peace treaty with the Soviets. He had access to the same intelligence as the Foreign Secretary did and the Northern Ireland Secretary believed that the West caved in all of a sudden on that demand over military restrictions but also on financial reparations too.
When he heard of the final points of that part of the agreement made he was rather unhappy and made sure that Thatcher and the rest of the War Cabinet understood that. The Soviets were claiming that they were broke and couldn't afford to pay for all the damage that they had caused. They were agreeing to make future payments costed by an international body not yet set up to civilian institutions for destruction and damage caused, but where was the payback for the disruption to international trade, wrecking the domestic economies of many nations – most-importantly Britain – and also the military costs of the war for the Allies?
There had been talk before Geneva from some of forcing the Soviets to accept trade deals which would benefit the West to allow financial costs to be recuperated and also give them a taste of capitalism too as a long-term geo-strategic goal. That had all suddenly been forgotten after the PM had spoken with other national leaders and then sent on instructions to King in Geneva.
Clarke had been informed like everyone else in the loop about the threat posed by pushing the Soviets to the point of internal combustion but he believed that such fears were overrated. He had always been opposed to demands on the territorial sovereignty of the Soviet Union (despite understanding how the very basis of those borders were illegal and immoral) and intervention in Soviet internal politics, as well as any advance towards the Soviet borders with a view to invasion, because he understood the nuclear war threat.
However, those red lines which the Allies had imposed upon themselves, not set by the Soviets, hadn't been crossed! Instead the agreed upon Five Demands had been watered down in many fashions and he saw a lot of that as coming from American interference, possibly the West Germans too with their utter focus on reunification of Germany now above everything else. When it came to Bush, Clarke had been briefed by FCO officials and heard what King had previously had to say on the matter where the Acting President had taken plenty of flak domestically for the peace treaty signed with the Cubans and was looking to see a harsher one imposed upon the Soviets to sure up his own position ahead of the Presidential Election there in November. Now, all of a sudden, Reagan's stand-in had done an about-face and been at the head of the call to compromise as had been the case; Clarke had been told (in confidence from a source) that a certain university professor in the United States had swayed Bush's feelings on that matter.
Clarke looked forward to seeing how that all played out in seven months time there…
Nigel Lawson did not take the approach that the Foreign Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary did in harbouring bad feelings about how the war was concluded and keeping quiet on the issue by staying in government: once the war was over with he let the Prime Minister know that he intended to resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The decision was taken not due to the sequence of events leading up to the agreement being made with the Soviets nor the terms of the peace treaty but rather other factors pertaining to what had gone on domestically while the war was ongoing and what was going to occur afterwards. Unlike his once close colleague Howe, Lawson chose to wait to the war was concluded and speak privately with Thatcher as well as being wholly honest with her about why he wished to leave the government.
On the eve of war breaking out last month, Professor Sir Alan Walters, the former Chief Economic Adviser to the PM, had returned to Britain from his post at the think-tank in Washington the American Enterprise Institute. He had left his role in London five years ago and his economic theories and monetary ideas had been heavily criticised afterwards… yet he still had some supporters as well as Thatcher who was prepared to listened to him. As the war went on and Lawson was forced to make very difficult decisions of an economic nature, he had become conscious of the interference coming from Walters who had the PM's ear. It was an untenable situation which the Chancellor had tried to resolve but to no avail. When the full scale of the economic crisis which the country faced became apparent, Walters had been waiting in the wings to offer 'advice' to the PM and also tried to solicit the support of Norman Lamont who was John Major's replacement as Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Lawson's lead junior minister.
Lawson could not, would not work in an environment which he saw as poisoned by such a man especially when there had come Cabinet (the wider Cabinet, not the War Cabinet) discussions in recent days concerning economic matters. Walters' handiwork was seen at play by Lawson and he didn't like it one bit.
To save the country's economic future, it had been suggested, the only options was to instigate a wide-ranging privatisation package across Britain. Almost nothing was not to be at least considered with ideas presented to privatise the railways, the defence industry, the rest of the energy sector and other vital public services too. Lawson had always been a supporter of the Thatcher government's earlier privatisation where that had created an economic boom in recent years driving down inflation and unemployment too, but what was being suggested now went far beyond that. There would be no tax rises or raids on pension funds as some spoke off nor selling off what remained of the nation's gold reserves to offset some of the cost of that immense American loan given to Britain during the war to finance the conflict, just immense privatisation with few limits. Lawson had his own ideas to link a post-war economic recovery to trade deals with Europe and had been a key proponent of the trade with the Soviets plan supposed to be a backup in the event of direct reparations coming from them for the cost of the war.
All of a sudden, the wishes of he as Chancellor were no longer being considered and it was his mortal enemy Walters and his all-conquering privatisation that was to solve everything. This wasn't something which Lawson could stomach and so once news was confirmed that the peace had been agreed in Geneva he made the PM aware of his intention to go at the earliest, most convenient time.
The top-tier of the British Government was composed of many politicians holding positions at heads of departments of state which they hadn't at the beginning of the year or before war broke out.
Cecil Parkinson had only taken on the post of Secretary of Defence due to the national need and had stated his firm intention at the time to relinquish the role at the conclusion of hostilities. Douglas Hurd as Home Secretary had spent much of the war in a bunker waiting to assume emergency powers following a feared nuclear strike upon the country and emerged from there to find the domestic situation in the country a mess following civil strife. King and Clarke had taken their briefs in the lead-up to open warfare erupting and would see benefits from their actions – real and perceived – afterwards where they would remain in government despite grave misgivings over how the war was concluded.
And, then there was Lawson's resignation.
Emerging from the war, leading the government, Thatcher wouldn't just have a country that would have to be put back together but also her Cabinet too. There would be serious political strains for the PM only softened somewhat by an outbreak of open patriotism nationwide where many people were willing to (for now) forget some of the things that occurred during the conflict as they were relived that they emerged alive from it; she also benefited from a fatally-wounded and stricken with infighting Opposition.
This wouldn't last though and the post-war troubles for the country that the PM led were just beginning.
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Aug 17, 2019 16:38:18 GMT
Epilogue
George H. Bush would end up losing the Presidential Election in November 1988.
He would earlier secure the Republican candidacy after a fierce campaign against his challengers – led by Senator Bob Dole – and this was regarded as being due to his incumbency. He had been confirmed as President, rather the Acting President, in May when doctors decreed that Reagan was not likely to come out of his coma any time soon. Therefore there had been moves made in Washington (where Bush returned to in mid-April) to relieve him of his official duties using impeachment procedures during to the irregularities of the 25th Amendment; Bush named New York Senator Al D'Amato as his interim Vice President.
The election campaign against his Democratic rival Michael Dukakis was attempted to be fought by Bush on him 'winning the peace' in the treaty with the Soviets at Geneva, but the negative image of that peace in regards to how the Soviets were seen as getting away with what they had done in launching a war of aggression, plus hostility that dogged Bush from the earlier treaty with the Cubans – again on the same theme – dominated the election. The issue of the body count suffered by the United States with its servicemen & -women was another issue which hurt Bush during the campaign with unfounded allegations that he tried to cover up the scale of the losses during the conflict to keep the public in the dark while his defence that that was an NSC / Pentagon decision to maintain military morale instead was barely listened to. In relation to that, the Bush White House was engaged in a long-running feud with the ABC network following an incident when the Geneva Treaty was signed there was a split-screen image of Bush addressing the nation while caskets with dead servicemen were shown arriving at Dover AFB. Not many people actually remembered the initial broadcast but it was shown time and time again afterwards in relation to the feud between the President and ABC which affected his campaign too.
Dukakis himself wasn't widely popular and it was argued afterwards that he didn't win the election and instead Bush lost it, but come the following January it was he and his running mate Congressman Richard Gephardt who would be taking their oaths of office while Bush and D'Amato stood down.
In later years, Bush's reputation would be greatly rehabilitated in the public mind following revelations of the situation which he faced standing in for Reagan when he did and trying to end the conflict with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. That came from a public though who had had quite enough of Dukakis though as well as ongoing events in the Soviet Union after the end of the war.
Bush by then was busy helping two of his sons with their own political ambitions for high office…
General Norman Schwarzkopf remained in-charge of the US Seventh Army throughout 1988 before returning to the Pentagon in the new year to take up the post of Vice Chief of Staff of the Army before retiring the following year. During his remaining time in Europe, the US Seventh Army stayed inside East Germany with Schwarzkopf overseeing the transformation of that formation from a fighting force to one of occupation there as part of the Allied military contingent in-place during German reunification.
Back home many regarded Schwarzkopf as a hero and while not opposed to such feeling he was overwhelmed by it when witnessing it during his visits to the United States on official duties. He had been selected as the 'American military hero' for the war above many other officers by the public yet he was still a serving soldier with duties to undertake in Germany.
After retirement to Florida, there was talk in the media of Schwarzkopf running for political office; he released an autobiography instead telling the story of the war though his own words rather than get involved in politics. There were critics that Schwarzkopf faced, people from the military and civilians too who spoke out against certain actions taken during the war by him and the United States as a whole and Schwarzkopf met those challenges head-on in the media and later in the courts when fighting slander suits. His reputation was maintained and he would later make many public appearances in support of veterans of the war whether before Congress or at fund-raising events for his former soldiers.
He would die in 2012 and be buried at West Point next to his father rather than at Arlington near many of those once under his command.
The United States, first led by Dukakis and then John McCain – the latter the Arizona Senator deemed the 'comeback kid' due to his up-and-down campaign, won the 1992 election in part due to his veterans of WW3 work but also his sudden firm foreign policy credibility following events which he predicted in the Soviet Union – entered an economic recession following the war which lasted throughout Dukakis' term in office. There had been a belief that a huge spike in manufacturing, especially military goods to replace those lost in the war, would avoid such troubled times financially, but this was not to be the case.
Political battles occurred countrywide with criticism coming at first of how the war was fought and the conclusion of it followed by later accusations made by some that the events leading up to the conflict had been stage-managed to make conflict inevitable. Veterans groups, families of the war dead and repatriated POW organisations gained great political influence especially when fighting against what they regarded as apologists for the actions of the Soviet regime.
Despite the recession, military spending remained high and the US military grew in size and capabilities post-war. New technologies which had shown their worth during the conflict – air-launched conventional cruise missiles, drones first for electronic warfare uses then reconnaissance means as well as mobile rocket artillery and depleted-uranium armour & warheads for ground combat – entered service in number. Combat divisions of the US Army lost during the war were re-established, the USAF purchased new-built aircraft to make up for losses while carriers and other warships for the US Navy were built to again replace destruction caused by the war. This military power was rarely put to use in the immediate post-war years though with a Dukakis Administration weary of the United States becoming the World's Policeman when urged by some to intervene in southern parts of Africa, Central America and areas of Europe too where conflict raged. The losses taken during the conflict still stung the country while political battles at home meant that this was infeasible.
The world's sole remaining superpower chose not to show what it could do and allowed the fear of what it might do to deter direct threats to its interests. After all, the United States was regarded as the victor of World War Three with the ability to do it all again if need be should another challenge emerge. An example of this was the decision made by Manuel Noriega to step down as the strongman leader of Panama in early 1989 and flee to Peru first then Argentina later to avoid federal drug charges in the United States. Noriega had feared that the Dukakis Administration was going to expend whatever political capital it had to force through a military operation to 'liberate' and 'democratise' Panama as well as putting him on trial not as a war criminal but a drug smuggler.
South Africa initially emerged as one of the big winners of the war… much to the chagrin of so many within the Allies. The strike into Angola to engage Cuban forces, foolhardy in a military sense but a master-stroke diplomatically, aided the United States right at the beginning of the war before afterwards the geographic position of South Africa and its mineral wealth then furthered the wartime cause of the Allies. Moscow-friendly regimes nearby came under attack by South African forces too along with land bases provided for American naval aircraft sweeping the southern parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans of Soviet submarines.
The South Africans went too far though, quickly earning themselves a special kind of hatred among the peoples of many of their wartime Allies. They crushed domestic opposition at home in a bloody fashion while acting with extreme brutality abroad too in neighbouring countries. When news of this reached the West following the post-war lifting of media restrictions, in the United States and across Europe all the old memories of why South Africa had been disliked as it was returned along with hatred for their regime too.
Some talk took place in Pretoria of offering concessions to pander to public opinion in the West, but that was nothing more than words. Several European countries downgraded their diplomatic relations with the South Africans below ambassador level and Canada joined them. In the United States, memories of South African assistance during the war were soon forgotten and the Dukakis Administration sought to capitalise on this ill-feeling by talk of sanctions. When Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell – a long-time Apartheid opponent who was later McCain's Secretary of State – brought legislation before Congress, the President supported that bringing about the start of the semi-successful international trade sanctions in 1990.
South Africa later 'released' the nations it effectively held captive on its borders and freed some political prisoners: Nelson Mandela among them. However as tight as some of the trade sanctions were other means of economic linkage to the world community existed as South Africa still had some friends… most just interested in buying what the country had to sell. No bright future loomed for the country and neither for its neighbours with several of those falling into civil war afterwards.
China was a true victor of the war despite not being directly involved.
This communist dictatorship had sat out the war waiting on the promises made by the Americans during the conflict and sought to attain them afterwards. There remained some opposition in the United States to how China was to benefit from the conflict afterwards such as a freehand being given in how it took down the North Korea regime in a bloodless coup, sent troops into Mongolia after the Soviets pulled out of there and also lobbied hard for the isolation of Taiwan. Nonetheless, China got what it wanted: trade deals with the United States and parts of Europe too.
Military technology first in the direct sale of manufactured weapons and then licensing agreements (quickly exploited by the Chinese) arrived in China. Their air force were soon flying new-build AH-64s and F-16s while their new warships had advanced electronic equipment. This started under Bush and carried on under Dukakis with both presidents doing so to help the American economy. Britain, France and reunited Germany would later have more success in commercial rather than military trade deals with the Chinese, but some of their own military technology was sold to the Chinese too.
Neighbouring countries like Japan and India, even distant Australia, were left concerned at the rise of China yet their military strength once in numbers but fast catching up technology-wise, wasn't put to use in the post-war years. Instead, China expanded internally with cities growing in population and people being lifted out of poverty. Political repression remained yet it was often subtle: some allegations were made that escaped figures from the East German Stasi taught the Chinese a few things on that yet those claims were generally rubbished while keeping a few supporters.
China was soon looking forward to peacefully absorbing Hong Kong and Macau to in later years even further increase their economic potential and make themselves a truly global power.
The post-war years in Europe were troublesome. Direct and indirect war damage was widespread in physical and social terms with political upheavals commencing during and immediately after the war following by the outbreak of an immense civil war in Yugoslavia that made what occurred in parts of Czechoslovakia during the conflict look tame in comparison.
Germany reunited unofficially at the end of the war with the collapse of the East German regime and then legally two years later. Economic and social problems plagued the country though. The manufacturing capabilities of what was West Germany stood generally undamaged but issues with workers unwilling to accept wage cuts during the recession were a major problem. In the former East Germany there was devastation to industrial and transport facilities and plenty of that had been caused by American military action outside the wartime NATO chain of command. The Germans would struggled to integrate their reunited country in an economic fashion and blamed the Americans for this.
The toppling of the East German regime brought about a wave of criminal trials domestically and internationally against those involved with that before the fall of Mielke. He himself was tried before a multi-national court set up in Luxembourg but those underneath him, from the top down, were brought before a judge domestically. All sort of revelations were made causing scandals that shook the whole country. Many East Germans fled their former country heading for the richer West Germany and ending up out of work and in need of state help… Germany could not afford this nor the problems that came with it with crime and active discrimination against them from their fellow Germans. On top of all of this, Germany – both sides of the former dividing line – was littered with the wreckage of war that was dangerous and needed to be dealt with: this was something that the majority of Germany's wartime allies were unable to afford to pay for the assistance of and so it was left to Germany.
France became a far more active member of NATO than it had been pre-war and also sought to assert itself throughout Europe more than beforehand. Austria, the Low Countries and Iberia felt the presence of French military bases for their protection and that of Europe's defences with an increase in those occurring in Germany as well despite the moves by the United States and Britain to decrease their own. Mitterrand won re-election in 1988 (delayed until June) and was deemed the 'new Emperor of the French' by some of his opponents for how his campaign concentrated on the war which he supposedly won for France. Economic troubles plagued France despite pan-European trade deals that were in many respects at the expanse of and taking the former role of the Germans. Relations with Italy, which had been very hostile during the war, were somewhat restored with Italy's wholly undamaged manufacturing might assisting in French recovery efforts and then in later years it was France and Italy, rather the France and West Germany as it always had been, who were at the head of European integration efforts transforming the EEC into the EC and much later the EU. France's 'little empire' remained alongside the country in support with Germany later fast catching up willing to play along too. In Europe, the 1990's clearly belonged to the French.
Through Eastern Europe, the post-war years brought continued turmoil resulting from the war. General Jaruzelski fled Warsaw soon after the Allied-Soviet peace treaty in Geneva occurred and he was a hunted man with the belief that he betrayed his country by being a puppet for the Soviets. He died not long afterwards, shot to death on the wrong side of the border crossing with Slovakia in 'mysterious circumstances'. The narrative that he was guilty held for some time, especially when Poland was unable to form a nationwide, stable government but once it did the truth came out of how he was a KGB prisoner throughout the war unable to do anything as his country was raped like it was. Poland would stabilise internally with hopes of a bright independent future… hopes which were dashed by events on its eastern borders bringing refugees as well as the issue of so many weapons being in the hands of many Poles too who had no interest in handing them over to the authorities. Everyone wanted Poland to be a fully-functioning nation without the poverty which was soon seen nationwide but this was not something that was going to come anytime soon. The Czech Republic was declared after the war and French assistance was plentiful helping the country get on its feet; tensions with neighbouring Slovakia were intense though as the split of Czechoslovakia had not been peaceful. There was the feeling with the Czechs after the war that the past was the past and they were part of Western Europe now with democracy and the rule of law. For those new leaders in Prague though the latter meant fair trials of war criminals which for many years were a stain on the country internationally when revelations were made. Hungary and Bulgaria both saw new, non-communist leaders emerge in the war's final days with little blood-letting and fast approaches being made to the Allies. This was not the case in Romania where Nicolae Ceausescu cracked down on anyone who might try to depose him and then took his country into active involvement with the civil war that tore apart Yugoslavia.
That civil war lasted for the next three years with the country collapsing into several successor states. Atrocities were common-place with ethnic cleansing taking place along with the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure. Bosnia, parts of Croatia and the Kosovo region suffered the most but that didn't mean that there wasn't much suffering across Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia too. Intervention only came from Romania with confusing war aims first to support the regime in stopping succession attempts and then later fighting for attempts to take territory from Serbia. At times there was the threat of the Greeks moving in or a Franco-Italian led effort to intervene but nothing came of it. Eventually, when the killing stopped after everyone appeared to have worn themselves out, 'Greater Serbia' emerged controlling parts of Croatia, most of Bosnia and having Kosovo & Macedonia under their control too. Slovenia, a quasi-Croatia and Montenegro all managed to get their independence but they surely paid a price for that.
Called the 'April Criminals Movement' by those in the West – certainly not by its proponents – there began a gathering of opponents into the Soviet Union to the terms of the peace treaty agreed with the Allies in Geneva straight afterwards. At first, those who were angry at the terms of the peace were generally unconnected and they didn't have access to all the information that would need nor each other… but that would change with time.
Before that came to partial destruction of the Soviet Union as a whole. Civil war broke out across the Baltic Republics and this brought about a successful breakaway of the three nations there from Moscow control by the end of the year. The body count was immense and the Soviet Union suffered the ignominy of seeing Lithuania managing to take the Kaliningrad region with it too when it broke away. The three nations had worked together towards the end of their struggle and fought with assistance from volunteers too: foreigners from aboard. Across the Caucasus, the fighting there saw a high loss of life though rebel forces refused to work together even when fighting the government. Six nations declared their independence in the end down there... all starting out as and looking to remain as failed states.
Ogarkov let all of this happen to save the rest of his country. He hadn't wanted to see the loss of the Baltic's nor the southern Caucasus, but had to do so that the Ukraine, Moldova, Central Asia and the Far East – all regarded as far more important and capable of being held – would not break away too and truly endanger the rest of the country with the possibility that hostile foreign neighbours might establish themselves there. The Chinese takeover in Mongolia and the entry of Pakistani forces into Afghanistan after he took Soviet forces out of those places showed just how real the threat was to his country. Only the Allies, maybe Iran at an outside chance, were positioned to move into the Baltic's or the Caucasus and that wasn't something likely.
An old man as he was, and someone who had taken power not because he wanted it but because he had no choice, Ogarkov had no intention of empire building or seeing another war fought. His attempts to forestall Allies supremacy at Geneva had failed and the country he was left with faced threats of internal subversion worse than the unrest witnessed in some of its component parts. Ogarkov fought off an attempted coup in October 1988 by security figures from the ancien regime, one which saw gunfire on Moscow's streets. Following this he set about making major changes to his country.
Limited democracy was introduced in the Soviet Union. This was not in the same fashion as Liberal Democracy in the West, but at a local level where opposition candidates – who were 'approved' by Ogarkov's military regime – ran for office. This came alongside other moves made by the unelected dictator that was Ogarkov to liberalise his country somewhat all made at the expense of breaking the complete monopoly on power which the Soviet Communist Party had.
In doing so, Ogarkov unwittingly set about giving the April Criminals Movement the room to grow. For the first couple of years those who opposed the peace with the Allies – what was agreed, when it was agreed and how it was agreed rather than the fact that there was a peace to bring an end a war which was being lost – were unable to mobilise the voters as they themselves were unorganised but with time they were able to do so. Former soldiers and sacked security agency personnel were often at the top of the wide-ranging set of groups opposed to the Geneva Treaty and Ogarkov and they slowly combined as time went on gaining the attention of voters in local elections and then regional ones. There was much contact made with the Communist Party as Ogarkov continued to slowly take that apart with linkages occurring between individual from the dying regime and those new to the political arena.
The breakthrough came in April 1992 when the first nationwide elections under a somewhat free system were meant to occur. The communists were meant to be facing the Democratic Party which was a rather conservative grouping set up under Ogarkov's regime by Soviet Army figures he gave far too much trust to and were using the old man's indifference in day-to-day affairs to enrich themselves. Ogarkov expected the Democratic Party to win and a future for the Soviet Union he foresaw in his old age was one of an authoritarian regime that could appeal to the people. He did expect that the April Criminals Movement would suddenly begin to really unite in the weeks leading up to the election nor that communists were standing down in-place of such people who were now calling themselves the Motherland Party. Everything moved very fast in the run-up to the scheduled election with Motherland Party being led by none other than his former loyal soldier General Lebed who had retired from military service in 1990. Lebed hadn't joined the Democratic Party and been with a smaller opposition group who Ogarkov had dismissed as a foolish bunch of revanchists and also writing a memoir which no one was ever going to read; Ogarkov had and seen how it didn't criticise him so had regarded Lebed as not a threat.
Now Lebed, who argued for a 'restoration of Soviet might' and 'revenge for 1988' (with regard to the Baltics), looked like taking power.
Ogarkov managed to have the Soviet Army move against the Motherland Party and arrest Lebed and others like him a week before the election which he then cancelled. There had come much disobedience to orders – rather than outright mutiny – with many senior officers (veterans of the war with the Allies) refusing to have their men do as ordered when so many April Criminals Movement / Motherland Party top people were former soldiers from that war too, but enough of the military did as they were instructed to and Lebed was detained on the dubious charge of treason. Democracy had been tried and shown to have failed with Ogarkov taking a lot of criticism from aboard for the crackdown that he made with the West not understanding the threat he saw in Lebed. The planned free-trade zones in Kronstadt, Sevastopol and Vladivostok (Ogarkov's economic advisers had led him to believe that these would work for the Soviet Union in the fashion which Shenzen had for the Chinese) were not going to work now when the West started pulling out of the deals to operate from them.
The Soviet's Spring Thaw with democracy and thus free trade came to and end and Ogarkov was forced to retreat to the Kremlin to think again.
Thatcher held office until January 1991. She was intending to fight a general election later in the year against a Labour Party still wracked by disunity and infighting where secret polls showed the British people would hold their nose and vote with their head for the Prime Minister and the Conservatives. However, she resigned weeks into the new year due to internal pressures within her government to be replaced by Ken Clarke.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer had taken his time to build a coalition across the party to force the PM out and for him to replace her. He had avoided for some time an overt challenge to her and managed to avoid the bloodshed of an official challenge by a gradual approach and this finally paid off. He had solved the problems in Northern Ireland during the war, so said his reputation, and then afterwards took over from Lawson when he left the government to work to fix the British economy. The crazy ideas of complete privatisation had been halted under his stewardship at the Treasury and there had come the hard work done with international trade focused as it always should be to fix the country's economic woes. He initially had many opponents because this was focused upon Europe when so many of his party colleagues were against firm links with the Continent, but he brought unemployment down, subdued inflation and got Britain working again… such was the general opinion of his achievements anyway. Into Downing Street he went determined to fight and win the election which his predecessor wanted but on his terms.
During those three years after the end of the war, Britain had suffered from the after-effects of the conflict. Economic woes were one thing, but there were other crippling factors too that took much work to overcome and pain to be endured before the solution worked.
Time and time again, there came judgements handed down from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the UK for actions taken with regards to Transition to War. Britain wasn't the only country which faced this but the reaction within was one of anger to foreign judges pointing fingers and instructing the country to make compensation as well as change domestic laws. The cases generally concerned those interned by the Security Service as subversives after MI-5 had acted as they did to arrest and detain so many people who European judges decided were innocent and should never have been held as they were. Britain had got it wrong, but for the right reasons: the ECHR didn't seem to want to understand that. Other claims were brought and won against Britain on issues of restrictions on movement and the right to assembly; the ECHR hadn't listened to the arguments made about wartime necessity to keep the country fighting. These proclamations coming from the ECHR were annoying more than anything else not just for the British government but soon enough for many ordinary people too. There was a nationwide feeling that an anti-British approach had been taken by those judges and they were scoring political points; allegations came in some sections of the British media that a few judges had pro-Soviet sympathies and were after revenge. Maybe the judgements didn't mean anything because Britain had won the war, yet they occurred on a seemingly continued basis with apparently the only intention being to upset the country as well as give money to what many people saw as traitors (real or imagined) when they themselves were still suffering.
British war losses in terms of the dead, injured and (disturbingly) the missing were immense from a conflict which lasted just over a month. So many families suffered from the huge casualty list that had been taken in defending the country and its interests. When Remembrance Sunday occurred later in 1988 – that year especially – there was a lot of public grief; the famous British stiff upper lip notwithstanding. Repatriation of POWs from enemy captivity also brought the war home to many families on a personal level when stories of mistreatment were told too. Many had been marched halfway across Europe on foot from Germany across to the western parts of the Soviet Union in hellish conditions… quite a lot of them had before that seen their fellow soldiers killed horribly in that Soviet chemical weapons strike. In the United States a major movement of bereaved families and POW survivors grew into a serious political force; in Britain that didn't take place as personal suffering overtook public anger.
Parliament sought to make major reforms with the national intelligence services post-war. There was an idea to formally link MI-5 and MI-6, as well as GCHQ too, into one combined organisation. This came from failures which MPs regarded as occurring during the war where MI-5 was seen to have arrested the wrong people while MI-6 had its spooks laying dead all across the world. In many quarters, such a move was long overdue and the security agencies had made grave mistakes during the war. However, there wasn't enough support for this with lobbying efforts being made behind the scenes from these organisations and also a feeling too that while they had made some mistakes they had generally done their job: Britain had suffered some but not crippling internal attacks while the nation too had enough warning of the coming war so that it had not been the victim of a surprise attack. Arrangements were made to establish formal working committees between the agencies to strengthen ties while new appointments at the top were made, but there afterwards remained separate organisations.
Reviews were undertaken by politicians into how the military conduct of the war went though those again were limited in their overall efficiently to make the changes some MP's wanted to see. It was the British Armed Forces who themselves conducted studies and enquiries into how the war was fought. There weren't rounds of backslapping and cheers because mistakes had been made yet medals and promotions were given while early retirements organised. Post-war military spending was increased by a government forced to understand that losses had to be made good especially as peace hadn't broken out everywhere yet there was a gradual draw-down of overseas deployment. Many soldiers came home from Germany with TA men not deployed from the UK during the fighting sent there afterwards as well as Gurkhas returning from the Far East. Ships and submarines with the RN came home though others were sent back out again because of national security needs.
Northern Ireland remained an issue that dominated the post-war years in Britain. Court cases relating to the attempts at genocide and ethnic cleansing were few and far between in reaching a successful conclusion due to lack of direct evidence and missing witnesses. More success was gained with military court martials of guilty military personnel who added and abetted in many of the war crimes committed. Away from these legal matters, there was the problems which came with the fact that a total of four hundred thousand residents left their homes across the Province during and immediately after the war… from a pre-war population of one and a half million. These were overwhelming Catholic civilians who either fled to the Irish Republic or towards the city of Derry (Londonderry to Unionists). There was no intention of these people to return home afterwards and the demographic change brought about political complications which went on for many years afterwards.
General Kenny, the British Army officer who commanded the British Army of the Rhine and later the multi-national British Second Army, was one of those who took early retirement after the war though his wasn't forced. His BLACKSMITH operation would later be studied greatly by future young officers as a perfect example of a limited by devastating counter-offensive along with how he had his men carefully advance into Berlin under PINNACLE. He himself though stayed out of the public limelight and spent his final days reflecting not on the victories which had had won that some foolishly accredited to him solely and as equal to the achievements of Wellington but rather the loss of life of the young men under his command during the Third World War.
THE END
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