The War Plan Revealed
The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet General Staff
General Vitanovský: I worked on strategic and operational issues at the General Staff for 13 years, i.e. in operational posts at the Operations Department, then as Deputy Chief of the General Staff responsible for operational issues at the Operations Directorate. Because of this, I had a great opportunity to look into strategic conceptual matters, not only ours, but also those of the Soviet Union. It was because, in my capacity and as part of my duties with respect to operational plans, I often traveled to Moscow and dealt with these planning issues at the General Operations Directorate.
Colonel General S. P. Ivanov was the Chief of the General Operations Directorate back then. We talked to each other once, and then I started to use to see him every time I was there, even if it wasn’t part of the visit schedule, I just used to visit him as a fellow professional in operational areas and he always gave me a rough overview to make me familiar with some of problems, which were not just in the Western direction. It means that he talked to me about those other fronts, i.e. the Eastern front with Japan, the U.S. bases and so on.
[ . . . ] The primary line or the primary level of command in the entire Warsaw Pact was the General Staff of the Soviet Army, not the Unified Armed Forces, that needs to be said. The Unified Armed Forces were just some sort of a transformer, they could only transform wishes and commands of the General Staff of the Soviet Army. This is extremely important, for even though these Unified Armed Forces pretended to be a sort of a command authority, they were of course – were I to put it in such a rough way – just a megaphone for the General Staff of Soviet Army. I could see this very well when dealing with some issues at the General Staff of Soviet Army and at the Unified Armed Forces. The planning documents regarding our defense were invariably discussed only at the General Staff of Soviet Army.
It means that it came down to a strange paradoxical situation, because there was the Unified Armed Forces Commander, at that time there was Marshal Grechko, and there was also the Defense Minister of Soviet Union, Marshal Malinovskii [1]. And it could seem, because everybody was assigning troops to the Unified Armed Forces, all the Warsaw Pact countries, i.e. including the Soviet Union too, but still the relationship of the Soviet Union Defense Minister, who should have been subordinated to the Unified Armed Forces Commander, well it wasn’t the case, the relationship was just reversed. It even came down to some conflicts, which were very interesting, between these two officials. It was interesting that Grechko was Deputy Defense Minister and yet the Defense Minister himself should have been subordinated to him at the Unified Armed Forces, to this Unified Armed Forces Commander. [Vitanovsky, 1-2]
General Raichl: At the Unified Command, at the Unified Command Staff, there was just one representative for each army. And there were talks that a staff of armies of the Warsaw Pact countries was to be established. And that was somehow always put off. [Raichl, 9]
Q: How – at the times when there was no Staff [of the Unified Armed Forces] yet – was the routine co-ordination going on? Did it all go along the chain of Unified Command representatives?
General Picek: It all went along the line of Unified Command representatives. Although the crucial issues, they went through them or directly, from the General Staff of the Soviet Army, not from the Unified Command. The Unified Command, it was what I’d call a token command, and I’m not really sure as to how far it was familiar with the operational plans or this... Maybe the Unified Command Commander knew it, but the Staff, those were just employees, liaison officers, who traveled. Even ours were intended to maintain the communication, but not to have any influence on army development or its combat readiness, not really.
[Picek, 16]
Q: You mentioned the Unified Command Staff and its role as a communicator of Soviet General Staff decisions. Lieutenant General Raichl, whom we have already interviewed, points out that he himself was the first Czechoslovak representative from 1967, that until then the Unified Command Staff had been...
General Pezl: ... a Russian staff, yes. Then they made a concession allowing individual officers to be seconded to this staff, to its sections, but they were lost there and didn’t have any powers or clout. And there were army representatives of the respective countries in this staff, who, on the strategic level, were again what I’d call liaison bodies, meant to hand over and receive shared data to complement the primary directives.
Q: So they didn’t really took part in agendas. When it came down to a ground discussion of substantial changes, it proceeded directly on the level of...
General Pezl: ...the General Staff. The General Staff back then played a much more important role, not the Ministry. The crucial say was in the hands of... the General Commander of the Warsaw Pact, the respective country’s Politburo, the Warsaw Pact Staff, the general staffs. These links was much stronger than those of defense ministries. [Pezl, 3]
The Planning Ritual
General Pezl: The General Staff at that time, the Operations Directorate was in charge of operational planning, which was strictly laid down by the Warsaw Pact Command. Yet the Warsaw Pact Staff was just a go-between for accomplishing the strategic plans of the Soviet Army General Staff in the European war theater [ . . . ], although it may have seemed to outwardly represent the participation of Warsaw Pact member countries in common operational and strategic interests. But most definitely, it was only forwarding directives of the General Staff, of the Main Operations Directorate of the Soviet Army General Staff. Subject to this, of course, were all tasks, which arose from it regarding the development of armed forces, i. e. tasks which were in this regard set and subject to the planned conduct of operations in the European war theater.
And as regards troop strengths, number of peacetime divisions and their mobilization deployment... It was a matter of the very structure of individual command levels, i. e. for example the Czechoslovak Army would have become a front, which was something unique, not found with the other armies. And this of course had an impact on equipment, its gradual modernization and upgrading, operational disposition of staff and army commanders and also annual plans of development and training, which were called for by Warsaw Pact directives.
These basic strategic and operation documents were of a political nature and formally adopted at annual meetings of the Warsaw Pact top representatives. And there was almost always a ritual where the Warsaw Pact Commander in Chief had visited all the political representatives of respective countries before the actual discussion of these directives took place, and had negotiated, politically, all those essential and major steps to be taken in the upcoming period. This concerned, in particular, which troops were lacked where, which equipment was to be purchased – those were, I’d say, arranged and approved Soviet equipment acquisitions – and possibly also commitments our country was then taking with respect to its own military industry and its production for other countries.
There were basic tasks set for large strategic and operational allied exercises, also basic tasks for troops training, all were defined as a specific means of determining which operations, which forces and which phases to prepare for. [ . . . ] In the long term, some intentions were prepared, i. e. in what direction the army should evolve in the next 2 to 5 years, towards modernization of both structures and equipment. That happened later on, as it was reflected in the state planning, in the budget and in the commitments which followed, so that funds for the purchases, trainings and potential reforms could be provided.
[ . . . ] Amongst the important factors, there was the strategic and operational planning adopted by the strategic directive of the Warsaw Pact High Command, which included specific tasks for Czechoslovak Army. Operational objectives were set here, also basic data, i. e. the direction of further operational deployment, activity areas where the Czechoslovak Front was supposed to launch and exploit its offensive, basic operation dimensions, stipulated in a more detailed front ops order, its basic logistic support and some data on the organization and command and control system.
On the basis of this strategic directive, the General Staff organized, through the Chief of General Staff, who was responsible for the implementation of this directive, its detailed downward planning within the Czechoslovak Army. This activity was limited to a selected group of people both at the Operations Directorate [of the General Staff] and at Operations Sections of Commands; these people were, as a rule, heads of sections, chiefs of operational preparation, of the air force. [ . . . ] Core groups of some five people from the armies took part in some subsequent basic planning tasks, developing the approved Ops Plan. On the basis of the above, the General Staff prepared a draft solution of this strategic plan, assets and means, and selected the units, initial Order of Battle and formation, how the initial formation was to be assumed and echelons deployed, and also laid down objectives for each of the armies and services subordinated directly to the front command, i. e. above all the air force, rocket troops and the operational task force. The operational plan prepared in the way described above, with the planned objective outline coming first, was then submitted to the General Staff, the Chief of General Staff and to the Minister of Defense.
Then, after appropriate amendments, corrections, comments etc., this document was developed and elaborated in the necessary detail. The planned objective and implementation of this task were then usually presented by the Chief of General Staff and a selected group of people at the Unified Command. Once the planned objective was approved, the General Staff proceeded with detailed planning of the operation, i. e. its planning in a greater detail, at the level of the front, army, various services, rear. After that, it was presented to the State Defense Council. The Council didn’t need to approve it; it only expressed its consent, because it had already been approved by the Warsaw Pact. The practicality of this plan was then documented by developing it downward, down to lower levels, into a set of implementing operational documents of a special nature. Everything was classified as top secret, as something of special importance.
According to special directives on security and operational documentation handling, the detailed documentation set was then sealed and stored in a designated place, appropriate signals were sent out, and infrastructure preparations were approved, which means command posts, communications links, buildup of strategic stocks, and preparations of roads and railways. It was brought to a system allowing it to be implemented. And the training of staff officers and troop commanders reflected the most typical tasks arising from the operation. [Pezl, 1 – 2]
General Vitanovský: There was this paradox – we were being told all the time: “Please, vashe delo [it’s your business], you’re a sovereign state.” But in reality, [ . . . ] the Chief of the General Staff was the Front Commander. And the Chief of Staff was the Chief of the Operations Directorate. I kept telling them all the time: “Excuse me, but who will be at the General Staff in the time of war, considering we are a sovereign state?” And they said: “That’s none of your business.” This also involved precisely the territorial forces, it’s like communicating vessels. And they rectified it at our compulsion only to the extent that we transferred the front issues to the Western Military District. [Vitanovský, 15]
The First Day and After
General Vitanovský: The procedure was as follows. The Joint Armed Forces, or rather – as I repeat – the Soviet Army General Staff, issued a directive for all the national armies of the Warsaw Pact. This directive – a strategic one – laid down the objective for our army, i. e. what we were expected do. But all this, all of this was, how to put it, planned for the first day, for the day the war was opened, but not beyond that. As to the following days, we could only gather from the exercises that had taken place, what it would have been like further on. Everything was done just for the first day, because we couldn’t admit to the public, the world and say that we prepared an offensive war. Therefore the Operational Plan only dealt with the war opening, the first day.
On the basis of this directive, of which we got just a single copy, everything top secret, we got home, in a special airplane, escorted by armed staff etc. We got home and took the document to the General Staff to the so-called Operations Room, so that it couldn’t get anywhere else, only there, and there it was worked out in a greater detail for the purposes of our army and the subordinate forces, i. e. armies. [. . . ]
This directive from the Unified Command was formulated as a front objective, and it was about working out the objective, that is to lay down the so called intention or planned objective, i. e. how we wanted to implement the directive, the objective that was given to us from above. It means, what the first echelon will comprise, what the second echelon will consist of, objectives for the armies, for the rocket forces, artillery, air force, air defense, rear support and so on, and all these documents which ensued from the directive were being worked out in detail. With no regard whatsoever as to whether it actually applies to specific conditions of Czechoslovakia. It was just like a task or mission at the front, e. g. when a soldier receives an order such as, “You’ll attack from here to there and nobody will talk about this with you. You’ll attack from A to B.” And it was same with the Czechoslovak [army]: “You’ll be doing this from here to there.”
When it was all worked out, we took it back to Moscow and they reviewed it, signed it and said “Yes, we agree”, or they just edited it, it was edited right on the spot. Just the three of us, we had to edit it, remake the maps if necessary or just do it all over in a different way. So this is how the whole planning looked like.
Q: General, the objective for the first day, what was it? Was it to intercept and stop the enemy?
General Vitanovský: To intercept or stop the enemy. [ . . . ] The Order of Battle resulting from the objective was giving an obvious opportunity to quickly launch a strategic counter-offensive and attack. And I can confirm it, as all the exercises were treated in this way. And of course it wasn’t exercised just for the purposes of the exercise, but because there was some reason, right? [ . . . ] The interesting thing was, the defensive combat was never exercised. It was somehow assumed that it had been over, that the counter-offensive was started. For I don’t remember any [measures] taken, i. e. that we would defend ourselves to a depth of some 100 or 200 kilometers, I just don’t remember. [Vitanovský, 5 – 6]
Q: To what extent did you have the chance to become familiar with different parts of the Operations Plan? [...]
General Vinkler: Well it was all sealed up, nobody was allowed to tamper with it. All the documents were prepared by us personally, under very strict conditions. I recall the Soviets claiming that they were forbidden to even use typewriters. So imagine, all that war documentation, all just written [by hand]. We did it in a slightly more modern way, but it still was... I say, it meant two months of intensive work for us, to renew the operational plans. They were sealed up, and we used to take them to Příbram together with Pezl, then call up all the commanders etc. and each of them got his part, and signed for it. And then it was kept with the units, because it could only be opened using the special cipher-keys. But it never got that far.
Q: Thanks God.
General Vinkler: Yeah, sure. [Vinkler, 2]
Lyon in Nine Days
Q: I have here that [Czechoslovak operation] plan [2] from 1964, which was declassified.
General Šádek: [browsing through the operation plan]
Q: This is a Czech translation, the original is in Russian, archived at the Ministry of Defense. It is signed by president Novotný, which I think corresponds to the operational plans approval procedure, then there are signatures of Lomský [3], Rytíř [4], Vitanovský as the Directorate Chief and Voštera [5] as the Chief of the Operations Section. [ . . . ] The interesting thing about this plan is that it is assumed here that in case of war, the single Czechoslovak Front would be able to not only resist NATO forces, but also advance at a relatively brisk clip. It is stated in the detailed objective that maybe on Day D-2 or D-3, the advance should go up to Ingolstadt, and in 7 days it’s already somewhere in Francie, Dijon, and in 9 days even in Lyon.
General Šádek: Besançon [smiling].
Q: Yes.
General Šádek: Besançon, Lake Constance etc. [Amused.] I’m looking at it... it’s an old business, this here. [Šádek, 4-5] [ . . . ]
Q: One of my associates put the data from this plan from 1964 into the map. On the ground of what’s in the plan, where the advance over Bavaria is anticipated, there is the line of 1st and 4th Armies and it’s assumed to reach France in 9 days.
General Šádek: Oh yes, that’s right.
Q: It’s obvious that this direction was probably retained – because there isn’t really any other – maybe even until the end of the Cold War, the eighties. Most probably.
General Šádek: Yes, yes.
Q: Yet there is that interesting question of the pace of the advance, and the width and depth of the area covered. Would you recall how successful was the advance presumed to be, according to your anticipations?
General Šádek: The senior commanders have always played the beginnings with us. So yes, in the beginning of course, in the particular directions... it wasn’t always like this, in a single line, it was different ... somewhere more into the enemy’s defense lines, somewhere else the other way, the enemy again, you see? The enemy again.
Q: ... The scale here is of course too small.
General Šádek: This is [studying the map with the plotted operation] the 4th Army. ... It’s a pity that we didn’t capture it back then. All the way to the Channel and the problems would have been solved. [Laughing, ironic.]
Q: And the plans counted on this, on an advance up to Brittany and beyond?
General Šádek: Oh yes, that was anticipated. That if we had been successful, we would have advanced all along the Lake Constance, down to Besançon and to Paris. This way. [Showing.] But what they [the Soviets] anticipated, we don’t know.
Q: Of course, it depends a lot on what the Soviet plans were. Because this was a secondary advance line.
General Šádek: Yes, secondary. Berlin was primary, here [showing], and on to the Benelux countries and then downwards. Of course.
Q: There is one question, which comes up – what was the situation of Austria.
General Šádek: Nobody ever dealt with Austria, in any connection. It was more of a neutral country.
Q: There was no risk of Austria joining [them] in case of war... ?
General Šádek: Because they never had any army, not a regular one.
Q: So it was always about the Prague – Saarland direction. Nobody thought about the Alpine line of advance?
General Šádek: No, no. [Šádek, 7 – 8]
Was It Feasible?
Q: Could you evaluate the feasibility of such plan? [ . . . ]
General Picek: I could. Look, at that time I just graduated the General Staff Academy in Soviet Union. There was simply... the warfare and strategy virtually corresponded to what is stated here in the Operations Plan. I mean those fast advance paces, I don’t know, 80 or 120 kilometers ...
Q: Daily ...
General Picek: ... daily, yes, and now the areas, the utilization of mass destruction weapons... I admit that since the very start I had always felt a little uneasy about this. Because when I saw at the exercises the amount of nuclear weapons which were just “dumped” there... well in the map, it was so dense, with land explosions which leave irradiated areas that have to be passed through, also the obstacles resulting from the use of those mass destruction weapons... and also the moral and psychical condition of the soldiers of both sides, the population, so I just thought that this was completely unrealistic.
And I kept this opinion all time, and even when I became familiar with the plan, I said: “It is set, we can’t change it, such are the orders.” But it wasn’t realistic in my view. Let alone the fact that even the balance of powers, which was always calculated in such operations, was almost even, there was simply no superiority in anything. So in my opinion, such an operation could have ended only in a total fiasco for both sides. It simply couldn’t have led anywhere. But this was how the exercises were dealt with, you see.
Q: I’m particularly surprised that there was little on the impacts... there were some 130 strikes, which had been delivered by the red, yet the blue ones [6] would had also delivered some strikes...
General Picek: But of course. They counted on a surprise nuclear strike, you see. Yet [smiling] ... the other side was never asleep. One side would have had to attack all of a sudden... and it was obvious that if they had launched, I don’t know, some strategic weapons, these could have been detected in the air, you see, so there would have been still some time... That’s why it was necessary in alert preparations that troops were out of the barracks in 30 minutes – it was based on the time the missiles would have needed to get here from the U.S. So, if one side had succeeded in launching its missiles earlier, the other would have had some delay, but it would ultimately have gotten its missiles on target as well. [Picek, 9]
Q: Let’s get straight to the text of the Operations Plan from 1964. It is anticipated there to conduct war operations in 7 days...
General Pezl: ... as far as the Rhine.
Q: ... to the Dijon line. And to Lyon in 9 days. That is an amazing pace.
General Pezl: Well... it is indeed an amazing pace, which assumed a pre-emptive nuclear strike. And some heavy nuclear strikes in the course of the operation. How far it was realistic... it’s hard to imagine even now. The terrain was not exactly suitable for such a fast pace. But there is that high number of nuclear strikes, and the tank forces, which even at the cost of heavy losses [ . . . ] would have had a crushing effect on the battlefield. You can really understand the fears of the NATO, which are still recalled even now.
The Czechoslovak Front – that was I don’t know how many, some 4.800 tanks, just on this piece of land here [shows a section of the Czechoslovak-German borderline on the map] and here above, the 22 divisions, two thirds of which were tanks. And the Soviet Group of Forces in East Germany, that was a group which was always equipped with the latest equipment – everything that the Soviet industry was able to turn out was first put there [ . . . ]. So I’d say it was... crushing and under certain conditions it could have resulted in a fast pace. Because the [NATO’s] main strategic reserve stocks for the European war theater were pre-positioned at the boundary of France and Germany and implied an aerial and naval transfer of forces from the USA for equipment. That’s why the pace was supposed to be so fast, so that there was an advance before these forces would have got here.
Q: So one could say that those 9 days were just part of the effort to keep it under 10 days, which the American forces would have needed to get here.
General Pezl: [Nods.]
Q: The main problem was probably the border encounter in the area of Šumava and Český les. There, on the first day, the D1, a 60 km advance is assumed.
General Pezl: A distance like that, if I’m not mistaken.
Q: Were they not afraid that the difficult area of the border encounter could have been somehow rendered impassable by the enemy – by using nuclear mines or other means?
General Pezl: Well, I don’t know, these nuclear mines... not that they weren’t factored into the operation calculations, but... it would have been difficult in reality. First, the efficiency was not so high... it couldn’t be in the whole area, there couldn’t be hundreds of nuclear mines, so that there could still be space for bypasses or certain maneuvers. Of course, the border area was difficult, it was one of the most difficult phases of the operation.
There was a peculiar situation here, as a result of the course of the East German border [shows on the map], which in fact put the Soviet Group of Forces some 200 kilometers ahead of the forefront of the Czechoslovak Front and thus formed some kind of a threat into the flank of any group which could have been formed here. There were certain preconditions present for an enveloping operation even in the first stages. [Pezl, 5 – 6]
General Slimák: [ . . . ] As regards the scale, it represents paces of some 70, 80 kilometers a day. That is completely unrealistic, and if it was to be realistic, then only if nuclear weapons were used. It means that this Operations Plan, in my view, was built solely on the assumption of the use of nuclear weapons as the only warfare option. Because a theory that nuclear weapons might not be used from the very start, appeared – as far as I remember – for the first time at the end of the sixties. Then there were debates to the effect that nuclear weapons might not be used from the very start, but rather in the course of the operation, depending on how it would evolve. And there is another interesting thing –these fast advances were planned at the times when the level of motorization and mechanization of the troops was not as high as, say, at the end of the eighties. What was the equipment back then? The T-34 tanks; the first “fifty-fours” only started to make their way in the inventory of the army. And we only had old troop carriers.
[ . . . ]
Q: Would you say that the plan and the calculation were unrealistic even in 1964, from the viewpoint of logistics?
General Slimák: I don’t know if it was realistic. I only want to say – the paces were too fast. It’s odd that with the subsequent modernization of the forces, the operation pace was becoming more realistic, and slower. Just take this – here the objective for the first day of the operation is to do 50 or 60 kilometers in a mountainous terrain. Not even in peace times would the troops make it, let alone when using... It could be said that it was presumed that there were conditions provided for by opening the war using nuclear weapons. [Slimák, 2]
Q: Here it talks about the estimate of 9 days to get to Lyon.
General Franko: That is possible.
Q: And in 7-9 days to Dijon.
General Franko: It was simply divided into an immediate, first phase front objective and then a subsequent front objective. But then, after that subsequent objective had been accomplished, it wouldn’t have meant mean the war would have been over. Because then it was time for those reserves, which were in the second line of advance, behind the Czechoslovak Front, some 300 to 500 kilometers behind. And the meaning of it was that our army had to launch and accomplish this lightning fast attack and not stay behind the forces, which were here [points on the map], in the area of Germany. In terms of geography, the war theater there is much more convenient than this one, which is a part of the area to be taken by the Czechoslovak Front. There is no Šumava, no Český les, no rivers or narrow passes, it’s just a plain there in Germany. So if they hadn’t co-coordinated the advance with us, i. e. if the Czechoslovak Front hadn’t co-coordinated the advance with its right-flank neighbor, it could have had catastrophic consequences, for a sufficient number of mobilized divisions, or divisions brought from the USA or even from France could have started through here, and the whole war could have ended somewhere on the Rhine.
Q: Exactly on this ground, the validity of the Czechoslovak plan from 1964 has been questioned recently by some of the critics of its interpretation. Most recently [7], it was General Deim [8], one of the operators of the Eastern German army, who said that the plans he had at hand had involved first an interception of the enemy offensive, and only then an advance of some kind, allowing for a counter-offensive in no less than four days. That is why, he says, it doesn’t make sense to count on being able to be in Lyon in 9 days, because the right flank of the Czechoslovak Front would not have been covered. Could you comment on this?
General Franko: Well, the right flank of our front, of the Czechoslovak Front, was covered at all times, because the primary strike within the group of fronts – there were maybe four such fronts – the primary strike would have been launched from the territory of East Germany, here above [points on the map]. Not from Czechoslovakia or from down here. In view of the entire European plan, we were on a secondary direction, if you follow me. And the secondary strike was ensuring the primary one, there, where there were so many tanks “crammed” that they could just shoot into each other at will. Mutually, by the way.
If you take a larger scale, Europe, if you think of the other forces, which must take Denmark and islands and peninsulas on the way to Sweden and Norway. Not that they would have gone to Norway, but it just needed to be covered. Another force would turn around and go here – for example to Hamburg, which would be its final destination. And the second line forces continue in the direction of the primary strike. And to provide enough of these forces, the whole Carpathian Military District, i. e. from Lvov, the mobilized divisions in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, the Polish second line forces, they all would have been transported by existing routes and transport means. The soldiers would have had to build those themselves, the rails or river crossings etc., so that they could soon have become part of the Czechoslovak Front’s order of battle, as reserves of the main command. That’s why the German [Deim] was talking from the standpoint of a German, i. e. speaking for a force stationed here on the right flank. But he should have seen this from the perspective of the whole of Europe.
Just as we couldn’t think that the French troops wouldn’t have been there – they would have, because they were NATO members, and played their role in the war, although in the peace times they were not subordinated to the NATO Supreme Command. That’s what de Gaulle had arranged back then.
What else did I want to mention – that’s why it was so important to get to, I don’t know, Genoa, to get to Marseilles, because those were strong points, bases where forces from all over the world could arrive. It took say 20 days – or let’s say 10 days, 10 days until the second line forces for the NATO got here from the USA. So that you should have gotten there in those 10 days. [Franko, 32 – 33]
General Franko: Those field forces, they were intended as a front. And they had everything what was needed for its operation, to accomplish its objective, in the course of 7, 8 or 12 days. The imminent objective was to be accomplished in 4 days, the subsequent one – e. g. get to France etc. – that was in 8 or 12 days.
But sometimes the exercise was about accomplishing the objective in 12 days. It depended on whether mass destruction weapons were used or not. A nuclear and a non-nuclear option. The nuclear option, that was the 8 days, and the non-nuclear one, 12 days.
But the front didn’t need anybody. Once it set off, it was only to move west. It didn’t need to care what’s behind. And its forces were positioned deep – I should say – some 50 or 80 kilometers, and if anybody was farther from the border, he was brought out to the front formation in time, so that he could be used for an offensive. Or if the enemy had succeeded to wedge in, for example, as far as Plzeň, then the front would have changed its deployment so that it would have been able to surround and destroy the enemy in the Plzeň or Klatovy region on its own. Nobody counted on any Russians from East Germany or elsewhere to come to help.
The Central Group of Forces, or the Carpathian Front, PrikVO, it was earmarked as another front, which would be formed to accomplish objectives after the Czechoslovak Front and the tank units had accomplished all their tasks. For the first line, i. e. those 50, 100 kilometers deep from the borders on both our territory and on that of East Germany, was so packed that there would have had to be a miracle if it hadn’t worked against the Germans, the Americans and the French.
A balance of powers was always calculated, i. e. what everybody was supposed to be able to have at some place. The Americans or French or English would have had to bring in materiel, equipment and God knows what at least two weeks in advance by ships and airplanes, which were to be loaded as soon as the alert was out, the orange, red and other alerts. And once it was calculated, i. e. what was there or what could be mobilized on the European territory, in the West, it was also taken into consideration. And what was in the East was also taken into consideration. And yet they arranged it, to secure it at 100 percent, so that the superiority in tanks would have been something like 1 to 3, in artillery 1 to 10, in air force God knows how much, it doesn’t matter, just that it was enough to secure a military success. [Franko, 24 – 25]
[ . . . ]
And then, in the Operations Plan, there were always options – for a non-nuclear war and a nuclear war. In the former case, it would of course have been just like it used to be in World War Two, and the deadline for the advance couldn’t have been 10 or 12 days. A front operation or a front group operation can take as long as two months. And it was just a question of how long the non-nuclear option would actually last, if two days, or three, four. And if the enemy – on one or the other side – realized that the first line divisions had just blown up, e.g. the 1st and 4th Armies, and he had hundreds of nuclear weapons at his disposal, then he would just start using them. All that mattered then, who would do so first? [ . . . ]
Therefore it is important to know that such options were exercised every year – there was an increasing number of command post and staff exercises, i. e. without troops, but outside, on the field. In the beginning, there were even three of them every year. That was something, you know, it was a terrible strain. That’s how it was when there was something special to exercise. And there was another thing, the uprezhdayushchiy udar, a pre-emptive nuclear strike, for example half an hour in advance. Because he who had a half-hour advantage certainly did best in the field, too. Eventually it came down to a stage – in the year we’re talking about – that’s 1961, 1962, 1963, it was decided to re-organize in a way which would ensure that the West and the East didn’t have deadlines of hours or days for anything, for to deploy the entire system is an enormous process, but rather that the first-line units were positioned in order to simply run over the state borders, on both sides. [ . . . ]
Q: You’ve suggested before that you saw the plan – as regards the other objectives – that you saw it worked out beyond Lyon. Where to? To the Pyrenees, to the Bay of Biscay?
General Franko: In the form of arrows – our objective didn’t reach all the way down there, that was for the second echelon, the secondary fronts. Having accomplished a subsequent objective – for example on the Rhine – how many, do you think, how many of them, fighting-fit and equipped would have been left there after 10 or 12 days of combat?
Q: The documents sometimes mention 50 percent as an estimate on casualties.
General Franko: Casualties are just hard to replace, that’s why new unit were to be formed there. I only know that an army group and a front group had a destination marked by the arrows, somewhere in Spain, in the Bay of Biscay. And the others were down in France.
And there were other indications – that was not an issue of the Czechoslovak Front, but of Russia – there were plans for an invasion to England. After some time, you know. [Franko, 33 – 34]
The Missing Second Echelon
Q: The operational plan [from 1964] counts on 7 days to Dijon and 9 days to Lyon. Did you think this was realistic, when you were Commander of the 1st Army?
General Procházka: I always supposed that our objective would be limited. It would be limited, even though on the maps you could plot an objective which was vast, a great swing ... of course we did plot the swing in the maps, that is understandable. But nobody asked us whether we were strong enough for that. They always said: “You are a front line army, the first echelon, v pervom eshelone, and behind you, the front of some three armies will come, you see.” You’ll form some kind of a bridgehead.
What were you trying to accomplish, when you had a front line army of 120,000 men? And you had an objective to go “as far as here”? Yes, it was correct to give ambitious orders to the subordinates, but also with a link to the strategic plan, you see. Did any of us know the strategic plan? Maybe somebody at the General Staff. We just received some limited objectives. And we worked out the particular tasks, we wrote them up, drew them. Our operators did. We knew the neighbor’s situation - approximately – what directions he could take, but to actually know the structure of his forces... That was already a question of strategy. But we were convinced that no sooner than in three days – no sooner – a second echelon would be deployed to exploit the operations. And on this ground we had to accomplish the immediate objective, then the next task. Of the operation.
Q: The implementation, the plan – did it change at all during that time? For example, was the pace, say, accelerated, or again slowed down... ?
General Procházka: No. The pace was clearly set. Whether the one who had set it, whether he believed in it, that is another question.
[ . . . ]
We had only one advantage, as we were in the first echelon, that maybe we wouldn’t have been hit by the nuclear weapons so much. They would have been aimed at the rear, on the second echelon, the reserves etc., the strategic reserves, more likely than on us.
[ . . . ]
Q: Which part of the plan did you think was most difficult? The beginning, the border encounter in Šumava, or...
General Procházka: The most difficult part is always to prepare the conditions for the front line units, so that they could get over the mine fields and start accomplishing the nearest objective, as soon as possible. And for this, it is necessary to utilize the artillery and missiles and rockets. Of course, in a way so as to not contaminate our terrain by the nuclear weapons. Naturally, even in such terrain, you fight using the... We often wondered why it was so little expected to utilize the gas. [Procházka, 9 – 10]
General Vinkler: The task of our army would be virtually over in this area. [Shows the plotted line for the advance on D1 and D2 .]
Definitely here. During the command and staff exercises then, we attacked with divisions which were really only at 10 percent of strength at this point here, and later were redeployed. So it was just to encourage the troops. [ . . . ]
Q: So do you think that the units would have been “spent” on D1 already, during the border encounter?
General Vinkler: You know, the people at Operations Directorate, they weren’t with the troops, so they just planned. I recall that a tank or two can hinder the advance of a whole division. And this is not open land, there are roads, woods, towns etc., so that it’s enough when somewhere around here... Nuremberg. [Showing on the map.] The way I felt about this – although it was not really my problem, we only perceived this from the standpoint of intelligence. But from the viewpoint of intelligence, it was more important for us to take this place, for example, than that area, therefore my view on this is that... it was not realistic, the way it was planned. [ . . . ] In my opinion it would have been a success if the divisions had got there without any fighting.
Q: [Smile.]
General Vinkler: But really, you see. Because this is about experience with the troops, it’s not just... Of course, the people in the Soviet General Staff also drew from experience dating back to World War Two, but back then – as they spoke about those Stalin strikes in 1944 – back then it was about an enormous mass of soldiers against a completely broken-down enemy. And it wasn’t always like that, too, it was in leaps. Well, that is known.
You see I’m not viewing this as if this was the area where the whole story of our army was to be played [showing the D1 and D2], and not any further. Of course, the operators would have different views. [ . . . ]
But can you imagine the Operations Directorate seeing it in a different way? Of course not. It was simply some objectives here, here and then some further development or exploitation of the operation, using second echelon forces. At that time the Ukrainian Front would have... We exercised with them, too, and with that air force – where was it from? Somewhere from Lithuania, from the Baltic region. They used to come here for operation exercises. [ . . . ]
Q: In view of the Carpathian Military District – because if they were the second echelon and yet relatively far away, then how would they have been deployed?
General Vinkler: That’s the same problem, you see. Of course, when we analyzed operational exercises of NATO armies, or that 7th Army, then you could see the enormous power of nuclear strikes right away. And they would have used them immediately against the Ukrainian echelon, against those divisions. The divisions, all the operators and we too were used to what the US exercises were like. You could always see that the Carpathian area was totally destroyed by their nuclear strikes. They tried to inhibit... you can imagine that to move an army from one place to another, you need roads and railways. Then it would have been virtually impassable, because they would have created a zone of radioactive contamination, and it would have been an exceptional success to get through that. But as I say, you must plan, you cannot get by without a plan. [Vinkler, 8 – 10]
General Slimák: The Czechoslovak Front, it was probably because there was no need, it was just a secondary direction, right? It was not a primary strike, it was intended to secure. To cover the left flank of a strategic operation.
[ . . . ] You know, I believe that some of the data is missing there, about the second strategic echelon. If it was part of PrikVO, the Carpathian Military District... But that was an issue of operations echelon, it would have depended on how the operational situation would have evolved. This problem was resolved in the situation which arose after 1968.
Q: The operators point out during the interviews that their biggest doubts were related to how the second echelon from PrikVO would get here and that it was really solved only with the Central Group.
General Slimák: I know that PrikVO exercised this, the transfers. On the command and staff level, they would simply have got into their cars and driven for three days to get to Germany, East Germany. I heard this during one meeting, when I was visiting the Ukraine with the former Chief of the General Staff, General Vacek, this very District.
Q: Did you know anticipated movement routes of the second echelon? Because there are not that many suitable routes through Slovakia.
General Slimák: Well that was it. I believe that the troops would have had to go through Poland. Because that was the natural route. A map view is distorted because of the Earth’s curvature, but the main route was through Poland. In Slovakia, there was one route in the North and one route in the South, nothing more.
Although the Soviets were a little generous, they just ignored the details in operation plans. [ . . . ]
Q: It is certainly strange, in view of the border clash in Šumava.
General Slimák: But I tell you, under a normal combat situation, the troops would never have accomplished the mission, because the roads would have been clogged. [Slimák, 3 – 4]
Planning on False Assumptions
Q: We talked about the Operations Plan from 1964, you have given us your comments. Could you tell us [ . . . ] your main concerns about this that you noted yourself back then?
General Zachariáš: I’ll try. So first, I studied it with great interest, looked up the respective objectives set on the map, measured the widths and depths. And then I started with the conclusions of the evaluation of the opponent. Some things seemed misinterpreted to me. First of all, it was not possible to conclude, on the basis of the evaluation, exactly under what circumstances it would have come to such an operation. Was there anything before, some time for preparations, or not? There is not a single mention here that both sides along the Western border at that time were preparing for defense, including entrenchments, obstacles, entanglements, roadblocks, minefields. At that time, even nuclear and chemical fugasy [mines] were anticipated on the opponent’s side. If that was the reality at that time – and it probably was, then there is no mention about it here and in view of this the objectives are not set realistically.
Another issue, which doesn’t seem very realistic to me, is the evaluation – our evaluation, of course – of the opponent’s utilization of operational airmobile forces, mentioning the areas of the Krkonoše and Jeseníky Mts. and the Moravian Gate. The Krkonoše and Jeseníky Mts. Were, in my view, out of question, because operational tactical airmobile forces are usually deployed along the lines of primary and secondary strikes, but nobody would mount a strike through the Krkonoše and Jeseníky Mts., not even a secondary one. The Moravian Gate was more realistic, but there were possibly other valid areas along the border between Bohemia and Moravia and also in Moravia, allowing for taking some important centers, for example communication centers.
[ . . . ]
I believe that even in terms of the balance of forces, some of the conclusions were incorrect, here it says 1.1:1.0 or 1:1, but that is just a quantitative relation, not taking into account the quality of forces. And back then – as far as I remember – a German or US division was better equipped in terms of quality, than we were, in tanks and armored personnel carriers in particular. We didn’t really have any APCs at that time, the infantry used trucks or was on foot, and the fielding of armored personnel carriers had only just begun then. And a balance of 1.1:1 in air assets doesn’t speak of quality. With a balance like that we wouldn’t have had any chance in an offensive operation. A superiority of 1:3 or 1:4 was required.
And to have such a superiority, you’d have to concentrate the troops in a narrow area, but that was not possible along our borders – there were just passes in the form of roads or dirt roads, but only few of them, so that virtually only columns of platoons, companies, battalions could get through, nothing more. Indeed they say that if a battalion gets through, so does a regiment and a division, but they cannot fight, they can just proceed in a column. And if you have obstacles, entanglements, roadblocks there... It was simply impossible to gain a superiority that would permit accomplishing an objective set like this in the plan, i. e. including the widths and depths. Here the widths are around 100 kilometers per army and more, and the depth for Day One is 100 kilometers – including the border region with those limited areas for maneuvering. Besides, the entire front was in a single echelon, because there was no second one, no second echelon army, just single divisions – and, moreover, just mobilized ones. So, with the objective set like this, and the widths and depths, it seemed almost impossible, impossible to accomplish. [Zachariáš, 1 – 2]
Q: You’ve said that for an offensive operation to be feasible, to be able to conduct an offensive operation in general, a superiority of 1:3 or 1:4 was necessary.
General Zachariáš: If a successful offensive operation is to be undertaken somewhere, then you need at least 1:3 or 1:4 in places where you want to break through. Either you need enough forces, or you must use weak covering forces somewhere else, and create such superiority [locally]. But the situation back then didn’t allow for something like that. I mean the plan from 1964. It didn’t because there was nowhere to achieve such a concentration of forces to gain threefold or fourfold superiority. The character of the country simply didn’t allow for this, there were no routes, not enough room for assembly areas, no place to deploy them. It just wasn’t feasible, it was impossible. And to do it somewhere in the enemy territory? In any case, you’d still have to get through the border areas, which would have been destroyed, razed to the ground. Well, I consider this almost impossible. It could be feasible some 100 kilometers deep from the borders, maybe, but you’d have to get there first. And we wouldn’t have had that many forces left at that time. [Zachariáš, 6 – 7]
Q: I understand naturally that in the sixties, you didn’t have access to the plans at the topmost level, but still, just based on your experience, could you evaluate, ... how was it possible that the plan was built like this? [ . . . ] Could you estimate the motives of this [ . . . ]?
General Zachariáš: It is quite difficult to explain, but we were always a secondary direction. And we never presumed that a primary strategic strike could be launched from our territory or through our territory. And the objective which was set, it probably expected us to cross the state border and engage as many enemy forces as possible, i. e. , the German II Corps, the US VII Corps, and any arriving French reserves, so as to facilitate the accomplishment of the objective set for the primary direction, which went through the German Democratic Republic and the western part of Germany, directly to France.
And the objective was clearly set – whatever objective you are given, you have to accomplish it. If our mission was to get somewhere on Day One, and somewhere else on Day Two, and to reach the territory of France by the end of the operation, then the plan had to be worked out in detail; and I believe that even experienced operators who were working on this, must have come to a conclusion that the objective was impossible to accomplish. But it was set and had to be planned for. [Zachariáš, 1 – 2]
General Slimák: An Operations Plan – to put it short – prepares an army for a certain way of its use, a specific way of conducting combat activities, but on the other hand, it also sets requirements regarding its future development, so that all this is provided for. To give a significant example, it is stated there – and you’ve pondered over it, too – the balance of forces. It means that if there was to be a ratio of 1.1:1 in tanks, a ratio of 1.1:1 in self-propelled guns, then of course with the expansion or transformation of motorized rifle divisions into tank divisions, or with re-equipping them with infantry fighting vehicles instead of OT-64s, then of course the potentials change considerably.
You know, every operations plan is an estimate of potentials. A distinct feature of the Czechoslovak Front, maybe well since the sixties and then until the nineties, was the stationing of the US VII Corps. And there was a simple reason for that. Because there, in the Southern region of the Federal Republic of Germany, just facing the former Czechoslovakia, units of the German II Corps were positioned. These units, 4th Motor Rifle Division, the 10th Motor Rifle Division, the 12th Tank Division, also underwent a transformation. The 10th Motor Rifle turned into the 10th Tank Division. The 1st Mountain Division even included a tank brigade in the course of time. When the 10th Tank Division was formed, the 12th Tank Division was subordinated to the German III Corps. And deep there, there were French troops.
The bottom here [shows the war theater of Southern Germany], this was really the entire II Corps. And here [shows] the VII Corps was stationed, and is still stationed, even now. Originally, they also had only two divisions, in the Operations Plan, but in the course of time, they grew to three. And the VII Corps could be deployed in the Czechoslovak Front area, but also against the neighboring front. If they had been deployed against our front, the ratio would have been 1:1 in divisions and 1.1:1 in tanks, but if deployed elsewhere, the ratio would have been considerably different.
I mean to say, we worked with this in different ways during exercises. For example, the balance of powers in the war theater was definitely in favor of the Warsaw Pact, at least with respect to ground forces. The primary direction was not in the [Czechoslovak] Front region, that was an auxiliary direction. The primary direction was that of the neighboring front. So, when a defensive operation was exercised, the VII Corps were attacking the neighboring front, and if an offensive operation was exercised, they went elsewhere. So the problem here was that there were no operation reserves, they were just the front echelon, the VII Corps, but due to the fact that our country bordered with East Germany, they could be used, because they were stationed right on the boundary. They could be used in our area, as well as in the area of our northern neighbor. [Slimák, 3]
[Translated by Jiří Mareš, Prague]
Notes:
[1] Marshal Rodion Iakovlevich Malinovskii was Minister of Defense of the USSR in 1957-1967.
[2] See footnote no.18, in: A Special Ally.
[3]Army General Bohumír Lomský was the Minister of National Defence in 1956-1968.
[4]Army General Otakar Rytíř was the Commander of the 1st Military District in 1952-1956, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Czechoslovak People’s Army in 1958-1968.
[5]Major General Jan Voštera was the Commander of the 20th Motor Rifle Division in Karlovy Vary in 1958-59. In 1959, he was the Chief of the Operations Section at the Operations Directorate of the General Staff, and in 1966-1969 he was the Chief of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff.
[6] In the operational planning of military exercises, the NATO forces were “blue” and the Warsaw Pact forces were “red”.
[7] Peter Veleff, Hans Werner Deim, “The Operational Plan of the Czechoslovak People's Army for the War Phase of 1964 – Was It a Real Operational Plan?” on the PHP website, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/ collection_1/texts/veleff_deim.htm
[8] Major General (NVA) Hans Werner Deim – Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the 11th Motorized Armored Division (1973-1976); Deputy of Deputy Chief of Main Staff Operations and Head of Operations Directorate (1976-1978); Deputy Chief of Staff Operations (1979-1982); Head of Combat Readiness and Operational Training Directorate / Head of Planning Staff (1982-1990).
