Blueprints for Battle: Planning for War in Central Europe, 1948-1968

2. Aims and Realities: NATO’s Forward Defense and the Operational Planning Level at NORTHAG

21 2 Aims and Realities NATO’s Forward Defense and the Operational Planning Level at NORTHAG Bruno Thoss At its formation, NATO basically represented a regional alliance with its leading powers as global actors. The classical strategic thinking of the AngloSaxon sea powers had to be coordinated with the demands of their continental partners for an effective defense of Western Europe. In all its strategy papers during the Cold War, NATO concentrated defense planning on three major principles: an overall defensive concept; maximum efficiency by minimal expenditure; and burden sharing.1 The United States, too, gave geostrategic priority to the Atlantic over the Pacific regions.2 But the sea powers regarded the Western European continent as only one of several pivotal points of Western security. A possible war over Europe would have been decided in the North Atlantic as the central region of transatlantic security. The peripheral seas, like the Baltic and the Mediterranean , also were considered to be nearly as important geostrategically as the European continent. Furthermore, the Soviet Union could focus on the Middle East to attack Western security through its dependence on oil.3 As a consequence, a lengthy process of mutual persuasion was necessary until the area between the North Sea and the Alps was accepted as the most vulnerable sector of NATO’s eastern front. Document DC (Defense Committee) 13 of March 1950 read: “Because of its material resources, dense population, high industrial potential, and the strategic values of its central geographical position , the conquest of the Western European Region would represent a ma- 22 Bruno Thoss jor and perhaps decisive victory.” For the Soviet Union, the centers of heavy industry along the Rhine and Ruhr, in southern Belgium, and in northern France, as well as the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, would be “their primary objective in war.”4 An invasion, therefore, “would in all probability develop through the North German Plain.” Because of its topography, which was the most suitable vicinity for the eastern tank armies, the area’s seizure would also with one stroke break up the NATO defense into two spaces linked only by the sea.5 Initial Response Because of a lack of sufficient armed forces, however, the initial NATO response would have been one of delaying, and even an evacuation of the continent at a very early stage. Confronted with this gloomy perspective, the members of the Brussels Pact tried from spring 1948 to make the Rhine front “impenetrable” from the onset. But that goal was far from achievable because many of the Western powers had strong military forces deployed outside of Europe.6 The United States expected the Europeans to prove themselves prepared and to strengthen their self-defense. NATO’s strategy paper MC (Military Committee) 3 of October 1949 postulated the mission to “arrest and counter as soon as practicable the enemy offensives against the North Atlantic Treaty powers by all means available.” The whole concept, however, was questionable because “initially, the hard core of ground forces will come from the European nations.”7 Western European responsibility for initial self-defense was combined with a conditional early reinforcement from overseas, depending on the situation at other key points of the conflict. Defense starting at the Rhine was in military terms nothing but a declaration of intent. At the Rhine and the IJssel the British, Dutch, and Belgian forces were to hold the Northern Sector from the North Sea to Remagen. Adjacent to them, French and American troops would defend the upper Rhine to Basel. Eventually, French forces, possibly including the Swiss army, were to secure the Alps to the Mediterranean.8 But since the Europeans did not have sufficient troops, they could defend only temporarily until powerful assistance was provided from overseas. In the event that it did not arrive in time, the Europeans had to resign themselves to the American plan to withdraw to the Atlantic or over the Pyrenees, and maybe even to North Africa.9 For the years to come NATO planned to extend its defenses eastward of the Rhine. Such a plan depended heavily on the Federal Republic of Germa- Aims and Realities 23 ny (FRG), not only its territory but also its manpower and material resources. As early as 1948 the future German defense planner, General Adolf Heusinger , prepared a study for United States European Command that considered the battlefield between the North Sea and the Alps as...