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Document No. 59: Report by the East German Defense Minister on NATO’s “Fallex 68/Golden Rod” Exercise, November 21, 1968 ——————————————————————————————————————————— Defense Minister Hoffmann’s report on NATO’s “Fallex” maneuvers in October 1968 reveals the interesting notion that Warsaw Pact leaders felt the need to provide further justification for the intervention in Czechoslovakia. The interpretation Hoffmann offers, clearly reporting what the Soviets have told him, is that NATO had been preparing to take advantage of internal developments in Czechoslovakia to interfere in the country’s affairs, and was only prevented from doing so by the Warsaw Pact action. (See also Document No. 56.) Thus the argument now is that there were military as well as political reasons for invading. Since this was not a public document but an internal report addressed to the East German National Defense Council, it was obviously not intended for propaganda purposes. In the months leading up to the intervention, no internal documentation reflected this concern. Nor is there any indication whatsoever from Western sources that this entered into the thinking of NATO member-states. ____________________ What was the “Fallex 68” exercise about? The main political goal was apparently to prove the necessity of the further existence and rapid stabilization of the NATO Pact. The rationale behind it was the thesis of an alleged “threat from the East”. […] The assumed political starting position of “Fallex 68” again clearly demonstrated the link between the United States’ and West Germany’s counterrevolutionary Ostpolitik, as well as between NATO’s military strategy of flexible response and the U.S. global strategy. Linking in principle the political assumption of the exercise with events in the ČSSR suggests that, depending on how the situation developed, NATO did not exclude the possibility of rehearsing for, or even initiating, Czechoslovakia’s departure from the socialist camp. The main political requirements imagined for triggering an aggression were: – splitting the ideological and organizational unity of the community of socialist states, especially separation from the Soviet Union. – an internal “softening” of individual socialist states. This year’s “Fallex” exercise again confirmed the intentions of the Bundeswehr leadership to capitalize onthealreadyexistingpotentialforinfluencingNATOdecisions,andtoincrease it further. The result was the acceptance of West Germany’s opinion on the early, selective and gradual, as well as general, deployment of nuclear weapons against countries of the Warsaw Treaty. This was indicated by layout of the exercise. In it NATO for the first time not only deployed nuclear weapons selectively within the scope of a limited nuclear war, but started a general nuclear war. 312 What were NATO’s main military goals during the exercise? The goal was to assess the particular deployments of NATO forces as specified within the framework of an overall plan during the course of the year 1968, and based on decisions of the NATO Ministerial Council to officially confirm the strategy of flexible response from December 1967. […] What are the most important results? 1. The “Fallex 68” exercise has confirmed the opinion of our party and government leaders on potential types of war, as well as on the methods of unleashing a war of aggression by NATO in Europe, especially against the German Democratic Republic. NATO’s intention to immediately gain the initiative by the early surprise deployment of nuclear weapons in a limited war, as well as in a general nuclear war, has clearly been confirmed. The role of a limited war was heavily emphasized, since it promised partly to achieve certain political goals for the enemy in individual socialist countries in case conditions are politically favorable to the enemy. It demonstrated that NATO is aiming to achieve certain success by means of a limited war in Europe—obviously also due to the evaluation of experiences with psychological warfare in ideologically softening socialist countries. However, NATO still attributes the decisive role in achieving its goals to a general nuclear war. 2. The different types of aggression, from covert to limited and finally general nuclear war, were not practiced separately during the exercise, but as stages of a gradually escalating war. The war was preceded by a period of continuously increasing tensions, during which covert warfare was escalated to open military actions that finally turned into a limited war. This exercise concept aimed at: a) assessing the possibility of military escalation in order to achieve political goals b) testing different military actions as a form of political pressure against the states of the Warsaw Treaty c) testing...

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