By the autumn of 1945 it was the turn of the Americans to
become the hawks in the stand-off with Stalin. The US finally began to outline
plans for their post-war strategy, yet there was no presidential or ‘top-down’
directive as there had been with Churchill and Unthinkable. Instead, individual
officers as well as the US Joint Planning Staff (USJPS) took the initiative in
preparing reports on a post-war strategic plan. The plans did not, at this
stage, detail operations but looked at overall US military capability and its
requirements for worldwide bases and military reserves. ‘New weapons and
countermeasures’ were discussed, with special consideration given to the
potential of atomic bombs and guided missiles. Experts concluded that these new
weapons had limitations, which would not change US military strategy, for at
the time the range of V–2-type rockets could not be extended beyond 1,000
miles, while atomic bombs could not be made small enough to suit artillery
rounds or naval torpedoes. Consequently, the planners and their experts
believed that these new weapons would supplement conventional weapons and the
idea that atomic bombs could be used as a deterrent did not seem to enter the
equation. However, the planners did determine that crippling a nation’s
industrial capacity would not affect the outcome of any atomic war, since the
war would be over well before that could take effect. By late 1945 the
strategic plan, which cloaked its objective with talk of ‘maintaining world
peace’, was presented to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and then the president
for approval.
The impetus for more detailed US operational plans for a
major conflict with the Soviet Union would take months to build. The US
planners had not consulted with their British counterparts at this stage, for
as an ailing Harry Hopkins observed, ‘to hear some people talk about the
British, you would think the British were our potential enemies.’ But to some
Americans, the British Empire was just that; when Major-General Francis
Davidson of the British General Staff was on a tour of the US in the autumn of
1945, he was accosted by a journalist who demanded to know about ‘British
imperialistic designs on Indonesia’. Such language might well have come out of
the Kremlin, but at least Anglo-US military relations were on a more cordial
level. During the autumn and winter of 1945 there was increasing co-operation
between the two armies as well as a sharing of intelligence on Soviet
deployments. Gradually, as a result of these constant and verifiable dossiers,
corroborated by their own agents in the field, US intelligence began to take
the Soviet threat seriously.
During October and November 1945 the US Joint Chiefs
examined reports that assessed current Soviet military capability at more than
sixty offensive infantry divisions, 25,000 tanks and 60,000 large-calibre
artillery pieces. They concluded that Soviet forces could easily overrun
Western Europe and the Middle East any time before 1948; such an alarming
prospect made the US Joint Intelligence Committee calculate the effect of
‘blocking’ that advance by unleashing nuclear weapons. In what was the first US
outline plan to attack the Soviet Union, twenty Soviet cities were selected as
targets for atomic bombs, to be delivered by heavy bombers, yet the American
JIC were excluded from most of the US atomic secrets and would not have had
accurate data on the number of available bombs.
In November 1945 the US State Department was alarmed by news
that Soviet troops in civilian clothes were assisting a tribal revolt in
Iranian Azerbaijan with a view to annexing this adjacent province. The US Joint
Chiefs of Staff ordered ‘a reassessment of US military capabilities in view of
Soviet aggressive policies’, which indicated the US themselves were now
preparing contingency plans for a conventional war with the Soviet Union. On 2
March 1946 the US Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC) produced a draft for
Operation ‘Pincher’, the US broad equivalent to the British Operation
Unthinkable. However, the casus belli was no longer Poland. It was assumed that
the Soviet Union had already set up its ring of satellite states to protect its
borders, and the conflict would arise from the Soviets attempting to infiltrate
more countries beyond that ring. In particular, Pincher singled out the Middle
East as a flashpoint, where US or British interests could be undermined. There
might also be incidents in Turkey or Iran, which would compel the Western
Allies to retaliate by military force, and thereby spark a Third World War. The
original plan envisaged a war sometime between 1946 and 1949, but as tensions
rose dramatically during 1946, the time span was drastically reduced. It looked
to US planners as if they were staring into the abyss. Of course, they were
unaware of the extent of the leaks by Donald Maclean, and how much the Soviets
knew about US plans for retaliation in the event of a hostile move against
Turkey. It is possible that because of the knowledge that the US would
retaliate, Stalin may have backed off from an invasion of Turkey in 1946, which
diffused the crisis.
Belatedly, President Truman talked of Stalin’s tactics in
Poland as an ‘outrage’. This tough talking may have resulted from the new US
atomic muscle, but their foreign policy hardened by the month. In February 1946
George Kennan sent his famous ‘Long Telegram’ from the US Mission in Moscow to
Washington. It was a seminal moment, for in Kennan’s own words, ‘these years
had been a strain for me nearly all the way through, because I watched our
government making concession after concession to the Soviets.’ It seemed that
both the US government and public opinion had needed a gestation period before
they could readily address the Soviet threat.
It was not just the US administration that was changing its policy
towards Stalin. Churchill’s fears about Soviet domination in the spring of 1945
had, by early 1946, become orthodox thinking in the British Foreign Office. The
Mediterranean, Turkey and Iran were all vulnerable, and northern Italy had
proved contentious. There were also concerns that the pro-Soviet French
communist party might take power in France. If a conflict with the West
erupted, Stalin would have no qualms about ordering a communist insurrection in
France, to be followed by an attempted communist coup in Belgium and, after a
civil war, a communist regime could follow in Spain. The worst fear for Britain
remained triumphant communism ‘fuelled by German economic might’, as the
British JIC confirmed:
Russia will no doubt give full weight to the fact that Great
Britain and the United States are both war weary, faced with immense internal
problems and rapidly demobilising their forces. By comparison, Russia’s own
forces and industry are still on a war basis. No further demobilisation has
been announced, and Russian divisions are being rapidly re-equipped with the
latest material.
Churchill, now free of the political constraints on a prime
minister, though still recognised as a world statesman, sensed a rising tide of
realism in the West. On 5 March 1946 he used such recognition to full effect by
giving a legendary speech during a tour of the US. At Fulton, Missouri, he
uttered a solemn warning to Russia, and talked of ‘an iron curtain’ descending
on Europe. He reminded the American people that the West could not afford to
appease the Soviet Union, for such a policy had been disastrous before the war
and now, in a post-war world, would be seen simply as weakness by Stalin. Yet
despite the dramatic tone of his speech, the British press and public were lukewarm
in their support for the ex-premier. This was hardly surprising, since in
Britain there remained an overwhelming feeling of gratitude to the Soviet Union
for their undeniable sacrifice in the war. Such public goodwill was certainly
fostered by the unrelenting diet of wartime pro-Soviet propaganda that emitted
from the British government. It was unrealistic to suppose that barely a year
later the public could absorb the ‘justness’ of an attack on the Soviet Union.
Regardless of any protests in the West, Stalin’s suppression
of Eastern Europe continued apace. In March 1946 alone the Soviet Ministry of
the Interior recorded that ‘8,360 bandits were liquidated’ in the Ukraine,
while in the Baltic Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) states of Latvia, Lithuania
and Estonia nearly 100,000 people were deported to gulags ‘forever’. Even as
the packed cattle trucks of ‘bandits, nationalists and others’ trundled
eastwards, Stalin launched his own verbal repost to Churchill’s Missouri
speech, denouncing him as ‘a firebrand of war’. But Churchill’s views were no
longer seen by the US as either extreme or as an impediment to better relations
with Stalin. Just days before Churchill had delivered his Fulton speech, the US
JWPC had finalised their Operation Pincher war plans. US policy was turning
full circle in its attitude to the Soviet Union:
It is wise to emphasise the importance of being so prepared
militarily and of showing such firmness and resolution that the Soviet Union
will not, through miscalculation of American intentions, push to the point that
results in war.
The US draft plan for their own Unthinkable war estimated
that in the spring of 1946 the Soviets had fifty-one divisions in Germany and
Austria, fifty divisions in the near or Middle East and twenty divisions in
Hungary and Yugoslavia. This force of 121 divisions was supported by a central
reserve of 152 divisions in the homeland, and a total of 87 divisions of
pro-Soviet forces within the satellite states of Eastern Europe. A Soviet
attack would most likely sweep across Western Europe and seize the channel
ports and the Low Countries in little more than a month. Simultaneous attacks
would be launched into Italy as well as the Middle East. In the midst of such
overwhelming force (again, an estimate of three to one in favour of Soviet
infantry), it was recommended that US troops would retreat into Spain or Italy
to avoid being decimated by the Red Army on the continent. It was conceivable
that the Red Army would even carry the invasion into Spain in an attempt to
block the western Mediterranean, in which case US forces would swiftly withdraw
and retreat to Britain. While Britain was considered a valuable base, Germany,
Austria, France and the Low Countries would be sacrificed. Retreating Allied
forces would also move across to the Middle East to bolster defences around the
vital Suez Canal Zone. It was no surprise that the US chiefs of staff now
accepted that an essential object of Stalinist policy was to ‘dominate the
world’.
There would be a fight-back by the West, of course, but not
until the Red Army had swept through Western Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and
Iran; in the Far East, South Korea and Manchuria would also fall. Although
Pincher did not go into further detail, the US and her Allies would launch devastating
air attacks from remaining bases in Britain, Egypt and India, no doubt
deploying their growing stock of atomic bombs, though the use of such weapons
was still not seen as a ‘war winner’. Meanwhile the US Navy would seek to
blockade the Soviet Union and destroy her naval fleets, as attempts were
eventually made to recover Western Europe by a southerly thrust via the
Mediterranean.
One old festering wound in Europe that looked like it could
precipitate Operation Pincher was the dispute between Tito and the West over
the Venezia Giulia region. It was also this scare that brought together the US
and British Joint Chiefs of Staff for their first planning sessions for a Third
World War. The first British Unthinkable plan, involving the attack on Soviet
forces on 1 July 1945, had not been discussed beyond the tight circle of the
prime minister, his Joint Chiefs and their Joint Planners. Similarly, the
highly sensitive US Pincher plan was initially confined to the US Joint Chiefs,
their Joint Planners and the commander-in-chief. But on 30 August 1946 Field
Marshal Henry ‘Jumbo’ Maitland Wilson, representing the British Joint Chiefs,
attended a lunch with his American counterparts. Reporting back to his JCS
committee, Wilson was able to reassure them that at least both sets of chiefs
were alert to the risk of an armed clash in Venezia Giulia, which could pull in
both power blocs, whether they wanted war or not. There was agreement that in
the event of a conflict in the Venezia region it was pointless having a plan
for large reinforcements to be sent into the territory, since the fight would
swiftly spread into central Europe. Poland, no longer seen as the tripwire by
late 1946, would nevertheless find herself at the very centre of military
activity.
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