The Cold War, which seemed such an ever-present reality just
a few years ago has now been relegated to history. The mighty armies that faced
each other across so many borders in northern, central and southern Europe are
now but shadows of their former selves. The navies which patrolled the seas
have dispersed, and former enemy armies now spend most of their time on common
exercises and in comforting each other about the glories that are gone. The air
forces, too, are bemused by the changes that a few years have wrought; vast
orders for the most complex and sophisticated machines ever invented by man
have been cancelled, training is now minimal, and recruits are hard to find;
indeed, some even question the need for air forces at all.
The armed forces were, however, only the public face of the
international effort put into the prosecution of the Cold War. Entire
industries depended upon the Cold War – tank production, warship construction,
warplane manufacturing – as also did many less obvious concerns such as
electronics, power-plant and machinery manufacturers. Virtually all governments
involved in the Cold War ensured that their national plans revolved around
preparing for, fighting and surviving a possible Third World War. Indeed, when
the Cold War ended, many things came to light that show just how thorough and
far-reaching the preparations had been. Buried headquarters and survival
shelters, which only a very select few had ever known about, were advertised
for sale. Huge strategic stockpiles of commodities such as coal, oil, sugar and
flour were publicly acknowledged and sold off. Secret arsenals of weapons for
use by guerrilla forces were revealed, even in ostensibly neutral countries
such as Austria. But many more facets of the conflict probably remain unknown,
even to this day.
The Cold War does not have two convenient dates to mark its
start and finish. No troops poured across a border to open the campaign, nor
did victorious armies march in triumph through the enemy’s capital city to mark
the end.
Many dates could be taken to mark the start of the Cold War,
but the events of 1945 to 1949 are considered to be preliminary skirmishes and
manoeuvring for position, and 4 April 1949, the date of signing the North
Atlantic Treaty, which formalized the anti-Soviet alliance, is taken to be the
most apt date.
Similarly, the end of the Cold War was publicly announced on
at least ten occasions as triumphant politicians signed yet another agreement
in Washington, London, Paris, Geneva or Moscow to reduce or remove tension. But
the signal for the real end of the Cold War came in Berlin, the city which for
forty-two years had crystallized all the issues at stake. There on one night in
November 1989 an East German government official telephoned the security guard
commander at the checkpoints on the Berlin Wall and ordered him to prevent East
Berliners from crossing to the West. But the officer, probably no more senior
than a captain, looked out the window, saw the vast crowd, sensed its determination,
knew deep inside himself that the game was up, and, realizing the futility of
it all, refused. Throughout the Cold War the Communist system had depended
absolutely upon orders being obeyed, and with that refusal in East Berlin the
entire system proceeded, with dreadful inevitability, to collapse.
There were no heroes and no villains in the Cold War. There
were definitely two ‘sides’, and on a political level each felt the other to be
wrong, but at the military level there were just millions of officers and
sailors, soldiers and airmen, the great majority of whom were doing their job
as best they knew how and carrying out the orders given to them by their
governments.
There were hundreds of ‘incidents’. Aircraft were shot down,
ships collided, and, on several occasions, tanks loaded with live ammunition
faced each other across borders. But opponents ‘on the other side of the fence’
were never left with no way out other than humiliation; no side ever pushed the
other over the brink.
Frequent mention is made of military plans prepared during
the Cold War, and a word of explanation is required. Many civilians find it
hard to understand why soldiers, sailors and airmen spend so much of their time
analysing possible threats against them and, when preparing plans, taking the
worst case. Thus, throughout the Cold War, congressional and parliamentary
committees and media correspondents were regularly given the direst of
predictions about the other side’s numbers and capabilities. Sometimes there
were genuine errors, but frequently each element in an estimate was given a
pessimistic ‘tweak’ which, when all were put together, resulted in an overall
prediction that was later proved to have been very wide of the mark indeed.
This predilection for the ‘worst case’ was partly due to
professional caution and the desire not to be caught out. Far better, planners
thought, to find the situation was not so bad after all. Partly, however, it
was also due to the knowledge that if war did come it would almost certainly be
of short duration and there would therefore be little chance to make good any
peacetime deficiencies. Thus, by painting the gloomiest possible picture of the
enemy’s strengths, one’s own side would be better armed to meet him should the
day come. Matters were not helped, however, when politicians took the budget
figure the military asked for and subtracted 10 per cent, since the military
responded by adding an extra 10 per cent the next time around, on the
assumption that they would lose it.
