Federal Republic of Germany, Armed Forces

Discussions regarding German rearmament took place as early as 1946, but the British government opposed anything more than an armed and mobile police force, while the French government did not wish to see Germans rearmed in any way. Serious negotiations over the creation of a German military began in 1950, however, when the Korean War stretched Western military resources thin. Once again, French resistance was the major obstacle.

The Paris Accords of May 1955 overcame these obstacles by creating a Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) army, the Bundeswehr, that was firmly under civilian and Allied control. In stark contrast to previous periods in German history, the Bundeswehr was under intense oversight by parliamentary committees and a public wary of military institutions. Soldiers would be subject to civil law in all matters that were not strictly military. All Bundeswehr units were designated to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for action, with the German government retaining peacetime control. Weapons and military matériel were imported from the United States, Britain, and France on a large scale until the late 1960s, when domestic military production developed.

Under the 1955 agreement, the United States and Great Britain committed themselves to maintaining a troop presence in Germany. NATO’s current European partners would provide naval and air forces to complement British and American commitments. In return, West Germany would provide twelve mixed divisions (approximately 340,000 men) for the common defense of Europe by 1959, with a final strength of 500,000. Each infantry division would have three combat commands with three motorized infantry battalions and an armor battalion each; antiaircraft, engineer, communications, and reconnaissance battalions; a company of aircraft; a military police company; and combat support from three light artillery battalions and one medium artillery battalion. Tank divisions contained two armored and three mechanized infantry battalions in each combat command. Two of the divisions would be further specialized for airborne and mountain operations.

A civilian screening process was created to recruit officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) from World War II veterans. NATO would be responsible for all war planning and for the direction of all operations. No German general staff was permitted, on grounds that it might revive German militarism. The Bundeswehr was allowed an operations staff but on the condition that officers rotated through such duty periodically. Planners believed that half of the necessary manpower for the divisions would be volunteers, while a draft would provide the remaining numbers.

The first West German military volunteers reported for duty in November 1955, and the Law for Compulsory Service passed the West German parliament on 7 July 1956. It required all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to serve for twelve months, with provisions allowing conscientious objectors to fulfill their obligation through alternative means, usually administered at the state and local levels. Further exemptions, thought to include some 10 percent of eligible males, covered the sons of deceased and wounded veterans, economic hardship cases, clergy, and those deemed unfit for service. Men who became officers or NCOs would remain in the reserves, known as the Territorial Army, until age sixty. The term of service was increased to eighteen months in 1962 at the height of the Berlin Crisis (1958–1963). It was then reduced to fifteen months in 1972, as population growth began to provide more than adequate numbers of draftees.

The West German government experienced some difficulty in providing the promised troops. Part of the reason was monetary. Between 1956 and 1989, the share of defense-related expenditures in the West German federal budget never sank below 12 percent. It reached its zenith in the early 1960s when it was one-third of the overall budget, yet most of the money was going to purchase matériel. On average, throughout the Cold War the West German government annually spent about 20 percent of its total budget on defense.

Beyond that, rearmament was never popular in West Germany. In October 1956, West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss announced that manpower targets had been reduced from 96,000 to 80,000 for 1956 and from 240,000 to between 175,000 and 200,000 for 1957 largely because volunteers were not coming forward in the numbers anticipated. Only eleven of the twelve German divisions originally planned for 1959 were filled out and under NATO control by 1963. It took until the mid-1970s before West Germany’s armed forces reached the final benchmark of 500,000 troops envisaged in 1955. In 1975, the Bundeswehr contained 345,000 soldiers, 110,000 air force personnel, and 39,000 seamen. At any given time, only 48 percent of the German armed forces were volunteers, far short of the 55 percent target that the West German governments maintained. Recruitment of long-term (twenty-one-month) volunteers and of NCOs in particular continuously fell far short of expectations, although the federal government offered numerous incentives such as vocational education programs and career guarantees.

Popular opposition to the Bundeswehr, although always strong, increased notably in early 1957 when the United States indicated that it would arm its European allies with nuclear weapons as part of a shift in NATO strategy. Before 1957, NATO planned a forward defense along the German frontier. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had pushed for and won the integration of German units all along the line rather than having the Bundeswehr assigned a particular sector. He had also readily accepted a ban on atomic, biological, and chemical weapons for German units in order to make rearmament more palatable to the public and to the Social Democratic opposition. NATO’s new strategy of nuclear deterrence, officially adopted on 21 March 1957, thus set off a maelstrom in German politics that continued into the 1960s.

Adenauer renounced German construction of nuclear weapons and declared that Germany would not accept national control over such weapons. NATO responded by introducing the two-key system, whereby German units possessed nuclear capabilities but the nuclear warheads and launchers remained under Allied control. After winning by-elections in Nordrhein- Westfalen in July 1958, Adenauer’s government announced that it was prepared to equip the Bundeswehr with atomic weapons. German units received Matador rockets and nuclear-capable artillery pieces so that they could fight either a conventional or a tactical nuclear war. Bundeswehr units were also divided into either the six armored infantry or four purely armored divisions to facilitate mobility and, supposedly, increase defense against nuclear attack.

Even before this restructuring was complete, however, NATO, with some prompting from West Germany and led by U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s administration, moved to a strategy of flexible response. This deemphasized the role of nuclear weapons where German forces were concerned by creating a multilateral force that deployed nuclear-armed Polaris submarines. Two of the German armored infantry divisions created in 1957 were reorganized as straight infantry divisions, and the Bundeswehr’s deployed division strength was increased by about 10,000 men to compensate for its reduced nuclear role. The question of arming West Germany with nuclear weapons was shelved for good when the coalition government led by Willy Brandt and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in November 1969.

In the late 1970s, however, NATO plans to station intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany renewed the debate over atomic weapons. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who had earlier been one of the principal advocates of flexible response in Germany, declared in early 1978 that West Germany would accept nuclear weapons only if other NATO countries did as well. U.S. President Jimmy Carter eventually led a NATO climb-down on the issue, agreeing to a two-track policy that tied deployment in Germany to Soviet deployments in Eastern Europe. In the 1980s his successor, President Ronald Reagan, worked closely with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to manage the deployment of Pershing missiles in Germany. Nuclear weapons always remained under NATO and U.S. control, and the German and American governments continued to cooperate in reducing the number of nuclear weapons stationed in West Germany.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Bundeswehr has changed immensely. Despite the integration of the former East German Army since 1990, overall troop strength has been roughly cut in half. Although during the Cold War West German troops were never deployed on foreign soil except for training exercises and joint NATO maneuvers, the Bundeswehr has undertaken several foreign peacekeeping missions since 1991, most notably in the Balkans. German armed forces now serve as part of different international missions on several continents, most notably in the Balkans and in Afghanistan.

References Bald, Detlef. Die atombewaffnung der Bundeswehr: Militaer, oeffentlichkeit und politik in der Aera Adenauer [Nuclear Armaments for West Germany’s Army: Military, Public, and Politics during the Adenauer Era]. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1994. Schmidt, Gustave, ed. A History of NATO: The First Fifty Years. 3 vols. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Thoss, Bruno, ed. Vom Kalten Krieg zur deutschen einheit [From Cold War to German Unification]. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995.

THE COLD WAR – Soviet Strike

T-80 MBT: Designed as an improved T-64, eliminating its chief operating problems, the T-80 has a gas turbine engine and the ability to fire AT-8 Songster antitank guided missile from its 125mm main gun. The most recent version, the T- 80U, has a new and more efficient engine and can also fire the A-11 Sniper (9K120 Svir) laser-guided antitank missile. The tank is fitted with the same autoloader as the main gun on the T-72 and is rated at 6–8 rph.

NBC package included, along with infrared and thermal sights; first production model Soviet tank fitted with a ballistic computer and laser rangefinder.

Issued to Soviet forces in the mid-1980s, it continues to be produced by both Russia and Ukraine and remains in their armed forces. It has been sold abroad to the People’s Republic of China, Cyprus, Pakistan, and South Korea.

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After the war, the armed forces demobilized to their prewar strength of about four million and were assigned to the occupation of Eastern Europe. Conscription remained in force. During the late 1950s, under Nikita Khrushchev, who stressed nuclear rather than conventional military power, the army’s strength was cut to around three million. Leonid Brezhnev restored the size of the armed force to more than four million. During the Cold War, pride of place in the Soviet military shifted to the newly created Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), which controlled the ground-based nuclear missile forces. In addition to the SRF, the air force had bomber-delivered nuclear weapons and the navy had missile-equipped submarines. The army, with the exception of the airborne forces, became an almost exclusively motorized and mechanized force.

The critical question, therefore, was whether a determined Warsaw Pact offensive could be held. Numbers and geography favoured the pact, and there was not even confidence in the West's technological edge as a form of compensation. While the Soviet Union might lag behind, it was often nimbler in turning new technologies into usable weapons systems. Furthermore, infatuation with advanced technology could result in a disregard of other critical features of military equipment including ruggedness, reliability and ease of operation - which the Soviet Union did not forget. Soviet designers, it was argued, built around the limitations of their troops and their industry while the West pushed them to their limits, with the result that the systems arrived late, well over cost, and were often difficult to operate effectively. In addition, there was a tremendous duplication of effort within NATO, as many countries had their own industries to protect and were not so sure of alliance that they wanted to become wholly dependent upon others for vital equipment.

The strength of the Warsaw Pact led serious commentators to wonder by the mid-1970s whether it could get itself into a position to launch an attack from a standing start - without warning - relying on its armoured divisions based in East Germany. If NATO was to cope it would need to be able to respond quickly to the first indicators of an enemy offensive. The problem was not warning time as such but the speed at which a political decision would be taken to mobilize. The indicators might be ambiguous. Diplomats might be concerned that any response would be a provocation, triggering the event that it was supposed to be preventing.

The Soviet army’s last war was fought in Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Brought in to save the fledgling Afghan communist government, which had provoked a civil war through its use of coercion and class conflict to create a socialist state, the Soviet army expected to defeat the rebels in a short campaign and then withdraw. Instead, the conflict degenerated into a guerilla war against disparate Afghan tribes that had declared a holy war, or jihad, against the Soviet army, which was unable to bring its strength in armor, artillery, or nuclear weapons to bear. The Afghan rebels, or mujahideen, with safe havens in neighboring Iran and Pakistan, received arms and ammunition from the United States, enabling them to prolong the struggle indefinitely. The Soviet high command capped the commitment of troops to the war at 150,000, for the most part treating it as a sideshow while keeping its main focus on a possible war with NATO. The conflict was finally brought to a negotiated end after the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, with nearly 15,000 men killed in vain.

Gorbachev’s policy of rapprochement with the West had a major impact on the Soviet armed forces. Between 1989 and 1991 their numbers were slashed by one million, with more cuts projected for the coming years. The defense budget was cut, the army and air force were withdrawn from Eastern Europe, naval ship building virtually ceased, and the number of nuclear missiles and warheads was reduced—all over the objections of the military high command. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, exposed the horrible conditions of service for soldiers, particularly the extent and severity of hazing, which contributed to a dramatic increase in desertions and avoidance of conscription. The prestige of the military dropped precipitously, leading to serious morale problems in the officer corps. Motivated in part by a desire to restore the power, prestige, and influence of the military in politics and society, the minister of defense, Dmitry Iazov, aided and abetted the coup against Gorbachev in August 1991. The coup failed when the commanders of the armored and airborne divisions ordered into Moscow refused to support it.

NATO’s Military Organization

A submarine travels during the anti-terrorist military demonstration staged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in the Gulf of Taranto.

From its inception NATO was involved in delicate juggling acts to balance a frequently bewildering variety of requirements. The overriding aim was to field forces which would deter an attack by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, since anything else the Alliance attempted was wasted if it could not achieve that. But this had to be balanced against what was both politically acceptable and economically affordable to the members – requirements which were not always mutually compatible. Then, too, the command structure needed to share out the posts to achieve a balance between the United States, which was not only the most powerful single member but also met a very large proportion of the bills, and the remaining nations, who wished to ensure that their national aspirations were seen to be met. Finally, the organization as a whole needed to present a good public image, and to produce solutions which would not offend public opinion in any member nation too greatly.

At the top of the military organization was the Military Committee, on which all nations were represented by their chiefs-of-staff and which normally met three times a year.fn1 Since the chiefs-of-staff were based in their national capitals, there was a need for some permanent representation at NATO Headquarters to conduct day-to-day business, and this was originally provided by the Standing Group, which consisted of just three members – France, the UK and the USA – with all other nations except Iceland appointing a ‘permanent national liaison officer’. The title of the group changed to the ‘Military Representatives Committee’ in 1950, and to the ‘Military Committee in Permanent Session’ in 1957. When France withdrew from the integrated military structure in 1966 this top-level body was reorganized again, being expanded to include a permanent ‘national military representative’ at three-star level (i.e. lieutenant-general or equivalent) from all nations except France and Iceland, although the title remained unchanged.

Originally, the chairmanship of the Military Committee in Chiefs-of-Staff Session rotated annually between members, but a separate chairman of the Military Committee in Permanent Session was appointed in 1958, and from 1963 onwards the same officer chaired both committees. Designated the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, this officer was in effect the senior military officer in NATO, and since the post was created in 1958 he has always been a European, thus balancing the US influence in other senior posts in the Alliance.

THE COMMANDS

On the establishment of NATO, a series of regional planning groups (RPGs) was set up, each comprising those nations with a strategic interest in the particular area:

• Canada/US RPG – Canada, USA;

• Western Europe RPG – Benelux, Canada, France, UK, USA;

• North Atlantic Ocean RPG – Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, UK, USA;

• Northern Europe RPG – Denmark, Norway, UK, USA;

• Southern Europe/Western Mediterranean RPG – France, Italy, UK, USA.

These RPGs were not, however, the only forums where discussions were taking place, and there were a number of bilateral links, of which by far the most important was that between the United States and the United Kingdom. These two countries not only had strong traditional and cultural ties, but also had forged a close alliance during the war under the Allied Combined Chiefs-of-Staff (CCS) organization. This CCS mechanism continued to be used after the war, and during 1945–9 it produced a variety of combined war plans to counter possible Soviet aggression. The link continued with the setting-up of NATO, and was used by them, as the two predominant military powers in the new organization, for private discussions on the command arrangements for the Alliance.

The RPGs produced a variety of organizational proposals, but, despite external pressures such as the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb, the Communist takeover in China and the outbreak of the Korean War, the discussions dragged on through the whole of 1950 and 1951, and it was not until early 1952 that a full structure was in place.

Naturally, a hierarchy of command appointments were needed, and these were designated as follows:

• major NATO commands (MNCs) – the most senior appointments, at four-star level, normally designated ‘Supreme Allied Commander …’ (SAC); e.g. SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe);

• principal subordinate commands (PSCs) – the next level down, headed by a commander-in-chief (CINC) at either three- or four-star level; e.g. CINCENT (Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Central Europe);

• major subordinate commands (MSCs) – these were usually at four-star level, headed by a commander; e.g. COMCENTAG (Commander Central Army Group).fn5

It was clear that one supreme allied commander would be required for Europe (SACEUR), that he would be an American, and that he should be the most prestigious military officer of the day. Thus, General Dwight D. Eisenhower took up this appointment on 2 April 1951, with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the British former military head of the Western Union Defence Organization (Brussels Treaty) forces, as his deputy. They established Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) at Fontainebleau in France, and quickly agreed on a command structure, which was in place in November 1951. This consisted of:

• Allied Land Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) – a four-star land command covering Benelux, France and West Germany;

• Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AIRCENT) – a four-star air command, covering the same geographical area as AFCENT;

• Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) – a four-star, joint (i.e. navy, army, air force) command, covering Denmark and Norway;

• Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) – a four-star joint command, covering Italy and the western Mediterranean, and including the US Sixth Fleet;

• Flag Officer Western Europe (FOWE) – who provided naval representation to SHAPE, but commanded only the French, UK and US Rhine flotillas.

It was, however, significant that the British refused to place the land or air defences of the United Kingdom under NATO. As a result, the land defence of the UK remained a national responsibility throughout the Cold War, although, as will be discussed later, the air defence eventually did become a NATO responsibility.

If SACEUR’s demesne was agreed without much disagreement, the same cannot be said of the Atlantic, where the two basic issues were the subdivisions of the command and the fact that both the Americans and the British wanted to provide the sea-going commander. The matter was not just a question of national prestige, however: it also included important factors of wartime strategy, with the United States being concerned about troops and supply convoys crossing the Atlantic in a west–east direction in war, while British concerns centred on south–north trade routes, including that for oil. Many meetings were held and a large number of alternative plans were discussed, with the naval discussions not being helped when the issue entered the British political arena in 1951, with Churchill, at that time the leader of the opposition, attacking the socialist government (led by Clement Attlee) for agreeing to a US officer as SACLANT. The problem was also complicated by disagreements over command in the Mediterranean and in the southern part of NATO’s Atlantic area, which had already been designated IBERLANT.

In the autumn of 1951 a British general election put the problem on hold, and when Churchill again became prime minister, on 26 October, the question of NATO naval commands featured high on his list of priorities. Churchill went to Washington in January 1952, and after a round of fierce arguments he eventually gave way, although a British admiral was to be appointed Deputy SACLANT. The principle agreed, the navy planners then set up a complicated organizational system which involved numerous situations where an officer held two appointments (known as ‘double-hatting’) or even three (‘triple-hatting’), although the problems inherent in such an arrangement were alleviated by having separate staffs for the various functions.

The problems did not go away, however, and among the knotty issues was the question of the US navy’s aircraft carriers. The control of atomic weapons aboard these carriers was governed by the US McMahon Act, which stipulated that control could not be passed to another power, and this raised a major hurdle when the US Navy’s Strike Fleet Atlantic (STRIKE-FLTLANT) was operating in the Eastern Atlantic area, where the NATO commander was Commander-in-Chief Eastern Atlantic (CINCEASTLANT), a British officer. There were also problems over IBERLANT, which were eventually solved by placing Commander IBERLANT, a British officer, under CINCEASTLANT.

After much argument, the naval organization in the Atlantic settled down in late 1952:

• SACLANT (US) and his deputy (UK) were in the headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia;

• STRIKEFLTLANT remained under the command of SACLANT, regardless of its position in the Atlantic;

• CINCWESTLANT (US) exercised command over most of the northern Atlantic, with two sub-area commands: US Atlantic Sub-Area and Canadian Sub-Area;

• CINCEASTLANT (UK) controlled four geographical sub-areas – Central (UK), Northern (UK), Biscay (French) and IBERLANT (UK) – with a fifth functional command (Commander Submarines Eastern Atlantic (COMSUBEASTLANT)), being a British officer.

One notable difference between the American and other command systems concerned the air. Under the US system the naval commander controlled all his air assets, since the US navy had assumed responsibility for long-range maritime patrol aircraft from the (then) US Army Air Force in 1943. Under the British and French systems, however, land-based air support was provided by the air force, as a result of which there were two commanders of equal rank – one navy, one air force – at EASTLANT and at the geographical sub-areas.

Similar difficulties faced the planners in the Mediterranean. The British had considerable interests here: they regarded the sea lines of communication (SLOC) as vital to their wartime requirements; they were strongly involved in Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Egypt; and they had a predominant interest in the security of the Suez Canal. They had also, as they pointed out, been the predominant naval power in the region for some 150 years, and maintained a sizeable Mediterranean Fleet, based in Malta. The French also had strong interests here, since they had colonial ties with Morocco and Tunisia, while Algeria was legally a département of France, and they needed to secure the north–south SLOC to metropolitan France. The US Sixth Fleet was permanently based in the Mediterranean, but, since it carried atomic weapons, its command, was subject to the McMahon Act. Italy also had a major interest, as the largest power bordering the Mediterranean and with a rapidly growing navy. Allied to all this was a totally new factor – the imminent entry of Greece and Turkey into the Atlantic Alliance, with a concomitant need to accommodate the geographically adjacent but traditionally hostile countries into the command structure.

A further and novel factor was added to the situation when the British posted Admiral Earl Mountbatten as commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet. This was seen as slightly underhand by some Americans, although it was part of such a senior officer’s normal career progression. Nevertheless, the British could not deny that such a thrusting, charismatic and successful officer – he had previously served as Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia Command from 1943 to 1945, as viceroy of India in 1947 and as governor-general of India in 1947–8 – might not have some influence on the situation.

A series of plans was proposed by the tri-national Standing Group at NATO Headquarters, by SACEUR and by the various nations involved, but every one of them met with a fundamental objection from one or several of the parties concerned. Eventually, however, a compromise was reached in which:

• Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Mediterranean (CINCAFMED) (UK) reported direct to SACEUR;

• geographical subordinates were Gibraltar (GIBMED) (UK), Occidentale (MEDOC) (French), Central (MEDCENT) (Italian), South-East (MEDSOUEAST) (UK), Eastern (MEDEAST) (Greek), and North-Eastern (MEDNOREAST) (Turkish);

• there were also three functional commands: US Patrols Mediterranean (USPATMED) (US),fn6 Submarines Mediterranean (SUBMED) (UK) and Submarines North-East (SUBMEDNOREAST) (Turkey).

Admiral Mountbatten duly set up his NATO headquarters in Malta in December 1952, but without STRIKEFORSOUTH – the US Sixth Fleet – which remained under CINCAFSOUTH, an American four-star officer with his headquarters in Naples, Italy.

These examples from the very early days of NATO show one of the underlying strengths of the Alliance: not that bureaucratic conflicts – which might today be termed ‘star wars’ – were avoided, but that they were always resolved. It would have been too much to expect that the various national susceptibilities would not have resulted in some bruising discussions, but somehow the will was always there to find a solution.

The organization did not, of course, remain static: it changed to meet altered circumstances in national organizations and to match political and military developments within the Alliance. Thus the national ‘share’ of appointments had to be adjusted to include the Germans in 1955, again in 1966 to cover the departure of the French, and yet again in 1982 to accommodate Spain, although Spain did not enter the integrated command structure.

In the late 1960s two events increased yet further the importance of the UK to the Alliance. The first was the move of many USAF air bases from France to the UK as a result of General De Gaulle’s diktat; the second was the adoption in 1967 of the strategy of ‘flexible response’. As a result the British Isles became of major significance as a base for offensive and defensive operations, and their security became a matter of great concern to the Alliance. A new NATO command was therefore established on 10 April 1975, when Commander UK Air Forces (CINCUKAIR) took post at High Wycombe, England. CINCUKAIR was ‘double-hatted’ as Commander-in-Chief RAF Strike Command, and, although only a major subordinate commander (MSC), he reported directly to SACEUR. This brought British airspace firmly under NATO’s control in war, but failed to cause the sort of political and public reactions which had made the decisions on the naval commands in the Atlantic and Mediterranean so difficult in the 1950s.

When NATO was set up there were two principal subordinate commands (PSCs) on the Continent: Land Forces Central Europe and Air Forces Central Europe. The air-force headquarters was subsequently disbanded, but was resurrected in 1975 as Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), although a directive by NATO’s Defence Planning Committee that it should be moved from Ramstein in southern Germany and collocated with AFCENT at Brunssum was successfully resisted by the air forces until well past the end of the Cold War.

Physical moves were also made. As has already been described, the French decision to leave the integrated military structure also involved a large-scale movement of NATO facilities from France to Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For different reasons HQ IBERLANT was transferred from Gibraltar to Lisbon, Portugal, in 1966, and HQ Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH) from Malta to Naples in 1971.