The Secret Soviet invasion plans

Soon after WW II the Generals in Moscow hatched plans to invade Western Europe. They knew that none of the war-ravaged countries were able to resist and that the United States’ population would not let their boys fight another war in Europe. Stalin had not to mind the opinion of the Soviet peoples.

Later in the Cold War in 1955 East Germany’s German Democratic Republic joined the Warsaw Pact. By and by up to 7000 full battle tanks were stationed most of them in Thuringia, just east of western Germany’s Land Hessen the biggest city of which is Frankfurt. There was the powerful U.S. Forces base.

The most logical and tempting deployment route ideal for a mobilized attack is the North European Plain. All the port cities from Hamburg over Rotterdam and Antwerp  to Le Havre were easy to integrate into the Russian Empire. But there was a problem: The Americans would interfere from Frankfurt and bring in more reinforcements by air and sea.

The alternative route was the ‘Fulda Gap’ leading straight to Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern, that the Americans called K-town and the nearby Ramstein Air Base. Only that would be a hard nut to crack, but the Moscow militarists fancied to reach the French border within 7 days. They still maintained the plan in the 1970ties when Europe was united and NATO was ready and able to protect it. In blitz attacks the tanks would conquer Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg  for none of these countries had nuclear arms.

The problem was France with President Charles de Gaulle’s nuclear Force de Frappe.  The Soviet strategists anticipated that France or England or both would nuke a line in Poland along the Vistula River in order to block Soviet supply lines. They rejoiced the prospect of having millions of the recalcitrant arch-enemy Poles killed. In the further movements, Czechoslovac s and Hungarians would march through Austria into Bavaria and over the Alps into Italy. The Russians  would lay a nuclear barrage along the Rhine River  and move near Saarland into France and passing by Nancy and Lyon reaching  Marseilles on the Mediterranean on the 11th day. Soviet Submarines would sink American supply ships in the Atlantic.

The bellicose generals realized the weaknesses of their plan: Before reaching the French border they would run out of oil. Resuppling  through enemy country was questionable.  But worse: They knew that the 7th US Army Field Artillery Detachment  had stationed tactical nuclear weapons  in Treysa in North Hessen just at the entrance of the Fulda Gap:  the Rocket Artillery Batallion 22 with 6 nuclear armed short-range rockets Honest John 762 mm and also 6 M-110 self propelled cannons  capable of throwing 203 mm nuclear shells.  I myself saw those weapons when in 1969 I passed my military service at Treysa.

As soon as the Soviet war machine would enter West German territory, the NATO generals had no other choice than to release those weapons killing all personnel in and out the vehicles. They gave up the plan.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Chrushchew and from 1964 on Brezhnev were both staunch cold warriors but would not consider a hot war. In 1990 the Soviet Union broke asunder due to bankruptcy. 

When in 1994 the Russians withdrew all their military equipment from re-united Germany’s soil they burnt tons of documents in Berlin but they forgot to burn the invasion plans. When in 1999 the Czech Republic joined  NATO the Generals found the identical plans in Prague. Since then the Soviet secret invasion plans are no longer secret.