How deep in the soil, how deep in the soul, does the Fence go that divides the German people into two parts?
Here, from this hilltop, we can see some of the Fence. It is not a straight scar that defaces the land; it runs up, over, and down the hills, plunges into the Werra River, and emerges on the opposite bank to slash a village in two. It makes two barns of one, two houses of one, two families of one. Then it rolls on, following its mysterious course, and disappears into the woods on a distant rise.
And in the fields, along the Fence, the German peasants work as did their fathers, one Communist brother on one side, one Capitalist brother on the other side. The Capitalist villages are blooming with the West German economic boom and the roads are filled with automobiles. The other side appears dull and silent, as if some evil genius had sterilized economic life. Where do the fruits of the labors of these people go? It is the same labor, of the same people, on the same land, both sides of the Fence. Why this stunning contrast? Perhaps East German labor is completely wasted through the deficiencies of an artificial system devised by “eggheads” and imposed and exploited by a political mafia; or maybe the fruits go somewhere else—into some collective enterprise far away from this corner of land, far away from the daily needs of these humble people. Does it go to Moscow? Westerners just back from Moscow do not seem to think so. They tell stories of having to get nails from Stockholm, of disregard for individual needs in Russia itself. The Marshall Plan, American aid, or “capitalist” genius are not enough to explain such a striking difference. There must be another factor beyond the Fence, guarded by the Fence, these watch towers, these grey patrols—a factor which has permitted these people to reach the moon before us.
Hans, a 23-year-old East German, does not know how deep the Fence goes, but he knows how high it is and how fragile it is. He has crossed it. Twice.
He had seen the neon lights, bright and beckoning. He had received enticing letters from relatives and friends in the West. He had listened to the siren’s song of the Capitalist radio. Full of hope, he had crossed over into West Berlin.
It took only a few days for him to realize that he was a pauper wandering alone in a glittering jungle. The bright lights burned on, close enough to touch now, but there was no warmth. The shining automobiles, the TV sets, the brilliant baubles and trinkets, the riot of pastel colors, the glistening chrome and stainless steel, all of it belonged to others.
In East Germany, he had pushed a wagon which belonged to the State and, he reasoned, as a member of the State, it was his own wagon, or at least partly his. As he pushed his wagon, he had often thought of himself as a soldier in civilian garb, striving with his fellow soldiers, men and women, toward a goal which was too high up, too far away for him to comprehend. Now, he was like a private on a battlefield, isolated from comrades and leaders, surrounded by an army of avaricious men who cared nothing for him personally, but wanted only his money, his skills, his strength, his loyalty. And he had none to give.
Perhaps Hans’s decision was inevitable. He crossed over the Fence, back to the gray, silent, sterile world he did not quite understand, but which, he knew, understood him. All his education has tended to tie his individual feelings to those of the group. Here, on the West side of the Fence, he was alone, lost.
Will people like Hans ever return to more natural, more human feelings? Will Communism lessen its pressure and will individualism appear again behind the Fence? Very likely, yes. Many signs point to that direction. But when? And meanwhile, what?
Meanwhile, on the dark side of the Fence, there is one objective: conquest of the world by Communism. Nothing less. In various guises throughout history, the stirring trumpet call to action, devotion to a momentous cause, has inspired millions of eager young men to lay down their lives. Under Communism, the “ideal” differs only in the wording appeasing the conscience or in the clarion call for action. To restless youth any cause seems good merely if it exists, but especially if it has been blessed with initial success. The Crusaders, the American pioneers, the French Revolutionists, the Nazis, the Fascists, the Franquiste, the Viet Minh, all were sincere, and no one can contend that their successes were not, in their own minds, due to the holiness of their causes. They were young men who had found an ideal, and all military commanders know that young men are vulnerable and enthusiastic followers. The Communist techniques of indoctrination have reached an unprecedented state of perfection behind the Fence. Beware of the youth who come under their influence.
Meanwhile, too, there is one ideal carefully worded: Communism, trumpeted from Moscow. Its true value is unimportant as long as it succeeds and provides action for young men who prefer action to inaction.
One objective, one ideal, and one banner— the Red flag. Already it ties together one- third of humanity, which is unprecedented in history. At a time when Kansas City is nine flying hours from Paris, technical progress requires some common symbol to translate the fact that the world is shrinking quickly and solidarity of men is increasing.
The Communists have such a symbol. The Eastern side of the Fence has a common banner from Kassel to Hanoi. Other Red flags are hidden in the basements in Paris, London, Rome, Madrid, Chicago, Casablanca, Buenos Aires. And, in those cities, a vague disquiet haunts the bourgeois when their sons begin to learn Russian. In those cities, in all the West, the only common banner has been the Red flag hidden in the basements, and the only bond has been the common fear of that flag shared by the great Western nations.
Once, a long time ago, the Christian faith launched Crusaders, conquistadors, and pioneers on their conquest of the world, in the name of an ideal. Now it sometimes seems that the capitalistic, merchants who dominate the West find in the Christian principles only an excuse to offer the left cheek when they are hit on the right. And, on our side of the Fence, new flags divide and weaken the Free World and pave the way for the Red flag. The myth of independence and hidebound nationalism, as outdated as the waterwheel in the atomic age but inevitable as a first step toward “sovereignty,” has torn whole continents to pieces, leaving them easy prey for the Communists.
The result is that the underdeveloped nations, whose primary objective is, quite naturally, material development, have now become the primary objective of Communist aggression. This passionate flowering of proud nationalistic flags comes at a time when the Red flag binds one-third of the human race and casts its shadow on the rest. The fact is that the educated youth of these nations has all too often been deeply infiltrated by Marxist propaganda in Moscow, or even on the left bank of the Seine. Furthermore, these underdeveloped countries can only retrogress relatively. They are starting with a handicap of two centuries, and will continue to lose ground, due to the fantastic acceleration of present technical progress in modern nations. They can survive, for a time, by playing off East against West. But they might have to make a choice.
Ours is but one side of the coin being offered them. On the one side, there is the Communist system, with its statements of dynamic idealism, its grass roots organization, and its world-wide common Red banner, offering at first a life of austerity, but with the glittering promise of universal peace and prosperity by which one billion people have already been lured. To what extent can the Western nations use their high standards of living as a weapon of inducement and persuasion in the economic battle just beginning? To what extent will the Western merchants agree to pay the fantastic and ever-increasing bill for this new and vital type of conflict between the two systems? And if they pay, what will be left for the others?
Everything, in the matter of our defense, seems to begin with a problem of time. In the long run, the West must hold firm until the time comes when the natural decline of enthusiasm will bring the Communist fanatics to a more human approach to life. In the short run, our main problem is to stand fast against the combinations of subversion—the Red Pawns—and military might—the Red Queen.
The formidable loss of control suffered by the West all around the world, with the fall of the British, Dutch, Belgian, and French empires, has opened to the Red techniques a providential lebensraum in the center of the world’s main sources of raw material. This might have been avoided if the Western nations had realized in time the magnitude of the threat and tried not to misunderstand each other’s reasons for action. Who could seriously believe that endless Colonialism was the ultimate goal of European democracies? Did their historical records and their proclaimed goals justify such a suspicion? Their past experience gave no reason to believe that they were so stupid as to deprive the natives of these countries, however immature politically, of self-government. Yet, they gave them independence before they were ready, and also gave an organization especially trained to seize such opportunities an excellent opportunity to do so.
But the big risk has been taken and the chips are down. The Southern flank of Europe, and South America, are now wide open to Khrushchev’s pawns. If Fidel Castro and Company can open eyes in the American Hemisphere, if the pressure of events can oblige the old countries of Europe to look at the future instead of searching for reminders of their glamorous past history, if the Western Alliance can be extended to meet the dimensions of the threat, then something can be done. It is certainly not too late, but time is running short.
The first step should be to explode the theory that the Red flag is the only common symbol of unity on a shrinking planet, and that the Soviets are the only faithful allies. We should institute a clear and common world-wide policy for anti- Communist forces, an appeal for unity, the psychological impact of which would be tremendous, and a guarantee of solidarity, like Moscow’s guarantee for those who adhere to her international gang.
The second step should be to prevent the Red Pawns from being the only fighters at the village level. At the root of native societies, the only active propaganda is too often the Red one. Often Western diplomatic relations with the native gentlemen in new capitals do not go very deep and do not reach the level from which the Red flags may one day begin to emerge.
Needless to say, these steps will be easier said than done. To rest our case solely on the blessings of capitalism or free enterprise, in countries where this would probably mean, at least in the beginning, wealth for a few and starvation for many, might not be the answer. A certain amount of socialism has to be accepted and perhaps encouraged at first. Short of wealth, socialism is the only proven anti-Communist vaccine. To strive for democracy and individualism in countries which need primarily a strong political organization might also be a mistake. Democracy is, in fact, the last step of political evolution, unrealistic for backward countries only recently released from colonialism.
The third step, assuming a new Western determination and unity, and some kind of organization in depth devoted to the Western cause as the Communist organization is devoted to Moscow, would then be financial support—which if improperly used would be completely wasted and would probably work to the benefit of social revolutions of which Red China is an example. Are the Western merchants ready to pay the appalling bill? Not if the policies of their government do not afford them some serious guarantee for their money.
Can we stop the Red Pawns? Can we stop the political machinery built by the Russians for a special purpose and refined for 40 years?
Above all, can the United States or Europe make it alone with their 40-year handicap? Probably not, for they need each other. When and where, for example, would the United States find the army of civil servants and technicians knowing the countries and speaking the language to help the new communities cope with the needs of the atomic age? Where, on the other hand, would Europe find the necessary money and the background of H-bombs to command respect from populations which still worship at the altar of brute force? Can the divided United Nations work effectively against the Red Pawns as long as they count in their own ranks so many of these pawns?
The general Western counteroffensive can and must start. It is not too late. Some very heartening signs come from Africa where the Communist failure in Guinea has been noticed by the new nations. This counteroffensive could still win the game against the Red Pawns if it reflects the common determination that has been devised with NATO or SEATO, against the Red Queen.
The fourth dimension of the war will divert money and manpower badly needed in other fields. In peacetime, with peacetime economies, it would be totally unrealistic to hope that conventional systems much more costly than nuclear weapons could be built by Western democracies both to stop the progress of the Red Pawns and to face the threat of the Red Queen. The “come - back - to - conventional- mass-armies” idea is just a dream of people who are probably not ready to give up their second TV set or extra automobile, or permit a universal and immediate draft for their sons to match the billion Communists, man for man. The military problems then, cannot be thought out independently from the civilian problems. The strategic and tactical consequences of the new global character of war (half civilian, half military) should be examined with the realization that the choice of an answer to the threat of the Red Army in the early and decisive stages of an eventual armed conflict is a narrow one.
It seems to me that the necessity for this vital counteroffensive against the Red Pawns, within the limits accepted by Western economies, obliges the West now to find a cheap system, able to deter any move of the Red Queen. It should be a shield able to protect Western Europe from the Red Army without blowing up the whole planet—a shield permitting our counteroffensive in the Cold War, which, at the same time, would give us time to mobilize the Western members in a hot war. It should be a shield able to save a town like Kassel without destroying Moscow, New York, Paris, and London.
Barbed wire in itself does not have a significant defensive advantage over clothesline type wire;- any pincer cuts both easily. But its barbs have a tremendous psychological value. They communicate the will to defend. The man who plans to cross barbed wire knows definitely that he will be hurt.
The barbs of our wire have to be atomic barbs if we want to convince the enemy that he cannot cross our fence without getting, automatically, on the spot, an atomic rebuff. Short of that, we open the door to miscalculations and to temptation. It is unfair to tease Khrushchev’s main weakness: his enormous appetite. It is a sin. The poor man could succumb to temptation, or to the pressures of his own fanatics if it is proven that the Western “paper tiger” is not ready to use his “nuclear teeth.”
All in all, the best deterrent against Khrushchev’s possible folly would be for us to overcome our abhorrence of using nuclear weapons. We must be prepared—more, we must be resolved—to use them. And Chairman Khrushchev must not be allowed to doubt our resolve. The mute soldier, holding the line with a loaded weapon, and possessing the determination to use it if need be, speaks far more eloquently than the heroic “intentions” of politicians. But who would be impressed by sentinels who have not the authority to fire anything but blank shots?
Should deterrence fail, only this line of maximum atomic lethality could save Europe from the Red tidal wave and possibly prevent all-out nuclear war. Even if this hope is very slim, even if a chain reaction from nuclear war to thermonuclear suicide appears likely, this is no reason to reject the only chance we have.
Can we capitalize on our nuclear stockpiles, our only military asset, in view of the present political trends? The heartening fact is the steady growth of these stockpiles. Nuclear plants, since 1945, have been producing tirelessly, silently these “pills of military power,” which Khrushchev cannot swallow. He knows very well that they have made all the difference between his proclaimed objectives and their quick attainment, and that the combined strength of Western nuclear reactors is bigger than his own. He has stirred up a campaign to get rid of them, and found, as usual, legions of Western idealists to support his drive.
Generally speaking, the old dream of disarmament may not be feasible, without a radical modification of human nature. Hiroshima and Auschwitz give no hint of any modification in the approach to human destruction since Attila. And should some change occur among the civilized, the reserve of savages is sufficient on our planet to guarantee the survival of many wolves among the sheep.
We must also ask ourselves if atomic disarmament can prevent war. It can be safely said that peace has slept on nuclear stockpiles. Without them, World War III would probably have occurred already. The abortive wars—Korea, Indochina, Berlin, Suez, etc.— and the bastard truces are due to the fear of nuclear weapons, not to their absence. This new god imposes wisdom by terror. Why not accept it after all? Let war die from excess of weapons, until it dies for good, by default. In the meantime, peace is worth some risks!
It is currently argued, in political circles in the United States, that the use of any nuclear weapon is bound to trigger the I CBM, and thermonuclear suicide; that the only “firebreak” thinkable to stop the extension of the blaze is to be drawn between the conventional explosive and the nuclear one—even the smallest Davy Crockett of an infantry man or depth charge of the Navy. This thinking tends to put the whole nuclear arsenal in the same category as biological or other “inhuman” forms of warfare.
It is quite natural for Americans to try to avoid provoking the use of a weapon which they gave to the world, and which has turned the tables, destroyed their protective ocean barriers, and made them vulnerable as never before. Maybe some foresighted policy could have prevented the building, in the first place, and then the spread of such a double-edged weapon. Maybe the U. S. “monopoly” and “secrets” have compelled, more than hampered, foes and friends alike to master the nuclear techniques, if only for reasons of scientific curiosity or national self respect. Nobody will ever know which would have been the wiser policy. The wheel of history cannot be reversed, and now U. S. cities are under the threat of U. S.-invented weapons.
But, if such a firebreak is to be drawn, it should include all the military uses of the atom, not just its explosive uses. For instance, is it really logical to allow the nuclear submarines to capitalize on their nuclear plant without countering this enormous advantage by the use of nuclear depth charges? Is there any defense effective with TNT against such deadly nuclear-propelled fish, hunting surface shipping with conventional torpedoes? I don’t know, not being an expert in ASW, but this might be an area where such a firebreak seems easier to dream of than to draw practically.
Whatever the value of this type of firebreak, there is a little known but inescapable consequence of its prospect, which might make all the difference between victory or defeat for the land forces, if deterrence were to fail.
No soldier in the world has ever had or will ever have any confidence in a “questionable weapon,” a weapon he does not control. The tacticians cannot and will not build a doctrine on the sand of a hypothetical arsenal, whatever its strength; there are no tactics for Russian roulette. Unfortunately, these days, the nuclear mushroom takes the shape of a question mark, and those who have the terrific responsibility of finding the proper ways to use it on the tactical battlefield cannot and will not dare to give up the certainties of conventional warfare to the shadow of uncertain weapons. They never did devise a tactical doctrine around chemical weapons before World War II. They only studied halfheartedly their technical aspects. They did not “believe” in chemical warfare.
The firebreak that some politicians would currently like to draw between nuclear and conventional weapons stretches as a deadly doubt in the minds of our tacticians. The politicians can easily remind us that nuclear war is “too serious to be left to the military.” The fact is that their “control” of nuclear weapons prevents the soldiers, psychologically, from “believing” as they should in their arms. This is new in history; consciously or not, politics paralyzes tactics. Are not tactics in turn, “too serious to be left to the civilians”? Is not the truth somewhere in the middle?
The rest of this article is based on the premise that the firebreak, in the spectrum of escalation, is not to be found in the nature of weapons, but in the areas where they might be applied. This geographical firebreak does not seem more diificult to control than the reactions of a soldier provided with nuclear weapons, and tempted to shoot them if his personal survival is at stake, in the heat of the battle, no matter what might be his administrative right to shoot. In this respect, the firebreak, other than geographical, appears indeed extremely thin, unless we deprive once and for all the Western armies of their modern weapons, which would certainly be agreeable to Mr. Khrushchev & Company.
Now, without inhibitions, let us try to see how our nuclear combat power might be used on the battlefield, to prevent war or to win it.
First of all, it should be clearly recognized that man is not a bird, not a fish, but a terrestrial animal. The plight of infantry men is surely not rosy, and nobody likes to have his feet in the mud. This instinctive disgust was perhaps behind the recent Western trend to escape into the stratosphere, but Korea and Indochina have brought us back in the mud. The Air Force weapon, although it was unopposed there, did not win those wars. This is an uncomfortable but inescapable fact. Paris will not be saved from the moon.
Three mortal dangers face the West at the beginning of World War II'I, destruction of the U. S. potential, loss of the seas, and land capture of Western Europe. The Air Force and Navy take care of the first two. No answer is yet satisfactory for the third. The land forces should not rely any longer only on the SAC to save their skin.
To remain realistic, there is no hope that the Western democracies will awake before the Reds cross the Fence. We cannot hope to have sufficient numbers in peacetime to match the Red tidal wave when it starts; nor can we hope to stop it without using nuclear weapons; nor hope to win if we have not the proper tactical doctrine. The space available in Western Europe does not permit any tactical mistake in the beginning. The French bitterly learned, in June 1940, the true value of tactical doctrine.
Then the key question is, are our ground forces provided with enough nuclear weapons, and are they properly trained to use them to perform this vital blocking action in view of the fact that the Red tidal wave has also nuclear weapons? Are our means and doctrine adequate to save Kassel and Paris without, in effect, using a “boomerang”? Probably not, since our strategy has, up to now, given the main mission to the Air Force and confined the Army to mere exploitation of the Air Force’s success in the atomic cemetery.
To the first question, the number of weapons, the means, the answer is secret. Only a few, even a few Americans, know the status of Western stockpiles, and these few may not have time to find the proper way of using them. At a period when the need for original military thinking is vital, Western military thought is sterilized because the status of our stockpiles is kept secret. Only the enemy knows it, approximately, since he operates a spy ring which has already permitted him to catch up quickly in technology.
The following reasoning, then, may be entirely false. It is based only on guesses about the military means available to defend Europe. The guess is based on public declarations in the United States—questionable ones —that the American stockpile is already enough to destroy humanity; and on the certain fact that this stockpile is growing, since the atomic plants are still at work. The trend, anyway, is not questionable: the number of weapons probably increases faster in the United States, England, France, than in the U.S.S.R., and has reached, or will reach, a status which permits:
(1) Keeping sufficient nuclear weapons to vaporize the enemy territory if need be, to neutralize the enemy’s air nuclear power and prevent, through deterrence, extinction of the white race. Keeping, also, enough nuclear weapons for our navies to maintain their vital mastery of the seas. This is an absolute prerequisite.
(2) Giving to the land forces, in nuclear combat power, permanently “mobilized” in Western Europe the strength we cannot give them in conventional numbers, and permitting them to do their job; which is deterrence or war between armies, not annihilation of civilians; saving Kassel and Paris and New York. Only land forces properly equipped and used with an appropriate doctrine can do so in the atomic age.
Paradoxically, it may be that nuclear weapons properly employed could prevent an inhuman massacre of cities, as occurred in World War II. Perhaps the unprecedented power of military forces, concentrated against enemy military forces, could obliterate them fast enough without being obliged to destroy their civilian roots. In killing the final product without destroying the raw material, i.e., cities and civilians, women and children, we could progress again from indiscriminate massacre to traditional laws of war, which were the first step of civilization. We might reverse this extraordinary trend of modern military thinking which has proposed the solution of military problems through mass slaughter of civilians. It is a kind of Stone Age strategy advocating extinction of the hostile tribe, which explains the reluctance of the politicians to give the military the authority for using their modern weapons.
We should apply nuclear power in the battle area only. Limit nuclear war, not in violence, which is unrealistic, but in its geographical extension. At least it is worth a try at the beginning, before resorting to suicide. Some wisdom might emerge from the first nuclear mushrooms, if they are not put on Moscow, Paris, or Washington right at the start.
But if the land forces inherit the mission given to the air arm in the last decade (i.e., try to stop the tidal wave, without the SAC bombing Moscow), the whole tactical picture is changed during the initial defensive phase. We have to think defense first, and to have a look at our present tactical doctrine in this matter. Because our present defensive doctrine, which assumes that the tidal wave impetus will be broken mainly from the rear by massive and general nuclear massacre, ties the fate of the land forces to the success of the Air Force and rigid, suicidal, thermonuclear strategy, the Western military dinosaur should be more concerned with the numerous teeth of the Russian bear. Tactics inherited from thermonuclear strategy in turn implies enemy counteruse of his own thermonuclear strategy. With our present tactical doctrine, quick escalation cannot be avoided.
“Offense is the best defense”-—this is the background of our thinking. But beware of words.
Obviously, when feasible, the offensive is better. Only the offensive can achieve victory, of course. Yet, we have now to face reality. Before taking Moscow, the first step is to prevent the tidal wave from taking Paris. Democracies are not truculent by nature, and military thinking has to evolve from political background. Since we do not want to attack militarily, and are not prepared to, our first job is to defend.
After World War I, Verdun, where the German armies had their backs broken against the wall of fire of French artillery and the bayonets of French infantrymen, the Maginot Line was built. The tank and the airplane were forgotten, although the few armor breakthroughs at the end of World War I could have raised a doubt as to the value of defensive lines, as to the superiority of firepower over a newcomer, and as to static defenses against mobile armor and its air support.
The much advertised and glamorized German Panzer blitzkrieg of World War II, in the beginning, and the Patton army at the end, are now the background of Western military thinking. It is almost a sin in our military schools to hint that attack at all costs should not be the cardinal rule, even in defense. Our tacticians appear to have a kind of Maginot complex, trying to avoid any move that could make them suspect of returning to such stupidity as belief in the Maginot Line position defense.
It seems to me that this attitude is dictated more by conformity to the general worship of blitzkrieg than by a serious approach to the problem of tactical nuclear war.
I would certainly not defend the Maginot Line which, 20 years ago, precipitated the collapse of my country from its top military position among the world military powers to its present situation. However, its disastrous effect on the French military posture in 1940 was more due to the consumption of money and brains to the detriment of offensive weapons and aggressive thinking (such as tanks or planes) than to its technical inability to perform its assigned missions. It should be pointed out that the Panzer breakthrough was achieved at a spot where this fortification had not yet been completed. To derive definite conclusions, such as condemnation of fortification and linear defense in the nuclear age, from this example is extraordinarily dangerous. The ill-fated Maginot Line could, in my opinion, kill us twice, because the remembrance of its failure haunts the minds of our tacticians and pushes them to the opposite excess. They behave as if they had forgotten the fantastic new development which gives to firepower and protection (i.e., Maginot fortified lines) an unprecedented boost—the nuclear weapon, which not only changes the rules of the game, but the game itself.
The primary consequence of its effects should multiply tenfold the factors that forced the armies to bog down in World War I. Everybody admits that the increase in firepower due to the machine gun and massed artillery resulted in a stabilization of fronts, because no surface movement was easy under the deluge of iron. If this were true (and it was true), how can we think that the new weapon would not stop surface movement? How can we deny that defensive action from protected underground shelter—ten times more difficult and costly to destroy and at least as difficult to detect as surface movement—has a terrific advantage over offense? Such an advantage can now give us the hope of stopping land forces without crushing their distant rear bases and, ultimately, the whole planet.
How can we then worship exclusively the word “mobility,” and still depend to a great extent on the tank which, although it was once able to breach machine gun and artillery lines, suffered serious setbacks in Korea, setbacks inflicted by enemies who weren’t armed with nuclear weapons?
Why think that mobility is the only answer in defense? Of course mobility has its merits; of course the tank, is not obsolete. Of course we have to think defense only to win the delays required by our democracies to build up our strength in hot war, and to protect our counteroffensive in cold war.
Obviously, the ultimate offensive phase would require more tanks than ever, since only armor can easily cross contaminated areas. Obviously, in defense we need fast- moving reserves to counterattack penetrations, and armor to crush airborne elements dropped behind our defensive front.
No one could seriously challenge the need of mobility. But, again, excess is a sin. The trees should not hide the forest. The forest is, nowadays, the capabilities of nuclear explosions to vaporize instantly enormous surfaces of terrain. For the unavoidable defensive phase of World War III, all our thinking should start from this premise, and not try to superimpose nuclear weapons on conventional warfare, as we do in all our military schools. We should not try to limit the power of nuclear explosives to the arrows of maneuver, solely because our tacticians like to draw complicated arrows on the map.
Beware of tacticians, beware of “scholastics” in time of revolutionary changes. Sometimes the most spectacular failures are achieved through complicated reasoning by very intelligent people. War is simple; military reasoning should be simple. Here the axe of common sense, able to cut a tree, might be a better tool than the razor blade of intelligence, able to cut a hair in four parts. Both are necessary. Begin the work with an axe; finish with a razor blade.
It seems to me that in the field of defense, at least of Western Europe, common sense would not reach the same conclusion as our tacticians.
Would you, in order to stop a flood, build a dam with holes in it? Our present concept of defense amounts exactly to that. “Defense in depth,” “defensive offensive,” “mobile defense,” “area battles”—all imply clearly that the tidal wave should be allowed to infiltrate our positions, in order to be destroyed within them, through the use of nuclear weapons and armored counte'r attacks. This can work when the disproportion in numbers is not too high, but the trouble is that the Soviet offensive doctrines recommend exactly what we allow them to do: penetrate our dispositions everywhere, in order to paralyze the use of our nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, they reason can be used only if there is a clear-cut separation between the enemy and themselves. This clear-cut separation—strong enough to resist night infiltration, armored raids, and correlative paralysis of our nuclear weapons, or even (why not?) infiltration of agents carrying nuclear weapons in suitcases—has a name that our tacticians cannot swallow: it is a line. Call it a continuous line, an ironclad, hermetic line, a Maginot-type line, a World War I-type line, a Korean-type line, or what you will, it is a line. Whether there must be two, four, or six of these lines occupied in order to give some depth to absorb the shock or to deceive the enemy, does not matter. The main point, the only vital point, is that the dam should not be full of holes if we want to use properly on the battlefield the only power we have now— nuclear power.
The growth of stockpiles day after day brings new building blocks to our nuclear dam. Our defensive posture, with an increase in standing manpower which would not be prohibitive under our improving economies, is growing stronger. We can now imagine a kind of nuclear barrage impassable with the present means of movement, a concept of defense unthinkable only a few years ago. In other words, firepower has taken a decisive advantage on movement for the time being, and this advantage is widening every day, since firepower increases steadily with the output of our nuclear plants. A nuclear land defense, provided it be thought out in nuclear terms, could win for us in a hot war the delays won in World Wars I and II by Verdun and Stalingrad, and assure, in the Cold War, the cheap and necessary shield for our counteroffensive against the Red Pawns.
Let us then capitalize once and for all on our main asset and adjust our tactics accordingly. Let us not worship mobility more than it deserves. Its time as a unique god on the battlefield is past. It may come back with new developments, but it is now far behind its old arch foe—firepower. But when we speak of firepower, we are speaking, we must remind ourselves, not of TNT but of nuclear weapons. It has been said that the revolution brought about by the nuclear explosion was wider than the one occasioned by gunpowder. Just as you would not build an army and a doctrine to fit both bows and arrows and gunpowder, you should not build an army and a doctrine to fit both gunpowder and nuclear weapons.
How can we solve the basic contradictions of nuclear and non-nuclear warfare? Certainly not with a smokescreen of words, such as “flexibility,” “dual capability,” “dispersion,” “quick concentration,” which cannot hide the disarray of tacticians trapped by these contradictions. It is not necessary to be a military expert to understand that a division provided with five atomic weapons to fulfill a defensive mission is not the same outfit as that division without these weapons. It is not the same outfit, either, if it can use 20 atomic weapons; all along the spectrum of allocation of weapons, the tactics have to be adjusted, from the conventional to the high-density status. The main defensive asset is, in the beginning, the physical presence of the divisions, but becomes very rapidly the crushing firepower of nuclear weapons. There is a degree beyond which “movement,” “maneuver,” completely give way to firepower to achieve defensive missions. There is a point where “conventional” and “nuclear” doctrines can no longer be integrated. We have few troops; at least let us play up firepower until the time when reinforcements arrive.
We should try to achieve an atomic fence if we want to stop the tidal wave without committing the SAC. This could be the “flexible response” in Western Europe. We should give our European land forces (completely outnumbered if they rely on mobile warfare, which quickly becomes hand-to-hand fighting, precluding the use of nuclear weapons) such tremendous firepower that the tidal wave would be vaporized on our dam, that the “bear hug” advocated by the Red Army cannot occur. We should give up the idea of battle in depth, with arrows covering all of Germany from the Fence to the Rhine (allowing hordes of civilian refugees to paralyze military movement) and concentrate our only strength—atomic weapons—on a band of terrain of maximum lethality, where the Red divisions would be destroyed. It should be a limited zone of intense battle, where no limits should be applied to the power of weapons, where all nuclear or other hardware in being could be used, if need be. It would be in effect an atomic wall, in front of the Fence, where combat surveillance and atomic artillery could play the main game, an invisible wall in peacetime, but a wall the strength of which is ever increasing. It is the only military asset in which time, apparently, is still working for us.
As for the fanatics haunted by the word mobility, is not the capability of shifting instantly “pills of military power” from Luebeck to Kassel the maximum mobility ever devised? Is not the extraordinary mobility and power of nuclear firepower able to revive the old linear defense concept killed by the armor blitz in World War II? Is not, in turn, this concept (which does not necessarily mean immobility) able to prevent the paralysis of the new weapon advocated by the Red Army, and to guarantee “freedom of action” to nuclear weapons? Should we, in the name of mobility, jeopardize the mobility of the new “Queen of battles” for the sake of recent but already aging beliefs? And behind the mobile nuclear line, would not mobile armored units and air-mobile operations remain necessary to cope with airborne assaults, to watch for possible breaks in the line, and obliterate eventual penetration? And to resume offensive operations later, when the numbers arrive from the awakened West? Are not the present tactical concepts still valid in less critical areas, where the disproportion of numbers is less likely to occur, in peripheral “limited wars” where the problem is different, since the unchallenged power of our navies is closely backing the land forces?
It is time to think one hundred per cent in terms of nuclear tactics in the nuclear age, at least to cover the vital objective which cannot be saved another way and to cover our counteroffensive. The Western decline since World War II is the result of half-hearted moves in all the fields where the enemy pushes with a relentless determination. On the battlefield, half-hearted nuclear doctrine born from a half-hearted determination to use nuclear weapons could be worse than surrender— it could mean defeat and annihilation.
Probably, behind the Fence, the slow decay of revolutionary enthusiasm that we now begin to notice will gradually bring back our Russian brothers to a more human approach to life. Nobody knows how long it will take, but it will be a long time. Forty years of brainwashing, for all the Hans’s in the world, will not fade away overnight.
Meanwhile, we have to stand fast. To stand fast against one of the most formidable war machines ever seen on earth. Against the progress of Red Pawns in the uncommitted continents, which requires absolutely a new unity of the West, a new common organization, and an immediate counteroffensive. Against the massive threat of the ICBM, through balance of power in this field. We must protect our mastery of the seas, more vital than ever.
Last, but not least, we must never let go the land; the land on which the fate of people has been, is, and always will be, determined through land battles. We must hold the line along the Fence against the unprecedented push of the whole Eurasian continent. We must hold our old Europe, whose youth would succumb to the psychological techniques and the prestige of the winner, bring Africa with them into the Red camp, and assure the victory of Communism.
We must stand firm with what we have available, should deterrence fail. We must hold our ground after H-hour to build up the necessary numbers that our political and economical systems denied to us in peacetime. We must never give up the only weapon with which we can oppose the tidal wave—the atomic weapon, used by soldiers against soldiers, to gain vital delays, to save the human race.
It is the only weapon capable of preventing war, the only one which, properly used, could save us, if war were to come. It remains the only shield able to protect us from the Reds, and the Reds from their folly, which, like everything else, grows old, decays, and may one day disappear, opening the long awaited way to the old human dream—disarmament.
Then, in retrospect, the fear of nuclear weapons may some day appear like the bitter medicine, the shock treatment that humanity, on the brink of disaster, had to take to be cured of its age-old sickness.
It is the atom, not TNT, which has already softened the Kremlin line towards “peaceful coexistence,” and which has begun to crack the Red monolith. Let us not give up the remedy when, apparently, it is just beginning to work.