The Third World War: The Untold Story

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The Third World War: The Untold Story
File:SirJohnHackett TheThirdWorldWar TheUntoldStory.jpg
First edition cover
Author Sir John Hackett
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre War novel
Publisher Sidgwick & Jackson
Publication date
 1982
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 446 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN 0-283-98863-0 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC 8640356
355.4/8 19
LC Class U313 .H33 1982b
Preceded by The Third World War: August 1985

The Third World War: The Untold Story is a novel by Sir John Hackett portraying a fictional Third World War between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces which breaks out in 1985, written in the style of a non-fiction, post-event historical account. The book was published in 1982 by Macmillan in New York and Sidgwick & Jackson in London. The book is an update to Hackett's 1978 novel, The Third World War: August 1985.

The Third World War: The Untold Story was written to incorporate what were, at the time of the writing of the original book, recent geopolitical and technological developments. In this update to his original novel, Hackett introduces newly-arising themes - including the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Additional new plot threads include material based on the proposed militarization of space, and the eventual participation of Ireland and Sweden in the war. In addition, Hackett goes into more detail on Soviet planning and doctrine.

Plot

Politburo debate

By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Politburo comes to the consensus that the country's economy is stagnating and its military may not retain superiority over the West for much longer. It would therefore be in the interests of the Soviet Union to invade Western Europe with a short, sharp blow, and then sue for peace from a position of strength.

The Politburo deliberates three attack options:

'Variant A' involves a sudden mass nuclear strike throughout the entire European theater, including Spain and Portugal. The Soviet Air Force and Aeroflot would drop Spetsnaz forces into areas not under nuclear attack. A land invasion of Western Europe would then follow intended to last 7 days, stopping at a line running from Linz-Frankfurt-Dunkirk.

'Variant B' was identical to Variant A, but with chemical and high explosives instead of nuclear weapons.

'Variant C' involves a conventional invasion with a nuclear strike as a backup option in the event of the invasion stalling.

The Politburo debates the nuclear option intensely. Eventually, it was decided that any use of nuclear weapons would inevitably escalate to a full strategic exchange which would leave the USSR so damaged as to make victory not worth while. Variant C was therefore chosen, augmented with some selective chemical strikes occurring where they might prove to be most effective, with the understanding that if the advance of Warsaw Pact forces was halted by Western resistance (led by NATO), nuclear weapons could be used to regain the initiative on the battlefield.

An invasion of the western seaboard of the United States as a distraction from Western Europe was briefly considered but then dismissed as logistically implausible due to the Soviet inability to lift enough airborne divisions and the US Naval and Air Defenses along the US west coast.

It was also agreed that it would be Soviet policy to discourage the European neutrals from entry into the war, especially Ireland and Sweden. The Politburo agreed to try to convince France to stay out of the conflict, as this would help create division in NATO and thereby make a Warsaw Pact victory more likely.

The war

The catalyst for conflict comes in July 1985, when a U.S. Marine Corps unit intervenes against a Soviet incursion into Yugoslavia. In response, the Warsaw Pact mobilizes and subsequently launches a full-scale invasion of Western Europe on 4 August 1985 (the anniversary of the start of the First World War). Soviet forces thrust through West Germany towards the Rhine, and also land forces in northern Norway and Turkey. Attacks are also carried out using long-range strategic bombing, naval forces, and even killer satellites in space.

The Soviet Union had hoped that Ireland, Sweden and France would stay out of the war, as this would take some pressure off the invading Warsaw Pact forces, making victory more likely. However, Ireland, Sweden, and France eventually side with NATO, for various reasons, in both direct and indirect ways.

Ireland (having gotten around its reluctance to become a British ally by entering into a bilateral defense agreement with France which allowed France, and thus its allies, to station naval and air forces on Ireland's west coast) enters the war when the Soviet Navy (having secretly mined Irish territorial waters) sinks an Irish naval vessel and the Soviet Air Force launches a missile attack on Shannon Airport—now home to various NATO aircraft including French fighter jets and various NATO submarine hunting planes such as the U.S. Navy's P-3C Orion.

Sweden, initially trying to stay neutral, is forced into the war when the Soviet Air Force repeatedly overflies its airspace to attack Norway. The Soviets believed that because Sweden had not been in a war since the 1800s, it would not respond. The Swedish Air Force does, however, defend its sovereign airspace, and the Soviets respond, making Sweden a de facto co-belligerent with NATO.

The Soviet conventional-force juggernaut quickly loses steam. Stiff resistance by NATO eventually foils the Soviet invasion, and Warsaw Pact forces get no further west (at least within Germany) than the town of Krefeld, and no further south than the Netherlands, which they briefly occupy.

From mid-August, the capacity of the Soviet Union to wage war is significantly attrited by the political and military desertion of some of its demoralized allies, internal dissent at home, and mutinies within its own forces.

Outside Europe, the Americans bomb Cuba, the Chinese invade Vietnam and overthrow its government, Egypt invades Libya, Japan seizes the Kurile islands, and the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet are both permanently neutralized.

To prove to the world that they are still a force to be reckoned with, the Soviets launch a successful nuclear missile strike against Birmingham, United Kingdom. The U.S. Navy and Royal Navy retaliate with a joint nuclear strike on Minsk, which accelerates the collapse of Soviet control in its satellite states. A coup d'etat led by Ukrainian nationalists overthrows the Soviet Politburo, accelerating the end of the Soviet threat.

A new post-war world

The ruins of Birmingham and Minsk are eventually turned into war memorials fronted by immense causeways, with the memorials respectively called Peace City West and Peace City East.

Hackett imagines that German reunification would be opposed by both sides after the war, and surprisingly that German reunification does not have any particular support in the two disparate German nations themselves as they have developed separate national identities.

Three new superpowers look to develop together in peace, this time regarding each other as peaceful friends and competitors in the economic sense, rather than as political and military rivals. The new superpowers are the European Confederation, the United States, and a similar Asian confederation dominated by Japan and China.

Alternate ending

In The Untold Story a separate chapter is devoted to an alternative, much darker, scenario written in the form of radio transcripts and newspaper editorials.

The alternative scenario assumes the following factors have changed from the 'real' story:

  • The Peace Movements in the 50's, 60's and 70's have been successful in removing theater nuclear forces from Western Europe.
  • The UK has scrapped its nuclear missile submarines, abandoning Polaris and refusing to proceed with Trident.
  • The only nuclear forces on the NATO side are French SLBMs and the American ICBMs based in the contiguous United States.
  • Public pressure, led by the peace movements, prevented a compensatory increase in spending on conventional forces as nuclear forces were reduced, amplifying NATOs existing disadvantage in conventional forces (this disadvantage had been evened out previously by the theater nuclear forces).

In examining this picture, the Soviet Union feels that NATO is not prepared to aggressively defend Western Europe, and thus the time is right for a successful invasion. The scenario recognizes that since there is no freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, there are no similar demands from any peace movements inside the USSR to reduce its forces, therefore Soviet forces remain at a high level of capability compared to the waning preparedness of Western forces.

The Soviet invasion of Western Europe thus begins, quickly overrunning NATO conventional forces in the Low Countries with a vicious combined arms attack, and soon reaching the French border. Driven by their fear of a Soviet occupation, or a punitive bombing campaign if they refuse to comply, France withdraws from the conflict after the Soviet Union assures them that if they do so, they will escape occupation and attack.

Deciding not to risk global nuclear war by using American ICBMs to attack the Soviet positions in Western Europe, the US and UK leaderships sue for peace. All US forces are withdrawn from Europe. Despite not being occupied, Britain is forced to accept a set of conditions which allows the Soviet Union to effectively control its military, economic, and political institutions, beginning, ironically, with the eradication of trade union rights and the termination of the European Community's social market economy. A joint UK-USSR Commission will control the country. The Queen stays in the UK, dispersing the major members of the Royal family to various Commonwealth states. Major parts of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy escape Soviet Control putting themselves under US or Australian commands.

This chapter is not included in the Macmillan edition.

Literary significance and criticism

Hackett had two objectives in mind: to demonstrate the necessity for Western Europe to have a strong and coordinated conventional military, and to suggest that it could be plausible that the use of nuclear weapons might not result in a full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons between the USSR and the west. Indeed, the limited use of atomic weapons portrayed in this scenario comes as a result of one side's conventional forces becoming weak and vulnerable (the USSR), thus triggering the swift response from the other side - the similarly limited NATO retaliation - implemented by the US and the UK simultaneously.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times thought that Hackett's proposed scenarios were too optimistic. Points that Lehmann-Haupt questioned included the portrayal of the Soviets as not initiating a major nuclear exchange (and thereby a global nuclear war) as they near defeat, and the rosy fact that Western forces do not suffer critical setbacks caused by poor decisions or bad luck. The effects of the war and enlightened policies resolve many local conflicts, from Ireland, to Central America, and likewise in Palestine. The reviewer also criticized the book for being too dry and swift in illustrating major incidents in the story. Because Hackett consulted with many military and political experts, however, Lehmann-Haupt stated that the book represented a "very high order of strategic thinking", and "a signal to the Soviets, or even a warning, of the way some Western military leaders are thinking."[1]

Release details

See also

  • Team Yankee, a 1987 novel by Harold Coyle set in Hackett's scenario
  • Red Army, by Ralph Peters, showing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe from an entirely Soviet perspective.
  • Red Storm Rising, a similar World War III scenario covering a conventional Soviet invasion of Western Europe, by Tom Clancy

References

  1. ↑ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times Book Review, September 22, 1982
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