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ABSTRACT
This article examines the early NATO discourse to illuminate ideas about a future war with the Soviet Bloc. World War Two provided an important cognitive script for conceptualizing a Third World War, with the impact of the nuclear ‘revolution’ being less dominant than generally believed. I argue that officials were unable to devise a script in which the Soviet Union could conquer Western Europe and then defeat the United States. Although this inability to achieve “final victory” was believed enough to deter Moscow from aggression, the need to reassure European Allies led NATO to adopt the “forward strategy”.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Martin Brown, Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Marcus Faulkner, Matthew Ford and Adam Svendsen for commenting on a draft of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The key work on the evolution of NATO nuclear strategy is: Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1997). Heuser highlights a crucial point related to thinking about war duration and its impact on NATO. The idea of a two-phased war was dominant in NATO strategy beginning in the early 1950s, as reflected in documents such as MC 14/1 in 1952 and MC 48 in 1954. According to this concept of war, a first phase ‘started with Armageddon and ended with a broken-backed “mopping-up”’ phase. However, by the late 1950s there was a ‘greater expectation of a limited attack’. A future war was now seen as starting with a conventional phase that ‘might or might not’ have been followed by a nuclear phase. This reflected a ‘paradigm shift’ for NATO. As Heuser notes, ‘The two-phase concept was thus inverted: this led to the most important change in NATO’s defence planning in the Cold War, with crucial consequences for force levels and nuclear employment doctrine’ (see discussion in Chapter 1). Two additional points should be mentioned here. First, whereas it was relatively easy to contemplate a massive nuclear exchange in the opening round of conflict, it was nearly impossible to imagine what a conventional war would have consisted of following ‘Armageddon’, much less to plan for it. No doubt this cognitive limitation is one of the major reasons interest was lost in trying to prepare for ‘broken-backed’ conflict. Second, though perceptions of the Soviet threat evolved over the course of the Cold War and were crucial in the development of NATO strategy, changes in strategy were only partly attributable to actual change in Soviet capabilities and behavior. Perhaps just as important for NATO strategy, if not more so, was that the ‘Soviet threat’ and especially ideas about a future war were intimately tied to various interests, such as the preferences of states and the preferences of the different military services within those states. NATO strategy thus reflected a compromise between these competing interests, and this shaped the prism through which the Soviet threat was viewed.
2 References to the 90-day war assumption can be found in: ‘Minutes of a National Security Council Review Group Meeting, Subject: US Strategies and Forces for NATO’, Washington, 16 June 1970, 4:07–5:30 p.m’, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XLI, Western Europe; NATO, 1969–1972; ‘Minutes of a Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, Subject: NATO Force Improvements’, Washington, 4 August 1971, 3:55–4:30 p.m., FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. XLI, Western Europe; NATO, 1969–1972.
3 The methodology employed in this article draws heavily on some recent works dealing with pre-First World War elite views of a future war. See: W. Mulligan, ‘Armageddon: Political Elites and Their Visions of a General European War before 1914', War in History 26/4 (2019), 448–69. For a discussion of scripts, see: Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford UP 2013) 598–9, 618–21.
4 For the purposes of this article, I will use the 1950 definition of ‘forward strategy’ which was to defend the Alliance ‘as far to the East as possible’. This was generally understood as developing a main defence line at the Rhine-IJssel. However, as noted in the 1954 NATO strategy document MC 48, ‘It has been evident from all past NATO military studies that, insofar as the Central European theater is concerned, a German contribution would be necessary, even for the strategy of holding Rhine Ijssel line. Up till now NATO has been obliged to accept this strategy, even though it neither includes the vital industrial areas of the Ruhr, nor provides adequate defense in depth for Western Europe. The advent of tactical atomic weapons alone would not enable NATO to hold even the Rhine Ijssel line without a German contribution. The advent of new weapons, plus a German contribution, however, will for the first time enable NATO to adopt a real forward strategy with a main line of defense well to the East of the Rhine-Ijssel’. MC 48(Final), The Most Effective Pattern of NATO Military Strength for the Next Few Years, 22 November 1954, NATO Archives (NA). By the early 1960s, as NATO defences moved closer to the Iron Curtain, Henry Kissinger defined the ‘forward strategy’ as ‘the ability to put up a defense along the Iron Curtain and in particular to protect cities close to that dividing line’. See his: ‘The Unsolved Problems of European Defense’, Foreign Affairs, 40/4 (July 1962), 523.
5 As Michael Howard observed, ‘The American military presence was wanted in Western Europe, not just in the negative role of a deterrent to Soviet aggression, but in the positive role of a reassurance to the West Europeans; the kind of reassurance a child needs from its parents or an invalid from his doctors against dangers which, however remote, cannot be entirely discounted’. See his: ‘Reassurance and Deterrence: Western Defense in the 1980s’, Foreign Affairs 61/2 (Winter 1982), 310. Similarly, as Kissinger observed: ‘The size of the military establishment in Europe reflected psychological and not strategic considerations. Our allies have always been uneasy about placing the major responsibility for their defense on an ally 3,000 miles away and with a recent tradition of isolationism. No moral commitment could entirely remove their fear that we might not implement our guarantee. They therefore sought to eliminate or at least to restrict our freedom of decision by committing us to maintain substantial ground forces on the Continent’. See Kissinger’s ‘The Unsolved Problems of European Defense’, 519. Regarding the importance of the Korean War with respect to NATO’s subsequent transformation, I draw heavily on Robert Jervis’s arguments in his article: ‘The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 24/4 (December 1980), 563–592. For a discussion of the need to protect Allies from ‘Soviet blackmail’, see: Timothy Sayle, Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Ithaca: Cornell UP 2019).
6 Radio Address Delivered by President Roosevelt From Washington, 29 December 1940. Text available at: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/arsenal.htm.
7 William T. R. Fox, The Superpowers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union – Their Responsibility for Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1944), 102.
8 F.O. Miksche, ‘The Strategic Importance of Western Europe’, Military Review 29/4 (July 1949).
9 George Kennan, ‘Is War with Russia Inevitable?’, Department of State Bulletin, 20 Feb. 1950.
10 Beatrice Heuser, ‘Stalin as Hitler’s Successor: Western Interpretations of the Soviet Threat’, in Beatrice Heuser and Robert O’Neill (eds.), Securing Peace in Europe, 1945–62: Thoughts for the Post-Cold War Era (London: Macmillan 1992), 17–40. For quote, see 35.
11 Memorandum by Mr Bevin for the Cabinet on ‘The Threat to Western Civilization’, 3 March 1948, Top Secret, CAB 129/25, CP (48) 72, Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives (hereafter TNA).
12 SG 20/21, Part II: Estimate of Enemy Capabilities and Possible Courses of Action, 22 August 1950, NA. Notably, in the Medium Term Defence Plan, similar language was used to describe a two-stage conquest, albeit unlike the estimate cited above, it adds that North America would ‘ultimately be attacked by military forces’. See: S.G. 20/2 Parts I and II, Report by the Standing Group to the Military Committee, Medium Term Defense Plan (1 July 1954), 11 March 1950, NA.
13 J. Hoffenaar, ‘”Hannibal ante portas”: The Soviet Military Threat and the Build-up of the Dutch Armed Forces 1948–1958', The Journal of Military History 66/1 (January 2002), 169. See also: H. J. Kruls, ‘The defense of Europe’, Foreign Affairs 30/2 (January 1952), 265–276.
14 Hans Speier, German Rearmament and Atomic War: The Views of German Military and Political Leaders (Evanston, Ill: Row, Peterson and Company 1957), 112–113.
15 NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, 7 April 1950. Text available at: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nsc-68/nsc68-1.htm.
16 ‘Soviet Intentions and Capabilities 1949 and 1956/57', report by the Joint Intelligence Committee, JIC (48) 104 (Final), reproduced in Richard J. Aldrich, Rory Cormac and Michael S. Goodman, Spying on the World: The Declassified Documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 2014), 210–222.
17 See for instance, E. Reid, ‘The Birth of the North Atlantic Alliance’, International Journal 22/3 (Summer 1967), 437; ‘Commons Welcome for Atlantic Pact’, The Times, 13 May 1949, 4.
18 For some Anglo-American discussions on this topic, see: Record of a Conversation between Mr Jebb and Mr Bohlen, 28 July 1948, FO/371/73077, TNA; Record by Sir J. Balfour (Washington) of a meeting with Mr Bohlen, 1 May 1948, FO 371/73069, TNA.
19 In terms of alternatives to sending either military aid, as was the case with the Truman Doctrine, much less sending combat forces to be based in Europe, earlier notions of deterrence included the possibility of simply making a public declaration that a particular ally’s ‘integrity’ was ‘vital to the interests of the United States’. This point was made by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in the Senate hearings leading up to the Truman Doctrine. As Lodge noted: ‘The Russians have about 35 divisions and we have less than one division. We have American troops in Germany, but we could not stop them. But the thing that prevents the Russians from coming in is the fear of the American potential. You can threaten them with the American potential by passing a few paragraphs in Washington as well as you can by sending 50 Americans in uniform, can you not?’. US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Legislative Origins of the Truman Doctrine (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1947), 53. I was drawn to this passage by Jervis’s reference to it in his ‘Impact of the Korean War’, 567, FN 2.
20 ‘US Minutes of the Second Meeting Between President Truman and Prime Minister Pleven, Cabinet Room of the White House, January 30, 1951'. Available at: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/truplev2.htm.
21 ‘Defence Policy and Global Strategy’, Report by the Chiefs of Staff, Ministry of Defence, 7 June 1950, DO(50)45 [CAB 131/9], TNA.
22 W. Lippmann, ‘Today and Tomorrow: State Department and Pentagon’, Washington Post, 15 Apr. 1948.
23 For background on the US decision to send additional divisions to Europe, see: United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on Armed Services, Assignment of Ground Forces of the United States to Duty in the European Area, Eighty-Second Congress, Hearings, First Session, February 1951 (Washington DC, United States Government Printing Office 1951).
24 G. Aalders, ‘The failure of the Scandinavian defence union, 1948–1949', Scandinavian Journal of History 15/1–2 (1990), 125–153; N. Petersen, ‘Danish and Norwegian Alliance Policies 1948–49: A Comparative Analysis’, Cooperation and Conflict 14/3 (November 1979), 193–210; H. Pharo, ‘Together Again: Anglo-Norwegian relations and the early Cold War’, Scandinavian Journal of History 37/2 (2012), 261–277.
25 See for instance, Note by the Secretaries to the Holders of SG 13/18, Addendum, 10 February 1950, Appendix, Norwegian Embassy, Washington DC, Aide Memoire, Comments to the Strategic Guidance, NA; Northern European Regional Planning Group 2, Subject – Medium Term Plan, paragraph 73, NR/Sec/5O/l67, 19 July 1950, NA.
26 Hoffenaar, ‘Hannibal ante portas’, 172.
27 ‘Belgian Tells UN Soviet Policy Is More “Audacious’ Than the Czars”: Spaak Assails Soviets’, Washington Post, 29 Sep. 1948.
28 ‘Defence Policy and Global Strategy’, 1950.
29 See for instance: H. W. Baldwin, ‘NATO Fleet Sails to “Defend” Danes: US Marines to Make Landing to Reinforce Kiel Canal Area in Mainbrace Exercise’, The New York Times, 21 Sep. 1952; B. Welles, ‘Danes Ask Ridgway for Border Aid By Deploying Forces in Germany: Foreign Minister Said to Have Given Assurances on U. S. Air Units in Country’, New York Times, 31 Jan. 1953.
30 D. Middleton, ‘NATO Changes Direction’, Foreign Affairs 31/3 (Apr. 1953), 433.
31 Sir G. Rendel (Brussels) to Mr Bevin, 8 February 1948, FO 371/73046, TNA.
32 E. L. James, ‘Fear of the Russians Haunts French Politics’, New York Times, 25 July 1948.
33 Charles G. Cogan, Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO – Then and Now (London: Praeger 1997), 28–29; R. Aron, ‘The “Medentente Cordiale”: II–Some French Fears’, The Manchester Guardian, 1 Dec. 1949; and ‘Defence of the Territory’, Manchester Guardian, 5 Aug. 1949.
34 K. Campbell, ‘Maginot Defenses are Almost Intact’, New York Times, 21 June 1948. Also: SG 27/5, Note by the Secretaries to the Standing Group on The Preparation of the NATO Short Term Plan. 29 June 1950, NA.
35 C.L. Sulzberger, ‘Pitfalls Lie in the Path of Spain To a Defense Alliance With West’, New York Times, 7 Feb. 1951.
36 The Memoirs of Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG (Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company 1958), 449.
37 Paul Cornish, British Military Planning for the Defence of Germany 1945–50 (Hampshire, Macmillan Press Ltd 1996), 116.
38 State-JCS Meetings, Draft Record of Department of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, Pentagon Building, Washington, 20 February 1951, FRUS, 1951, European Security and the German Question, Vol. III, Part I.
39 Jill Edwards, Anglo-American Relations and the Franco Question, 1945–1955 (Oxford, Oxford UP 1999), 239–248.
40 752.5/7-851: Telegram, The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Gifford) to the Secretary of State, London, 8 July 1951 − 1pm, FRUS, 1951, Europe: Political and Economic Developments, Vol. IV, Part 1.
41 One explanation, according to Matthew Evangelista, is that ‘when the JCS was planning Soviet invasion scenarios, they used … overinflated estimates to predict invasions that the Soviets were incapable of executing’. See his: ‘Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised’, International Security 7/3 (Winter 1982–1983), 115. I have been unable to unearth any references to actual Soviet military plans from this earlier period that would confirm or disconfirm whether NATO’s assumptions about those plans were accurate. On the other hand, I have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that NATO’s assumptions were based on any hard evidence of those plans. Later Soviet/Warsaw Pact exercises included major offensive operations into Western Europe, although these were always framed as responses to NATO aggression. For a compilation of documentary sources, see: Vojtech Mastny and Malcolm Byrne, A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991 (Budapest: Central European UP 2005).
42 SG 27/5, 1950, NA.
43 ‘The Overall Strategic Plan’, Future Defence Policy, Report by the UK Chief of Staff, May 1947, DO(47)44, TNA.
44 ‘Mr. Churchill on Europe’s Great Danger, Atomic Bomb Still a Shield’, The Manchester Guardian, 12 Aug. 1950.
45 B.H. Liddell Hart, Defence of the West: Some Riddles of War and Peace (London: Cassell and Co. Ltd. 1950), 87.
46 751.00/9-150, The Ambassador in France (Bruce) to the Secretary of State, Paris, 1 September 1950, FRUS, 1950, Western Europe, Vol. III.
47 Memorandum by the Secretary of Defense (Marshall) to the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Dean), 27 January 1951, FRUS, 1951, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, Vol. 1. See also: ‘Huge Congo Base Planned by Belgium’, Washington Post, 19 Dec. 1948, M3.
48 Lawrence Kaplan, A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military Assistance Program, 1948–1951 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office 1980).
49 Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1999), 118–119.
50 Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. IV, 1950–1952 (Washington DC: Office of Joint History Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1998), 159; and Louis Galambos, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Vol. 13: NATO and the Campaign of 1952 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1989), 594, FNs 2,3,4,5.
51 Cited in Jervis, ‘The Impact of the Korean War’, 569.
52 Summary Record of a meeting of the Council held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, on Tuesday, 28 October 1952, at 10.15 a.m., NA; Memorandum for the Standing Group, Data in Connection with Standing Group Meeting with the Permanent Council on the 28 October 1952, SGM-2309-52, 15 October 1952, NA. On the problem of NATO military infrastructure in Germany inhibiting strategic flexibility, see: Michael Howard, Disengagement in Europe (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd. 1958), 60–61.
53 Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 159.
54 Ibid., 83–84.
55 Kenneth W. Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Volume II, 1947–1949 (Washington, DC: Office of Joint History Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1996). 162–163. See also: Robert J. Watson, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1953–1954, Volume V (Washington, DC: Office of Joint History Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1998), 93.
56 General de Monsabert, ‘North Africa in Atlantic Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 31/3 (April 1953), 418–426.
57 NSC 68, 1950.
58 Bradley cited in Roger Hilsman, ‘NATO: The Developing Strategic Context’ in Klaus Knorr, NATO and American Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1959), 19. Interestingly, Bradley’s comments were made the same month as the Inchon landings in Korea.
59 According to British minutes of the October 1949 meeting between Bradley and British Chief of the Air Staff Lord Tedder, the former ‘“cringed” at the idea of another amphibious landing on Europe’. Cited in Robert Allen Wampler, ‘Ambiguous legacy: The United States, Great Britain and the foundations of NATO strategy’, 1948–1957, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1991, 7–9.
60 For an extensive discussion of this issue, see: Beatrice Heuser, ‘Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies’, Contemporary European History 7/3 (Nov. 1998), 311–327. As Heuser notes, ‘The absolute power of the nuclear weapon has made absolute war-aims irrational, as many strategists, particularly in the West, have remarked. But this realisation took time to work its way into NATO strategy’.
61 Memorandum by the Chiefs of Staff Committee, ‘Western Union Defence Policy-International Relations’, 2 July 1948, DEFE 5/8 [COS(48)145(O)], TNA. The reluctance to contemplate offensive operations against Soviet forces in Eastern Europe can be traced at least as far back as 1945. Despite Churchill’s interest towards the end of the Second World War to conduct an Allied offensive in order to get a ‘square deal for Poland’, the British military officials charged with developing plans showed little enthusiasm. See chapter 7 on ‘The Bitter Fruit of Victory: Churchill and an Unthinkable Operation, 1945' in David Dilks, Churchill and Company: Allies and Rivals in War and Peace (London: I. B. Tauris 2012).
62 SG 1/3, Note by the Secretary on Strategic Guidance for Regional Planning, Preliminary Report, 22 November 1949, NA; Note by the Secretaries to the Standing Group on Strategic Guidance for North Atlantic Regional Planning, 23 December 1949, NA; MC 14, Report by the Standing Group to the North Atlantic Military Committee on Strategic Guidance for North Atlantic Regional Planning, 3 March 1950, NA.
63 DC 13, Medium Term Defence Plan, 28 March 1950, NA.
64 MC 14/1, A Report by the Standing Group on Strategic Guidance, 9 December 1952, NA.
65 Record of the 168th Meeting of the Standing Group, 12 December 1952, NA. See also: Summary of Record of a meeting of the Council with the Military Committee held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, 11 December 1952 at 3 p.m., NA.
66 Report by the International Working Team to the Standing Group on Regional Short-Term Plans, SG 27/13, 20 September 1950. See Appendix ‘A’ to Enclosure ‘C’ Draft Memorandum from the Military Committee to the Defense Committee on Allied War Objectives, NA.
67 Steven T. Ross, American War Plans 1945–1950 (New York: Garland Publishing Inc. 1988). For additional details on US war plans during this period, see: Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 153–166.
68 Ross, American War Plans, 48.
69 Ibid., 56.
70 Ibid., 85.
71 NSC 20/4, Note by the Executive Secretary on US Objectives with Respect to the USSR to Counter Soviet threats to US Security, 23 November 1948, FRUS, 1948, General; The United Nations, Vol. 1, Part 2.
72 Ross, American War Plans, 129.
73 Memorandum of Discussion at the 187th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 4 March 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Vol. II, Part 1.
74 Memorandum of Discussion at the 190th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 25 March 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Vol. II, Part 1.
75 Note by the Executive Secretary to the National Security Council on US Objectives in the Event of General War with the Soviet Bloc, NSC 5410/1, 29 March 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Vol. II, Part 1.
76 Memorandum of Discussion at the 394th Meeting of the National Security Council, 22 January 1959, FRUS, 1958–1960, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, Vol. III.
77 MC 14/3(Final), A Report by the Military Committee to the Defence Planning Committee on Overall Strategic Concept for the Defense of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Area, 16 January 1968, NA.
78 For a discussion of ‘general deterrence’, see: Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications 1977).
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Jeffrey H. Michaels
Dr. Jeffrey H. Michaels is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Earlier experience included working as a Senior Lecturer in Defense Studies and Research Associate in War Studies at King's, as well as serving as an official with NATO and the US Defense Department. He has also held visiting research fellowships at the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre at Pembroke College and the Egmont Institute in Brussels. His most recent publication is The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th Edition, co-authored with Sir Lawrence Freedman.