Chapter 1345: East Meets West
“Commander of the Rheinland Group Army, do you recognize it?” Alan Wilson grabbed his wife’s small hand and fiddled with it, inquiring if it was a Montbarton family connection.
“His son, little Sterfield is in the Swire Group.” Pamela Mountbatten didn’t hesitate at all, as if all these intricate connections were in her head, “What do you want me to do?”
“Just to tell him that we have no intention of provoking the Soviet Union. Nothing.” Alan Wilson muttered with a cloying look on his face, “I don’t know them yet, they can’t wait to go to war the next day when they run into a weaker country as a stepping stone to building a career, and when they do run into a heavy Soviet bloc, the army is far more of a dove than the MPs who are spouting off in the House of Commons.”
Coming up against the Soviet Union, the NATO army would not have the guts to do so, but by borrowing from the Soviet Union to ask for military money, the army not only has the guts but a lot of them.
“We in the UK are really relying on you.” Pamela Mountbatten rolled her eyes, her own husband didn’t seem to look down on anyone, not that she thought of it for a moment anyway.
Unfortunately Alan Wilson didn’t catch any of the mockery, but instead felt it was rightly said, puffing out his chest like the poorest patriot in London’s East End.
“Actually, as long as the Americans are supportive, this exercise is still quite optimistic.” Pamela Mountbatten expressed optimism, well aware of the importance of the United States in European issues.
“Are we confronting the Soviet Union at sea?” Alan Wilson craned his neck, “If not, what use is the United States? Standing together is just one more body.”
The United States of America’s active Patton change or do not take out the shame, the United States Army in his eyes are not as reliable as the British Army, as for the reliable British Army, anyway, the Rheinland Army itself said that it can be covered for three days, the garrison will be able to play a supporting role, the key is the Federal Republic of Germany’s own line.
Alan Wilson hopes that the German army line, this time the military exercise is also mainly to see if the German army can play the role of cannon fodder …… uh, the mainstay of the role.
As for the scale of NATO’s military exercises can not be compared with the Warsaw Pact, although he once in the Arab world a few years ago to lead a large field of military exercises, but in Europe if you meet the many visual animals to do so, it is really at this juncture provocation of the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s military exercises can mobilize 100,000 people even if it is a very big action.
The following two days, the British Ministry of Defense often received troops in West Berlin to ask, it is understandable, West Berlin that part of the enemy surrounded by the real strategic miscalculation, that is really a blink of an eye. Makins pacified the local British troops with a normal military exercise, and then complained like Alan Wilson, “I’m now very skeptical of the combat effectiveness of NATO in a real fight.”
“Not better than American soldiers who only know how to drill the woods with female soldiers?” Alan Wilson responded with a smile, “That’s normal, there’s no risk in bullying the third world, who wants the real doomsday to come? The first ones to die aren’t the troops on the front lines? We’re not hiding our intentions, and at the same time, we hope the Soviet side doesn’t misjudge.”
In the office of the Chairman of the Lubyanka in Moscow, when he heard a knock on the door, Andropov said come in, and then a major officer in uniform walked in, “Chairman.”
“Alexeyev, back from Warsaw?” Andropov nodded, “Sit down, there’s something to report.”
“With the way things are going, pressure probably isn’t going to work, we have to deal with the upper echelons of Poland in a dry run, or they won’t know what’s good for them. Something I don’t quite understand is why there’s a delay in taking action. The country shouldn’t be unaware of the importance of Poland, the place where the Warsaw Pact was signed, and it would be an insult to the very existence of the Soviet Union if Poland turned its back on scientific socialism.”
“The Kremlin still has to try not to use military means, and hopefully the Poles will appreciate our concern. By the way, your mother, Comrade Foltseva, feels the same way.” Andropov smiled, “Of course it may also have something to do with the fact that you serve in the Warsaw Embassy.”
“Mother’s view is not always right.” Alexeyev sniffed and couldn’t help but mutter, “From what I’ve seen of the Poles, they probably wouldn’t understand our good intentions. Those in the Polish government-in-exile should have all been taken out in the first place, I can clearly sense that they still have influence and are a destabilizing factor that exists within Poland, and have probably hooked up with the Americans a long time ago.”
Not bad for a good cadet, Alan Wilson would be praising the young man who had been more than one side of the story if he were here, collecting dollars of course. Or did he personally plan it with the Americans, Poland was so important to the Warsaw Pact that just the Soviets knew? The free world as an adversary couldn’t see it?
He still thought it would be better for the USSR to hit Poland a little harder, and the right-to-sovereignty theory had better come up, or else maybe one of the major powers couldn’t be a backslider. Forgive me for being a bit direct in describing it that way, but that’s actually what it looks like to the US, I pulled your leg or you would have been in the hands of the Soviet Union a long time ago.
The emergence of the theory of limited sovereignty also allows the free world to bash the Soviet Union, although in fact the European countries stationed by the U.S. military also have little sovereignty, but the free world can pretend to have, the electoral system of the country naturally has such a mechanism in the form of election system, those who do not like it can find a way to make it in the form of scandal outbreaks to get out of power, even more ironclad can be assassinated.
It’s not like the Soviet system countries, where either you’re a quiet follower or you’re headstrong to the end specifically against the USSR, which has always been a problem for the Soviet bloc. Not to mention, Yugoslavia, which has always listened to the tone, and Romania, which has always been with the Soviet Union more than the chatter, have made the Soviet Union very embarrassed, not to mention a certain big country.
If Poland looked at a few examples out there and thought you can do it and I can do it, it would have completely destroyed the Soviet geo-pattern.
In terms of importance one has to go after Poland, which is far more important than some Czechoslovakia, both in terms of size and population.
If we could get something going in Poland, no matter what the end result was, it would give Moscow a handful of times, it was a sure deal. And it would be a more worthwhile maneuver than the U.S., which had been left in the dust by the North Vietnamese spring offensive.
This difficult problem at this time in the Kremlin is being discussed, it must be said that Brezhnev stroke before, when afforded the evaluation of the splendor, not like later so depressed.
But at this time, as the number one man in the Soviet Union, his trademark thick eyebrows are tightly knitted together, and a flash of impatience on his face suggests that the most powerful man in the USSR is not in a good mood, and that even when replacing the KGB chairman, Semichasne, he was not so hesitant to do so.
“The beginning of the economic reforms led to all this now.” Suslov just couldn’t continue to watch Brezhnev’s silence and spoke, “The bourgeois restoration in Poland has to be ended immediately, we can’t allow something to happen in Poland that goes against the overall interests. We were still soft on those who were in the Polish government-in-exile at the time, we didn’t think that they had maintained their influence, and their presence led to the destabilization of Poland.”
In fact, at that time, the Soviet Union dealt with those in the government-in-exile who returned to Poland, but nothing could be done without leaving a trace.
With Khrushchev’s rise to power, the social environment was loosened, and these members of the government-in-exile who had returned to Poland began to play the role of people in the keyway in person again.
These people are not as many as when they first came back, but with the halo around them, the Polish government is not in a position to do anything to these people again.
“Comrade Kosygin’s reforms are still worth recognizing.” Brezhnev at this time, is not like the seventies so conservative, still willing to say a few words for Kosygin’s reforms, “Poland’s problems, naturally, are to be solved, this year’s problems will certainly not become next year’s problems, but not now, right away, if you can wait for a time is the best.”
“A time?” Suslov frowned, “Is timing something that can be waited for by doing nothing? We need to solve problems, not avoid them.”
“Of course it’s not avoiding the problem, on the Lubyanka front, Comrade Andropov has received information from the British side that British intelligence has come up with a pessimistic thesis about the recent situation in France, they have detected Trotskyist activity in France, of course we are not in the same category as the Trotskyists, but the Americans and the British don’t see it that way. It all looks like a threat to them. The matter can be manipulated a little.”
In his usual tone, Brezhnev said slowly, “While both Britain and the United States are attracted to France, we’re making an exhaustive plot to solve the problem as a fait accompli when the enemy can’t react, and that’s it.”
In the face of Suslov’s tough attitude, Brezhnev still took out the old-fashioned side, the direct opening of military action is certainly very painful, but how to act is also a problem.
Once the action begins the Soviet Union will certainly be blamed by other countries, as the No. 1 person in the Soviet Union he must be prepared for such accusations, other countries will blame him Brezhnev, not the gray bishop in front of him.
“And on Vietnam, we still have to support the spring offensive in Vietnam. Give more weapons to make the Americans lose a little more, and pull the attention of the United States.” Brezhnev, seeing Suslov wavering, said in an undeniable tone, “We must be resolute in our actions, but we must be exhaustive in our considerations.”
This spring offensive, General Westmoreland did not hesitate to push the ROK army up to the front line, and then began to relieve the besieged American bases all over the area, throughout the airspace over South Vietnam, the huge American helicopter fleet played an important role, and he believed that the massive killings of this time would put the North Vietnamese army out of action for good.
Pushing the South Korean army up, in a sense, also serves to attract the North Vietnamese main force, General Westmoreland and some Korean War generals discussed this issue, the army of a certain big country likes to break through from the South Korean position, since this is the case, the United States can also use the South Korean army to be a bait to attract the presence of the North Vietnamese forces.