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General Defense Plan


scowlmovement

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Fascinating document. Little confused though. Which Staatssicherheitsministerium are we talking about - West German or East German? If its East German, then they had exquisite intelligence of our operational plans. This must be West German. Anyway, lots of information about my old division, 8th Infantry, which has since been deactivated. Even mentions my old unit 5th battalion 68th armored. Often wondered what the exact plans were for us should the balloon have gone up.

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UHM...you know East Germany was kinda commie and paranoid, so they were the one with the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit...aka Stasi..aka Gestapo reloaded. And yes, the East block got tons of information like that thanks to their spies, which even sat in NATO HQ in Brussels IIRC.

The bit about Task-Force 5-68 is interesting. Corps reserve...quite a job.

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Fascinating document. Little confused though. Which Staatssicherheitsministerium are we talking about - West German or East German? If its East German, then they had exquisite intelligence of our operational plans. This must be West German. Anyway, lots of information about my old division, 8th Infantry, which has since been deactivated. Even mentions my old unit 5th battalion 68th armored. Often wondered what the exact plans were for us should the balloon have gone up.

West Germany had no "Staatssicherheitsministerium", or short: StaSi, which meant the executive arm of it (intel, secret police and uniformed forces). The institution and term is heritage exclusively of the GDR.

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A fascinating document, found in one of the links that GO posted:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=46280&lng=en

= transcript of an oral history conference from 2006 on military planning in Central Europe during the Cold War.

The transcript focuses on the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Détente came to an end and the Cold War reached a renewed peak with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, etc ...

The conference was unique because it was the first time that high-ranking officers from countries of the former Warsaw Pact and of NATO held organized discussions of their military planning, the role of nuclear weapons in that planning, and their perception of each other’s intentions and capabilities.

It's the actual generals that were facing each other across the border,

that are discussing together !

-> "Today, I can say as an historian, is a historic day. Never before have the former adversaries of the Cold War sat around a table to discuss one another’s war plans"

-> e.g. :

* Leopold Chalupa

Well, thank you. In 1979, I was chief of staff Central Army Group, etc ...

* Mojmír Zachariáš

In 1978, when I was 39 years old, I was a division commander. In 1982, I commanded the 4th Army, and starting from 1986, I was the commander of the okrug troops on the Czechoslovak front. General Chalupa was my adversary.

THX GO for the links

Rgds, K

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