Atomic Express

I note US Secetary of Defense Leon Panetta has announced the disbandment of the last serving ‘heavy’ brigades of the US Army in Europe serving in Germany. This leaves an armoured cavalry regiment (essentially a brigade) and the 173^rd Airborne Brigade in Italy. This is a far cry from the heady days of the Cold War when US Army Europe/Seventh Army boasted two full corps in West Germany of five divisions and two armoured cav regiments plus an airborne brigade in Italy and the Berlin Brigade, all backed up with a few thousand tactical nuclear weapons.

Trying to convey the magnitude of NATO’s deterrent forces in West Germany during the Cold War is extremely difficult today. Canadian, American, British, Belgian, and French troops were stationed on West German soil for forty years. This not only involved the combatant forces but their civilian dependents as well. And, because dispersion was the name of the game in the atomic age, these military communities were spread out all over West Germany.

I found some period documentaries that give us an idea of what was going on. “The Big Picture” was a regular US Army TV documentary feature narrated by Master Sergeant Stuart Queen, with obvious propaganda embedded.

There’s “Why NATO?” Now, I know we could ask that question today [!] but when this documentary was made, NATO was two or three years old. Of course, this was the NATO where France was a member and the headquarters was based in Paris, so it’s kinda weird to see Lester B. Pearson at the beautiful Pallais de Chaillot instead of that horrible 1970s cubist building in Brussels.

“The Seventh Army”: Best scene once you get beyond the hokey 1950s documentary music: a US Army sergeant hopping into his Studebaker from his German apartment with his helmet and rifle at night during an recall exercise. It is also interesting to see how integrated the 1950s US Army is portrated: white and black troops, men and women, Americans and de-Nazified Germans and French all working alongside each other “Guarding the frontiers of the Free World.” 

Here is “Missile Man”, which is outright Army propaganda on its 1950s guided missile systems. Hmmm…who was the target audience for deterrence purposes? The Soviets, the US Navy, or the US Air Force? Great footage of Corporal, Honest John, Nike, Redstone, Jupitar missiles…and the DART anti-tank guided missile.

And “Operaton SAGEBRUSH”: A land force exercise casually incorporating nuclear weapons into the exercise “play.”  “Simulated atomic weapons are a major feature of the manouvre,” the announcer intones as they show an 280mm “Atomic Annie” cannon (repeatedly). Airmobile action, nucs, nerve gas, APCs, assault river crossings,….SAGEBRUSH had it all. Large-scale exercises like this took place regularly during the Cold War. (In West Germany, the annual exercises were called FALLEX). Check out the atomic weapons simulators. And the “Fantasian” agressor forces’ helmets. Again, I love the casual mention of the use of atomic weapons on the battle field throughout.

Another interesting point: all of these documentaries make contextual reference to the previous wars, specifically, Korea and the Second World War. For example, in “SAGEBRUSH” they point out, as the squadron of huge Globemaster transports thunder down the runway loaded with troops, that “these aircraft would have seen fantastic to us during the last war.”“ The producers understood that the average American family and its members had some level of understanding and did not treat them as idiots.

And my favourite: “Atomic Battlefield.” Briging it all together at Camp Desert Rock for live troop trials with nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. This will blow you away….and this was the sort of thing on TV or in the theatres as newsreels in the 1950s???? Wow. Here is footage of the “Smoky” tests. Chilling, given what we know today.