Eyes on target: ‘Stay-behind’ forces during the Cold War

Abstract

This article examines the concept of ‘stay-behind’ as a war-fighting tactic used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization to maximize its defensive efforts against a possible Soviet onslaught during the Cold War. It outlines how the concept developed, describes the military and clandestine units involved and what the division of tasks was between them, the way they operated, and how North Atlantic Treaty Organization was involved in coordinating these efforts. By providing a holistic look at military and clandestine stay-behind doctrine, it fills a gap in Cold War intelligence research.

I. Introduction

The study of stay-behind (SB) assets in the context of Cold War intelligence has concentrated mainly on clandestine – as opposed to military – organizations and has evoked interest among serious scientific researchers as well as conspiracy theorists. ¹ Analysis of the issue was clouded for a long time by images of ‘GLADIO’, ‘NATO’s Secret Army’, ‘Strategy of Tension’, and other nefarious plots in a spider web of clandestine organizations and operations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) holding the strings. ² Most of these allegations have been debunked to the degree possible when the issue is one of covert military and clandestine intelligence operations. ³

The purely military aspect of the concept, the use of SB as a war-fighting tactic, has been largely overlooked possibly because it was nothing as ‘scandalous’ and ‘controversial’ as the clandestine side. This article thus examines how military SB units were meant to function in the eventuality of actual war fighting; how they would have interoperated with civilian, clandestine assets; and how both were embedded in NATO’s overall war plans for the defence of Western Europe. By looking at war plans, training manuals, exercises, strategic documents, and interviewing veterans, this article provides a detailed look at the SB doctrine, and the roles, missions, and duties of SB units. It shows how experiences of World War II were drawn upon and further developed under US and UK leadership, what kind of military and clandestine units were involved, and what the division of tasks between them would have been.

A 2018 NATO Parliamentary Assembly report states that ‘during the Cold War, Special Forces (SF) were a marginal component of the Allies’ defence strategy’. ⁴ This article shows, however, that this is not quite accurate. In fact, NATO commanders relied on SF as an important element of NATO defence strategy and the resulting war plans. As Richard Aldrich notes, one might have expected senior NATO commanders to have turned to signal intelligence (SIGINT), but instead, these commanders turned to human reconnaissance from SB patrols. ⁵

This article analyses the military and clandestine SB assets available to a NATO Army Group, in this instance the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) and its five national corps that provided for the defence of the northern half of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) during the Cold War. It maps out how the concept was included in NATO war plans and where military and clandestine roles overlapped and indeed complemented each other. This is important in order to understand the role of NATO as the lynchpin, tying civilian and military SB assets into its war planning. Using archival primary source documents, especially those recently declassified, secondary sources, and interviews with veterans, this article builds on the research of Riste, Aldrich, and others concerning NATO’s and, in particular, NORTHAG’s intelligence and war-fighting requirements and clarifies the military dimension of SB which so far has been largely overlooked. ⁶

To that end, the first section describes the strategic assumptions underlying the concept and the various SB formats in general terms. This is followed by an analysis of the evolution of NATO strategy, the resulting war plans, and the implications for SB efforts that led to the development of the doctrine straight out of recent World War II experience. The increasing introduction of various national units, military as well as clandestine, necessitated coordination between the various actors, something that happened within the framework of NATO which had the overall responsibility for emergency war planning. With the adaptation of NATO strategy to the changing conditions and capabilities of the alliance, the military SB units changed as well. New units were formed, others became obsolete, and training became increasingly standardized. The article then looks at the clandestine networks, their training, command arrangements, and, in passing, the difficulties experienced with them. As doctrine includes methods and equipment, these are described before conclusions can be drawn.

II. Military and clandestine SB

During the Cold War, NATO faced a numerically superior adversary. The Alliance relied heavily on intelligence before the outbreak of hostilities, and then especially during the first hours and days of an attack in order to retard or stop the Warsaw pact (WP) attack. NATO had to gain the necessary time to deploy forces to their front-line positions and mobilize reservists in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium as well as reinforce Western Europe from the United Kingdom and the United States. For these early stages of a war, the Allies had made plans to field SB capabilities, military as well as civilian, that would allow themselves to be bypassed by an attacker in order to collect intelligence behind enemy lines, conduct target acquisition, and thus try and slow its advance. The United States and the United Kingdom were in the lead developing SB concepts and they assisted allies to stand up special military units as well as civilian Stay-Behind Organizations (SBOs). In general, one can differentiate between three, more or less, distinct SB formats. ⁷

The first were military special units, usually long-range reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition units that were specifically earmarked for operations in the early phase of a potential war (D-day to D + 1-5). These units would quickly deploy forward, link up with the rear guard or ‘aggressive delaying force’, and ‘stay-behind’ as these forces withdrew, letting themselves be bypassed by advancing WP troops. ⁸ Exploiting pre-reconnoitred hide sites and caches of arms, ammunition, and radios, they would then start to conduct intelligence gathering operations in what is called static covert surveillance and target acquisition for high value targets such as enemy headquarters, troop concentrations, and atomic weapons systems. They would also perform demolition tasks, in what was referred to as the ‘demolition belt’, at places where bottlenecks were likely to occur for enemy formations. ⁹ Another task would have been escape and evasion (E&E) assistance to downed pilots and others needing repatriation. Considering the rapid speed with which the WP was expected to advance in the early hours of an attack, complicated infiltration techniques would not have been needed.

The next kind of unit was SF like the British 22nd Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment or the US 10th Special Forces Group which had a primarily strategic, as opposed to battlefield (tactical) role. If given the time, they could have infiltrated into East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, or even deeper into WP territory by means of parachute, helicopters, or from the sea in order to gather intelligence by active or passive means and to conduct direct action, that is, strategic demolition, sabotage, and precision strikes.

While these two kinds of military units were part of NATO’s organic forces and on the official order of battle, other organizations were created and run under the auspices of intelligence services and recruited their agents from among the civilian population. These specially selected civilian SB networks or SBOs were created in many Western countries, including Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, and others, including Iran. ¹⁰ They prepared to organize resistance, sabotage, and intelligence gathering in occupied (NATO) territory. As stated earlier, these SBOs have been the focus of much debate but they represent only a small part of the SB efforts deployed by NATO allies.

III. NORTHAG in the early phases of war and the role of SB units

NORTHAG was the Army Group assigned to defend the North German Plain, an area well suited for tank warfare with its rolling hills and wide-open spaces. This was also the shortest route from the Inner German Border (IGB) to FRG’s industrial heartland, and the shortest route to the West German capital of Bonn as well as the strategically important port cities of Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, and Antwerp. As the WP was numerically superior in conventional military strength to NATO, the assumption was that a surprise attack could be halted, not at the border but somewhere within the FRG – initially as far back as on the Rhine river and, over the decades, gradually closer to the IGB.

The European Regions must arrest the enemy advance as far to the East as possible. Their defense should be conducted in an active manner making full use of mobility and offensive action whenever opportunity offers. [. . .] Some additional delay may be achieved by sabotage and subversive action provided suitable advance planning has been accomplished to assure that maximum effectiveness will be derived from all of these special measures. ¹¹

The advent of tactical nuclear weapons created a situation in which NORTHAG was very much reliant on their use – to halt the advance – and on the ability to use these weapons effectively – by accurate targeting. ¹²

Without going into details of the evolution of NATO strategic concepts over the decades, the battle against a WP invader would have been based on the principles of mobile defence and defence in depth, that is, trading territory for time. ¹³ It is understandable that West Germany continuously tried to pose restrictions on the concept of ‘mobile defence’ by insisting that the WP be engaged as close to the IGB as possible.

NATO’s earliest strategy called to ‘arrest and counter, as soon as practicable, the enemy offensives by all means available’. ¹⁴ The 1950 Military Committee report on NATO’s Medium Term Plan contained the nucleus of unorthodox and covert actions in support of NATO military efforts to delay WP forces and calls for suitable advance planning and Allied guidance and support for sabotage and guerrilla activities. The Standing Group suggested in 1952 that all ‘practicable methods and techniques aimed to distract and delay the enemy, including sabotage and subversive action, should be employed to gain the maximum time for deployment of sufficient forces to stabilize the enemy offensive’. ¹⁵

At the Lisbon summit in 1952, ambitious conventional force goals were set but these never materialized. The advent of tactical nuclear weapons then started to offer an affordable option to counter WP conventional superiority in Europe in the mid-1950s. ¹⁶ The high tempo of a possible attack, and the perceived need for the early use of nuclear weapons, demanded timely and accurate target intelligence for battlefield missile and artillery systems. Aerial reconnaissance was not deemed sufficient – hence the reliance on human intelligence and target acquisition provided by SB forces. ¹⁷

So from the very beginning of NATO war planning, military and civilian SB were expected to play a crucial role in enabling and aiding outnumbered conventional forces to stop or delay the WP advance. This need did not fundamentally change as NATO strategy developed over time. ¹⁸

IV. Development of the SB concept

World War II had seen the creation of military long-range reconnaissance and special operations units such as the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), the SAS, and the Commandos, as well as clandestine resistance and sabotage networks. These units and clandestine networks were largely disbanded after the war, but the concepts were not forgotten and experienced personnel could still be found within the ranks of the Western alliance. In fact, it was as early as October 1945 that SAS experts discussed the importance of SAS-type units in the new post-war setting and that the concept of operations for the SAS had to be further developed. Tactical nuclear weapons, it was argued, made such a unit even more valuable as they operated independently and could slow the enemy’s advance ‘out of proportion to its size’. ¹⁹

Suitable advance planning, as called for by NATO, was needed when it came to creating clandestine assets as well. Intelligence Services took it upon themselves to develop the concept and create SB networks. Thus, the documents quoted below were written with clandestine and resistance networks in mind.

In the United Kingdom, the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) of World War II fame, Major-General Colin Gubbins defined the role of a Special Operations (SO) Branch in late 1945. SO should train agents and personnel, make clandestine contacts in foreign countries, and develop clandestine means of communication in order to ‘undertake Special Operations as may be required by a theatre commander’. ²⁰ This directive would later provide the basis for the creation of SB networks by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Unfortunately, few documents have been declassified by the United Kingdom. Research in US archives is more revealing and thus, the following analysis of the concept development is based on US documents.

In the United States, the National Security Council’s Directives NSC 10/2 authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations abroad in 1948. ²¹ The semi-autonomous CIA Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) assumed responsibility for organizing and managing covert actions. ²² The 1951 ‘Memorandum from the Director of Central Intelligence (Smith) to the National Security Council’ outlined the tasks assigned to the CIA which included organizing civilian SB and resistance groups in all of Western Europe. ²³ The CIA/OPC ‘Strategic War Plan in Support of the Joint Outline Emergency War Plan’ of 1951 then provides a clear mission statement:

THE UTILIZATION OF COVERT OPERATIONS TO THE FULLEST PRACTICABLE EXTENT TO ASSIST IN ACCOMPLISHING THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF THE U.S.S.R. AND HER SATELLITES. HIGHEST PRIORITY AMONG COVERT OPERATIONS IN SUPPORT OF MILITARY WAR PLANS WILL BE GIVEN TO THE RETARDATION OF THE SOVIET ADVANCE IN WESTERN EUROPE. ²⁴

The same document called on the US military to allocate military training areas, housing, and administrative buildings in Germany to the CIA in order to train German and Austrian agents recruited from US-run labour battalions. Specific tasks for these agents were described in five phases of war fighting. ²⁵ The highest priority was to assist US forces to retard and attack Soviet forces and destroy their lines of communication. Furthermore, the document called for the preparation of ‘peoples of the area’ to resist the Communist forces and on Allies to ‘communicate with, assist and direct this resistance’. Another memorandum describes the role of the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) in the coordination of SBOs and the command arrangements of US clandestine SB units in peace and war. ²⁶ The same document recommends establishing a coordination committee under the Standing Group of NATO. These US documents clarify that SBOs would have remained under national command in support of the overall war plan, even when put under operational control of NATO.

V. The role of NATO

NATO had a clear interest to coordinate the military SB units under its command with efforts conducted by clandestine SBOs. The alliance’s role in SB started when the allies saw the need to formally facilitate this coordination in designated committees. NATO provided a forum to integrate, coordinate, and optimize the use of all SB assets as part of the Emergency War Plan. This coordination included the military SB units, which were part of NATO’s order of battle, and the clandestine SBO’s run by NATO nations.

Western secret services had cooperated in various bilateral, triparty, and multilateral fora in the creation, training, and running of clandestine SBO soon after World War II. In 1947, France, the United Kingdom, and the Benelux countries had created a joint policy on SB in the Western Union Clandestine Committee (WUCC), a forum of the Western European Union (WEU), the European defence alliance predating NATO. The format entered into NATO structures around 1951–1952 when the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) established such an ‘ad hoc’ committee, the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) at SHAPE. The peacetime role of the CPC would have been to coordinate the different military and paramilitary plans and programmes in NATO nations (and partners like Switzerland and Austria) in order to avoid duplication of effort. The CPC itself had at least two working groups – one on communications and one on networks. ²⁷ SACEUR also established a Special Projects Branch to develop and coordinate ‘clandestine forces operating in support of SACEUR’s military forces’. ²⁸

The CPC, at the time, had three permanent members representing the members of the Standing Group: the United States, United Kingdom, and France. ²⁹ Representatives from member states were included whenever discussions touched their national interest. The brief of the CPC, as expressed in document CPC/4/52, covered the planning and coordination of military as well as paramilitary operations including operations by clandestine services, to include intelligence gathering, SO, guerrilla, and psychological warfare. ³⁰

In 1957, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Benelux countries, all of which ran SBOs in Western Europe, established the ‘Six Powers Lines Committee’ which became the Allied Clandestine Committee in 1958 and, after 1976, the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC). ³¹ The ACC has been described as a technical committee to bring national SBOs together. It took its guidance from the CPC and organized multinational exercises. ³² The authority of SACEUR when it came to clandestine operations was discussed in the early 1950s as one can gather from the document ‘SHAPE Problems Outstanding with the Standing Group’, which, under sub-heading ‘IV. Special Plans’ calls for the ‘Delineation of Responsibilities of the Clandestine Services and of SACEUR on Clandestine Matters Including Pertinent Definitions and Organizations’ and ‘Principles for Unorthodox Warfare Planning’. ³³

While all this concerned the highest level of NATO command, coordination in time of crisis had to be arranged. Thus, to coordinate these activities at different command levels in wartime, SACEUR created the Allied Clandestine Coordinating Groups (ACCG) staffed with personnel from NATO nations at SHAPE and the subordinate commands. ³⁴ In case of war, SACEUR was meant to exercise operational control of national clandestine services’ assets, according to each nation’s existing policies, through the ACCG. ³⁵

By 1961 though, ‘both SHAPE and CPC [now] accepted that such SB activity [guerrilla warfare and resistance under Soviet occupation] was a purely national responsibility, and neither SHAPE nor CPC was involved in its planning’. ³⁶ What did remain a concern for SHAPE though was the role of clandestine SBOs in E&E of downed air-crews, and in the retardation of the enemy’s advance. These were classical military activities which had to be coordinated and integrated into the overall military campaign planning.

So while ‘covert operations and clandestine intelligence activities in a theater of military command shall come within the responsibility of the theater commander’ in times of war and NATO commanders will ‘exercise operational control of US clandestine resources’, these assets would remain under US command at all times. ³⁷

The CPC and ACCG fulfilled an important function coordinating the overlapping contributions of military and civilian SB capabilities. Indeed, combined exercises between military special units and civilian assets were conducted. In 1974, for example, the annual Joint/Combined Exercise FLINTLOCK, a special operations exercise conducted by the US European Command (not a NATO exercise), was held with sub-exercises in Norway, Germany, and Italy. Sub-exercise ALTENEA ’74 in northern Italy involved US Special Forces and Navy SEAL teams which infiltrated by air and sea to link up with Italian SBOs to conduct guerrilla warfare operations, perform direct action, reconnaissance, and attack missions and join with Italian SF units to form joint command and control bases. ³⁸ Such exercises incorporated almost all SB roles and functions – military as well as clandestine. A similar exercise, WATERLAND, was apparently conducted as late as 1989 in Belgium. Members of the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) parachuted into the sea off the coast of Flanders, were met by clandestine Belgian SB agents, and guided to the target – the Zeebrugge canal locks, which the SBS then simulated destroying. ³⁹

VI. Military SB units in NORTHAG during the Cold War

NORTHAG, with its British, German, Dutch, Belgian, French, Canadian, and US units, expected to have at its disposal a variety of SB forces. As noted above, commanders at NORTHAG desperately needed to gain accurate and timely intelligence on WP mobilization, movements, and troop concentrations in order to identify the enemy’s main thrust, main supply routes, the location of reserves, and logistic supply dumps. Under the assumption that WP advances would be too swift to rely on air reconnaissance and SIGINT, NATO SF were tasked to provide this vital intelligence as well as guide air, missile, and nuclear strikes against high-priority targets. Furthermore, these units would be called upon to execute retardation and demolition tasks to slow down enemy advances. ⁴⁰ Over time and with NATO strategy changes, the kinds of units and their missions changed to adapt.

In the early 1950s, NATO doctrine, in light of the indefensibility of the IGB against numerically superior Soviet forces, called for a rapid fall-back to the west bank of the Rhine River, a natural defensive barrier. There the advance of Soviet forces would have to be stopped. To turn the Rhine into a formidable obstacle, the bridges over the river had to be blown up at the right time. This was the task of the Royal Navy Rhine Flotilla’s SBS – frogmen-commandos. ⁴¹ Their task was to conduct contingency planning for and execution of ‘close protection (and demolition if necessary) of the key strategic bridges over the Rhine’ as well as destroy the many river barges on the river to prevent the enemy utilizing them and to create crossing hazards. ⁴² Bridges over the Weser and Elbe rivers also had to be defended against Soviet attack and capture, and were to be blown up after NATO troops had crossed to the western banks. Extensive mining would have been emplaced at natural crossing/bridging points. For all these tasks, thousands of magnetic mines, tens of thousands of kilogrammes of plastic explosives, and detonators were stored near the rivers. ⁴³ Having done as much as they could to turn the Rhine into a formidable obstacle, the SBS would then stay behind on the eastern side of the river providing reconnaissance and intelligence and to sabotage WP logistics. Travelling by light vehicle, a radio operator and two SBS swimmer-canoeists would advance eastwards on country roads as far as possible and until they reached enemy formations. ⁴⁴ 2 SBS, and later also the newly formed 3 SBS, were part of the Rhine Squadron till around 1958 – when the main line of defence was moved to the centre of Germany – and took part in all major British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) exercises when they would be joined by 4 and 5 SBS, formed from the Royal Marine Force Voluntary Reserve. ⁴⁵

East of the Rhine, NORTHAG forces would have fought an aggressive delaying battle. In this battle, a Special Air Service Group would have let themselves be bypassed and stayed-behind. ⁴⁶ 21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Terretorial Army/Reserves - TA), a reserve unit with many World War II SAS veterans in its ranks was stood up in 1947 specifically for the task. ⁴⁷ It was later joined by another TA unit, 23 SAS, which was also formed as a result of a direct military requirement of 1 (BR) Corps. 23 SAS had its roots in the Joint Reserve Reconnaissance Unit (JRRU), a small unit studying ‘the possible methods of acquiring accurate battlefield surveillance and designating nuclear targets’. ⁴⁸ It was because of the JRRU’s impressive performance during its annual exercise in 1957, when it tested their new techniques in battlefield surveillance and nuclear targeting, that 1 (BR) Corps requested the unit to be included in its order of battle. ⁴⁹ The role of the SAS in the defence of West Germany was kept top secret but by the 1960s, the KGB and East German intelligence were well aware of what was being planned and even tried, unsuccessfully, to penetrate the unit. ⁵⁰

When the main line of defence moved from the Rhine eastwards in the late 1950s, NORTHAG identified the obvious shortcomings of employing two reserve units for these tasks. In theory, 21 and 23 SAS would have been mobilized and deployed to 1 (BR) Corps within 48 hours of an alert – losing valuable time that NORTHAG did not have. ⁵¹ To fill the gap, the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) stood up the Special Reconnaissance Squadron (SRS) in 1962 to augment the SAS. Untill 1964, the SRS would have provided intelligence on WP movements and strengths and target acquisition for NATO missiles and heavy artillery systems. Again, four-man patrols would have ‘hidden in well concealed observation posts covering likely main enemy axis of advance. A secondary role for the patrols was to undertake ambushes and demolition’. ⁵² In 1973, the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) became a Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) Patrol Regiment and provided additional Stay-Behind Observation Posts (SBOP) with their three squadrons each with a number of four to six man patrols. HAC provided STA capabilities to the HQs of 1st Artillery Brigade (HQ Sqn HAC), 1 Armoured Division (I Sqn HAC), 4 Armoured Division (II Sqn HAC), and 1 BR Corps (III Sqn HAC) with one ‘sabre’ squadron each. ⁵³

Again, these units were reserve units with the aforementioned shortcomings. In 1982, a regular army unit, the Special Observation Post Troop, was tasked to take on the role as part of 5th Regiment Royal Artillery (RA). This STA unit was stationed in Hildesheim, close to the IGB. From 1985 onwards, two Special OP Troops would have guided the artillery fire of their respective parent units (5th and 32 Reg RA) from their underground shelters on the IGB. ⁵⁴

The other component national corps of NORTHAG also build up SB capabilities. The Belgians, Germans, Dutch, French, and US forces fielded similar units. ⁵⁵ In 1977, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom sent instructors to Germany to work on the planning of an international long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) school. From 1979 onwards, joint training for military SB units was conducted at NATO’s International Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol School in Weingarten, Germany, under the lead of UK SF. British SAS, German Fernspäher, Dutch Marines, Belgian Para-Commandos, US SF, and others worked and trained together on a daily basis. ⁵⁶ Courses included Long Range Reconnaissance, Combat Survival (E&E and resistance to interrogation), Advanced WP Specialist Recognition, Close Quarter Battle and so on. TRISTAR, a NATO LRRP exercise originally sponsored by the SAS, was conducted annually.

Military SB SF were an important capability from the onset of the Cold War and throughout. The allies agreed on the enabling function they had and started aligning their respective units to common standards.

VII. Clandestine SB organizations in West Germany

In 1952, the commander-in-chief of BAOR, General Sir John Harding, called for the formation of a secret German SB organization in order to augment his military assets and fill the gap caused by their lengthy deployment times to the front:

Our chances of imposing effective delay on the enemy’s advance east of the Rhine will depend largely on the success of our demolition plans. All practicable preparations must be made beforehand to make the plan effective, including the organisation of a German manned stay behind sabotage organisation. A great deal still requires to be done in these respects. ⁵⁷

As the United Kingdom’s SIS had been busy building up SB networks elsewhere, the SIS SO Branch would have been tasked with this role. The SO Branch had emerged as part of post-war SIS from the SOE that was amalgamated into the SIS in 1946. With it, SIS inherited the World War II experience of the SOE in building up and running partisan, sabotage, and resistance networks. Philip Davies describes how the operational assets of the SOE, officers, networks and agents, taken over by the SIS were absorbed into the agency’s operational Production Directorate, while a separate Directorate of War Planning (D/WP) was created to handle planning for the creation of stay-behind networks and sabotage and subversion cells in the event of war, and placed under Brigadier John Nicholson. ⁵⁸

The actual networks were set up under the respective area controllers and their ‘Production’ organizations.

Training would have been provided by the SIS and SAS in facilities such as the SIS Training Section at Fort Monckton and Hereford (SAS). ⁵⁹ Two German scholars published a detailed history of SBOs in Germany in 2015. ⁶⁰ Unfortunately, however, the United Kingdom has not declassified documents on SIS activities concerning West-German SBOs in the NORTHAG sector. Thus, many questions remain.

SB units were formed in occupied West Germany right after World War II not only by the British but also by the intelligence services of the United States and France in their respective sectors, and the Dutch and Danish in northern West Germany. The running of these SBOs was coordinated with the Organization Gehlen, which later became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the West German foreign intelligence service. In 1956, the BND took over these networks and merged them into one SBO, the Lehr- und Ausbildungsgruppe für das Fernspähwesen der Bundeswehr (LAFBw). ⁶¹ The SB networks, which suffered from chronic understaffing, trained in BND run training courses and on military training grounds in conjunction with US and German military units. Training included aerial resupply, signals, E&E, parachuting, and demolition. There are no records that the United Kingdom handed over control of their SBO in the NORTHAG sector, and it is quite possible that they continued to run their own SBO network even after 1956. ⁶²

The BND was a member of the CPC at NATO, as well as in the Executive Group of the CPC and the Allied Clandestine/Coordinating and Coordinating/Consultative Group (ACCG). From 1959 onwards, BND representatives sat in the ACC together with the Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg’s, the Dutch, the British, and the US secret services.

By 1973, the planned role of BND-led SBO during the early phase of a WP invasion would have been marginal. SB agents were instructed to survive an invasion, and to lay low and quiet during the early occupation phases. Only in what the BND described as the third phase, ‘every-day/routine occupation’, would they start sending messages, recruit fighters, and then conduct ‘massive sabotage operations’. ⁶³ At any stage, they could have been joined by members of NATO deep-penetration units like 22 SAS that would mentor and lead the effort. This concept was not much liked by members of the SAS who, considering their extensive combat experience, did not see a need for ‘amateurs’ to assist them in their missions. Thus, at least 22 SAS had abandoned the cooperation between them and clandestine SB units by the 1980s. ⁶⁴

In theory, it was in the last phase, when the West was gathering strength and the reconquering of occupied territory was imminent, that the clandestine SBO were to engage in sabotage and actual fighting. ⁶⁵ Coordination and cooperation between the BND and the German Ministry of Defence led to many problems. Due to increasing capabilities developed by the Bundeswehr in the area of signals intelligence and long-range reconnaissance, they increasingly ‘trespassed’ on what the BND regarded as its prerogative – signals intelligence and combat reconnaissance, demolition, retardation, sabotage, and so on. The desire on the part of the BND to further develop paramilitary and military capabilities met with increasing resistance and outright refusals on the part of the German army beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the BND tried to regain a mission for its SBO network as a search and rescue/E&E unit to help smuggle out some of the hundreds of aircrew that could have been shot down in the early stages of a war with the WP. For this mission, the German SBO trained on a regular basis with allied intelligence services and other SBO, building up and conducting cross-border ‘rat lines’ for the exfiltration of pilots, agents, and so on. ⁶⁶ The existence of OPC/BND run SBOs in Germany was not a secret to East German intelligence. In 1961, Julius Mader, an officer in the East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), the state security service, published a book about the clandestine ‘killers’ who were trained to be ‘rangers’ and saboteurs. ⁶⁷

As late as 1996, the United Kingdom revealed to the German government the existence of SB weapons and equipment caches in West Berlin. The content of these caches offer an insight into the equipment supplied to (German) SBO. In two of the secret caches, buried in the Grünewald forest, police found boxes with 9 mm pistols and ammunition, knives, navigation equipment, a RS-6 ‘spy radio’, various manuals, tank and aircraft recognition books, a flask of brandy, and chocolate as well as a copy of ‘Total Resistance’, the guerrilla warfare manual written in 1957 by Swiss Major Hans von Dach. ⁶⁸

In sum, and General Sir Harding’s plans for German SBOs notwithstanding, the clandestine assets did not seem to have developed into a war-fighting force to assist in the retardation of an attack. They were in steady decline from the early 1970s and the end for the BND SBO came soon after the end of the Cold War in wake of the ‘scandalous’ revelations about the ‘GLADIO structures’ in many European nations.

VIII. Retardation and demolition – methods and equipment

Retardation operations are designed to inflict damage on the enemy in order to decrease its offensive capability. ⁶⁹ Such operations can be pre-planned missions, as part of a retardation plan, or attacks on targets of opportunity. To achieve the maximum impact on such targets of opportunity, accurate and timely target acquisition would have been provided by aerial reconnaissance or indeed SB units directing the strikes.

The defensive operations by unconventional warfare forces in support of military war plans will include, on highest priority, the retardation of the Soviet advance and attacks on Soviet forces and lines of communications at the outset of hostilities. ⁷⁰

A big part of the retardation effort was demolition.

Military demolition was defined by NATO as interference with the enemy’s operational plan by hampering movement and disrupting supply by destroying communications, transport facilities, airfields, stocks, supplies, fuel, and so on. ⁷¹ Detailed and multilingual NATO ‘obstacle folders’ were prepared in peacetime giving the precise target location, the location of explosives and equipment, the orders for preparing and firing, and a demolition report. ⁷² Preparations for road, tunnel, and bridge demolitions were elaborately planned and pre-prepared all over West Germany. ⁷³

A particularly promising kind of ammunition for such demolitions came with the advent of smaller nuclear devices in the 1950s. In 1957, the US Army started equipping their SF with T-4 Atomic Demolition Munitions, a multi-component system which was soon replaced by the single unit B-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM). ⁷⁴ If nuclear release were authorized, these 1-kiloton devices would have been placed at important bridges or bottlenecks of WP advance and detonated in order to slow their progress. NORTHAG could have requested SADM support from SACEUR who would have allocated the devices to be emplaced and fired by US personnel, that is, the 10^th US Special Forces Group from Bad Tölz, Germany. ⁷⁵ British plans to develop and deploy their own nuclear demolition devices, BLUE PEACOCK, and ‘Project CLIPEUS’ were abandoned in 1958 and the 1970s, respectively. ⁷⁶ This left NORTHAG reliant on US capabilities. Understandable political considerations on the part of the German government rendered the whole SADM tactic questionable.

In the event and given time, SB units would set up secure underground hides using light, prefabricated MEXE modular shelters, or occupy pre-prepared hides and surveillance sites. MEXE Mk2 shelters consisted of pickets, spacers, and arches and PVC-coated jute fabric with a wire mesh woven in as walls as well as to hold the soil used to create the roof. Periscopes were used during the day and night-vision sights outside the shelter by four man teams in a two men on, two men off ‘hot bunk’ system. Light Mobile Diggers would ideally be used to dig the T-shaped hides quickly. ⁷⁷

Once overrun, the patrol would either conduct their static surveillance or leave the hide in pairs and, now behind enemy lines, move to observation points. At intervals, one of the pair would return to the shelter to be relieved by another member of the patrol. Other subsurface hides, strengthened with ‘I beams’ and aluminium landing mats able to sustain a tank rolling over, would provide security, cover, and concealment, and be situated on a vantage over a specific choke point or route of likely enemy advance close to the IGB. In one configuration, four sleeping shafts were dug. These radiated from the main observation trench and had small camouflaged ventilation shafts to the surface. Noise, communication, and light discipline was strict and a ‘candle watch’ to monitor oxygen levels was kept. Life in these shelters was extremely demanding. Emerging from one of the static hides after a few days could leave operators temporarily blinded and barely able to move. ⁷⁸

Information on enemy movements, troop concentrations, enemy artillery or nuclear weapons, and so on would be transmitted from the hide site via HF or other, hopefully secure, communication. In the beginning high-speed Morse ‘spy radios’ like the Mk 123 and Mk 128 with its 30 m wire antenna would have been used – to be replaced by digital radio equipment in the late 1980s. ⁷⁹

Secure communications, crucial to assure an impact on the overall war effort, were identified as the Achilles heel of SB units. During an exercise, BADGER’S LAIR, near Soltau in 1973, 23 SAS units were quickly discovered by British signals teams using direction finding equipment and dog patrols: 37 out of 39 hides were identified within hours. ⁸⁰ Secure communication equipment would have been of the highest priority to ensure the units’ survivability. Detailed military manuals were developed for these kinds of operations. ⁸¹

As previously noted, a priority task would have been the target acquisition for NATO (nuclear) missiles and artillery which would provide tactical support to the battlefield through attacks on either fixed or non-fixed targets like tank battalions in staging areas, concentration of forces preparing for river crossings, and artillery systems. ⁸² For this, operations on a nuclear battlefield had to be trained and manuals for this kind of warfare were developed and disseminated among allied SB units, military as well as clandestine. Already in the late 1950s, the CIA’s Nuclear Energy Division developed a Training Handbook for Nuclear Warfare. The handbook was written in such a way that its classification would not prevent its passage to foreign clandestine services or to foreign nationals, including SBOs. In this handbook, the identification of nuclear weapons’ stockpile sites and their vulnerabilities are described. It also explained procedures to be used by SB agents to assess nuclear strike damage. ⁸³ Furthermore, exotic equipment was contemplated and possibly developed. This included cache locators, electronic devices to pinpoint prepositioned weapon, and equipment storage sites as well as a battery charger that could run on anything from petroleum to coal and twigs. ⁸⁴ One classified US publication was apparently called the Guerrilla Warfare Guide and would have been written with clandestine operations in mind. ⁸⁵

Preparations for military and clandestine SB units were elaborate. Decades of evermore sophisticated technical development and training demonstrate the importance of their function within the overall war plan.

IX. Conclusion

Little had been written in SB research on the role of military SB units in actual war fighting; how they interoperated with civilian, clandestine assets; and how both were embedded in NATO’s overall war plan for the defence of Western Europe. The article for the first time provides a more complete picture of military and clandestine SB units embedded in NATO war planning and doctrine – providing the Alliance with ‘Eyes on Target’ – through a detailed examination of the concept, how it developed, and the division of tasks between the different military and clandestine SB formats.

The article demonstrates how seriously NATO and the allies took the role of SB in the alliance’s war plans. From the very early stages of the Cold War, military SB units were counted on by NATO to fill a significant role as enablers in the retardation efforts against a Soviet onslaught. Over the years, military special units were especially created or resuscitated to fill that role, and adaptations were made to keep the function in line with changing NATO strategy. Clandestine SBOs had been created in parallel with military units under the auspices of intelligence services. They were primarily tasked with resistance against occupying forces but also to act as guides and points of contact for infiltrating SF. Furthermore, clandestine SBOs had the advantage of already being in situ, something the reserve units earmarked for the SB role under NORTHAG could not necessarily guarantee in the event of a surprise attack.

The role of NATO was not always clear in earlier publications on SB. The fact that the Alliance did not convincingly explain the concept when the GLADIO scandals broke did not help. The simple fact that military SB units and clandestine SBOs had a war-fighting role necessitated command and control arrangements and standardization. NATO was the natural forum where these efforts could be coordinated as Western allies incorporated the SB concept into the Alliance’s war plans.

The question remains whether the SB concept and all the effort invested into it was a viable and sound war-fighting tactic. If World War II can serve as an indicator, and that experience certainly influenced the development of the concept, it held promise. Specialist military units are an important asset when it comes to targeting conventional or nuclear strikes. If the units were able to overcome counter-SB measures employed by the invaders, then they could very well have had an impact in the early stages of a war.