danger of a surprise attack. A third military option was also conceivable: Western Europe could be cut off from its US protector in the event of war by the destruction of the Atlantic harbors. It is also certain that missiles were aimed at population centers in Western Europe, such as London, Paris, Bonn and the Ruhr, and Brussels.27 The establishment of another Soviet missile base in Albania could have completed the Soviet's strategy. From this base in the harbor city of Vlorä, Rome and NATO's Southern European Headquarters in Naples could be targeted.28

Although a formidable number of the Soviet Union's battle-ready nuclear missiles were located in GDR territory at the time,29 this fact alone should not be viewed as an aggressive move on Khrushchev's part. His central interest was to improve the Soviets' strategic position in the case of a potential conflict. At the time of the Suez Crisis, Soviet politicians and military planners had to recognize that they did not have the military capacity to threaten Western Europe in order to exert pressure in the case of a crisis. This strategic disadvantage, which the Soviets considered decisive, was to be eliminated through the stationing of R-5M nuclear missiles in the GDR. At the same time, it can be assumed that the nuclear forward guard of the USSR was supposed to reduce the US nuclear advantage that had existed up to that point. Since the Soviet Union was not in a position militarily to match the alleged threat of the Strategic Air Command, it responded by stationing nuclear missiles.

Meanwhile, the brigade in the GDR perfected its readiness through repeated launch drills. For security reasons, training took place only at night. Since the unit was very motivated politically and also enjoyed comparatively comfortable material conditions, they succeeded in reducing the preparation time for a launch from thirty to five hours. This increased performance guaranteed a high state of readiness, but technical problems repeatedly emerged. The substitute used for the highly volatile fuel component liquid oxygen continued to caused problems. Without refueling, the missiles were not mission-ready for longer than thirty days.30

After the BND had gathered the first bits of information about the stationing of the 72nd Engineer Brigade at the beginning of 1959, the information flow increased in the spring of that year. The continued construction work exclusively carried out by Soviet units, the strict cordoning-off of the construction sites, and the forest surroundings necessary for hiding the missile troops, as well as the close military observation by machine gun posts-all of this caused the local population to speculate frequently that the Russians were building missile-launching bases in the area. The BND informants in the area quickly passed these rumors on to the intelligence organization's center in Pullach.31 But the West German intelligence service was by no means the only such agency active in the area where the 72nd Missile Brigade was stationed. US, British and French intelligence agencies, as well as two others that have yet to be identified, attempted to gather information

about the unusual activities in the Fürstenberg/ Vogelsang region.32 Despite this concentration of intelligence agents from NATO countries on such limited territory, the documentary evidence thus far available suggests that information on the nuclear missile deployments may not have reached top-level policymakers in the US until late 1960. It was not until then that US intelligence agencies had even reached firm conclusions on the GDR deployment. Indeed, the CIA believed that Soviet missiles were still in the GDR as of early 1961!33

The Soviet missile base in the GDR provided Khrushchev with an important means to back up his Berlin ultimatum-whether or not its deployment was known among Western policymakers. The Soviet leader reiterated this threat in a conversation in Moscow on 23 June 1959 with W. Averell Harriman: "It would take only a few Soviet missiles to destroy Europe: One bomb was sufficient for Bonn and three to five would knock out France, England, Spain and Italy. The United States would be in no position to retaliate because its missiles could carry a warhead of only ten kilograms whereas Russian missiles could carry 1,300 kilograms."

The Western military alliance hence had to make it clear to the Soviets that there would be no compromise on the status of Berlin. The core of this tactic was NATO's 1959 contingency plan “Live Oak," designed to assure Western Allied rights in Berlin. The crisis scenario developed in the context of "Live Oak" foresaw a continual escalation of military force applied in Berlin in the case of a military conflict. The possibilities ranged from an armed invasion of the GDR by US military units to reach Berlin to nuclear retaliatory strikes. 35

Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine at this time whether the presence of the battle-ready Soviet missiles in the GDR played any role in this contingency planning of the Western plans and tactics in the Geneva negotiations that began in May 1959. Uncertainty about Soviet missile deployments (whether Intercontinental or Intermediaterange ballistic missiles) heightened Western concerns that a political crisis over Berlin that turned into a military confrontation could put the UK and Western Europe at risk. Certainly that problem made negotiations seem more urgent. But that uncertainty had been in the air for months before the completion of the GDR deployment. It seems highly doubtful that IRBM deployments in the GDR had an impact on decisions on the Berlin negotiations, especially when one considers that the intelligence community did not complete its assessment of the data on the GDR until the last days of the Eisenhower administration.37

36

Khrushchev, however, probably did not intend an escalation of the crisis to reach the point of a war. The Soviet premier's tactics in the Berlin Crisis were much more bluff-oriented. For Khrushchev, the nuclear missiles in the GDR might have served as a special "trump" in the game of power poker. At no point, however, was the Soviet leader prepared to risk a World War III over Berlin.38 When he recognized that a military conflict would develop in the

case of continued confrontation, Khrushchev moved to pull back his missiles stationed in the Soviets' front guard—perhaps intended (but not noticed) as a visible symbol of a relaxation of tensions.

In August 1959, the missile unit left its positions in the GDR in great haste. The officers and the soldiers of the unit, many of whom had hoped to be stationed in the GDR for a long term and had already begun to develop plans for a life in East Germany, were taken completely by surprise by the order to relocate. Within the span of a few weeks, the missiles were moved to the area around Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast. Paris and London were once again outside the range of the R-5M.39

Even today, most of the officers and soldiers of the 72nd Engineer Brigade who took part in the stationing and withdrawal are unable to explain the hasty retreat of the missile unit. They suspect, however, that the retreat to the Soviet territory was based on political motives.40 In fact, the withdrawal occurred just as Eisenhower and Khrushchev announced their decision to exchange visits, with Khrushchev to visit the US in September. With détente in the air, the Soviet leader may have worried that it would be awkward for Soviet policy if the US discovered the missiles in Germany. Given that two years later the Soviet leader launched "Operation Anadyr," the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba, Khrushchev's motives in deploying and removing nuclear missiles in the GDR raises intriguing questions-which only further access to the relevant archives will help to answer. Was "Operation Atom" a prelude to "Operation Anadyr"?

About Measures to Increase the Battle-Readiness of the Engineer Brigades of the Supreme Command Reserve Units.

With the goal of increasing the battle-readiness of the engineer brigades of the Supreme Command's Reserve Units, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have decided that:

The Defense Ministry of the Soviet Union (Comrade Zhukov) is assigned with carrying out the following

measures:

1. From 1955 to 1956, four engineer brigades of the Supreme Command Reserve Units are to be transferred to areas that correspond with the plans for their battle deployment:

A. The 72nd RVGK [Rezerv Verchovnogo Glavnokomandovanija—Reserve of the High Command] Engineer Brigade is to be transferred to the territory of the GDR and is to be incorporated into the troops of the Soviet military forces in Germany;

B. The 73rd RVGK Engineer Brigade is to be transferred to the territory of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the Foreign Ministry of the USSR (Comrade Molotov) is to gain the agreement of the Bulgarian government to this stationing;41

C. The 90th RVGK Engineer Brigade is to be transferred to the territory of the Trans-Caucasian Military Zone;

D. The 85th RVGK Engineer Brigade is to be transferred to the Far Eastern Military Zone

2. The 72nd, 73rd, 85th, 90th and 233rd Engineer Brigades of the RVGK are to be brought up to full strength and are to be fully staffed, and armed with the necessary special weaponry and technology.

3. The 80th RVGK Engineer Brigade is to be transformed into a training unit for engineer brigades RVGK, and will be responsible for training the new non-commissioned officers and soldiers for all engineer brigades, as a substitute for those released to the reserves.

It is to be guaranteed that the training unit for RVGK engineer brigades can be transformed into battle-ready engineer brigades RVGK. In this instance, the specialists necessary for training the replacements coming from the reserves are to be left out of the transformation process. The training unit for RVGK engineer brigades is to be stationed on the territory of the Central State Artillery Range.42

4. The size of the Soviet Army is to be increased by 5,500 men in order to guarantee that the measures listed in points 2 and 3 are carried out.

5. In the period 1955-56, the Ministry of Defense of the USSR is allowed to use 30 R-1 and 18 R-2 missiles that have passed their maximum guaranteed storage life in the reserve of the Ministry of Defense to

improve the battle training of the 7 engineer brigades.

The Secretary of the Central Committee

The Chairman of the of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Council of Ministers of the USSR,

N. Khrushchev

N. Bulganin

[Source: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (AP FR), Moscow, Register 93 (Documents with Decisions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the Year 1955) as printed in Pervoe raketnoe soedinenie vooruzennych sil strany: Voenno-istoriceskij ocerk (Moscow: CIPK, 1996), pp. 208-209. Translated from Russian for the CWIHP by Matthias Uhl.]

Dr. Matthias Uhl recently defended his dissertation on "Stalin's V-2: The Transfer of German Missile Technology to the USSR and the Development of the Soviet Missile Production, 1945-49." He is currently a research fellow at the Berlin office of the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich), working on a larger documentation project on the 1958/62 Berlin Crisis. Dr. Vladimir I. Ivkin is a Russian historian.

1 See "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Nr. 589-365," Top Secret, 26 March 1955, printed in Pervoe raketnoe soedinenie vooruzennych sil strany: Voenno-istoricesky ocerk (Moscow: CIPK, 1996), pp. 208-209. The original is located in the Archiv Prezidenta Rossijskoj Federacii [Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow, AP RF], Register 93 (Documents with Decisions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for 1955).

2 On the activity of the German missile specialists in the Soviet Union, see Jürgen Michels, Peenemünde und seine Erben in Ost und West: Entwicklung und Weg deutscher Geheimwaffen, (Bonn: Bernard & Gräfe, 1997); Ulrich Albrecht, Andreas Heinemann-Grueder and Arend Wellman, Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion (Berlin: Dietz, 1992). The author is currently working on a monograph on the same topic that will soon appear under the title: Stalins V-2: Der Transfer der deutschen Raketentechnik in die UdSSR, 1945-1955.

3 See Raketno-kosmiceskaia korporacia "Energiia" imeni S. P. Koroleva (Moscow: RKK "Energija”, 1996), pp. 31-51; T. Kochran, U. Arikin, R. Norris and Dz. Sends, Jadernoe vooruzenie SSSR (Moscow: IZDAT, 1992), pp. 230-233.

4 See M. A. Pervov, "Ballisticeskie rakety velikoj strany" Aviacija i kosmonavtika: Vcera, segodnja, zavtra, no. 7 (1998), pp. 17-23; see also A.V. Karpenko, A. F. Utkin and A. D. Popov, Otecestvennye strategiceskie raketnye kompleksy (Sankt-Peterburg: Nevskij bastion: Gangut, 1999), pp. 38-44.

5 See Strategiceskoe jadernoe vooruzenie Rossii (Moscow: IzdAT 1998), pp. 160-161, see also B. E. Certok, Rakety i ljudi (Moscow: Masinostroenie 1995), pp. 389390; Jadernye ispytanija SSSR (Moscow: IzdAT 1997), p. 147; Chronika osnovnych sobytij istorii Raketnych vojsk strategiceskogo naznacenija (Moscow: CIPK, 1996), p. 35. "See Raketnye kompleksy, p. 43f. see also S. G. Kolesnikov, Strategiceskoe raketno-jadernoe oruzie (Moscow: Arsenal-Press, 1996), p. 19-20.

7 See M. A. Pervov, Raketnoe oruzie Raketnych vojsk strategiceskogo naznacenija (Moscow: Violanta, 1999), p.

51.

8 See "The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Council of Ministers of the USSR," no. 589-365, Top Secret, 26 March 1955, printed in Pervoe raketnoe, pp. 208-209.

During my interview with General Heinz Kessler, who was the Defense Minister for the GDR from 1985 to 1989, on 24 October 1999, Kessler stated: "The Soviet Army leadership did not give the GDR military leadership any information about the stationing of missiles in Vogelsang and Fürstenberg. In my position at the time as head of the GDR air force, I had no knowledge of any action of that type. Neither the GDR Defense Minister at the time, Willi Stoph, nor his first assistant, Lieutenant-General Heinz Hoffmann had received any information, as far as I know. In addition, in my later position as Defense Minister, this 1959 event was never mentioned in any way by the commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany or the Supreme Command of the Warsaw Pact. This type of behavior matches my later experiences. The Soviet military, for example, never told us which Soviet installations in the GDR had nuclear weapons in storage during my time in that position."

10 See Sozdateli raketno-jadernogo oruzija i veteranyraketaikij rasskazyvajut (Moscow: CIPK, 1996), pp. 250252, see also Voennyj enciklopediceskij slovar' Raketnych vojsk strategiceskogo naznacenija (Moscow: Naucnoe izdatel'stvo "BRE", 1999), p. 619.

11

See Pervoe raketnoe, p. 124-125.

12 See Draft Decision for the Council of Ministers of the USSR, "About the Production of a Trial Series of LongRange Missiles V-2 and Measures to Their Further Improvement," not dated (probably August 1946), Russian State Archive for Economics [RGAE], Moscow, Register 8157, Section 1, document 1149, sheet 126-128.

13 See Ju. A. Jasin and N. K. Monachov, "Pervaja otecestvennaja" Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, no. 3 (1998), p. 5; see also Raketnye vojska strategi'eskogo naznacenija: Voenno-istoriceskij trud (Moskva: RVSN, 1994), pp. 51-53; M. V. Sacharov, Die Streitkräfte der

UdSSR: Abriß ihrer Entwicklung von 1918 bis 1968 (Berlin: Militärverlag d. DDR, 1974) p. 637.

14 See Pervoe raketnoe, pp. 11-13, see also M. A. Pervov, Mezkontinental'nye ballisticeskie rakety SSSR i Rossii: Kratkij istoriceskij ocerk (Moscow: [publisher not identified], 1998), p. 29–30.

15 See Standortkartei der Militärischen Auswertung des BND: "Allgemeine Beobachtungen in Vogelsang, 22. Mai 1958 bis 11 August 1958", [Card Catalog of the BND's Military Evaluations: General Observations in Vogelsang], Federal Archives, Koblenz [henceforth BA Koblenz], Collection B 206/114, sheet 18-19.

16 Ibid, sheet 18.

17 Ibid., report E 14136, mid-September 1958, BA Koblenz, collection B 206/114, sheet 20.

18 See information sent to the author by the BND on 22 April 1998 and 4 May 2000.

19 A. Bondarenko, "Osobaja tajna Vtoroj armii," Aviacija i kosmonavtika: Vcera, segodnja, zavtra, no. 7 (1998), pp. 24-25; also see Pervoe raketnoe, p. 13.

20 Card Catalog of the BND's Military Evaluations: General Observations in Fürstenberg, report E 21235, late January, 1959, BA Koblenz, B 206/109, Sheet 6.

21 Ibid, sheet 6. The Soviets' procedures for unloading their cargo, which corresponded exactly to the instructions for transporting missiles of the R-5M category, also indicates that it was actually missiles being delivered at that time. See "Security Instruction to the Troop Section 15644 for Testing the R-5M and Other Analog Varieties," 31 July 1954, RGAE, Register 397, Section 1, Document 201, Sheets 101-112.

22 See Pervoe raketnoe, p. 13.

23 See Pervov, Raketnoe oruzie, p. 51; also see Slovar RVSN, p. 204-5.

24 See Pervoe raketnoe, p. 133-34.

25 See Bondarenko, "Osobaja tajna Vtoroj armii" p. 25. 26 Voenacal'niki Rakenych vojsk strategiceskogo naznacenija (Moscow: CIPK, 1997), p.88.

27 See Wolfgang Bayer "Geheimoperation Fürstenberg," Der Spiegel, no. 3, 16 January 2000, p. 42-44; also see Bondarenko, "Osobaja tajna Vtoroj armii" p. 25-26. 28 See Das Albanien des Enver Hocha, "Arte" TV Production, 1997.

29 See Raketnyj scit otecestva (Moscow: CIPK, 1999), p. 68. In 1959, the missile troops of the Soviet Union had only 32 battle-ready atomic missiles at their disposal. All of them were R-5M model types. By 1960, they had two intercontinental missiles, model R-7A, as well as 36 medium-range missiles, model R-5M, and 172 R-12 missiles. 30 See Bondarenko, "Osobaja tajna Vtoroj armii" p. 26; Pervoe raketnoe, p. 120–22.

31 See Standortkartei der Militärischen Auswertung des BND: Allgemeine Beobachtungen in Vogelsang, Februar-Juni 1959 [Card Catalog of the BND's Military Evaluations: General Observations in Vogelsang, FebruaryJune 1959], BA Koblenz, B 206/114, Sheets 25-29.

32 See Standortkartei der Militärischen Auswertung

des BND: Allgemeine Beobachtungen in Fürstenberg, Meldung von USAREUR (United States Army in Europe), April 1959, BA Koblenz, collection B 206/109, sheet 6; "Meldung von Aster," ibid; Standortkartei der Militärischen Auswertung des BND: Allgemeine Beobachtungen Baustelle VOGELSANG - BURGWALL, Meldung von Narzisse, September 1959, BA Koblenz, collection B 206/114, sheet 1. ASTER is the BND's code name for the British intelligence agency, and the information delivered to the BND by the French Foreign Intelligence Service was classified under the codename NARZISSE. In addition, there are the code names DIANA and BSSO, which have not yet been positively linked to a particular foreign intelligence service.

33 Editor's Note: See "Intelligence Note: Deployment of Soviet Medium Range Missiles in East Germany," Memorandum from Hugh S. Cumming Jr (INR) to the Secretary of State, 4 January 1961, National Archives, Record Group 59, Lot 65D478: Records of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy/Country and Subject Files Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1950-1962, box 5, 1961/USSR/Intelligence Reports.-I would like to thank William Burr (National Security Archive) for bringing this document to my attention.

34 Quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford UP, 1997), p. 242.

35 See William Burr, "Avoiding the Slippery Slope: The Eisenhower Administration and the Berlin Crisis, from 1958 to 1959," Diplomatic History, 18:2 (Spring 1994), pp. 177205; see also "Geheimoperation Fürstenberg" Der Spiegel, p. 46; see also Christian Bremen, Die Eisenhower-Administration und die zweite Berlin-Krise 1958-1961 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998); John Lewis Gaddis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds. Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 111-115.

36 Whatever data the West might have had on Soviet deployment in East Germany did not lead to a clear clamor among the Western European NATO members for corresponding MRBMs-only Turkey and Italy responded favorably responded to Eisenhower's offer for them. See Phil Nash, The Other Missiles of October (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).