The Third World War and The Third World War: The Untold Story are war novels by Sir John Hackett, published in 1978 and 1982, by Macmillan in New York and Sidgwick & Jackson in London, respectively. The novels detail a hypothetical World War III waged between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1985, written in the style of a non-fiction historical retrospective interspersed with accounts of the conflict from the perspectives of various people.
The Third World War and The Untold Story describe largely similar events, but the latter incorporates geopolitical and technological developments made since, such as the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts, and the proposed militarization of space.
Meanwhile, the Politburo, coming to the consensus that its economy is stagnating and the Soviet Armed Forces may not be able to retain technological parity with the West for much longer, decides that it is within their best interests to expand the Soviet sphere of influence by force through an invasion of Western Europe. Although resistance from NATO is guaranteed, the Politburo gambles on quickly defeating its European members before the United States can mount a counteroffensive, while also keeping neutral countries out of the war and potentially causing a schism in Western Europe's defense by convincing France to stay out of the conflict. The Soviets deliberate three options:
"Variant C": A conventional invasion with nuclear strikes as a backup option should the invasion stall.
To avoid mutual assured destruction, the Politburo ultimately decides on Variant C as their invasion strategy, albeit augmented with chemical weapon strikes in locations where their use is deemed effective.
The catalyst for conflict comes in July 1985, when a U.S. Marine Corps unit intervenes against a Soviet incursion into Yugoslavia. In response, the Warsaw Pact mobilizes and launches a full-scale invasion of Western Europe on 4 August 1985, the 71st anniversary of the start of World War I. Soviet forces advance on Europe from East Germany and manage to thrust through West Germany towards the Rhine, while also landing forces in Norway and Turkey. Attacks are also carried out using strategic bombing campaigns, Soviet Navy firepower, and even space weapons.
However, the Soviet invasion stalls when stiff resistance from NATO halts Warsaw Pact forces along the German border at Krefeld and forces them out of the Netherlands. Compounding this setback, the Soviets fail to secure the neutrality of the other European states: Ireland sides with NATO under an agreement with France after Soviet missiles strike Shannon Airport for hosting French fighter jets and NATO anti-submarine aircraft, while Sweden mobilizes for war and assists Norway after the Soviet Air Forces repeatedly violate Swedish airspace. The Soviet Union also faces significant internal destabilization as mutinies, desertion, internal dissent, and demoralization plague the Warsaw Pact. Elsewhere in the world, the U.S. bombs Cuba, China invades Vietnam to overthrow its government, Egypt invades Libya, Japan seizes the Kuril Islands, the Frontline States and most other Soviet allies in Africa invade South Africa, and the Soviet Navy and its merchant fleet are neutralized.
As the war rapidly shifts against their favor, in an effort to prove they are still a force to be reckoned with, the Soviet Union launches a nuclear missile at Birmingham, United Kingdom, destroying it; in response, the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against Minsk, Belarus, accelerating the Soviet Union's loss of control over the Warsaw Pact and their own republics. In Moscow, internal dissent reaches its peak when Soviet citizens protesting food shortages become convinced that a luxury hotel contains hoarded food for the Soviet elite and storm the building, only to find that the KGB murdered all of the patrons. The anti-government revolt rapidly swells as even the militsiya and Internal Troops side with the populace while political dissidents organize mass prison breaks, and the Soviet government loses control of the entire country outside of the Kremlin. A coup d'état launched by Ukrainian nationalists overthrows the Politburo and the Soviet Union collapses, ending World War III.
In the aftermath, the ruins of Birmingham and Minsk are preserved as war memorials named Peace City West and Peace City East respectively, fronted by immense causeways. Among the various geopolitical changes, German reunification is never achieved, as support for it has diminished both internationally and in both Germanies, each now having come to possess separate national identities; in particular, East Germany, having outlived the superpower that created it, prepares to host its first free elections in 1986 to determine its future. Inheriting the post-war world are three superpowers—the United States, the European Confederation, and an Asian confederation dominated by Japan and China—who regard each other not as political and military rivals, but as economic competitors and peaceful friends.
Alternate ending
An alternate ending unique to The Untold Story is offered as a separate chapter, told through radio transcripts and newspaper editorials. This alternative scenario assumes that NATO acquiesced to the demands of the peace movements and anti-nuclear movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and drastically scaled down their nuclear forces and nuclear sharing capabilities in favor of conventional forces (which they already had a disadvantage in), aside from France's Strategic Oceanic Force and the U.S.'s Strategic Air Command. In contrast, the Soviet Union's political repression and lack of freedom of speech allow them to maintain their nuclear forces, leaving the West at a major disadvantage.
In this alternate turn of events, the Warsaw Pact invasion quickly manages to overrun NATO forces in West Germany and the Low Countries. Driven by fears of Soviet occupation or a punitive bombing campaign if it refuses to comply, France withdraws from the conflict after the Soviet Union assures that it will escape occupation and attack. Unwilling to risk global nuclear war, American forces withdraw from Europe, and the remnants of NATO sue for peace.
Despite not being occupied, the United Kingdom is forced to accept a set of conditions that effectively give the Soviet Union control of British political, military, and economic institutions. National control is handed to a joint British–Soviet commission. Britain's European Economic Community membership is terminated, as are its obligations to the Treaty of Rome. A journalist predicts the Soviets will terminate trade union immunities under the law. Queen Elizabeth II remains in the United Kingdom, but most of the British royal family flees for Commonwealth states, while much of the British military escapes Soviet control by putting themselves under American, Canadian, or Australian commands.
This chapter is not included in the Macmillan edition.
Development
Only a portion of The Third World War was actually written by Hackett.[1]
Hackett had two objectives in mind: to demonstrate the necessity for Western Europe to have a strong and coordinated conventional military and to suggest that the use of nuclear weapons might not result in full nuclear warfare between the Soviets and the West. The limited use of nuclear weapons portrayed in the scenario results after one side's conventional forces have become weak and vulnerable; the other side responds quickly, albeit with limited retaliation.
Critical response
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times thought that Hackett's proposed scenarios were too optimistic. Points that Lehmann-Haupt questioned included the portrayal of the Soviets as not initiating a major nuclear exchange and thereby a global nuclear war as they near defeat and the projecting of Western forces proceeding without critical setbacks caused by poor decisions or bad luck. The effects of the war and enlightened policies resolve many local conflicts from Ireland to Central America and in Palestine. Lehmann-Haupt criticized the novel for being too dry and swift in moving through its major incidents. However, noting that Hackett had consulted with many military and political experts, Lehmann-Haupt said that the book represented a "very high order of strategic thinking" and "a signal to the Soviets, or even a warning, of the way some Western military leaders are thinking."[2]
Release details
The Third World War
1978, UK, Sidgwick & Jackson ( ISBN978-028-398449-5), Pub date 1978, hardback (First edition)
Red Army, by Ralph Peters, depicting a Soviet invasion of Western Europe from an entirely Soviet perspective
Red Storm Rising, a similar World War III scenario by Tom Clancy, detailing a conventional Soviet invasion of Western Europe
Related Research Articles
Twilight: 2000 is a 1984 post-apocalyptic military tabletop role-playing game published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). Set in the aftermath of World War III, the game operates on the premise that the United States/NATO and the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact have fought a lengthy conventional war followed by a limited nuclear war with all its consequences. The player characters are survivors of said war.
The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant defensive alliance, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). The Warsaw Pact was the military and economic complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe.
Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.
World War III or the Third World War are names given to a hypothetical worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since at least as early as 1941. Some apply it loosely to limited or more minor conflicts such as the Cold War or the war on terror. In contrast, others assume that such a conflict would surpass prior world wars in both scope and destructive impact.
Red Storm Rising is a war novel, written by Tom Clancy and co-written with Larry Bond, and released on August 7, 1986. Set in the mid-1980s, it features a Third World War between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact forces, and is unique for depicting the conflict as being fought exclusively with conventional weapons, rather than escalating to the use of weapons of mass destruction or nuclear warfare. It is one of two Clancy novels, along with SSN (1996), that are not set in the Ryanverse.
The RSD-10 Pioneer was an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, deployed by the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1988. It carried GRAU designation 15Ж45 (15Zh45). Its NATO reporting name was SS-20 Saber.
Team Yankee is a techno-thriller novel written in 1987 by Harold Coyle, then a major in the United States Army. Set during the World War III scenario outlined in Sir John Hackett's novel The Third World War: The Untold Story, the novel follows the titular United States Army armored company-sized team in combat against the Soviet Union after the Warsaw Pact invades Western Europe. While Hackett's book emphasizes strategy and world politics, Coyle's features the experiences of the tank crews and infantrymen fighting on the front lines.
AirLand Battle was the overall conceptual framework that formed the basis of the US Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late 1990s. AirLand Battle emphasized close coordination between land forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front line enemy forces. AirLand Battle replaced 1976's "Active Defense" doctrine, and was itself replaced by "Full Spectrum Operations" in 2001.
The military history of the Soviet Union began in the days following the 1917 October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power. In 1918 the new government formed the Red Army, which then defeated its various internal enemies in the Russian Civil War of 1917–22. The years 1918–21 saw defeats for the Red Army in the Polish–Soviet War (1919–21) and in independence wars for Estonia (1918–20), Latvia (1918–20) and Lithuania (1918–19). The Red Army invaded Finland ; fought the Battles of Khalkhin Gol of May–September 1939 against Japan and its client state Manchukuo; it was deployed when the Soviet Union, in agreement with Nazi Germany, took part in the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and occupied the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. In World War II the Red Army became a major military force in the defeat of Nazi Germany and conquered Manchuria. After the war, it occupied East Germany and many nations in central and eastern Europe, which became satellite states in the Soviet bloc.
Seven Days to the River Rhine was a top-secret military simulation exercise developed in 1979 by the Warsaw Pact. It depicted the Soviet Bloc's vision of a seven-day nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces.
The Rapacki Plan was a proposal presented in a speech by Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki to the United Nations General Assembly on 2 October 1957 as a limited plan for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization in Central Europe by establishing a nuclear-free zone. The plan declared that the People's Republic of Poland would not station or produce any nuclear armaments within their territory, if the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic agreed to do the same. Czechoslovakia would later include itself in support of the nuclear-free zone. The plan followed attempts by both Western Powers and the Soviet Union to de-escalate Cold War tensions and push for greater disarmament during the mid 1950s.
The Cold War from 1979 to 1985 was a late phase of the Cold War marked by a sharp increase in hostility between the Soviet Union and the West. It arose from a strong denunciation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. With the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and American President Ronald Reagan in 1980, a corresponding change in Western foreign policy approach toward the Soviet Union was marked by the rejection of détente in favor of the Reagan Doctrine policy of rollback, with the stated goal of dissolving Soviet influence in Soviet Bloc countries. During this time, the threat of nuclear war had reached new heights not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The NATO Double-Track Decision was the decision by NATO from December 12, 1979, to offer the Warsaw Pact a mutual limitation of medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. It was combined with a threat by NATO to deploy more medium-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe after the Euromissile Crisis.
NATO Commander is a strategy video game designed by Sid Meier for the Atari 8-bit family and published in 1983 by MicroProse. Ports to the Apple II, and Commodore 64 were released the following year.
World War III, sometimes abbreviated to WWIII, is a common theme in popular culture. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapons and a third global war. The presence of the Soviet Union as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created persistent fears in the United States and vice versa of a nuclear World War III, and popular culture at the time reflected those fears. The theme was also a way of exploring a range of issues beyond nuclear war in the arts. U.S. historian Spencer R. Weart called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."
The "nuclear umbrella" is a guarantee by a nuclear weapons state to defend a non-nuclear allied state. The context is usually the security alliances of the United States with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Those alliances were formed because of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. For some countries, it was an alternative to acquiring nuclear weapons themselves; other alternatives include regional nuclear-weapon-free zones or nuclear sharing.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Cold War:
NATO: Operational Combat in Europe in the 1970s is a board wargame published by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1973 that simulates an invasion of Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact.
The Warsaw Pact Early Warning Indicator Project was a highly classified US and Allied program designed to gather intelligence that would provide indicators of impending Soviet nuclear attacks before they occurred. It was the American analogue to Operation RYAN. The project aimed to observe and find ways to prevent conflicts with the Soviet Union and its allies from the Warsaw Pact. It consisted of intense clandestine reporting, and Indicator and Warning Methodology.
Nuclear escalation is the concept of a large conflict escalating from conventional warfare to nuclear warfare.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
