Recently I used an Audible Credit to get Red Storm Rising which I hadn't read in the better part of a decade, and at least in my opinion it still holds up. Despite it's problems in (what I believe to be) the Holy Trinity of Cold War gone hot novels (Red Storm Rising, Team Yankee, and Chieftains), I still think that Red Storm Rising is the best of them. One of the first action movies I can remember in it's entirety is We Were Soldiers and the way it portrayed the NVA as not faceless villains but tough and clever opponents who were half a step ahead of the Americans was amazing to me, and RSR just hits that same itch. The Soviets and Americans are both shown at the peak of their capabilities going tit for tat, bringing out novel technologies and tactics that catch their enemies off guard even as their commanders flounder with an impartial picture of events despite bringing everything from foot scouts to reconnaissance satellites to bear. The Dance of the Vampires is still one of my all time favorite sequences of action in any book I have read and it is only one engagement in a conflict that pushes the bleeding edge of 80s/90s technology. However there is one egregious issue I have with the book, because after listening to it again I have determined that I have been catfished. Throughout the book there are a number of events that would be awesome novels all on their own, the destruction of the Royal Norwegian Air Force, the Battle of the North Sea, the Battle of Hamburg where the Bundeswher launched a suicidal counter-attack the broke the back of the largest Soviet Army and didn't just drive them back but pushed on into East German territory. All of these events are talked about and referenced but are not discussed in anything more than passing which is a little frustrating on it's own, these are flat out stated to be incredibly important events in the course of the war between NATO and the Pact but it's just a footnote in the background. This doesn't even go into the political crisis between SACEUR and the German government (minor spoilers ahead) which escalates to the point that after weeks of begging to abandon Hannover and fallback behind the Weser River, when some NATO officers suggested a further withdrawal behind the Leine the Bundeswher issues an ultimatum that another retreat is out of the question and the war will be won or lost on the west bank of the Weser. But by far the most egregious example comes from Chapter 14: Gas.
Moderate Spoilers in the following paragraph:
The chapter comes after the decision to go to war has already been made, the pieces are in motion, the maskirovka is underway, and tensions are sky high as NATO has detected the movement of Soviet troops into assault positions and begun their own mobilization. As the moments draws near the Soviet government finally informs the German Democratic Republic of what their plans are and includes a copy of their plans, which calls for a conventional attack initiated with a strike by chemical weapons on strategic targets. In the dead of night the leader of the DDR (called the head of their Communist Party even though they were lead by a Prime Minister, one of the oddities that pops up throughout the story) dons plains clothes and leaves for a secret meeting with the Commander in Chief of the National Volksarmee and a Colonel of the Stasi. Together they present a report obtained through an agent highly placed in the West German military that presents the analysis of the result of a chemical weapon attack in Germany, and the catastrophic results it would have. The report makes for some truly horrifying reading I'll type it out below, and as the PM finishes his reading he turns to the officers and ask them what they think, and the General begins by saying that the report if anything understates the damage a Soviet chemical weapon attack and a tit for tat exchange would leave Germany 'as barren as the surface of the moon' and there was nothing they could do to mitigate the damage. At the end of the day he concludes, it would be easier to protect the people of the DDR from a nuclear exchange than it would be from a chemical attack, and they had confirmed reports that American transport aircraft had begun delivery of Bigeye chemical bombs into Germany. The PM turns to the Stasi Colonel, who states flat out (albeit with more words) that one way or another the conflict will end with a unified Germany, and they had to consider the possibility that the immense destruction may in fact be a deliberate consequence of the Soviet plan. After all over the past seventy years it was a unified Germany which had invaded Russian territory twice and inflicted such damage to the nation, and what better way to cripple a newly unified Germany than devastating their population and leaving the few, if any survivors with the worst humanitarian crisis in history. The PM is understandably appalled by the conclusion his officers have reached, and after a few minutes consideration he decides that he has no choice but to issue a letter to the Soviet Politburo stating in no uncertain terms, that the People, Party, and Army of the DDR will under no circumstances tolerate the deployment of chemical weapons within the territory of Greater Germany.
This letter is quite simply, a political nuke that would have forever changed the relationship between the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Even within the story it's a one hell of a bomb that throws the Politburo into a circular firing squad of insults and accusations before they decide that they are too far along to stop now and decide to go full convent, but here is the kicker. It is never mentioned again. You could write an entire story about this crisis on it's own but it is never mentioned again, and I am seething a little bit that my political thriller boner was tickled and left unsatisfied by an incredibly interesting situation.
In conclusion, 7/10 I recommend it for action fans but I am forever saddened that we couldn't hit every note that I wished TC could have.
by roadrunner036
1 Comment
**Section 6**
Spring-summer weather patterns (moderate humidity and temperatures; rain probability 35% per day); westerly and southwesterly winds of 10 to 30 km/hr at ground level; indexed for altitude; use of highly persistent agents against communications nexi, POMCUS sites, airfields, supply, and nuclear weapon storage facilities (normal computed delivery error rate, see Appendix F of Annex 1).
As with Scenarios 1,3,4, and 5, any warning of over 15 minutes will ensure virtually complete MOPP-4 protection of alerted combat and support personnel. The problem of civilian casualties remains, since over a hundred targets of the categories cited above are near major population centers. Biodegradation of persistent agents such as GD (the expected Soviet agent of choice; for an analysis of Soviet literature on this topic, see Appendix C of Annex 2) will be slowed by generally mild temperatures and weather-reduced sunlight photochemical action. This will allow the agents in aerosol form to drift on wind currents. Given minimum source concentrations of 2 milligrams per cubic meter, predicted vertical temperature gradients, and cloudwidth inputs, we see that the downwind toxic vapor hazard to large areas of the FRG and DDR will be approximately 0.3 (plus or minus 50% in our calculations, allowing for expected impurities and chemical breakdown in the chemical munitions) as great as that at the targets themselves. Since open Soviet literature calls for source (that is, target) concentrations well beyond the median lethal dose (LCT-50), we see that the entire German civilian population is at the gravest risk. Expected allied retaliation to such chemical strikes would be largely psychological in nature-the use of Soviet munitions will effectively contaminate most of Greater Germany; it is expected that no part of Germany east of the Rhine can be considered safe to unprotected personnel, beginning 12 hours after the first munitions are expended. Similar effects may be expected in Czechoslovakia and even western Poland, depending on wind direction and speed. Such contamination must be expected, moreover, to continue at least 1.5 times the mean persistence level of the agents used. This is the last (and statistically most likely) of the scenarios outlined by the contract specifications.