The rearward movement of Warsaw Pact forces in the Federal Republic was not the retreat of a defeated army. Though always under pressure from Allied forces which were growing constantly in strength, penetrating where they could and never failing to preserve that intimacy of contact which was always something of an insurance against nuclear attack, the forces of the Warsaw Pact were still able to develop a local superiority almost at will and to retain a high degree of tactical control along the forward edge of their battle area. They had failed in what they had set out to do, however, and the opportunity to do it could not be recreated. There was not only no point in staying where they were. It was going to become increasingly dangerous and difficult to try to do so. The wisest course was to withdraw.
We are concerned here only with the military situation as it confronted Allied Command Europe. Political developments, and particularly those within the Warsaw Pact, which were to become of paramount importance at a later stage, are another matter and are treated in Chapter 26.
In the AFNORTH area, the whole of Denmark and north Norway remained occupied. A gentle movement of the Soviet administrative elements, with security troops and guard units, which was virtually all that had moved into Italy in the first few days of August, had begun out of the AFSOUTH area. By the end of the month the communist-dominated Italian government was on its own, to make what reconciliation would be found possible with its former allies under the Atlantic Treaty.
In the Central Region the early withdrawal of the Soviet divisions in the Krefeld Salient, following hard upon the opening of the NORTHAG counter-offensive of 15 August, was the beginning of an orderly rearward movement along the whole Warsaw Pact front, everywhere — except possibly in the extreme south — under firm Soviet tactical control. A concentration of four Soviet divisions north of Osnabruck, facing south, kept open the southern hinge of a door which might otherwise have closed upon Pact formations moving eastwards out of the Low Countries and the westernmost parts of the Federal Republic, harassed on their way by Allied air attack and the action of II British Corps but still in being. The Allied airhead round Bremen, which might have been the hinge of the northern half of NORTHAG’s door, was firmly contained by the enemy; it would be some time before mine clearance allowed access to it from the sea. In spite of persistent pressure from the south the gap between the Teutoburger Wald and the North Sea coast was never fully closed, and Pact formations were able to move through it eastwards, if only, for the most part, at night. Allied artillery fire caused heavy losses and, in spite of the occasional temporary establishment of local air superiority by Pact air forces, Allied air attack was frequently of devastating effectiveness. A dogged Soviet screen of tank and motorized divisions, however, was able to maintain a defensive front, and this, with the help of local counter-attacks, just held off the threat from the south to the rearward movement.
The Allied purpose was less to inflict a punishing defeat on the armies of the Warsaw Pact in the field than to get them off the territory of the Federal Republic as soon as possible, with the minimum of Allied loss and collateral damage. From the junction with NORTHAG, which was now on a line running north-east through Hildesheim, CENTAG maintained continuous heavy pressure on Pact formations moving eastwards (though with no further major set-piece battle) all the way south to the junction with SOUTHAG. By 18 August no troops of the Warsaw Pact were anywhere to be found in the CENTAG area, out of captivity, west of the Demarcation Line. It was clear, however, that an advance by Allied troops across the line into the GDR would be fiercely resisted, and orders to Allied Command Europe were for the present to hold hard.
In north Germany the position was rather more complicated. Bremen was relieved by 20 August. On the 23rd the forces of the Pact had consolidated everywhere along the Demarcation Line except in the vicinity of Hamburg. Here the River Elbe was the front. Hamburg, its declaration by the
