RAF Germany (RAFG)

 The Royal Air Force in Germany or RAFG was a command of the Royal Air Force stationed in West Germany throughout the Cold War.  It consisted primarily of those units located in Germany following the end of the Second World War and was continually adapted, upgraded and transitioned later to become part of the RAF's growing commitment to the defense of Europe from communist expansion during the Cold War.

The command was officially formed on 1 January 1959 by renaming the RAF's Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF). It operated from numerous airfields and airbases across the former British zone of Occupation in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westfalia. Various fighter, reconnaissance, strike and transport aircraft  and their units saw service in West Germany throughout the Cold War prepared to defend against a Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack. RAF Germany also maintained a number of tactical nuclear weapons for deployment from strike aircraft at installations such as RAF Brüggen near Elmpt.

RAF Germany was disbanded as a separate command in 1993 as part of the reduction of British military presence in Europe following the collapse of the Iron Curtain and end of the Cold War. The remaining RAF forces in Germany ceased to be a separate command, and instead became No 2 Group RAF, part of RAF Strike Command (now RAF Air Command). RAF Germany is now part of British Forces Germany along with the former British Army of the Rhine (BAOR).

The defenders of Europe: A U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagle of U.S. Air Force Europe  is flanked by Panavia Tornado fighters of RAF Germany & the West German Luftwaffe  

British Army of the Rhine (BAOR)

Shoulder insignia of the British Army of the Rhine

The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) was the main element of the British Army based in West Germany from the end of the Second World War until 1994. It was  tasked with being prepared to counter aggressive operations by Soviet and Warsaw Pact armored forces. At the end of the Second World War the British Army was drastically reduced in manpower to such an extent that the former British Rhine Army consisted of only two divisions, the 7th Armored Division and the 2nd Infantry Division. These were based in various former Wehrmacht barracks located across Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westfalia.

These two divisions were reinforced first by the 11th Armored Division in 1950 and the 6th Armoured Division in 1952. Together they formed I British Corps, which was part of NATO and subordinate to NORTHAG (NATO's Northern Army Group). Throughout the Cold War and the subsequent collapse of the Iron Curtain, the four Divisions of BAOR were continually reduced, restructured and reequipped with new weapons.

The BAOR consisted of three main elements: 

1. The main force of I (BR) Corps which had its headquarters at Bielefeld. 
2. The British Rear Combat Zone headquartered in Dusseldorf, responsible for the resupply of the fighting formations. 
3. The British Communications Zone headquarters at Emblem, Belgium which was tasked to receive reinforcements from Great Britain and to coordinate their onward deployment to I (BR) Corps.

The fourth and final contribution to BOAR was the Berlin Infantry Brigade, which was 3,000 strong and not subordinated to NORTHAG but under the control of the Allied Control Council in Berlin.

The manpower strength of the BAOR varied during its existence roughly between sixty and twenty-five thousand troops. The troops of the British Rhine Army were commanded by a four-star general from Headquarters at Rheindahlen, which also housed the headquarters of RAF Germany, NORTHAG and 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force.

Infantrymen of the British Army of the Rhine conduct training exercises with a mortar 

I (BR) Corps consisted of Corps troops and four divisions. The 2nd Infantry Division was one of these and was stationed at Catterick, ready to deploy upon moments notice. The 24 Airmobile Brigade also belonged to this division. It was fully air portable and capable of being transported by helicopter along with all its equipment. The main task of the three infantry battalions of this Brigade was anti-armor operations and they were equipped with the capable Milan anti-tank weapons system.

Two other brigades consisted of Territorial Army units maintaining highly trained and motivated personnel, with their senior ranks including many ex-regulars. The three other divisions were armored divisions and with the Corps troops, they were stationed in twenty areas across Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westfalia. The divisions had three brigades each, differing in strengths and capability ranging from armor, infantry, artillery, engineers, Long range reconnaissance, signals, pioneer and artillery regiments formed from divisional troops. Each division could call on air support from an Army Air Corps Regiment equipped with Gazelle observation and Lynx multi-purpose helicopters.

BAOR participated constantly in various exercises such as the REFORGER or Return of Forces to Germany alongside the United States and other NATO armies to ensure its readiness in time of a crisis. The units of the Territorial Army also carried out exercises across West Germany, with the battalion and brigade scale exercises carried out in joint NATO training areas. Live fire exercises at battle-group level were carried out in Canada at the BATUS training area, to enable a three-day exercises without having to use the same terrain twice.

The Challenger main battle tank was the British Army of the Rhine's tank of choice in planning the massive defensive operations against Soviet and Warsaw Pact armored forces in Germany.

Elements of the BAOR were regularly deployed to operate under UN command as part of BATT and UN peacekeeping operations and they also took part in regular deployments to Northern Ireland for tours of three or six months.

In the event that war had broken out, the BAOR would have come under NATO command. BAOR as 1 (BR) Corps would defend a sector of the North German Plain as part of Armed Forces Central Europe. BAOR forms part of Northern Army Group as part of AF CENT and NORTHAG and would be partnered by the Central Army Group. NORTHAG's operational area extended from Hamburg down to Kassel and from the Netherlands border to the Inner German border with communist East Germany.

In NORTHAG, BAOR was flanked by 1 Netherlands Corps to the far north, 1 German Corps to the immediate north, and 1 Belgium Corps in the southern most position. The 1 British Corps area extended from a line just north of Hanover down to a line just north of Kassel, and extended from the inner German border to a line just west of Soest but the BAOR boundary itself extended right back to Antwerp in Belgium. In the event of war, BAOR would become British Support Command, which would supply 1 British Corps and guard the rear areas.

It was planned that if the area of responsibility of I (BR) Corps came under threat the Corps would fight with two of its respective armored divisions forward deployed with one remaining in reserve. The 2nd Infantry Division, after its arrival, would defend vital military targets in the Corps rear and the 24 Airmobile Brigade would be ready to guard against any rapid enemy armored thrust which might develop.

A Gazelle observation helicopter provides reconnaissance and targeting information for a pair of Army Air Corps Lynx helicopters configured with guided missiles for the anti-armor role.

As well as the members of the Armed Forces, there was also a significant British civilian presence in Germany with spouses and families living in dozens of small British townships, their streets named after members of the Royal family and they were sprawled across the northern plains and the fringes of the Ruhr Valley. Shopping complexes offered reminders of home such as marmalade, Bovril and tea bags and olive-painted military buses took army dependents to schools where Germany and its history were barely mentioned.

Within their towns and villages, the British forces had their own cinemas, bingo nights, pantomimes, hospitals, clothes shops, postal service and radio station. They were not as isolated as their Soviet counterparts in East Germany and many Anglo-German marriages occurred. It was not uncommon for British soldiers and their families to spend three years in Germany without learning more than four phrases of the language. There was little friction between the two communities except for the steady protests of locals against the noisy, low-flying British jets.

Following the collapse of the Iron Curtain and subsequent reunification of Germany, BAOR was officially disbanded on 28th October 1994 with the Prince of Wales paying final tribute to the Army. As a parade of soldiers from the Queen's Dragoon Guards alongside the Devonshire and Dorset Regiments lifted their caps and roared three cheers for the Prince as he took the last salute from the troops. The Prince said proudly:

"The momentous events in Russia, Central Europe and Germany have brought changes for all of us in Western Europe, almost all for the better. Here today we draw together one of the consequences of these events with the disbandment of the British Army of the Rhine."

BAOR has now been succeeded by British Forces Germany, which also incorporates the former RAF Germany.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Flag of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defense spending.

For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defense against a prospective Soviet invasion; doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent threat of all Communist countries working together, and forced the alliance to develop concrete military plans. SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, was formed as a consolidated command structure, and began work under Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1951. The 1952 Lisbon conference, seeking to provide the forces necessary for NATO's Long-Term Defence Plan, called for an expansion to ninety-six divisions. However this requirement was dropped the following year to roughly thirty-five divisions with heavier use to be made of nuclear weapons. At this time, NATO could call on about fifteen ready divisions in Central Europe, and another ten in Italy and Scandinavia. Also at Lisbon, the post of Secretary General of NATO as the organization's chief civilian was created, and Baron Hastings Ismay was eventually appointed to the post.

In September 1952, the first major NATO maritime exercises began; Exercise Mainbrace brought together 200 ships and over 50,000 personnel to practice the defence of Denmark and Norway. Other major exercises that followed included Exercise Grand Slam and Exercise Longstep, naval and amphibious exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, Italic Weld, a combined air-naval-ground exercise in northern Italy, Grand Repulse, involving the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR), the Netherlands Corps and Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), Monte Carlo, a simulated atomic air-ground exercise involving the Central Army Group, and Weldfast, a combined amphibious landing exercise in the Mediterranean Sea involving British, Greek, Italian, Turkish, and U.S. naval forces.

Greece and Turkey also joined the alliance in 1952, forcing a series of controversial negotiations, in which the United States and Britain were the primary disputants, over how to bring the two countries into the military command structure. While this overt military preparation was going on, covert stay-behind arrangements initially made by the Western European Union to continue resistance after a successful Soviet invasion, including Operation Gladio, were transferred to NATO control. Ultimately unofficial bonds began to grow between NATO's armed forces, such as the NATO Tiger Association and competitions such as the Canadian Army Trophy for tank gunnery.

In 1954, the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe. The NATO countries, fearing that the Soviet Union's motive was to weaken the alliance, ultimately rejected this proposal. The incorporation of West Germany into the organization on 9 May 1955 was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway at the time. A major reason for Germany's entry into the alliance was that without German manpower, it would have been impossible to field enough conventional forces to resist a Soviet invasion. One of its immediate results was the creation of the Warsaw Pact, which was signed on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and East Germany, as a formal response to this event, thereby delineating the two opposing sides of the Cold War.

Three major exercises were held concurrently in the northern autumn of 1957. Operation Counter Punch, Operation Strikeback, and Operation Deep Water were the most ambitious military undertaking for the alliance to date, involving more than 250,000 men, 300 ships, and 1,500 aircraft operating from Norway to Turkey.

NATO's unity was breached early in its history with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France. De Gaulle protested the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a special relationship between it and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the US and UK.

Considering the response he received to his memorandum unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began constructing an independent defence force for his country. He wanted to give France, in the event of an East German incursion into West Germany, the option of coming to a separate peace with the Eastern bloc instead of being drawn into a larger NATO-Warsaw Pact war. In February 1959, France withdrew its Mediterranean Fleet from NATO command. He later banned the stationing of foreign nuclear weapons on French soil. This caused the United States to transfer two hundred military aircraft out of France and return control of the air force bases that had operated in France since 1950 to the French by 1967.

Though France showed solidarity with the rest of NATO during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, de Gaulle continued his pursuit of an independent defence by removing France's Atlantic and Channel fleets from NATO command. In 1966, all French armed forces were removed from NATO's integrated military command, and all non-French NATO troops were asked to leave France. This withdrawal forced the relocation of SHAPE from Rocquencourt, near Paris, to Casteau, north of Mons, Belgium, by 16 October 1967. France remained a member of the alliance, and committed to the defence of Europe from possible Communist attack with its own forces stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany throughout the Cold War. A series of secret accords between US and French officials, the Lemnitzer-Ailleret Agreements, detailed how French forces would dovetail back into NATO's command structure should East-West hostilities break out.

During most of the Cold War, NATO's watch against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact did not actually lead to direct military action. On 1 July 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature: NATO argued that its nuclear sharing arrangements did not breach the treaty as US forces controlled the weapons until a decision was made to go to war, at which point the treaty would no longer be controlling. Few states knew of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangements at that time, and they were not challenged. In May 1978, NATO countries officially defined two complementary aims of the Alliance, to maintain security and pursue détente. This was supposed to mean matching defences at the level rendered necessary by the Warsaw Pact's offensive capabilities without spurring a further arms race.

On 12 December 1979, in light of a build-up of Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities in Europe, ministers approved the deployment of US GLCM cruise missiles and Pershing II theatre nuclear weapons in Europe. The new warheads were also meant to strengthen the western negotiating position regarding nuclear disarmament. This policy was called the Dual Track policy. Similarly, in 1983–84, responding to the stationing of Warsaw Pact SS-20 medium-range missiles in Europe, NATO deployed modern Pershing II missiles tasked to hit military targets such as tank formations in the event of war. This action led to peace movement protests throughout Western Europe, and support for the deployment wavered as many doubted whether the push for deployment could be sustained.

The membership of the organization at this time remained largely static. In 1974, as a consequence of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Greece withdrew its forces from NATO's military command structure but, with Turkish cooperation, were readmitted in 1980. The Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina did not result in NATO involvement because of the limited scope of NATO. On 30 May 1982, NATO gained a new member when, following a referendum, the newly democratic Spain joined the alliance.

The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 removed the de facto main adversary of NATO. This caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature, tasks, and even geographic focus. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe agreed between NATO members and the Soviet Union and signed in Paris in 1990, mandated specific military reductions on the continent. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, European countries accounted for 34% of NATO's military spending.

The first post–Cold War expansion of NATO came with German reunification on 3 October 1990, when the former East Germany became part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance. This had been agreed in the Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet approval of a united Germany remaining in NATO, it was agreed that foreign troops and nuclear weapons would not be stationed in the east.

As part of post–Cold War restructuring, NATO's military structure was cut back and reorganized, with new forces such as the Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps established. The changes brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union on the military balance in Europe were recognized in the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which was signed in 1999.