The Carter administration had showed no will to meet the Soviet challenge, so the Germans individually and collectively made their deals with Moscow. That was true of the circle around German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Russia’s proposed natural gas pipeline to Western Europe was to be the Trojan horse for economic integration of German industry with the weak Russian economy. German defeatism had rational grounds: Russian military strength on the European front dwarfed that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. If Russia had launched a conventional or nuclear attack on Germany, NATO
The Carter administration had showed no will to meet the Soviet challenge, so the Germans individually and collectively made their deals with Moscow. That was true of the circle around German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Russia’s proposed natural gas pipeline to Western Europe was to be the Trojan horse for economic integration of German industry with the weak Russian economy. German defeatism had rational grounds: Russian military strength on the European front dwarfed that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. If Russia had launched a conventional or nuclear attack on Germany, NATO doctrine called for the United States to retaliate with a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. No such thing would ever have happened, of course, for no U.S. president would risk a strike against the American homeland to save Germany. Even if the U.S. had been willing to meet its obligation, the Germans would never have known who had won World War III—for all of them would have been dead. Thus Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party in 1982 saw little incentive to stick with the American alliance, and Russia had every hope of turning Europe into a satrapy. Installing Pershing II nuclear missiles in Germany with a six-minute flight time to Moscow was a decisive act of preemption. The missiles turned the tables on the Soviets. Were Russia to attack Germany, the Pershings would strike Russia. If Russia were then to launch nuclear missiles against the United States, the response would be a...
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an annihilating counter-strike. No Russian premier would sacrifice the Russian homeland for Europe. Thus the Russians sponsored an enormous “peace movement” to prevent the deployment of the Pershings. Once the intermediate-range missiles were installed in 1983, and once the U.S. was embarked on the Strategic Defense Initiative, Russia had lost the Cold War.
