A part of history you were never taught following the Vietnam War.
This was my infantry squad when I was seving in A Company, 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Wildflecken, Federal Republic of Germany, 1977-1978. We were part of the speed bump blocking threatening Soviet forces against their planned military takeover of Western Europe.
After the United States abandoned all of the blood and sacrifice of Americans, South Vietnamese, and our allies in Vietnam, and Vietnam subsequently fell to Soviet backed Communist forces on April 30, 1975, the Soviets turned their attention to the pursuit of their aspirations to conquer the free nations of Western Europe. NATO was weak, and the Soviets (led by Russia) wanted to take, by military force, what they had been denied by United States power at the end of World War II.
With the collapse of Vietnam, Democrats, who despised our military, saw the chance to cut Defense funding to divert taxpayer funds to socialist projects. They called it a “peace dividend.” Their “peace dividend almost cost us Western Europe to communism.
These developments, brought on by the pro-communist Democrats in the United States, meant that the United States military did not have the necessary funds to defend the borders between Warsaw Pact (Communist) threat and truly democratic republics in NATO.
To be able to defend West Germany, the United States Army diverted funds for combat forces (Forces Command) out of funding originally authorized to support schools and training (Training and Doctrine Command) to fund two combat brigades out of 2nd Armored Division and 4th Infantry Division augmented with additional combat rotational battalions out of the 1st Cavalry Division and 2nd Infantry Division, on rotational “training” tours to Germany to bolster NATO border security (so we used “training” funds to train on the front lines in the face of our real enemy, the Soviet Union).
Finally, if the Soviets had forced East German Army forces, followed by Russian Army units, across the border and into NATO nations it would have triggered massive wartime deployments of our Vietnam experienced combat divisions to crush the invading communist forces in the latter half of the 1970s. We won. The Soviets didn’t push into Western NATO nations and Reagan broke the Soviet’s backs in the ‘80s leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Long story, but few Americans know about this Cold War standoff between two nuclear superpowers called “Operation Brigade 75,” that broke the Soviet drive for global military domination which was their goal since the end of World War II (and which Putin is again entertaining in this action in Ukraine today). The war continues today—and the Democrats are still on the side of global communism.
You will be tested at the end of the semester.
Captain (Retired) Terry Michael Hestilow
United States Army, Infantry
March 21, 2022
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