World: Games with Nuclear Trimmings

War breaks out in September 1966. “Red” forces attack the “violet” (NATO) alliance, only to be stymied at the Rhine. The reds try an end run through “white” country (Switzerland) to invade “blue” country [France].

So went the script for the French army’s annual fall war games. The setting was lovely: the meadows and fir-covered hills of the Jura mountains, a few miles from the Swiss border. The assemblage was splendid: Charles de Gaulle in his brigadier general’s uniform; Premier Georges Pompidou; General Charles Ailleret, the modern-minded chief of staff of all French forces; General Louis Le Puloch, the traditionalist chief of staff.

To block the flanking thrust, the army men staging the games plotted military academy textbook tactics—with nuclear trimmings. The invading reds began the show by firing nuclear artillery at the blue defenders, supposedly vaporizing the town of Pon-tarlier (pop. 16,000). Smoke machines puffed up mushroom clouds to simulate utter destruction. The blues responded by dispatching a couple of Mirage VIs to drop 60-kiloton bombs on a red town of equivalent size. Meanwhile, back at the battlefield, the blues sprayed 15 tactical nuclear weapons on the reds in an area ten miles long and ten miles wide. More puffs of smoke aux champignons. Fifteen minutes passed, and the blues advanced in tanks and on foot. France won. Among army strategists, felicitations all around.

De Gaulle’s nuclear experts and modern warfare men, however, were appalled. They insist that France’s nuclear force will be only a deterrent, or else a last-gasp weapon; if they fail to deter, and France is falling, then and only then are the bombers to be used to drag the attacker under with France. They cannot be used on routine, tit-for-tat bombing missions as the war games suggested. As for the frantic, 15-weapon battlefield broadside, so lavish a use of atomic weapons in so small an area (particularly on French soil) amounted to nothing more than an old-fashioned artillery barrage, reduced to absurdity. And why move into the area 15 minutes later? What would be left to attack? How could one protect tanks and infantry against fire and intense radioactivity?

De Gaulle himself tried to calm the briefing rooms by admitting that France is still at the “stumbling stage of nuclear tactics.” Some mistakes had been shown up usefully, he comforted; future maneuvers would not resemble this one at all.