Where is fulda gap

NATO planners have pinpointed the Fulda Gap--several open passes running through the hills about 60 miles northeast of Frankfurt--as a likely invasion route into Western Europe for Soviet Bloc forces. Thomas E. White, 43, of Detroit, commander of the 4,man Fulda-based U. As at other outposts on the frontier dividing West Germany from East Germany and Czechoslovakia, Americans warily eye their Communist opponents about yards away on the other side of a steel-mesh fence and barbed wire.

Soviet troops stay in the background, but Soviet-made helicopters regularly patrol the eastern side of the border. The crews are sometimes Soviets, sometimes East Germans, White said. The Fulda Gap outpost, with its surrounding support bases, is among the U. Howard Crowell Jr. European Command. The Social Democrats, the largest opposition party, has called for a withdrawal of the U.

Some critics say the high numbers of troops on both sides now are unnecessary because a future European war probably would be fought with nuclear weapons, a premise that U. Saint and Matthias Uhl. This edited collection examines the role of the Fulda Gap—located at the border between East and West Germany—in Cold War politics and military strategy. The contributors analyze the strategic deliberations of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, the balance of forces, the role of the local peace movement, and various other topics, while weaving together the history of the Cold War at local, European, and global levels.

Lexington Books. Volker Bausch is former director of the Point Alpha Foundation. If the Pact concentrated 15 divisions for an attack here, on this front of only 50 kilometers, only three divisions could be wedged up front for the first assault. That would be a force ratio of only three Pact divisions to 2. This potential choke point was known as the Fulda Gap.

This was the most direct route from the Soviet Zone, and the Soviet 8th Guards Army was poised immediately across the border on the other side of the gap.

Because the corridor was also the shortest route to France and the English Channel, and it exposed many of the major industrial cities in the U. Zone, the Seventh Army placed the V Corps, with its two infantry divisions and one armored division, in position to defend this approach. The Hessian Corridor, Meiningen Gap, Vogelsberg and Spessart Mountains shape an area that had seen its share of exercises, both command post and field training exercses.

In July the V Corps commander said he was dissatisfied with the available intelligence information in general, especially near the Fulda Gap area. This "gap" existed because the Bundeswehr was not allowed to patrol on the border. The advent of Active Defense in was preceded by the emergence of a new order of weapon lethality that was dramatically revealed in the Arab-Israeli War of NATO planners concluded that nothing could blunt the initial Russian thrust. Thus, the Fulda Gap scenario called for a fighting retreat to positions near the Rhine River.

NATO would then use its superior knowledge of the terrain, its advanced weaponry and superior tactics to slow and thwart the Russian invaders.

NATO planned to fall back to more defensible positions.