Page 625 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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publications , which revealed also the East German evaluations on NATO regular mili-
tary exercises in Central European War Theater (West Germany, France, and Benelux).
Our Western colleagues have as well a unique opportunity to present a comparative anal-
ysis about the reliability of the East German intelligence reports based on the additional
revealing of the West German, US, British, Dutch and some other military records. We
had no such a chance for a parallel approach about the South European War Theater
since the postwar Greek and Turkish archives continue to be almost totally closed so
far. However, inside the rich collection of Bulgarian military intelligence files we found
a lot of new and sensitive information about the Warsaw Pact multilateral discussions
particularly on NATO military plans and joint exercises.
Here I’ll limit myself for revealing the Intelligence services’ summarized estimates
about the largest NATO joint and combined exercises, such as FALLEX/WINTEX,
DAWN PATROL, and AUTUMN FORGE. There will be mentioned as well a few re-
gional staff & forces exercises in South Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean,
which were of special interest for the Bulgarian MI services. In general, the main goals
of those large scale exercises with participation of staffs and units from almost all NATO
allied armed forces were training and checking the battle readiness of the troops, com-
mand and communication, the process of transition from peace to war, and carrying
out defensive and counterattack operations in the initial war period with or without use
of nuclear weapons. The requested intelligence information was received usually by
three parallel sources: HUMINT (both via personal reconnaissance by legal and un-
der cover officers or data obtained through their agents and “confidential contacts”),
SIGINT (mainly by Radio Electronic intelligence units, but also with the support of
the Air Forces, Naval, and Border troops reconnaissance), and, finally by Open sources
analysis (Western media coverage).
The first attempts to organize multilateral intelligence exchange and “distribution
of goals” among the Warsaw Pact were agreed even in 1955; however, these intentions
concerned initially only the foreign political intelligence services. In 1956 the Warsaw
Pact Joint Armed Forces Staff started a distribution of a “Special Information” Bulletin
with actual data on adversary military build up and war plans, emphasizing especially on
US nuclear weapons disposition in Europe. The first bilateral talks for eventual informa-
tion exchange between the East European MI services started irregularly in 1957-1959,
but they had practically very limited results until the early 1960s. For instance, Bulgar-
ian MI service established such exchange in those years only with the neighboring Ro-
manian service, and, occasionally, with the Polish counterpart. When Sofia approached
East German General Staff on the matter, the response was negative with the argument
that their MI service was in a period of organizational transformation. With the start of
the first larger multilateral Warsaw Pact exercises in 1961-1963, however, the necessity
of regular discussion on NATO war plans and scenarios grew up significantly.
The first massive large scale NATO exercise on the whole European territory, the

2 Hoffenaar, Jan. “East German Military Intelligence for the Warsaw Pact in the Central Sector” – In: Jan
Hoffenaar and Dieter Kruger /Eds./ Blueprints for Battle: Playing for War in Central Europe. 1948-1968
(University of Kentucky Press, 2011), pp. 75-92.