History channel had an interesting story the other night about the paranoia of the Russians during the late 1980’s, shortly after the downing of the Korean plane after it entered Russian air territory. The Russian Premeir was convince that Reagan was going to attack Russia. Paranoid old man!
Nato was having their annual war games meeting and the Russians thought this would be a good cover for a sneak attack. When the Russian satellites sounded an alarm that the USA had launched a missle toward Russia, This happened around 4 more times, that same evening, it’s a miracle that they didn’t retaliate.
Protocol required retaliation. The soldier who was on duty did not know for sure what was happening, but his military training had always been that if the USA launched an attack it would be massive designed to obliterate the USSR.
Instead of following protocol, he refused to retaliate which would have started WWIII, because he thought there must be an error. He was right, but I think he was releived of his command.
It wasn’t until the mole in Soviet Union advised his British handlers that we became aware of how close we came to Russia launching an all out nuclear retaliation on the USA.
Closer than anything since the Cuban Missle Crisis. Didn’t come to light until years later. Declassified now, but I don’t think it was ever widely reported.
Fascinating. That was 1983, in fact, the stuff of nightmares.