Burke's Joystick

Chapter 2: The Soviet Right Hook As we detailed in the previous chapter ( "Red July" ), STAVKA had conceived of the assault on the Fulda Gap not as their central effort but as a grand diversion to draw NATO forces away from other sectors of the West German front.  As expected, NATO, long expecting Fulda to be central to a Warsaw Pact onslaught, took the bait and committed the bulk of its ground forces to holding off the fierce Soviet offensive. STAVKA waited three full days to ensure that NATO forces were fully engaged before committing their strategic reserve to opening a new front to the north of Fulda.  Known as "Operation Gold Pluto," this daring Soviet plan would put NATO in a perilous position. Final unit dispositions of Operation Gold Pluto with operational overlay (courtesy 8th Guards Army Archives , Volgograd, 1985) Historical Redux If this sounds a bit familiar, it should: Operation Gold Pluto was based on the plan used by Germany during ...

Once upon a time my gaming used to drive my reading.  That is, whenever I would come across a really good game - you know, one that really fired off those neurons - I would inevitably find myself running to the local library (for you Millennials, that was the Amazon.com of the pre-internet age ) or the bookstore to find a book that matched the subject matter of the game I was currently enjoying.  Heck, if you take a look at my bookshelves you can almost track what I was playing back then!   Such a gaming-reading connection seemed to happen a lot back in the good ol' days of gaming.  Sadly, not so much today. However, you might have noticed that as of late I have been playing a lot of Wargame: AirLand Battle and, now, Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm (you haven't seen anything on that...yet!).  Clearly, I am enjoying gaming's rediscovery of the epic standoff that was the Cold War .  No surprise: the very first serious wargame I ever played was a ...