Ostplan Division

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

*Where the morning wind blows away the dream*

*Where the young day hesitantly rises,*

*You hear our division from far away,*

*The heavy tanks roar, their sound rumbling dully,*

- *"Unsere Panzerdivision (translated)"* the tank march of the Ostplan
The **Ostplan Division**, or **Ostplan** is a minor Annihilation/fan-faction created by OneWingedHussar. A military force drawing on the Soviet military juggernaut but answering to the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, the Ostplan Division seems created for the sole purpose of presenting a moderate, professional face to those on the other side of divided Germany, a model force that will eventually win over the recalcitrant bourgeoisie masses of capitalist Europe and perhaps one day, be the vanguard of the unification of Germany on the Soviet Union’s terms. But can an independent army so contrary to Soviet military orthodoxy really exist unhindered in one of the Union’s most prestigious vassals? Or is a counterbalance really being assembled over the fulcrum of Europe’s Cold War, hinting at a more restive Warsaw Pact than the free world has realized?

## Background

**The Potemkin Army**

Germany will ever be the staging ground from which the Soviet legions overrun what remains of Capitalist Europe. So it was in the last World War, so it will be in the next. But while the Allies and the capitalist nations of Western Europe managed to stave off the steel tide this time, the Soviets were left with a fine consolation prize – a little less than half of Germany, which they promptly consolidated into the People’s Republic of Germany with the homegrown communist party in charge. Barely stood-down militaries thus stare at each other across a newly and bitterly-established border, which soon blossomed with barbed wire and concrete walls and checkpoints. A puppet leader more beholden to his Russian masters or more concerned with political orthodoxy may have been content to leave it at that, and let the prophets of Kremlin decide when to liberate West Germany in the next big and bloody push over Allied fortifications. But Party Chairman Erich Honecker is a more ambitious man. It would be political suicide to state overtly that the Politburo-approved offensive doctrine of the Red Army can be improved upon, especially from the mere leader of a WARPAC subordinate. But the Soviet Union did leave the matter of soliciting goodwill for German reunification to Germans, which gave Honecker substantial latitude and resources to see it done. And since Honecker realized that the bristling steel and scowling faces of the freshly garrisoned Red Army is what most West Germans will ever see of the East, he perhaps has just enough leverage to start from there…

So propaganda was printed and strings were pulled, and the newly-established Ministry for State Security dispatched to remove more than a few obstacles. Procurement orders were conveyed to the great weapon bureaux of the Pan-Soviet arsenal, and Red Army commanders with their jealously guarded fiefdoms were assuaged with a variety of platitudes: that it was a pure propaganda exercise, borrowing men and tanks for a parade formation never intended for real combat; that it was an employment program for newly-liberated East Germans to prove their eagerness to fit into the Soviet order; that it was a demonstration of Soviet technological prowess, a finely-tuned cybernetic system of man and machine far more impressive than the West’s tawdry tinkering with physics. Nevertheless, the fighting force that Honecker built was not only fully combat-ready, but also something unfamiliar. There was no toxic weaponry, no terror drones, none of the weapons that so exemplified Soviet brutality to those observers with delicate bourgeoisie sensibilities. Motorized regiments were slimmed down and geared for mobility, not unrelenting firepower. Numerous advances in automation and magnetic science were incorporated into a variety of untested units. Even checkpoint sentries were apparently smiling more, or at least maintained neutral expressions with greater frequency. In the analysis, Allied military intelligence didn’t know whether to be alarmed or flattered: alarmed that it may represent a sea change in Soviet war plans across Europe that the Allies are completely unprepared to counter; flattered that the Soviet military establishment apparently found so much about Allied doctrine worth emulating.

That was because the Ostplan Division was a show put on for the benefit of Allied military intelligence as much as the ordinary West German – and only a fully realized fighting force could be convincing enough to the former, as Honecker and his backers in Moscow well knew. Both parties are also keenly aware of the paradox this presents: without real teeth, the Ostplan Division will be necessarily dismissed as a propaganda cutout and thus worthless for the ultimate goal of engineering German unity as far as the Politburo is concerned. Yet the very existence of the Division, so fraught with apparent “western” influences, was a show of ideological-military capitulation that a tenuously secure Soviet Union perhaps could not afford. To Honecker and his little fiefdom in the Warsaw Pact, the very existence of the Ostplan Division depends on him negotiating these two shoals: he did not doubt that all the funding and political cooperation for his army would evaporate in an instant if his mandate was jeopardized, so he had to work hard to convince Kremlin that his wild scheme would yield its promised effects. On the other hand, there was even less doubt as to his fate if the fledging Division was ever seen as a threat to the iron grip of the Soviet Communist Party. But if he can negotiate this perilous path, he may become more than a puppet-king yet…

Already, Honecker plans to franchise out his maturing corps to other WARPAC states, and has even tentatively floated the idea of a joint military exercise with Allied diplomats. Baby steps, of course, as the obstacle course of politics ever has to be negotiated.

## Army

*"It is quite unfortunate that half of Mother Germany remains in the hands of the capitalists. Perhaps the Red Army should have pushed on past Lübeck to bring the rest of our countrymen into the brotherhood of the international proletariat – but perhaps if the Red Army spilled less blood, there would have been less fear and mistrust for our working committees to deal with too. But one must work with what has been decreed, and one has a thousand apparatchiks to feed. The face of the new Germany must, for now, come in a form that the capitalists find not too alarming… "*

- Erich Honecker, Chairman of the National Defense Council of the People’s Republic of Germany

### Deathmatch Reinforcements

**Soviet Shock Army Reinforcements**

It would be impolite, not to mention impolitic, to suggest that other Soviet military commanders watch the Ostplan Division like hawks, appropriating any genuinely useful innovations for their own units in exchange for a stern front of ideological rebuke. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has made clear that Honecker’s model army must be supported to ensure that its battlefield success never falls into doubt, even if it would mean diluting its purpose with more orthodox elements of the Soviet war machine. When combat gets intense, the commander of an Ostplan force may call the following reinforcements into action:

 File:Placeholder.png | Ploughman IFV
 File:Placeholder.png | Apocalypse-S
 File:Placeholder.png | Nevsky Ekranoplan
 File:Placeholder.png | MiG Flicker

Template:Ostplan