American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Even if they had not been bombed by the air force, how could these two battalions of Cuban light infantry defeat an entire division and brigade of the enemy?

　However, even if they were trapped in the fortress, this small group of defeated soldiers could only survive for a few more days.

　Now, with the Cuban army and Soviet reinforcements being destroyed one after another, and especially the Central Theater Commander Che Guevara's disastrous defeat and flight, Major Bosque and his subordinates, who were trapped in the Puerto Casilda fortress, were all trapped in despair and isolation.

　——After occupying the city of Trinidad, the US Marine Corps 1st Division, which had rested for a while, turned its spearhead and slowly moved towards the coastal defense fortress of Port Casilda. The US carrier-based aircraft on the "Essex" aircraft carrier also continued to attack with high intensity, bombarding this small fortified area.

　Faced with a barrage of aerial bombs and the relentless bombardment of American field artillery, even the strongest permanent fortifications gradually softened and crumbled under this barrage... Currently, more than half of the bunkers protecting the fortress on the outer perimeters have been destroyed.

　Some US Marine Corps tanks even boldly broke into the port and bombarded the flaming machine guns at extremely close range.

　The artillery pieces equipped on the fortress were destroyed one by one in the endless bombardment, and the counterattack firepower quickly became weak.

　At the same time, the wired telephone and telegraph communications between the defenders of the Puerto Casilda fortress and Havana had long been destroyed in the war, and the radio communications were interfered with by the US military. In the invisible electronic warfare, neither the Cubans nor the Soviets were a match for the US military.

　Fortunately, although Major Bosco was powerless to hold on and could not call for reinforcements, he still had a way to escape for the time being - the US Marine Corps was still as keen on head-on confrontation and frontal advancement as ever, but was not very good at encirclement and annihilation battles, and failed to completely cut off the fortress's connection with the outside world.

　Even now, the remaining Cuban soldiers and a small number of Soviet troops in the fortress can still escape from the war zone through tunnels, sneak into the Escambray Mountains behind the port, and then use the cover of the dense tropical vegetation in the vast mountains to disperse and escape back to their own controlled area.

　In fact, Major Bosco had just ordered the destruction of documents and code books, the smashing of radio stations, and the abandonment of excess baggage and supplies. Then, except for a few suicide squads to cover the rear, he would personally lead the remaining soldiers to retreat into the Escambray Mountains through the tunnel.

　But the problem was, there was something in this fortress that he could neither carry away nor leave for the enemy to capture...

　—Amidst the rustling of falling dust and gravel, and under the flickering lights caused by the vibrations of several explosions, Major Bosco looked at the steel artifact in front of him, a bus-sized object shipped from across the ocean, and fell into deep hesitation and entanglement.

　"Major! Please leave! There's no need to try to persuade us to change our minds! We all know this thing is too big and too heavy. You don't even have a car to get around in, so there's no way you can evacuate with it! And we can't leave a nuclear bomb to the Americans and the rebels!"

　A Soviet adviser, his leg torn by shrapnel, wrapped in dirty, blood-stained bandages, shouted hoarsely to Major Bosk, "I've decided to perish here with the enemy! Aren't the nuclear mines of our socialist camp meant to be used at times like this?"

　——As an important part of the Soviet Union's secret aid plan to Cuba. In addition to medium-range missiles and nuclear warheads, the Soviet General Staff also planned

　Four to five nuclear mines with a yield of tens of millions of tons were shipped to Cuba and stored in warehouses at major Cuban ports. If these ports were to be lost to the US military or rebel forces supported by the US military in an amphibious attack, the nuclear mines would be detonated, destroying the invaders along with them.

　Although the Soviet General Staff had a good plan, the only problem was... there were no nuclear mines in the Soviet nuclear arsenal at that time!

　There is no way. As a defensive weapon, usually only the defensive side in a war will vigorously research landmines.

　In the struggle between the US and the Soviet Union, although the US had an overall advantage, when it came to the European battlefield, it was the Soviet Union's steel torrent that clearly had the upper hand.

　For most of the Cold War, NATO lived in constant fear, fearing that Soviet tank clusters would sweep across the plains of Western Europe.

　To delay a possible Soviet blitzkrieg, Britain developed Project Blue Peacock in the 1950s, while the United States developed Project Greenlight during the same period. Both programs involved laying nuclear mines across continental Europe. If the Soviets invaded westward, they would be detonated, turning the continent into a radioactive wasteland.

　Among them, the UK's Blue Peacock Project was slightly more restrained, producing only ten "Blue Peacock" nuclear mines in total.

　Each "Blue Peacock" nuclear mine

　The weight of the atomic bomb is 7.2 tons, mainly because it is a steel shell on the outside of the atomic bomb. The explosive equivalent is 1 tons of TNT, which is slightly smaller than the two atomic bombs detonated by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

　The British army planned to bury these nuclear mines on the border between East and West Germany, or hide them in the Rhine River. Once the Soviet Union invaded, these nuclear mines could be triggered by wires as far as 5 kilometers away, or detonated by electronic timing devices, and could be set to explode after up to 8 days.

　But after testing, British scientists found that the electronic timing device of nuclear mines was unreliable and would fail in cold winters.

　They first tried using thermal blankets, but that didn't work. They then tried a variety of other methods, but none of them worked. Finally, they came up with the idea of ​​raising chickens inside a nuclear mine—yes, they built a chicken coop inside a nuclear mine, densely populated it with 40 chickens, and used the heat from the chickens to insulate the electronic components, raising the temperature by 8 degrees Celsius. This wasn't some crazy April Fool's Day fantasy; it was rigorously scientifically tested!

　By 1957, ten Blue Peacock mines had been built. However, because the Blue Peacock was too large and heavy, and the idea of ​​raising chickens inside a nuclear bomb seemed too strange, the British ultimately canceled the program in 1958, and the mines were returned to storage to gather dust.

　——Otherwise, Britain during the Cold War would have had a hellish dish called "Radiated Chicken"!

　The US's Greenlight Project used even smaller nuclear mines, only 1000 tons. So, they were simply buried underground in Europe's transportation hubs and bustling cities, numbering in the hundreds and thousands. After all, with the Atlantic Ocean between them, they wouldn't mind reducing all of Western Europe to a radioactive wasteland.

　It can be said to be a genuine scorched earth strategy, and the main idea is "If I can't get it, the Soviets can't get it either!"

　Alas, poor people in those Western European cities, what would they think if they knew that they were living on nuclear mines every day?

　As for the problem that early electronic components were afraid of cold and could not withstand freezing, and the time fuses made from them were sensitive to low temperatures, the Pentagon, which was particularly unruly at that time, decided to learn from the Japanese Kamikaze Special Attack Force and trick an ignorant soldier who was unaware of the inside story into manually detonating the device, and then both of them would perish with a loud bang.

　As the hypothetical attacker ready to rush to the English Channel at any time, the Soviet army did not have much research on nuclear mines. Because these things are useless in an attack and do not conform to the Soviet-style deep military theory.

　More importantly, the technical difficulty of this thing is not high. When you really need to use it, you can just find a nuclear bomb and modify it.

　Therefore, after determining that a batch of nuclear mines needed to be donated to Cuba, the Soviet nuclear industry immediately began to work, and then found that it would be a waste to convert a hydrogen bomb with a yield of tens of millions of tons into a nuclear mine, and the power would be too excessive.

　So, the Russians, who were suffering from a stingy disease, dug out a batch of obsolete atomic bombs in their inventory, with an equivalent ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 tons. They put a steel casing on the outside, loaded it onto merchant ships, and shipped it across the ocean to Cuba.

　As for how to detonate it? Because of the short time, the Soviet side had no time to design a timer, so it could only be done manually by conscious soldiers!

　Anyway, according to Khrushchev's original idea, he didn't think this thing would actually be used, it was just a prop to scare people.

　Then, as always, "plans cannot keep up with changes"...

　When the CIA launched Operation Tropic Thunder, the sudden invasion of Cuba in early January 1962, disrupting Soviet military aid shipments to Cuba, not a single nuclear warhead suitable for Soviet medium-range missiles had arrived. This rendered the envisioned nuclear strike force that threatened the US mainland useless. However, three nuclear mines stationed at the port had already arrived.

　One of the nuclear mines was placed at the Port Casilda coastal fort in Trinidad.

　Now that the war has collapsed, the city of Trinidad has changed hands, and the fortress is about to fall... It seems that the time has really come to detonate the nuclear mine?

　Will the soldiers under him obey such an outrageous order? Major Bosque's own family is still in Havana!

　What's more, the brutal anti-aggression war had already broken out, and there were more than just the Soviet nuclear mines buried on the island of Cuba.

　Even if Major Bosque could sacrifice himself and his family, bearing the accusation of treason, to prevent the mushroom cloud from rising in Trinidad, what about the nuclear mines deployed in Havana and Santiago? Wouldn't they also be "a flash of white light, and the people and animals turned to ashes"?

　Today, due to the successive wars, not many people have escaped from Trinidad. Even if it were to be bombed by an atomic bomb, not many people would die.

　Well, probably the people who died the most in the nuclear explosion were the Americans from the 1st Marine Division.

　But if a large city with a large population like Havana were hit by a nuclear mine, it would be hell for the Cubans.

　Furthermore, as a Latin American who had been victimized by the United Fruit Company for years, he had no faith in the moral bottom line of the Americans. If the nuclear mine had not exploded but had been captured by the US military, who could guarantee that the Americans would not simply launch a nuclear strike against Cuba?

　Thus, this tropical island in the Caribbean Sea would be bombed into the same size as the Bikini Islands in the Pacific Ocean (the US hydrogen bomb test site)?

　The reason why Americans do this is very simple: to strike first!

　As long as we use nuclear bombs with a large enough yield to destroy the nuclear mines deployed by the Soviets in Cuba in advance, we don’t have to worry about Cuba’s nuclear counterattacks!

　So, instead of avoiding the problem and pinning our hopes on the enemy's moral integrity, why not just let the already devastated Trinidad rise with the first mushroom cloud of a nuclear war? Perhaps this could even have a certain deterrent effect, preventing the Americans from going too far in Cuba?

　With such a troubled mind, Major Juan Almeida Bosque's lips moved a few times. Ultimately, however, he said nothing. Instead, he raised his right arm and saluted the Soviet officer who had volunteered to stay behind to detonate the nuclear mine. Then, he turned and left, disappearing into the escape tunnel.

　——Since he has decided to retreat, he must escape as far as possible before the nuclear mine explodes.

　Otherwise, wouldn’t it be a wasted trip?

　-

　With Major Juan Almeida Bosque's departure, though the artillery still roared outside, the fortress fell silent. Soldiers outside fought, bled, and died, but the headquarters was deserted, no longer filled with the hum of telegraphs or hoarse roars.

　The Soviet officer with a broken leg, supported by a Soviet soldier who was blind in one eye, held the detonator of the nuclear mine in his hand, found a slightly cleaner empty box to sit on, then shook off the dirt on his uniform, straightened his body as much as possible, and leaned against the wall quietly, waiting motionlessly.

　He is silently waiting for his death, or the moment of sublimation for his ideals!

　Although he may not be as resolute and tenacious as steel or as pure in heart as a saint as the protagonist Pavel Korchagin in How the Steel Was Tempered, he will never hesitate or hesitate when the time comes to sacrifice himself for the world revolution.

　From the moment he was sent to the island of Cuba on the other side of the world, right at the doorstep of American imperialism, he was mentally prepared to sacrifice his life for his country.

　If he doesn't even have the awareness of dying on the battlefield and leaving no trace of his body, then what kind of soldier is he?

　Let yourself be reduced to ashes and dust along with your enemies in the white light of the atomic bomb explosion!

　Burn yourself to light the way forward! To liberate all mankind!

　- Overall, at least before the "stagnant" Brezhnev era, the vast majority of Soviet grassroots military and civilians still had a strong spirit of sacrifice and dedication.

　The savior sentiment created by the thousand-year-old Orthodox faith, coupled with the grand ideal blueprint of Marxism, allowed the Russians, who had long been despised and scorned by the mainstream Western civilization, to finally stand at the center of the historical stage for the first time and become the leader of half the world's camp.

　This unprecedented glory and greatness inspired the Soviet people and idealists around the world to abandon their differences and unite to fight.

　It also enabled the Soviet Union during the Cold War to maintain the status of a superpower despite being devastated and far inferior to its opponents in material strength.

　It is no exaggeration to say that the Soviet people of this era were indeed ambitious and full of martial virtues, and could be called a "heroic people."

　The reason why the Soviet Union ultimately lost the Cold War was not because of the broad masses of the people, but because of the upper class and the Kremlin!

　To be more precise, these Moscow bosses never quite understood their own identity: Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union?

　If you think that the Soviet Union is just a new dynasty of Tsarist Russia, then forget it and stop dreaming of dominating the world!

　To put it bluntly, with just this little capital, do you think Russia can compete for hegemony with the United States, which has already integrated the Western civilization?

　Look at Russia's financial situation, the United States' financial situation, Russia's geopolitical environment, and the United States' geopolitical environment...

　It is clear that when both sides are engaged in imperialist hegemony, Russia will not have even half a chance of winning against the United States!

　However, if we put aside the Tsarist tradition and only consider the Soviet Union as the meaning of its country name, then it really has the qualifications to compete for hegemony!

　Even though the Soviet Union was inferior to the United States in many aspects, such as economy, military, population and technology, it could still compete in the global game.

　They compete with the United States and sometimes even have the upper hand!

　Why? Because the Soviet system was superior!

　You know, the Soviet Union was an unprecedented new type of country and the largest social science experiment in human history!

　It has also broken free from the constraints of basic attributes such as ethnicity, region and religion, and is completely cohesive based on ideology!

　Before the birth of the Soviet Union, no one believed that Marxism could really lead a great country, and a great power that was one of the world's great powers.

　But the Soviet Union did it, and unfolded before the world a beautiful picture of no exploitation, equality for all, and the eradication of the corrupt rentier class!

　Therefore, as the world's first country born from the victory of the proletarian revolution, even if the Soviet Union did not have as much wheat, oil, aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs as the United States, it was a banner of justice representing resistance and a socialist beacon that illuminated the way forward for the oppressed people all over the world.

　Inspired by this banner, intellectuals in developed countries in Europe and the United States would betray their country and become communist spies for the sake of their ideals without charging a penny; capitalists had to restrain their greed, bear heavy taxes, and give up most of their profits to improve the treatment and income of workers.

　The surplus value obtained by capitalists can flow back into the engine of social operation and progress, driving human civilization faster and further.

　As long as this red flag does not fade, the Soviet Union can continue to draw strength from the entire world to fight against the seemingly powerful capitalist camp alliance!

　But unfortunately, the Soviet Union did many things in its domestic affairs that Marxists should not do, which made this great banner fade a lot and made left-wing revolutionaries around the world feel frustrated and disappointed.

　Even worse, in terms of diplomacy, the Soviet leadership never quite understood the position of their own regime:

　Do you want to launch a world revolution and liberate all mankind, or do you want to engage in a great power game and imperialist struggle with the United States?

　The successive Soviet leaders during the Cold War basically thought they had to have both... and then tragedy struck.

　During the Cold War, the United States took the path of outright imperialism, nurturing all kinds of heinous warlords, compradors, feudal monarchs and reactionaries as running dogs all over the world. It acted uprightly and openly, wanting to "create a kind of shining starry sky", and its reactionary behavior was also open and aboveboard.

　Just like the practice of scalping Indians during the westward expansion, the American flag had "I am not a good person" written on it from the beginning!

　But the Soviet Union was flying the red flag and had to ally itself with revolutionaries, the oppressed, and other progressive forces around the world. Instead, the Kremlin resorted to the tactics of the Orthodox Tsar, insisting on being a child father, interfering in various ways and making life extremely difficult for those revolutionaries who truly desired the light of day.

　As for the left-wing revolutionary movements around the world, the Soviet Union treated small parties in all countries as its own branches, ordering them to serve the Soviet Union's big chess game. They spoke of "comrades and brothers" in a nice way, but in fact they often sacrificed the interests of their younger brothers, which was no different from the American style.

　——That is why it was later called "social imperialism" and "Red Tsar".

　Although the aid provided by the Soviet Union was indeed generous, the Kremlin’s various blind commands were really fatal!

　Whether it is the Chinese, Greeks, Poles, Germans, or even Arabs, they all feel deeply painful about this.

　As the big brother of the socialist camp, what the Soviet Union really should have done during the Cold War was to support the anti-colonial movement in the Third World and support the proletariat around the world in fighting for their own rights, thereby undermining the cornerstone of the capitalist camp and causing it to collapse.

　Well, it's not that the Soviet leadership didn't do these important things. But the problem is, they also did a lot of things they shouldn't have done.

　For example, after Nasser, who supported Egypt, took back the Suez Canal, the Soviet Union immediately demanded compensation, wanted to station troops in Egypt, lease a military port in Egypt, and turn Egypt into a springboard for Soviet forces to advance into the Mediterranean - this naturally made Nasser, who had just driven out the British colonists, very unhappy.

　As a result, the Soviet leadership once again reverted to its Tsarist mentality, believing that Nasser, their younger brother, was not sufficiently "submissive" and needed to be "disciplined." Therefore, they stood by and watched Egypt suffer a beating during the Third Middle East War, losing the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal, and even deliberately delayed promised aid.

　The Egyptians, helpless, acceded to the Soviet Union's terms, accepting the stationing of Soviet troops and the lease of a military port. However, they no longer harbored any gratitude or trust for the Soviet Union, instead viewing it as a profound humiliation. Despite the Soviet Union's vast investments in Egypt, building countless factories and sending over a thousand experts to support the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Egyptians retained only the image of a despicable, hegemonic, and opportunistic Soviet state.

　This is probably the best example of a thankless task.

　When the Fourth Middle East War broke out and Egypt fought Israel again in an attempt to regain lost territory, the Soviet Union again ignored Egypt's core interests and strongly opposed Egypt's military deployment. The Egyptian government was so angry that it simply expelled Soviet advisers and broke away from the Soviet Union to act on its own.

　After being defeated again, the enlightened Egyptians turned directly to the United States and even expelled the Soviet ambassador.

　As for the 20,000 Soviet troops stationed in Egypt and the countless manpower, material and financial resources invested, they were all wasted and of no use at all.

　The previous breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations was similar to this. Khrushchev, who was in an illegitimate position at the time, wanted to ease tensions with the United States. He wanted China to give in on the Taiwan issue and also wanted China to make concessions on the Sino-Indian issue.

　Giving in on the border...it would be strange if they didn't fall out!

　Later, in the 1970s, Soviet leader Brezhnev abandoned revolutionary principles and fostered a bunch of anthropomorphic warlords in Africa. This seemed to greatly expand the territory of the Red Camp, but in fact it was a huge waste of money and tarnished the red flag, causing the Soviet Union to degenerate to the same reactionary level as the United States.

　There was no way. The Soviet high-level officials during the Cold War never figured out their own position. Sometimes they sacrificed the interests of other countries, trampled on the sovereignty of other countries, and pursued Tsarist hegemony; sometimes they remembered that they were the socialist big brother and wanted to compete for the leadership of the world revolution in theory.

　——Isn’t this schizophrenia?

　Just like Napoleon, after becoming emperor, he was no longer qualified to call himself a revolutionary, and the Napoleonic Wars also degenerated into a dynastic struggle.

　During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had already wantonly executed leaders of other countries and opened fire on citizens on the streets of Budapest and Prague, yet it still insisted that it was not imperialist and demanded that its brother countries respect it as the leader of the world revolution... Who still believes this nonsense?

　In short, in the great game of imperialist hegemony, the Soviet Union's comprehensive national strength has always been far inferior to that of the United States, and it could not win in a head-on confrontation.

　In order to launch a worldwide proletarian revolution, the productivity of capitalism was still developing rapidly and was far from rotten, making it difficult to launch a revolution.

　During the Cold War, it was already very difficult for the Soviets to choose either of these two paths.