In 1984, the Third World War expanded to the Korean Peninsula as U.S. and South Korean ground forces launched a pre-emptive attack across the 38th parallel to forestall an expected North Korean invasion of the South.

Battlefield AlaskaNeither of the North's longtime allies intervened to halt the attack; the Soviets were hopelesssly on the defensive by this time in Siberia and central Europe, and the Chinese were focused on eliminating what was left of Soviet military strength along the Siberian border. Furthermore, China had previously given the Reagan Administration its assurances it would not interfere in any hostilities between the United States and North Korea.


In these circumstances, it was almost inevitable that the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang would collapse within weeks of the initial U.S.-ROK thrust.

In 1984, a Soviet expeditionary force crossed the Bering Strait and landed on the shores of Alaska in the first phase of a bold military campaign aimed at conquering the United States and Canada; the Red Army high command expected to accomplish their objectives in Alaska with little resistance and establish control over all of North America within 45 days at most.

Battlefield Alaska by Chris OakleyInstead, however, the Soviet invasion ran into trouble almost immediately -- KGB estimates of US troop strength in the immediate vicinity of the beachheads would prove in many cases to be wildly inaccurate, and to complicate things even further Canadian ground forces were deployed to Alaska to back up the US defenders.


Within 48 hours half the initial Soviet landing force had been killed in action and President Ronald Reagan had retaliated by ordering US Marines at Guantanamo Bay to attack Soviet military outposts in Cuba. The Soviet assault on Alaska would later be recalled as the start of World War III and become a major catalyst in hastening the downfall of the Communist bloc as world opinion turned sharply against the Soviet Union in the wake of its unprovoked aggression against America. Soon the Kremlin would also face strong internal opposition as thousands of Russian citizens took to the streets of Moscow and Leningrad (later St. Petersburg to protest the massive casualties resulting from the Alaska invasion. In the months that followed the failed offensive, the USSR's longtime Warsaw Pact allies would desert it one by one; within a year after the war started the USSR itself would be racked with civil unrest and poised on the brink of collapse.

In 1984, Soviet ruler Yuri Andropov marked the May Day holiday in Moscow with a speech justifying the ill-fated Soviet assault on the Alaskan coastline as -- in his words -- "a necessary response to the imperialistic agenda of the capitalist powers". He also claimed, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the Alaska operation had been a success. But in reality, most of the Soviet beachheads had long since been wiped out and the few that remained were under punishing US air and naval bombardment. Battlefield Alaska by Chris OakleyFew people, even among Andropov's closest advisors, had any idea that Andropov was in the midst of a psyhchological breakdown or that this breakdown, combined with general distrust of the West and lingering anger over the "Able Archer" incident of 1983, had been one of the primary motivations for Andropov's misguided decision to go to war with the United States. Papers recovered from the Russian defense archives after the Soviet Union collapses would later reveal that Andropov had been convinced the United States was about to attack Siberia and this delusion had provoked him to order the landings in Alaska.

Within hours of Andropov's speech, his already severe problems would get exponentially worse; China, seeing an opportunity to readjust the Sino-Soviet border to its own advantage and strengthen ties with the Untied States, declared war on the Soviet Union and sent several of the PLA's top divisions into Siberia.

In 1984, on this day Raul Castro, brother of the late Fidel Castro, was captured by U.S. Marines in southern Cuba while attempting to escape to sanctuary abroad.

Capture of Raul CastroRaul's fate was sealed when an SR-71 reconnaissance plane spotted his personal vehicle traveling near the city of Santiago de Cuba; it only took slightly over 90 minutes after the sighting for U.S ground forces to home in on his position and arrest him.

By the end of the day he was incarcerated in the brig at the U.S. Navy Atlantic fleet base in Norfolk, Virginia awaiting transfer to Fort Leavenworth and then trial before a military court on charges of perpetrating or at least sanctioning crimes against humanity during the era of Communist rule in Cuba. The Raul Castro tribunal would later be regarded as one of the most significant events of the Reagan era, signaling the end of Communism in Cuba once and for all and setting a precedent for future prosecutions of accused war criminals.

In 1984, a joint U.S.-Egyptian assault force crossed the Libyan border to aid rebels fighting to topple the dictatorship of Muammar Khadafy, the former army colonel who had overthrown Libya's monarchy nearly fifteen years earlier.

Colonel Khadafy's "Line of Death"Among the U.S.-Egyptian contingent's immediate objectives was assisting the rebel forces in retaining control of Benghazi, a major seaport and oil production center and the heart of the rebel movement; their primary longtime goal was to deny the use of Libya to the Soviets as a staging area for attacking Egypt.

A Battlefield Alaska Installment from Chris OakleyAlthough Khadafy had bragged of establishing a "line of death" on the ground similar to the one he'd declared in the Gulf of Sidra three years earlier, in reality U.S. and Egyptian troops were able to enter Libya with only minimal opposition -- in some cases Libyan regular army units actually defected en masse to the U.S.- Egyptian side.

In 1984, U.S. and Egyptian ground forces in Libya, aided by local insurgents and disaffected elements of the Libyan regular army, captured Muammar Khadafy just as the dictator was getting ready to flee Tripoli; also seized where documents linking the Khadafy regime to dozens if not hundreds of terrorist acts worldwide, a vast quantity of weapons and ammunition, millions of dollars in foreign currency, and -- to the surprise of many U.S. Soldiers - a collection of X-rated videotapes compiled on his behalf by Libyan diplomats stationed in the West.

Khadafy CapturedKhadafy was subsequently extradited to the Netherlands to stand trial in the Hague at the U.N.'s International Criminal Court.

In Korea on this same day, U.S. and South Korean marines landed at the North Korean port of Wonsan.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan visited Anchorage to deliver an Independence Day speech honoring the Alaska National Guard troops who had turned back the Soviet attempt to invade Alaska in the first days of World War III.

Valiant GuardsmenIn his remarks to the crowd, Reagan said: "The valiant Guardsmen and soldiers who risked, and in some cases gave, their lives to defend this country from Soviet aggression are the newest heirs to the ideals established two hundred and eight years ago by our founding fathers".

The president also took time to pay tribute to the servicemen fighting in the Middle East and Korea and the troops who'd died during the fighting in Cuba; at the conclusion of his speech he presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Canadian Defense Forces general Romeo Dallaire in recognition of Dallaire's role as commander of the CDF contingent which had supported U.S. troops during their fight against the Soviet invasion force.

"Battlefield Alaska" post by Chris OakleyOne woman's life would be dramatically changed by Reagan's Anchorage visit; 20-year-old Wasilla resident Sarah Louise Heath, who had previously been attending the University of Idaho before the war began, was inspired by the speech to leave school and enlist in the U.S. Army Reserve, where she served for over six years before returning home to tie the knot with fiance Todd Palin. Following her discharge from the reserves in 1991, Sarah would embark on a career as an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, in which capacity she would have the responsibility for archiving hundreds of previously classified documents recovered from Russian defense ministry files after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This post is an installment of Chris Oakley's Battlefield Alaska thread.

In 1984, Czechoslovakia's so-called "Velvet Revolution" swept the Communist regime in Prague out of power as a coalition of students, intellectuals, journalists, clergy, and dissident lawmakers occupied key government buildings in the Czech capital and proclaimed the establishment of a new Czech Republic.

Velvet RevolutionAlthough at first there were some fears the Soviet Union might try to halt the Velvet Revolution by force just as they had crushed the "Prague Spring" experiment sixteen years earlier, those fears gradually subsided as it became clear Soviet military forces were too preoccupied elsewhere to offer more than token opposition to the bloodless coup.

One of the leading figures of the Velvet Revolution was a playwright and ex-political prisoner named Vaclav Havel (pictured); in the aftermath of World War III Havel became prime minister of Czechoslovakia's first democratically elected government since 1948 and served two six-year terms in that office before retiring from the political arena in the mid-1990s. In an ironic reversal of the German reunification, the later years of Havel's second term as PM would see Czechoslovakia split into separate Czech and Slovak states.