The Fulda Gap

node · earth

The lowland corridor in Hesse, between the Rhön and Vogelsberg uplands, running from the inner-German border toward Frankfurt and the Rhine. Nothing happened here, which is the point: it is where NATO planners expected a Warsaw Pact armoured thrust into West Germany to come, because it offered ground on which large mechanised formations could move quickly toward the most important objective in the western half of the country. American V Corps was stationed to cover it, and an entire generation of NATO planning, equipment procurement, exercise design and tactical nuclear weapons doctrine was shaped by the assumption of a battle in this valley. Two things follow. The corridor is the clearest example in Europe of geography dictating a military posture that then dictated politics — the presence of American forces in Germany as a permanent condition rather than a deployment. And it is a reminder of how much of the confrontation consisted of preparations for events that never occurred.