@Andy in Germany
Did you ever watch Deutschland 83 and the follow up 89?
I enjoyed it as a series but often wondered quite how true to life it was. The main character (East German) seemed to nip from East to West and back at will!
I think the reason for that was that the main character had been recruited by the Stasi to take the place of a murdered West German soldier in order to obtain information from the inside, the whole story having being written round the increasing tension around the time of the Able Archer ’83 military exercise, where the USSR & DDR had the belief that the US was planning a nuclear attack, the main character was working undercover in the West German Army as part of Operation RYaN, an intel gathering operation for the KGB & GRU, iirc they level of panic in the East rose as they believed the 1983 Able Archer Exercise was a cover for an actual attack, made worse by the Western Allies using a new radio system that automatically changed frequency for secrecy, the Soviets were monitoring radio traffic, that just suddenly stopped, they couldn’t understand why and believed an attack was imminent, the character in the series had to run back to the East at the last minute in order to prevent them pressing the button, there’s more detail in the link below,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
a lot of military exercises in both parts of Germany were monitored, in the East by the, mainly Brixmis, along with USMLM & the French mission, in West Germany the Soviet SOXMIS mission kept an eye on the 3 Western powers, each would be chased away, but all sides seemed happy that they all knew the standard round of training exercises were taking place, as this meant things were ticking along normally with no threats, thereby preventing a nuclear war.
Able Archer ‘83 is believed to be the closest we ever came to World War 3 breaking out
