Operation Mainbrace, 1952

In September of 1952, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Canadian Legation in Sweden, Mr. Southam alerted the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs to potential political ramifications stemming from Operation Mainbrace, an upcoming NATO exercise in the Baltics. Mainbrace coincided with the Swedish armed forces' own practice manoeuvres. Fearful of Soviet provocation, Mr. Southam worried that, with only 175 kilometres between the two exercises, the Soviets might misconstrue Mainbrace as a partner exercise with neutral Sweden. To make matters worse, the Swedish Communist party had been spreading rumours that the Swedish military was participating in the NATO exercises. The Swedish Communist leader suggested this would lead “to a deterioration in Sweden's relations with other Baltic countries” [CDEX00017]. Despite these warnings, neither NATO nor Sweden felt the need to curtail these accusations.

 As Operation Mainbrace commenced, Canada’s Department of External Affairs was hit with its own storm: Soviet newspapers were reporting on Canadian sailors acting recklessly in Norway. The Red Star reported that the town of Narvik was “terrorised by the Canadian sailors” who plundered shops and homes. Coincidingly, Pravda contended that the townspeople hid in their houses in the hopes of “saving themselves from the wild orgy” [CDEX00023]. These colourful accounts, which were gaining traction in Western media, demanded answers. The Canadian Secretary of State reached out to the Commanding Officer of the vessel carrying these sailors, who admitted that some members of his crew did in fact pickpocket candy and one particularly unruly sailor even stole a bike. Yet he insisted that while he had “no intention or desire to excuse the conduct of those very few who did misbehave,” he could not help but feel “the dispatch released by Reuters must have been put together by some irresponsible reporter” as it was “highly distorted” [CDEX00026]. An October 6th dispatch from the Canadian Delegation in Moscow eased worries; the Soviet press had lost interest in their tales of the rowdy Canadian sailors and Moscow never feared a Sweden-NATO partnership.

Although the sailor fiasco and the Sweden-NATO overlap did not escalate, the Canadian Delegate in Moscow warned that Mainbrace did arouse the Kremlin’s suspicion. According to Soviet calculations, if Mainbrace “was to solve the problem of rapid military occupation of Norway and Denmark” it followed that NATO was “not interested in the defence of these countries but rather using them as advance bases in preparation for war against the Soviet Union [CDEX00074]. Consequently, a conversation later that week between Danish Minister Hergel and USSR Deputy Minister Pushkin turned heated. Minister Pushkin scolded the Danes for “turning into a base for foreign troops” which he regarded as “creating a threat to the security of the Soviet Union and other Baltic countries” [CDEX00038]. The Danish Ambassador lamented in correspondence that perhaps all the political confusion of Mainbrace could have been avoided if there was “early consultation between the military and civil authorities” and a mechanism to assess Member States’ foreseen political concerns about NATO exercises [CDEX00027]. 

The political tensions of Mainbrace served as a soft catalyst for reforms in line with the Danish Ambassador’s recommendations, with NATO adopting a greater focus on anticipating Soviet responses to exercises and implementing diplomatic strategies to improve negative political ramifications. Despite its imperfections, Mainbrace was an important lesson to NATO about how political missteps could ricochet into a diplomatic nightmare.