Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in order to serve as White House Chief of Staff for President Richard Nixon during the depths of the Watergate crisis, was abruptly installed as SACEUR after Watergate's denouement. Haig arrived in 1974. Some scattered notes about his time at SHAPE are recorded by Colodny and Shachtman's book "The Forty Years War". A creature of habit, Haig took the same route to SHAPE every day – a pattern of behavior that did not go unnoticed by terrorist groups. On June 25, 1979, Haig was the apparent target of an assassination attempt in Mons, Belgium. A land mine blew up under
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe weapons ('Massive retaliation'), with conventional forces merely acting as a 'tripwire.' The policy enunciated in Military Committee document MC14/1, issued in December 1952, saw the defence of Germany as principally a delaying action, to allow a line of resistance to be established along the lines of the IJssel and Rhine rivers. The conventional forces would attempt to hold this line while the allied strategic air forces defeated the Soviets and their allies by destroying their economy and infrastructure. What this strategy meant for the land battle in the central region was described for publicity purposes in January 1954 by then-Supreme