The exercise was officially intended to ensure that NATO (principally W. Germany and the USA) had the ability to quickly deploy forces to West Germany in the event of a armed conflict with the Warsaw Pact. Many Germans found it a major inconvenience and did not like some of the Anglo-American troops' drunken antics that took place afterwards. The North German Plain and Germany's Fulda Gap were the perceived to be the Soviet, E. German (GDR), Czechoslovakian, Hungarian and Polish targets. The USSR, GDR and Poland were seen as the backbone of such an invasion.