For what it’s worth, Western Europe drew up plans to invade the Soviet Union before WW2 was even over.
They had tons of equipment (well, THOUSANDS of tons) and soldiers (close to a million?) already there. It was too expensive to ship home, so might as well try and make use of it.
Gonna make damn sure this shit never happens again, right?
Being dismissive isnt the same as having natural authority. Save that for when you’re really cornered, have nothing to add, and then you can flee the thread saying you’re losing your time here discussing with hapless people.
There were huge pro-communist forces in the West. If the USSR were really intent on conquering Western Europe, those forces would have been the first thing activated. Funnily, in my oh so remote view from the continent I’m living on, it never happened. Strange.
The Soviet troops at the divide line is just the glacis doctrine all over. The divide of Germany is the same thing. The USSR didnt want another powerhouse in Europe that could run them over in weeks. So original is what I have just written that it has been discussed for decades already.
[QUOTE=Capitaine Zombie]
Being dismissive isnt the same as having natural authority.
[/QUOTE]
But you are so good at it. That and making lots of assumptions.
Has this strategy worked well for you in the past?
It’s only strange when you consider that those things would have only happened if the Soviet Union actually launched their invasion…which they didn’t. The fact that they didn’t launch an invasion has little bearing on whether they wanted too, or had plans to do so, and hinges more on the fact that they never felt like they could do so and have a good shot at winning. I’m unsure why you can’t seem to grasp this, as, to me at least it seems skull numbingly obvious.
So, they put a massive and offensively oriented army group in East Germany with the intent of simply being an occupation force to keep the Germans down? And they put an unbalanced force mix in East Germany (as well as many other eastern bloc countries, not to mention having a larger field force in, you know, that Russia place) that was unsuited to defense in order to protect themselves from invasion?
You know what else was discussed for decades that isn’t exactly original? The real possibility that the Soviets might one day wake up and discover that their occupation and defensive force was better suited to invasion than it was to either defense or occupation! :eek:
At any rate, I think I’m done with the hijack portion of this little drama. The OP wasn’t really asking about Western Europe, and if you want to continue with your fantasy that the Russians had no designs or plans to invade Western Europe if they got the chance, well, it’s a harmless fantasy these days, since it won’t ever happen now. The Soviet Union is no more, and Russia is no threat to Western Europe today, at least not from a massive invasion. If you want to talk about the actual OP of this thread, feel free. Or if you want to keep beating your head against your own ignorance wrt the hijack then I’m sure other 'dopers will be ready and willing to either take your side or point out why you are wrong.
-XT
No. While it was a tenet of Marxist ideology to spread the program, the Soviets took over Eastern Europe and spread communism to keep war away from themselves. Particularly after WWII, they never wanted to suffer like that again. In the US and Western Europe WWII was not nearly as bad as it was for the Soviet Union. All post war Soviet policy was paranoia to prevent a recurrence. Remember millions of people died. Everybody had multiple family members who died.
They postured a lot, and a lot of people over here believed that they wanted to “take over”, but that was a misunderstanding of the posturing they did in response to guys like Patton who wanted to keep on going. We did have those sorts of loudmouths and still do.
Ok interesting position. Not sure I completely agree or not. But I am going to post something I heard anyway.
I remember the news clips of Krovchev (SP) standing at the podium of the UN (I believe it was the UN) and stating that “our grandchildren will bury your grandchildren”.
What do you mean “if”? We had the chance right after WWII, but chose not to. Much to the chagrin of Gen Patton (at least according to the movie).
But your point is well taken. However, seeing as how the USSR got its ass kicked in Afghanistan, I doubt they would have been effective overlords of the US, weakened or not.
I’m confused as to why you’d take that as being proof they wanted to invade Western Europe when, in fact, they did not invade Western Europe.
The presence of a substantial Soviet attack force in Eastern Europe is simply because it was Soviet doctrine to use substantial armoured force in defeating an enemy. Possessing the ability to attack your enemy in force is itself a defensive measure. Irrespective of who started the war, or for that matter whether the Soviets planned on occupying Western Europe following a war, having the ability to mount an offensive from East Germany was simply a logical deployment of their available forces, as well as a logical assessment of the strategic imbalance between the two sides; NATO had far more people, more resources, and more money. A war would either have gone nuclear, making it all the more important to strike quickly, or had it somehow remained conventional would have been more to NATO’s advantage with every passing day as their superiority in numbers and industrial capacity gradually built up.
I’m also a bit confused as to the assumption NATO’s standing forces would have been some kid of easy pickings. The West German army alone was a hell of a force, but that’s another matter.
The idea that a force is “Defensive” or “Offensive” in nature betrays an unwillingness to divide between the operational and the strategic. The intention to start a war or enage in conquest, versus defending from aggressive conquerors, is not the same distinction as offensive versus defensive operations. The ability to immediately carry the war onto an enemy’s turf is a powerful defensive ability, as a moment’s reflection will reveal - hell, look at US forces today, which are largely based around the ability to carry the war to the enemy with speed and force.
This is especially true n the case of the Cold War given two additional facts:
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For the first half of the Cold War, the USSR had a huge disadvantage in nuclear weapons, and the USA and NATO maintained an open policy of first strike in the event of war (I am forever amazed at the number of people who don’t know this and think we had an actual policy of no first use.) The Soviets, logically, concluded their troops would be safer from nuclear attack if they were on NATO soil, and
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The Soviets had the additional motivation of keeping the Eastern Europeans in line. They ended up using the tanks for against Hungarians and Czechoslovakians than against us.
It was certainly never the Soviets’ “intention” to invade and conquer Eastern Europe, much less the United States as an end in itself; had war broken out they would have, quite logically, tried to mount an offensive, but they had 44 years to start an invasion and didn’t. The strategic realities trumped any such dreams. Soviet military doctrine was designed around keeping their satellite state buffer zone.
As to the Soviet desire to see world revolution spread, I sincerely doubt the USSR after World War II ever had any realistic belief the U.S. was going to magically become the People’s Republic of America.
Would it be fair to say they may not have viewed the USA as the ultimate enemy, like we did with the Soviets?
That they didn’t make a movie “Red White & Blue Dawn” and weren’t especially worried about us attacking them (after Patton left)?
No we didn’t. The Soviets had lots of battle hardened soldiers ready to go. They had over 300 divisions.
Invading Western Europe doesn’t necessarily imply that they would have wanted to conquer and annex Germany and France. Simply clearing NATO forces away from the Soviet borders and bringing the continent under their sphere of influence would have been a legitimate reason to go to war. I have no reason to think the Soviets wouldn’t have taken such an opportunity had it presented itself (at least through about 1955).
And if having armored forces in Eastern Europe gave the Soviets the ability to either launch rapid offensives or take the defensive, then it can’t be discounted as evidence of their willingness to preemptively invade.
They did put West Berlin under siege, though.
No, they cut off all non air access. They were not bombarding West Berlin or attacking it.
At that time ,Russia claimed their interest was having a line of states around Russia. They were called buffer states.
While we were not aware Russia was not wealthy, they sure knew what kind of financial constraints they were under.
I suspect “ultimate enemy” feelings have a tendency to become reciprocal, regardless of where they originate, and the overall arms race is the most elemental evidence of that. We were scared of them because they were scared of us because we were scared of them, etc.
My god I’ve seen some whitewashing and/ or incredible naivety’ in my time.
The apologists telling us all about how the poor hard done by Russians , (And I use the word Russians as opposed to Soviets as their often extreme nationalism was and is, almost as much a driving force in their imperialist/expansionist drives as their ideology)
Firstly lets remember that prior to WW2 the Russians invaded and occupied the Baltic states without any provocation whatsoever.
They then attempted the same thing with Finland, and though receiving a bloody nose in the process still managed to aquire Finnish territory.
They then in conjuction with their Nazi allies, yep allies, some people have very short memories invaded Poland, also without any other motive then land and asset grabbing.
Of course they didn’t like it when their former allies turned on them but lets not make innocents out of them because of it.
And the tired old tripe about them fearing an invasion by the U.S. and their huge military build up only being forced on them by that fear.
At the end of WW2 the U.S. had the atom bomb the Russians didn’t.
If the U.S. had wanted to invade using those weapons there was absaloutley nothing the Russians could have done about it.
But the Americans despite not liking communism, or for that matter the Gulags , summary executions for trumped up offences, slave labour camps and show trials, didn’t.
So the idea of the trembling Soviets living in fear of an American invasion is total rubbish.
The Soviets given the means and the opportunity would have happily invaded and occupied ANY country without any qualms whatsoever, W, Europe , N.America, anywhere.
Remember that they occupied Eastern Europe for decades and still occupy Japanese territory.
The only reason that they didn’t invade for example W.Europe or other regions was because of N.A.T.O. and not for any altruistic motives.
Due to being an isolated culture with countless foreign invaders and a political system rising from power struggle rather than mandate from the people, I think it is fair to say that the Russians always expect powerful nations to attack them. Tied to this is a philosophy of advanced defense position. This has led them to search strong position as far west as possible since at least 16th century.
This nihilism in relations between states of course gives a nice justification for your own expansionism: since the Cumans, Vikings, Mongols, Turks, Swedes, Poles, French, Germans and Americans are only plotting against you, it is only fair you take what you can. Just say that the others started it and pretend that Rurik had nothing to do with it.
When the Bolsheviks took over, their deep belief was that Europe would soon follow in revolution and there was very little they needed to do. While they were intelligent enough to understand it did not work this way, it must have stayed some part of their thinking to the end. Being commies (as opposed to capitalist pigs), they were always liberating, never conquering.
Stalin’s plan for WWII was that first Germany, France and Britain exhaust each other and then Russia reaps the benefits. Difficult to say how much he saw it as a popular revolution aided by Russia and how much as an outright conquest, but originally he wanted to invade West Europe.
Germany’s easy victory over France was a nasty surprise and as a result, Russia got terribly weakened and unable to invade anything. Being Russian (well, a Georgian from Russian political school of thinking), Stalin decided it is more important than ever, as a defensive measure, to look like they are just about to invade everybody. From then on the importance of nukes grew rapidly and any immediate plans to invade West had to be abandoned. However, they seem to have believed in domino theory at some level, so the status quo in Europe was not entirely against them.
Russians had quite an advantage of numbers in Europe (well, everywhere really) so the strategem was always to advance rapidly. The large number of armoured and mechanical divisions had beaten or tied all NATO forces in Germany, a task force had sailed along the coast of Norway and the huge amphibian capability of the Baltic navy had been used against Denmark. This plan was so grandiose that it must have been written by the same people who wanted to surround no less than one third of the Wehrmacht in january 1941 :smack: The number of first-line divisions in central Europe as well as allied divisions, as well as divisions to guard unreliable allied divisions (there was a Russian division beside every East German or Polish division) was such, that it would have been a miracle to manouvre them out of there :smack::smack:
Earlier communists had no grasp of true democracy, they did not believe in it and they would have liberated any number of countries but they did not have the power.
Later communists had (possibly) conventional means but an all-out attack was blocked by nukes and they could at least partly see that nobody wanted them. The later Soviet Union was ran by old men who did not prefer adventure to caviar and vodka.
Now invading lower 48, I’m pretty sure nobody has considered it seriously after 1812.
Only in the sense that the Pentagon has plans to invade Canada.
AFAIK (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), we never put several thousand tanks and several hundred thousand troops permanently stationed on the boarder of Canada, with large scale logistics (roads and rail) designed to support an invasion. However, if you want to think that invading Western Europe by the Soviets was sufficiently back burnered as to be on par with a US invasion of Canada, wall, that’s fine by me. Just do me a favor…if someone wants to sell you a bridge, do some serious research before forking over your savings.
-XT
True, but our attitude towards the USSR changed significantly over the cold war from what it was at the end of world war two. If anti-communist furor at the end of WW2 was as high as it was during McCarthyism, we might not have stopped at Berlin. Of course most of that was fear the the Soviets nuclear arsenal which puts us in a catch 22 situation. We would be interested in invading them only if they were too strong for us to invade.
Note: I’m not advocating one or another point of view. I have many more questions than answers.