This thread can go in either Great Debates or IMHO; please move this as you see fit, moderators…
In the wake of the Vietnam War, the American public was anti-war, deeply demoralized and the United States was weakened on many levels. This was a prime opportunity for the Warsaw Pact to launch a massive heavy-armor invasion of NATO-Europe - assuming, of course, that the Soviets were thus inclined.
If this had happened, would the United States, in the wake of Vietnam, still have had the political support, at home, to stick to its NATO commitment of defense?
Even if it did, would the US have been conventionally (non-nuclear) capable of stemming the tide?
If NATO Europe fought by itself without American intervention, could it have held down the fort in the late 1970s or would the Soviets more or less have rampaged through West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands at will?
If they could not be stopped by NATO, where would the Warsaw Pact have probably stopped its conquest? On the Spanish and Italian borders? Or would they have taken every bit of Western Europe?
Would France and the UK really use their nuclear arsenals?
No, the forces present at the time could not have stopped a massive Soviet armored assault. We’d have had to ferry over reinforcements. That makes the new Battle of the Atlantic a critical part of the war: would Soviet submarines be able to stop convoys to Europe? That’s one of the really big questions, and nobody is quite sure of the answer.
Without U.S. reinforcements, there would be no stopping the Soviets.
While the above are my very strong opinions (and shared by at least some professional military and academic experts) I have absolutely no idea where a successful Soviet assault would have stopped. I’m not completely sure the Soviets had any idea. The plan was “Go west, fast, stop for nothing.” I do not know if they had a “Mission accomplished” line drawn on their charts.
And it’s all moot, because, yes, the affair would have gone nuclear, and we’re all dead now.
That’s a huge hypothetical; it’s entirely implausible that the US would renege on its commitment to NATO out of the blue. If however it did for some implausible reason do so the end result is largely the same: the Soviets can rampage across West Germany and the low countries “at will”, but only if you define “at will” as meaning Moscow is a radioactive crater. The UK’s nuclear force within NATO and France’s Force de frappe outside of NATO but still a card in any Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe were both more than capable of inflicting unacceptable damage to the Soviet Union. They couldn’t inflict the absurd amount of overkill the US could, but they could end the Soviet Union as a functioning nation.
The ‘conquest’ would have ended in an extremely large number of mushroom clouds; where the front lines of the conventional war happened to be at that point would cease to be of much relevance.
I think it would depend on the exact situation; I suspect nuclear powers would chicken out on their threats a lot sooner than they’d admit.
If West Germany were overrun but the Warsaw Pact stopped at the French border, I think the French nukes stay put; if Soviet armored columns are headed towards Paris I think the French use nukes, but then, only tactical, not strategic.
I can’t see the UK using nukes even if all of continental Europe were overrun. The Soviets wouldn’t be capable of a Sea Lion invasion any more than the Nazis were. If the Soviets try to starve Britain to death by blockade, then that would be different, but if the UK were left alone, I think British nukes would stay put as well.
I think Vietnam’s demoralizing effect would have still had some impact on US public opinion. I think American armed intervention on Western Europe NATO allies’ behalf against a Warsaw Pact invasion would go from being “Certain (>99%)” to “Highly likely (90%+).”
There might have been massive anti-war demonstrations in the streets, just like there were during Vietnam, but probably not enough to stop America from going to war nonetheless.
I’m going to direct the OP to a book called The Third World War August 1985 (which was actually written in 1979) by Sir John Hackett, an English military expert.
In Hackett’s scenario the Soviet goal is to turn all western Europe into client states similar to the situation behind the Iron Curtain. Warsaw Pact troops roll through West Germany until the NATO forces can muster enough attack aircraft to slow the assault. France (not a part of NATO at that time) is prepared to use nuclear weapons if directly threatened.
Hackett’s resolution was criticized by some as being a Deus ex machina With the ground war grinding to a stalemate because NATO air strikes were destroying the Pact’s command/control structure, the Soviet Union fires a nuclear missile at Birmingham, England. The UK retaliates by striking Minsk, the Ukrainians and Poles break from the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapses. So he wrote an alternate scenario where the other side won, with roughly the same amount of destruction.
Is it realistic that one day, out of the blue, the Soviet Union* would decide that now was the time to launch an invasion, one that would pose the risk of existential retaliation against the USSR? The British and French independent arsenals were a guarantee that the USSR couldn’t count on going unscathed even if the US couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. In addition there were the tactical nuclear forces already in place, presumably with orders to use their nukes rather than lose them. Plus Spain and Italy were peninsulas behind mountain ranges that the USSR couldn’t expect to overrun, so not surprisingly the US had substantial airbases there. Short answer, Germany would glow in the dark before the USSR won anything worth having. Not to mention that Nixon’s opening relations with China meant that come what may in the west, the USSR would still have an unfriendly nuclear power on its southeast border, ready to take advantage of a weakened post-war Soviet Union.
In actuality what the Soviet Union did was to seek detante with the West while expanding its influence in the third world. The 1970s were a great time for marxist movements in Africa, and 1979 saw the Sandinistas gain control of Nicaragua and America lose its ally the Shaw in Iran. In fact it was the perception that the Soviet Union and its allies were gaining strength year by year that handed Reagan the election in 1980.
Also Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising. OK, it’s Clancy and it has an idealised view of military technology - particularly American military technology - but it’s early Clancy and he always had good links to the military people who thought about these thought of things.
The Brits would go nuclear, 30 seconds after it became clear that the position in Europe was untenable. The might keep Polaris in reserve, but they would use their tactical weapons on advancing Soviet formations.
Don’t forget there were plenty of American troops in Germany at the time. A Soviet blitzkrieg would likely cause enough American casualties to swing a lot of American hearts and minds.
Agreed, and that’s presumably a big reason why it never actually happened. As long as we’re spinning out counter-factuals, though, I suppose one possibility might be a succession struggle within the USSR, with some group of generals willing to take the chance in order to win power for themselves. Someone sufficiently fanatical might even see the restrictions of Moscow as a plus in some ways – it would decapitate rival centers of power, while giving a reason for the populace to rally to war.
Indeed, that was arguably the primary reason they were there.
Which, in order for them to have used they would have had to control the seas as well as the air. Good luck with that.
I think a lot of folks in this thread believe this would have been a slam dunk for the Soviets, but the reality is that they knew it wouldn’t be, even leaving aside the nukes. Having 10’s of thousands of tanks and APCs and millions of troops are all well and good, but you have to be able to move them and resupply and support them. Since someone already brought it up I’ll say that I think an attack into Western Europe by the Soviets would have gone roughly along the lines of Red Storm Rising by Clancy. I know Clancy isn’t well thought of here, but I think the book is very well researched on this topic, with input from a lot of good sources. Without nukes the Russians would have been going into a meat grinder, and one where their armored spear heads would probably be cut off from resupply and support pretty quickly.
As to the OP:
Yeah, it would have been one of the things we would have had to fight for, no question.
The US alone? No, certainly not. The US and the rest of NATO? Yeah, I don’t think the Soviets would or could have swept through all of western Europe. Germany alone would have been a bitch for them. Consider…at the height of Soviet might during WWII and with a Germany already on the ropes and pretty much alone AND being hit from multiple sides the Germans made the Soviets pay a horrific price to take the country. The death toll for the Soviets was unreal in their push into the heart of Germany, and that was, as I said, a Germany who was also being attacked and pushed from the west as well, surrounded by enemies and bombed and strafed continually from an allied force that had total uncontested air superiority at both the tactical and strategic levels. This wouldn’t be the case in a Warsaw Pact/Soviet invasion of the west.
Well, it’s a question that doesn’t connect to reality. The US would have HAD to intervene. Not only were we treaty bound but it was in our vital strategic interest to do so.
But could the other NATO members have held back the Soviets? Depends I guess on how unified they would be in the face of the major partner in the alliance packing it in and going home. They certainly could have made it hell on the Soviets to push through their defenses and natural terrain challenges and to logistically support such a push IF they had stuck together and not been over awed or intimidated into surrendering.
Again, this is more political…if the Soviets somehow got the US to not defend western Europe or our treaty obligations, and if they could have intimidated the rest of NATO (assuming it even survived us leaving) to surrender then sure. If they had fought though, I’d guess that the initial Warsaw Pact/Soviet push would have stalled somewhere in Germany/Austria/eastern Italy. The Soviets et al would then have needed time to consolidate, push forward logistics and then start again. They would have taken tremendous causalities, they would have to think about how they could keep the other parts of the Warsaw Pact from flying apart in their rear and in the face of those causalities and also how their own troops would feel about the slaughter (and how to keep their crappy equipment, especially the 2nd or 3rd tier stuff they would be on by this time having lost a lot of the best units and formations just getting to that point). It would be very ugly for them, and I don’t know how far they could have gone in the end before it all came apart on them, but assuming NATO decided to fight hard I don’t think the Soviets could have rolled through all of Europe even without the US involved. WITH the US involved I think it would have been about the same…we’d have stopped them in Germany.
I think they would have used them if the Soviets used theirs or if the Soviets looked to be on the verge of breaking through and unstoppable. They might have also used their weapons if NATO had fallen apart and they felt they were on their own, especially France.
I believe that the plan was to take out the Russians logistic tail while fighting the spearhead with conventional weapons in delaying actions while the U.S. shipped reinforcements across the Atlantic .
Though personally I believe that not many would make it across due to Soviet naval activity .
If the ground warfare situation became untenable then the UK would have most certainly used tactical nukes to take out the Warsaw Pact on the ground , though understandably this was not a popular idea with the West Germans .
There also would have been considerable Special Forces activity from both sides in the enemies rear areas and homelands .
Interestingly enough both N.A.T.O. and Russia conducted independent surveys on the survivability of these troops and both came to the conclusion that 50% at least of them would be dead within the first twenty four hours .
If the Soviets had used either Chemical Weapons or Nukes on U.K. soil then there would be an immediate and automatic Strategic Nuclear attack on the Soviet Union .
The U.K. deterrent on its own would have taken out Russia west of the Urals .
I’m pretty sure that France wouldn’t have held back either .
US public opinion would mean diddly squat. As mentioned a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany would run headlong into the US Army, which was defending the inter-German border at the border along Southern West Germany and the Czech-West German border throughout the Cold War. American armed intervention would begin the moment the tracks of a Warsaw Pact armored vehicle crossed the border. Just to note, the anti-war demonstrations didn’t prevent the war in Vietnam from happening, nor from it being until Afghanistan the longest war the US had ever fought.
Soviet sea lift capabilities were indifferent at best; the Ivan Rogov class linked was the epitome of Soviet amphibious designs, and a grand total of 3 were commissioned over the course of 12 years. The Greek Navy had as much amphibious lift at the time in former US and UK WW2 era vessels.
The posited time frame is the late 1970s though; so there are none of those neat toys introduced into service in the 1980s when there was a resurgence in defense spending and technology development. So no cruise missiles, no F-117s, no M-1s, no Bradley AFVs or Apache gunships or MLRS or F-15E Strike Eagles. The US Army is going to be using M60A1s (or god forbid M60A2s), M113s and AH-1 Cobras.
A general war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have gone nuclear within ten days at the most. The conventional war would not have lasted long enough to really be a significant thing.
NATO’s policy (and, separately, France’s) was first use of nuclear weapons to prevent a Soviet overrun. The moment that became apparent, things would have gone nuclear and two hundred million people would have died. Had the USSR been stopped and therefore faced the threat of a NATO counterattack - NATO had far more people, money, equipment and industry, it was just a matter of bringing it to bear - they would have used nuclear weapons to break through.
Every professionally executed war game that allowed a full range of strategic options resulted in nuclear war, and it is impossible, really, to construct a realistic scenario that goes otherwise.
Huh? Naval warfare was the place where NATO always had the clear advantage, and the WP was playing catch-up, and not particularly successfully.
Both the UK and the US (and to a lesser extent, France) had/have extensive historical naval warfare experience and the traditions, training and doctrine that goes with it. Plus, they had very large, well-funded navies. We knew how to make convoys and escort them as well, and there isn’t as much evidence that the Russians had any insight into how to attack except for reading about the WWII sub experiences of the Germans and the Allies.
The Russians had/have little to no real naval warfare experience, save the sub business, and they weren’t any more experienced than we were.
Long story short, there would have been a Battle of the North Atlantic, but it likely would have ended with NATO having more or less uncontested control of the shipping lanes from the US to Europe.
Another thing to consider in Western Europe proper, is that the US would have actually had experienced veteran troops, having a large number of Vietnam vets in service, and a whole lot more they could call back if need be. This shouldn’t be underestimated; the Russian troops were all green, even the crack ones, and a large proportion of all US troops might be combat experienced, and that would have made a difference.