Just how likely was a Soviet invasion really during the Cold War? (I don’t know exactly when the Cold War began. In hs history class I was taught there actually where many “red scares” long before it. But let’s just say it was 1945-1989, for the sake of argument.)
This is a deceptively simply question, because much of the US’s Cold War policy was based on a Soviet invasion. Pres. Reagan’s policy esp. was based on this, and may have ironically led to the end of the Cold War (whether he was right of not, again ironically). Indeed, the NATO alliance was based on this assumption.
So on a scale of one to ten, just how likely was it 1945-89?
I don’t think a Soviet invasion of America was ever likely. It certainly wasn’t anything anyone I knew worried about. A potential nuclear war got more hype, along with the magic school desks that would protect us from radiation if we got under them when so instructed.
When I was older, it was assumed that any Soviet invasion would happen in Europe.
A Soviet invasion of the United States was simply not possible. Maybe infiltrators and saboteurs, but not an actual invasion. The USSR did not have the capability to do such a thing and never demonstrated any intent to develop the capability to do so.
Any conventional war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have largely involved a war in Europe.
On a scale of one to ten, it was a zero. Militarily impossible and not even logical for them to try.
interesting reactions…
The previous couple of posts quickly replied that an invasion of the US was impossible.
That seems obvious–I assumed that the OP was asking about a Soviet invasion of Europe.
The cold war was mostly about the American army defending its allies, not its homeland.
I don’t think anybody ever claimed otherwise.( I’m talking about the conventional forces, not nukes).
The potential military danger to America itself was from missiles, not tanks or infantry. Even at the most dangerous moments, when we were eyeball-to-eyeball with the enemy, (the cuban missile crisis), worried Americans dug in the ground to build missile shelters, not anti-tank trenches.
Reagan wasn’t worried about an invasion…He expanded the rapid-deployment forces so that they could fight overseas, not at home. And he wanted to develop star-wars defenses , not ground defenses.
Even that wasn’t particulary likely. The Soviets seemed reasonably content with keeping the status quo. Despite the US propaganda that an attack was round the corner and that they were trying to take over the world.
In hind-sight the Soviets were more reactive than agressive.
The Warsaw Pact was in response to the formation of NATO and the Cuban Missile crisis was in response to the US placing missiles in Northern Turkey.
As has been pointed out, the Soviet Union never had the capability to project power to the continental US. Not enough logistical ability, not enough doctrine.
Most of our (US/NATO) doctrine up until the mid 90’s was geared towards fighting the Soviet Union in Western, and then Eastern Europe. For example, we knew they had more men, more tanks, more guns… so we worked on “force multipliers”. These are tools, weapons, or strategies that allow our smaller force to strike with a larger force than mere men and guns would imply. Example: Stealth bombers. Instead of sending a squadron of fighter bombers over enemy lines to take out a bridge or rail head, we could send in 1-2 stealth bombers, and accomplish the same mission with less men, less fuel, less bombs…
However, there was a large body of study done in regards to a Soviet/NATO nuclear exchange. That was the fear to the US, much more than Spetsnaz troops landing at JFK.
And, as a nitpick… Oakminster, studies done after the bombings in Japan showed that there were more immediate injuries due to flying glass and debris, and flash burns caused by the initial blast impulse. Duck and Cover was supposed to help combat that to some degree. Nobody expected a desk to save you from radiation, but it might keep the classroom window from turning you into so much ground meat.
The Warsaw Pact was a piece of paper. The militaries of Soviet satellite states answered to the Soviets before the formation of the Warsaw Pact and they answered to it after the formation of the Warsaw Pact; nothing actually changed.
Since it didn’t happen the likelihood would be a zero. In the event that a war broke out however, the likelihood of an invasion of Western Europe was ten on a scale of one to ten. Soviet doctrine was to immediately seize the initiative and go on the offensive regardless of who started the war or why.
The logistics of massing a Soviet invasion of the US made it all but impossible. Getting the troops and equipment across the ocean would have been extremely difficult and all but impossible to hide. Look at the time and expense involved in getting US assets to the desert for the first Iraq war. And we weren’t facing a nation that had the ability to intercept and destroy our efforts.
I say 0 change of a land invasion. A nuclear strike was another possibility all together.
For much of the Cold War, NATO matched the Warsaw Pact man for man. People forget the various European countries all mounted fairly healthy armies. West Germany alone had a pretty kick-ass armed forces.
Western doctrine was to work on force multipliers because, well, that’s just common sense.
The Red Army had a morale problem just from troops stationed in Warsaw-Pact countries getting a look at how much better people there lived than in the USSR. They would not have wanted to risk exposing them to West Germany or France.
I studied this question in college as an undergrad. Unless Stalin was going to do something within a year after the Potsdam conference, the Soviets were never otherwise in a position to invade West Germany and ideologically and culturally disinclined. The danger lessened further after Stalin’s death. He was a supreme ruler who could have done so on a whim, his successors were not.
They talked and postured a good communist expansion game, but the Soviets were never going to risk their power with open warfare. They were far too weak and knew it. Everything in their policy was to make a repeat of Hitler’s invasion and slaughter difficult to impossible.
This was not a popular position with Sovietologists, whose livelihood depended on supporting the military industrial complex full throatedly. The Reagan military expansion was excessive and had little to do with the collapse of the Soviet economy. Maybe it hastened it, but their misadventure in Afghanistan had a lot more to do with it.
Being a child of the 60’s/70’s the risk of an actual invasion was not worried about. What was worried about was the slow cutting off of the U.S. from the world. Europe going Commie…Africa…South America… I think the WOLVERINES! movie actually set up exactly that in the beginning.
I try to tell my son what it was like in the 70’s as a kid. I mean, it really seemed we were losing the cold war. It was a very pessimistic time.
Even at that, it wasn’t going to happen. The Soviets were so scarred by WWII (Great Patriotic War) that most of what they did was entirely to prevent something like that from happening again. Hence the thick belt of buffer satellite states and forward positioning of highly trained and equipped Soviet divisions in Eastern Europe.
Part of what was confusing is that Soviet military doctrine didn’t really emphasize defense, but rather was more concerned with pre-emptive attacks and strategic counterattacks, and consequently, was seen as a desire or plan to sneak-attack the West, when in reality, it was all part of a scheme to keep fighting out of Russia.
On top of the other problems mentioned, a Soviet invasion of America wasn’t ever going to happen because we had nuclear weapons, and in a losing war we’d have used them.
I’m old enough to have done the “duck and cover” thing when I was in elementary school. We certainly thought we were protecting ourselves from nuclear bombs, but what does a 7-year-old know?
I felt a lot safer under those desks. I don’t think modern plastic school desks will stop a nuclear bomb, but we had the good old wooden ones. Those things were sturdy, and even had inkwells.
