During the Cold War, it was commonly stated that the Warsaw Pact had such great conventional forces superiority over NATO forces that the war would end quickly with a Soviet victory. One common figure was that, if the nuclear option was not used, the Warsaw Pact would overrun western Europe in six weeks. Now that much more is known on capabilities on both sides, would that have really happened in the case of a Soviet invasion? What were both sides’ strengths and weaknesses?
The nuclear option would have been used.
You need to specify the exact date of this hypothetical conflict. Warsaw pact may have had considerable advantages for some periods but heres an article from 1989 claiming rough parity in forces. Warsaw pact has a lot more tanks, but NATO has a big naval and airforce advantage.
If the war had been limited, the Soviet Union would have won. Of course, that meant that there would have been motivation for the United States to raise the limits.
The problem with the “nuclear option”, as it were, is that there’s a high chance of escalation.
U.S. generals : well, Europe is being overrun. We could nuke the soviet troop concentrations. However, if we do that, they will use nukes back on us, and vaporize hundreds of thousands of our troops. It could also escalate to a strategic battle where we blow up all their major cities, and they kill all of ours, and there is nothing left to fight over but radioactive rubble.
Or we could concede victory, and only the troops that were killed already will be dead. Of course, now that we conceded victory, nothing stops the Soviets from asking for more territory next week.
I don’t honestly know what the outcome would be, but the U.S. Army officers I talked to felt that the U.S. would have to have it’s back against the wall, left with no other options, before it would use the first nuke.
For instance, maybe we could let them have the other half of Germany, or Belgium, or some other less essential NATO country. For that matter, is it really worth using nukes to protect France? And so on.
Actually, I’d read the exact opposite. Everyone still quotes that tired old Cold War propaganda about overwhelming Soviet superiority… without realizing that it was primarily intended to spook Congress into funding a lot of weapons.
From some point in the early-mid 1980s, the NATO forces may not have had numeric parity, but they had enough troops such that the Soviets did not have the standard 3:1 ratio that’s required to successfully attack a determined opponent and succeed.
On top of that, the NATO forces were staggeringly better in a qualitative sense. The top of the line Soviet tanks didn’t have thermal sights, DU penetrators, laser rangefinders, etc… and the NATO forces did. Furthermore, the NATO troops were generally (with the exception of the West Germans) volunteers, and consequently were better trained and better motivated, with most NATO countries having professional armies instead of peacetime conscript armies. Soviet allies like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary had even worse troops and cruddier stuff than the Soviets did. Put simply, how many T-64s would it have taken per M1A1?
In short, it would have been a bloodbath for the Soviets, with the Soviets maybe gaining some ground due to surprise, but once the NATO air forces got into the fight, and POMCUS units started arriving a couple of days later, they’d have been stopped fairly cold, and NATO would likely have counterattacked to regain any lost ground in a week or two.
Ultimately, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Soviet forces would have been marginally better motivated, trained or equipped than Iraqi forces in 1991, and wouldn’t have been any more experienced, considering that the Russian/Afghan conflict ended in 1988 as did the Iran-Iraq war.
Despite this, the US Army mowed through the Iraqis like a hot knife through butter. Even if the Iraqis had been 50% better, we’d still have beaten them decisively, although not as spectacularly and clearly with more casualties. That’s how I envision a Cold War fight in Germany after about 1984-1985 going.
The Soviet gear was better than what Iraq had. They made some press releases after so many Iraqi tanks got destroyed noting that their MBTs did have thermal sights, better armor, and so on. Also, there’s a non-export high performance Soviet tank that is a lot more expensive.
I do concede your point regarding the numerical superiority : they didn’t have so many troops that they would be able to gain ground quickly against a defensive opponent.
Side, maybe dumb question: it is my impression (e.g. willing to be schooled) that NATO armies were less asymmetrical. So the USA and USSR were obviously the biggest, but UK, W Germany etc. were big enough, whereas the other Warsaw armies were much smaller*. Who was the #2 biggest/most powerful Warsaw nation? Czechoslovakia?
*Also, don’t assume that size = effectiveness
France official policy was a nuclear attack against Russian cities if the country’s “vital interests” were threatened, after a tactical “last warning”. It was often assumed it was planned to happen if NATO defenses in Germany were breached (hence before a direct invasion of French territory).
And French, and Italians, and Belgians, etc… Most NATO countries had a conscription army. The risk of war with the Warsaw pact was the reason why conscription was still in place. In fact, I’m not sure any other country than the USA and the UK had a purely volunteer army.
I think it was Poland and East-Germany.
But the hype worked both ways. In order to convince Congress to pay for weapons, manufacturers oversold their products. Tests were designed to maximize apparent effectiveness and minimize maintenance issues. In actual combat, we almost certainly would have found that some of our weapons systems didn’t work as well in the field as they did in test conditions.
And a NATO/Warsaw Pact war was expected to be fought on a “come as you are” basis. The war was expected to last a few weeks or maybe months. It wasn’t expected to last long enough for new weapons to be developed, built, and deployed.
But we had a major advantage in both Iraqi wars. We chose when to attack. That was true when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and that war was over in less than a week. We then spent months building up our forces and launched our counter-attack in January 1991, which also was a quick campaign. The same thing happened in 2003, when we had months to prepare for the invasion.
The likeliest scenario for a NATO/Warsaw Pact war would have been a Soviet invasion. And they obviously would have done everything they could have to avoid giving us advance notice. So the situation on the ground from our perspective would have been more akin to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait rather than the Coalition invasion of Iraq.
So what would have happened if the Soviets got the first strike in and overran everything east of the Rhine in a week or two? Let’s say they halted there and then said they wanted to negotiate a settlement. With our first line troops defeated, it would take months for us to send enough troops to Europe to launch a counter-attack. And where would we launch that counter-attack from? France might not be willing to be the site of the next round of the war. And while we’re preparing for a counter-attack, the Soviets would be preparing to defend their occupied territory. Would we be willing to destroy most of West Germany in a fight to liberate it?
That is wrong on so many levels.
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Almost all countries in NATO employed conscription. The UK and later the US were the only ones who did not.
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Iraq is not a good substitute for comparison with the Red Army.
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Soviet equipment used in category 1 divisions in Germany was as good as and in many cases better than any used in NATO armies? You gave the example of DU rounds as something lacking, which the Soviets were the first to field, in the T-62 in the early 70’s! The soviets also put more emphasis on guided weapons than NATO did.
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The most important thing was that the Soviets were already in Europe. They could rapidly reinforce their forces in theater. NATO could not. Moreover, NATO was defending open ground with little strategic depth. The 1973 war showed that attrition rates in the era of guided weaponry would be very high and whoever could reinforce its troops fastest would win.
Canada, one of the founding members of NATO, has had an all-volunteer force since the end of WWII, longer than either the UK or the US.
France (and the UK) are both sovereign nuclear powers with at least IRBM thermonuclear capabilities both land and sub-based. I have not the slightest doubt that France would act unilaterally and make it perfectly clear to the Soviets that they ***will ***use nuclear weapons if a Soviet invasion of their territory seems likely. And unlike most things French, I’d be hard-pressed to argue with that policy.
BTW, this is what the so-called ‘Neutron Bomb’ was designed for, WWIII in central Europe. Not to ‘kill people while leaving cities intact’, that was media hype. They were enhanced radiation weapons designed to penetrate and neutralize waves of hardened Soviet armored divisions.
For a highly accurate & detailed fictional telling of this scenario I highly recommend Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising. It’s a stand-alone novel and exists outside the Jack Ryan universe…
A Soviet invasion of western Europe is a very different scenario from a Nato invasion of eastern Europe.
In the west the threat was grossly exagerated. The Russians had no interest in dining in Paris. They felt threatened and for good reason because over the last 150 years they had been attacked from the west repeatedly. The last time, in WWII they paid a horrendous price which Americans just cannot imagine. Russia just wanted security and set up the Warsaw pact countries as a buffer zone. I do not believe thay had any interest or intention of attacking. They were paranoic about their own security. With good reason.
It is the same with China or Iran today. We are being sold the notion that they are aggressive towards us but the facts are that they have been attacked by western countries repeatedly and they want to feel secure. Instead of giving Iran the security that we will not attack them we keep making theatening noises and then we do not understand why the want to have nuclear weapons. It is the only thing that would make them feel secure which is what they want. They have no interest or intention of invading us like we have done to them in the past. It was the same with Russia during the cold war.
I agree none of these countries are a direct threat to the United States. Red Dawn was a joke. But I disagree with the argument that these countries have purely defensive interests.
Russia, after all, did occupy countries like Poland, Hungary, and East Germany. To say they did this and then argue that they had no interest in occupying countries like Greece, France, or West Germany seems a little improbable. If they occupied half of Europe, there’s no reason to assume they wouldn’t have occupied the other half if they thought they could.
They might even have used the argument that it was a defensive occupation and the reason they were occupying western Europe was so it couldn’t be used as a staging area for attacks against them by the United States. And they might even have been sincere. But that justification wouldn’t make much difference to the occupied countries.
What is forgotten is that many of these occupied countries had participated in the events of 1941-45; on the German side. One of the reasons the US did not really protest the whole occupation, until it became politic to do so was that at the time it was felt that the East Euros had it coming. And lets not forget that the France and Germany which had invaded Russia/USSR had been a a friend and an ally generally, not an enemy. The Soviets saw any country in its neighbourhood not under its thumb as a threat.
The Russians wanted a buffer zone just like America wanted a buffer zone. And the Russians needed it more. because America had two huge oceans. But see how America reacted to missiles in Cuba.
What I am saying is that had the West recognized the source of Russia’s discomfort they could have handled it much better by making soothing noises than by making aggressive noises. But the tension and aggression served well the hawks on both sides.
I believe the same mistake is being made with Iran today. Maybe deliberately. You keep threatening Iran and what do you expect? They will fight for their lives and country and they want the bomb ASAP.
Western countries had occupied Germany and Russia wanted a buffer zone which would give it some time to react. I can’t say I blame them. They had just been through hell.
So I do not think they had any intention or interest in further expansion, just a buffer zone.
Right. No one thinks Iran will ever build more than a handful of bombs, just enough to be a credible threat. And they are not going to use them on purpose.
What everyone is afraid of is that Muslims are crazy (this is factually arguable), and no one wants to see more nukes in their hands. Iran also had a major regime change once, won’t want to see it again.
Finally, if the Iranians had nukes, they would only need a handful to vaporize the the Israelis.
One interesting fact - there’s about 6 million Jews left in Israel. Roughly the same number that Hitler managed to murder. That’s all that’s left.