Not necessarily, assuming the Russians actually wanted to conquer western europe - rather than end the world. The plan was that they sweep into Germany in over

Not necessarily, assuming the Russians actually wanted to conquer western europe - rather than end the world. The plan was that they sweep into Germany in overwelming tank force, your only option is to drop serious megatonnage on them to try and melt all the tanks. They assume you don't want to totally destroy western europe and kill 100million people. The neutron bomb allows you to (in theory) destroy large numbers of their tanks without totally devastating your allies. So you are more likely to use it - and it still keeps things tactical rather than strategic. They are not going to nuke New York because you used a tactical device on their army. The Russian response was to wrap hydrogen rich armour (aka diesel fuel) around their tank crew spaces which would provide enough sheilding that you are back to having to use silly amounts of megatonnage to achieve anything.