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> Supposedly at one point, early in 1990s, some high rank officers from both sides got to meet and look at unredacted data about capacity of both sides in Europ
by dodobirdlord 5y ago
> Supposedly at one point, early in 1990s, some high rank officers from both sides got to meet and look at unredacted data about capacity of both sides in Europe, with NATO representative going "oh god, with those numbers you could steamroll us, why you didn't?"
This makes for a good story but seems pretty unlikely. Recognizing the disparity in army sizes available for rapid deployment in Central Europe, the NATO doctrine through the Cold War was to stop any invasion attempt somewhere in Germany with large-scale use of tactical nuclear weapons. There were enough NATO forces in the area that invading Soviet forces would have to be concentrated enough to be vulnerable to theatre deployment of nuclear weapons.
- p_l 5y agoThe steamroll, of course, assumed that NATO didn't nuke Western Germany out of existence. And while Warsaw Pact returned to idea of Close-in Air Support later on, the idea of making holes in NATO front by dropping a nuke then blitzing through still hot ground held at least to 1989 in limited fashion. But yes, there's a reason why I put "supposedly". It's a nice story and there might be a kernel of truth to it, but the details probably were different. That said, a lot of the front line units (especially american) in western germany were there to make nice coffins to mobilize public into support for war in europe (and at least some soldiers definitely were aware of the concept).