NATO-Warsaw Pact 1985

Started by bayonetbrant, January 15, 2015, 04:29:15 PM

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mirth

Quote from: OJsDad on January 30, 2015, 05:04:26 PM
I'm not sure I buy the theory that the US would sacrifice Taiwan just so the Chinese would attack Russia.

I don't think we'd sacrifice Taiwan outright, but I think we might dangle concessions to entice the Chinese if they didn't attack on their own.

If the Russians found themselves fighting on two fronts, I think the chance of the things going nuclear increases substantially.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

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Toonces

I'm bummed I'm so late to this thread- this is my era!

I read somewhere- I can't remember where now- that the Soviet Union viewed the use of tactical nukes completely differently than NATO.  For the Soviets, nukes were just another weapon to get the job done.  There wasn't this nuclear threshold that needed to be crossed in the same way we in the west think of the war "going nuclear."  So there is a high likelihood that tac nukes could have been released.  Of course, that entails a large danger of things escalating to a complete nuclear exchange, which is why such a war would have been so dangerous.

I'll have to see if I can find where I read that about Soviet nuclear doctrine.
"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

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Toonces

Also, I think it is easy to get sucked into an all-or-nothing thought process WRT a winner of a NATO/WP conflict in West Germany.  In Red Army, the Germans make a separate peace with the WP to end the war because their country was being decimated.  There is certainly potential that a partial victory was possible.
"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

"Does a watch list mean you are being watched or is it a come on to Toonces?" - Biggs

Staggerwing

^I remember that. Red army is a very good book if anyone is looking for a different perspective on a potential 80's NATO-WP conflict.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

mirth

Thanks for the reminder of Red Army. That's one that I've looked at but haven't read.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Toonces

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=2199.msg62886#msg62886


Quote from: Toonces on September 14, 2012, 01:22:20 AM
So I broke out my copy of Ralph Peters' Red Army again.

Page 56 (first shots of the war just fired previous page, start of new chapter):

"Junior Lieutenant Plinnikov wiped at his nose with hs fingers and ordered his driver forward.  The view through the vehicle commander's optics allowed no meaningful orientation.  Rapid flashes dazzled in the periscope's lens, leaving a deep gray veil of smoke in their wake.  The view was further disrupted by raindrops that found their way under the external cowl of the lens block.  Plinnikov felt as though he were guiding  his reconnaissance track through hell at the bottom of the sea.

The shudder of the powerful artillery bursts reached through the metal walls of the vehcile.  Suddenly, the armor seemed hopelessly thin, the tracks too weak to hold, the automatic cannon little more than a toy.  Occasionally, a tinny sprinkling of debris struck the vehicle, faintly audible through Plinnikov's headset  and over the engine whine.  He could feel the engine pulling, straining to move the tracks through the mud of the farm trail.

'Comrade Lieutenant, we're very close to the barrage,' his driver told him.

Plinnikov understood that the driver meant too close.  But the lieutenant was determined to out perform every other reconnaissance platoon leader in the battalion, if not the entire Second Guards Tank Army. 

'Keep moving,' Plinnikov commanded, 'just keep moving.  Head straight through the smoke.'
....

'Keep going,' Plinnikov said.  'Get down into the low ground.  Stay on the trail as long as the smoke holds.  Fast now, move.'

Plinnikov sensed that they were very close to the enemy.  Clots of earth and stone flew into the air, hurtling across his narrowed horizon.  Plinnikov guessed that, if he moved off the trail, there might be mines, but that the trail itself would only be coverd by direct fires-which would be ineffective in the confusion of the Soviet artillery preparation.

'Lieutenant, we're catching up with the barrage.  We're too close.'

'Keep going.  We're already in it.  Go right through.'

'Comrade Lieutenant...'  It was Junior Sergeant Belonov, his gunner and assistant.  The boy's face was milky.

'It's all right,' Plinnikov told him through the intercom.  'Just spot for targets.  If we wait and try to sneak through, they'll get us for sure.'

An unidentified object thumped against the vehicle so hard that the vehicle jolted, as though in pain.

'Go faster,' Plinnikov shouted to the driver.  'Just stay on the road and go as fast as you can.'

'I can't see the road.  I lose it.'

'Just go.'  Plinnikov brushed his fingers at his nose.  He felt fear rising in his belly and chest, unleashed by the impact of whatever had hit the vehicle.

Suddenly, the artillery blasts seemed to swamp them, shaking the vehicle like a boat on rough water.  Plinnikov realized that if they threw a track now, they were dead.

'Go, damn you.'

In the thick smoke, the lights of the blasts seemed demonic, alive with deadly intentions.

'More to the left...to the left.'

The tracks seemed to buckle on the edge of a ditch or gully, threatening to peel away from the road wheels.

'Target,' Plinnikov screamed.

But the sudden black shape off to their right side was lifeless, its metal deformed by a direct hit.  The driver swerved away, and the tracks came level, back on the trail again.

Plinnikov broke out in a sweat.  He had not seen the shattered vehicle until they almost collided with it.  He wondered, for the first time, if he had not done something irrecovably foolish.

Slop from a nearby impact smacked the external lens of Plinnikov's periscope, cracking it diagonally, just as the vehicle reached a pocket where the wind had thinned the smoke to transparent gauze.  Several dark shapes moved out of the smoke on a converging axis.

'Targets.  Gunner right.  Driver, pull left now.'

But the enemy vehicles moved quickly away, either uninterested in or unaware of Plinnikov's presence.  The huge armored vehicles disappeared back into the smoke, black metal monsters roaming over the floor of hell."

"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

"Does a watch list mean you are being watched or is it a come on to Toonces?" - Biggs

Staggerwing

^you realize you have just condemned me to spending the rest of the evening going through all my bookshelves and boxes of overflow in search of my copy, don't you?  :(
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

bayonetbrant

interesting perspective from a Polish dude

QuoteBack to the topic: it was not exactly the fear of a "resurgent Nazi state" but rather the constant fear, that the Bundesrepublik Deutschlands still did not recognize our western borders and there are still a lot of ex-Nazi officials that only "changed colours" and keep the "democratic" Germany on the same course as their Nazi (adnd also the Kaiser's Germany and Kingdom of Prussia etc.) predecessor. Of course it was backed up by the fact that most of German war criminals (like Heinz Reinefahrt who ordered to kill some 30 thousand people in Warsaw during first few days of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944) have never been put on trial in West Germany - nor have they been transferred to Poland to let us make a trial upon them.

Thus it was not about "just another Nazi state" but rather "another German state that is an enemey of Polish independence forever, no matter whether under an eagle or swastika", so we must keep close to the only power in the area that could protect us from that danger.

And you know, those unfortunate pictues as Chancellor Konrad Adenaure in a Teutoinic Knights' cloak (when he made a visit to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order) was a happy day for communist propaganda: "You can see that there's no difference between the Teutonic Knights, the Prussians, the Nazis and the current Germany - they all wanted Poland to perish". Also all those societies, like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees added a lot to support the communist thesis that "former Nazis want to turn back the time and take away the Silesia, Pomerania and Mazury from Polish People" And the fact, that 13 members of the first council of the Federation had a Nazi past, was also a great argument to that communist statement. In Poland the main symbols for many years of these "revisionists" were: Herbert Czaja http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Czaja and Herbert Hupka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hupka - similar to the very recent issues with Erika Steinbach (however, Frau Steinbach is a child of a German Wehrmach soldiers occupying Gdynia in WW2, while Hupka and Czaja lived in Silesia before the war and had their "roots" there; yet that's not the most important).

Thus it was very often used as an element of "legitimisation" of the communist government - "only the communists can assure forver friendship, alliance and protection of the Soviet Union, and the USSR is the only power that can stop the Germans, so if you want to keep the Germans waway, support the Communist government".

To sum it up:

any "Nazi 4th Reich" was rather not seen as possible and real danger; however, the post-war Germany were seen as "the real 4th Reich" and thus as dangerous as the Nazis, or even more dangerous as the Bundesrepublik was supported by the USA and Great Britain.
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GDS_Starfury

but Red Army is moving well towards the worst case scenario and it was written when the reds were 10 feet tall.
all of the weapons we built for 30 years were geared towards stopping Soviet army doctrine and fear.  the end result really were hypercapable weapons.
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