I'm in the mood for a fun, hypothetical discussion, so here we go.

The year is 1984, the season is Spring/Summer, and for the sake of being close to realism, let's assume hardliners have taken over the Kremlin and/or a crisis has been provoked in the Warsaw Pact, say an uprising in Hungary or a wheat harvest failure is causing problems in the Ukraine. Just like Red Dawn or something.

I could have chosen the 60s or 70s, but I prefer 80s music

Any of these things would not be against the realms of possibility in real life.

It's unlikely NATO would have struck first anyway, and we'll assume there's an 'unwritten' agreement by both sides not to use any kind of nukes. This is purely conventional warfare.

So, who would have won? I've always wondered this, and I doubt if I'm alone on dakka, and thank God it never came to pass.

But the 2 key questions:

1. Could the Warsaw Pact make its superiority tell in the opening days, and win quickly, which to the best of my knowledge was always their plan?

2. Could NATO forces hold out long enough for American reinforcements to arrive?

Or would the whole thing just bog down into a grinding stalemate? The Warsaw pact makes initial gains, but NATO rallies and drives them back to the pre-war frontiers and it's back to the status quo.

What does dakka think?

Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in this, I would call it a stalemate however as while NATO appeared to have superior tech at the time, I think the Soviets would most likely persevere.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

I'm a big fan of collecting and painting T-55s and T-72s, so yeah, I have a soft spot for Communist armour, and in my youth, I did dabble with Marxism for a while

But when I said no nukes, I meant it.

As for economic ruin, a quick victory, and NATO having to accept the changed situation i.e de facto Warsaw Pact control of more of Western Europe, might not have led to economic ruin, although you can imagine Britain being used as a base for a last-ditch stand.




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 Valkyrie wrote:
I wouldn't consider myself an expert in this, I would call it a stalemate however as while NATO appeared to have superior tech at the time, I think the Soviets would most likely persevere.

Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.


Would NATO tank crews not be better trained than their Warsaw Pact opposite numbers?


We saw in 1941, that better trained German tank crews usually got the better of larger numbers of Red Army tanks in the early battles.

It is difficult to separate out Nukes because their useage, particularly on a tactical level, was seen muc differently. The Soviets were much more inclined, in doctrinal terms, to use a nuke to stop an armored thrust or break a defense point than NATO forces would have been. In fact, following the Gulf War (a mere 7 years after 1984), the new Russian army came to the conclusion that the only way to stop a NATO armored division's offensive was through a tactical nuke.


That said, I suspect that, in the classic scenario of Ivan pushing through the Fulda Gap (which I think was way less likely than was usually made out to be the case, probably no more likely than NATO attacking first), the Warsaw Pact would prove very capable for the first couple of weeks, then their logistics would begin to strain and the tide would shift heavily towards NATO as the superior industrial/logistics/infrastructure/training/etc kicks in...until it starts trying to spearhead deep back into the Warsaw pact and that dynamic swings back. Ultimately probably some bloody stalemate.

I suspect that, more importantly, if no nukes were involved, that the conflict would still be difficult to maintain at intense levels for long, simply because the rates of destruction would overmatch production. It's one thing to crank out a T34 or Sherman off the assembly line and directly into battle. Can't do that with a T64 or T72 or M60/Abrams. Same thing with a P51 or Il2 vs a Mig29 or F16. Those WW2 aircraft were a fraction of the cost and complexity, and could be replaced quickly, the more modern aircraft would have much more trouble replacing losses.


More importantly though, what would the Warsaw Pact objective be in this scenario, and what counts as winning for NATO? I dont think the Warsaw Pact was ever going to drive to Bordeaux and the Atlantic to conquer Europe. Without having an objective, its hard to judge the outcome, which I think is also partially why this never came to pass.

Soviets.

I was a kid in northern West Germany in 1988, listening to my father's company commanders talk at a party at our house. The gist of the conversation was basically that the NATO forces would probably hold out long enough to evacuate the families and they'd be overrun shortly after that. This was a matter-of-fact conversation that none of the group bothered to dispute, which was pretty chilling to hear as a pre-teen.

Now it's an open question as to what happens after West Germany and (probably) France, but with a 'no nukes' doctrine, probably a long, bitter air campaign. How long would probably depend on UK & US elections and if they go to hardline campaigners or negotiators(or isolationists), but honestly I'd expect years of devastation and a Red continent at some point.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

Anyways, I predict that a WW3 would have ended in a stalemate and played out much the same as the Korean War did after NATO and China intervened, except on a much larger scale. First, the Warsaw Pact would have had the upper hand. They would have occupied much of Western Europe and pushed NATO forces back to the Atlantic. However, NATO forces would not have gone down without a fight and they would have slowed down the Pact's advance enough for the US and Canada to muster and send over a massive response force. With parts of the Atlantic coast still being in NATO hands and safeguarded by the powerful US Navy, these forces could have landed in relative safety. These reinforcements then would have allowed NATO to match the Warsaw Pact more equally in terms of numbers and equipment. And given that they would have been fresh while Warsaw Pact forces would have been exhausted from the war already, the Warsaw Pact advance would likely have lost its momentum and their forces would have started to be driven back. However, the Warsaw Pact's forces would still have been very formidable and stubborn in their defense, so inevitably the NATO counteroffensive in turn would have lost momentum and brought to a standstill. At this point, either the strategic nukes will be brought out in an attempt to force a breakthrough, or both sides will recognise that the war has now become pointless and engage in peace negotiations. The outcome of those negotiations would most likely have been largely a status quo ante bellum, with only relatively minor changes in territory/political alignments depending on how successful both sides were until the stalemate. For example if Western Germany would still have been largely under Warsaw Pact occupation, I could see it being absorbed by Eastern Germany. Or the reverse if the NATO counteroffensive would have succeeded in advancing beyond the Iron Curtain.
Of course, in the aftermath of the war, the political situation would have become even more tense as the relations between East and West would now have been completely ruined and likely completely severed. Both sides would likely focus on rebuilding as fast as possible and getting ready for "round 2".

 Vaktathi wrote:
It is difficult to separate out Nukes because their useage, particularly on a tactical level, was seen muc differently. The Soviets were much more inclined, in doctrinal terms, to use a nuke to stop an armored thrust or break a defense point than NATO forces would have been. In fact, following the Gulf War (a mere 7 years after 1984), the new Russian army came to the conclusion that the only way to stop a NATO armored division's offensive was through a tactical nuke.


That said, I suspect that, in the classic scenario of Ivan pushing through the Fulda Gap (which I think was way less likely than was usually made out to be the case, probably no more likely than NATO attacking first), the Warsaw Pact would prove very capable for the first couple of weeks, then their logistics would begin to strain and the tide would shift heavily towards NATO as the superior industrial/logistics/infrastructure/training/etc kicks in...until it starts trying to spearhead deep back into the Warsaw pact and that dynamic swings back. Ultimately probably some bloody stalemate.

I suspect that, more importantly, if no nukes were involved, that the conflict would still be difficult to maintain at intense levels for long, simply because the rates of destruction would overmatch production. It's one thing to crank out a T34 or Sherman off the assembly line and directly into battle. Can't do that with a T64 or T72 or M60/Abrams. Same thing with a P51 or Il2 vs a Mig29 or F16. Those WW2 aircraft were a fraction of the cost and complexity, and could be replaced quickly, the more modern aircraft would have much more trouble replacing losses.


More importantly though, what would the Warsaw Pact objective be in this scenario, and what counts as winning for NATO? I dont think the Warsaw Pact was ever going to drive to Bordeaux and the Atlantic to conquer Europe. Without having an objective, its hard to judge the outcome, which I think is also partially why this never came to pass.

I'm more North German plain myself when it comes to invasion, because it has the advantage of securing Denmark, a natural choke point, which could have stopped the Soviet Baltic fleet from coming into play, and it allows for an attack on the Low Countries, which is where NATO HQ is located.

To win in this scenario, the Warsaw Pact don't have to conquer the whole of Europe. Capturing a few countries could have led to a domino effect a la 1940, when the Allies fell like flies, and other nations like Hungary and Romania joined the Axis soon after.

I think a Korean War style stalemate would have been the likely outcome, and I really should stop playing Team Yankee.

As an aside, how long would it have taken for your nation's military to rush major reinforcements to Europe? The 101st and 82nd would be there in what, 3-4 days, with Special Forces there sooner??? But I suppose a serious build up, say, 250,000 men, would have taken weeks. It might have been all over then...


Was it limited to just the US Army, or would the US Marines have made an appearance?






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Voss wrote:
Soviets.

I was a kid in northern West Germany in 1988, listening to my father's company commanders talk at a party at our house. The gist of the conversation was basically that the NATO forces would probably hold out long enough to evacuate the families and they'd be overrun shortly after that. This was a matter-of-fact conversation that none of the group bothered to dispute, which was pretty chilling to hear as a pre-teen.

Now it's an open question as to what happens after West Germany and (probably) France, but with a 'no nukes' doctrine, probably a long, bitter air campaign. How long would probably depend on UK & US elections and if they go to hardline campaigners or negotiators(or isolationists), but honestly I'd expect years of devastation and a Red continent at some point.

A friend of mine was there in the 1970s with the British Army, West Berlin, and he was telling me that they weren't expected to last long...


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 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

Anyways, I predict that a WW3 would have ended in a stalemate and played out much the same as the Korean War did after NATO and China intervened, except on a much larger scale. First, the Warsaw Pact would have had the upper hand. They would have occupied much of Western Europe and pushed NATO forces back to the Atlantic. However, NATO forces would not have gone down without a fight and they would have slowed down the Pact's advance enough for the US and Canada to muster and send over a massive response force. With parts of the Atlantic coast still being in NATO hands and safeguarded by the powerful US Navy, these forces could have landed in relative safety. These reinforcements then would have allowed NATO to match the Warsaw Pact more equally in terms of numbers and equipment. And given that they would have been fresh while Warsaw Pact forces would have been exhausted from the war already, the Warsaw Pact advance would likely have lost its momentum and their forces would have started to be driven back. However, the Warsaw Pact's forces would still have been very formidable and stubborn in their defense, so inevitably the NATO counteroffensive in turn would have lost momentum and brought to a standstill. At this point, either the strategic nukes will be brought out in an attempt to force a breakthrough, or both sides will recognise that the war has now become pointless and engage in peace negotiations. The outcome of those negotiations would most likely have been largely a status quo ante bellum, with only relatively minor changes in territory/political alignments depending on how successful both sides were until the stalemate. For example if Western Germany would still have been largely under Warsaw Pact occupation, I could see it being absorbed by Eastern Germany. Or the reverse if the NATO counteroffensive would have succeeded in advancing beyond the Iron Curtain.
Of course, in the aftermath of the war, the political situation would have become even more tense as the relations between East and West would now have been completely ruined and likely completely severed. Both sides would likely focus on rebuilding as fast as possible and getting ready for "round 2".

Good summary.

So, who was the stand out military within the Warsaw Pact? The East Germans seem to have a good reputation in this regard, with the Poles and Czechs not far behind...

Depends on exactly WHEN the war happens.

The 'no nukes' rule eliminates the fifties. NATO depended heavily on tactical nukes at the time, ruled by the American mindset that nukes were literally the only way to go.

In the sixties, it's possible the Soviets would have held the upper hand. In the aftermath of Vietnam, they DEFINITELY would have won; the American conscript were that demoralized at that point.

By the mid-eighties, the U.S. military had transitioned to all-volunteer, and was getting useful numbers of the new equipment like the M-1 tank and the F-15 fighter. At that point Soviet odds of winning drops off steeply.

Of course, working against NATO is the German insistence upon a forward defense, and the NATO allies all using different equipment which complicates their logistical needs. Not to mention the logisitical nightmare of having the most powerful of the NATO allies several thousand miles away across the ocean...

In contrast the Warsaw Pact forces all use the same equipment and tactical doctrine across the board. It doesn't hurt that the Soviet tactical and strategic doctrine were so good that by the eighties the U.S. was actively copying that doctrine. They were also VERY big on planning out for every conceivable possibility and condensing it all into One Big Plan.

The flip side of that is that the Soviet OPERATIONAL doctrine was badly hampered by a total lack of flexibility at anything less than the Division level... and even they had to contact STAVKA for permission to deviate significantly from the One Big Plan. NATO, on the other hand, tended to give local commanders a mission, and then allow them a great deal of latitude and flexibility in carrying it out. This could work out well, as these junior officers could take advantage of momentary opportunities that the senior officers were too far away to react to.

Or it could work out very badly if the junior officer was a real tool, which still happens to this day.

At any rate, all of this hinges on the Soviets NOT threatening France directly. If France feels that NATO is not going to stop the Soviets, they WILL unleash the nukes to keep them off French soil. I expect a NATO counterattack would also get nuked if it threatened to reach Russian soil. So this is a self-limiting scenario, basically a War of German Reunification instead of World War III.

WWI all over again, but a bit further East and with a slightly less static frontline.

No nukes changes the situation big time.

Warsaw Pact would face a substantially harder and more powerful NATO. Germany alone would have been 4x -6x larger, and not the joke it was in the 1980s but a serious force ready to fight.

US would have deployed bulk of it's forces in Europe, would likely still have a draft. On the positive, side wars like Vietnam likely would not have happened.


This also assumes we would not have attacked first, 6 Day War style. Bad assumption!

Warsaw Pact.

When it came to the balloon going up the moto was
" fighting the silent war, while maintaining a passport in case of a shooting war"

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The year is 1984, the season is Spring/Summer,

If it's 1984, the Berlin Wall still stands and NATO is still on a war footing in Germany. A-10 squadrons have been operational for years, and over 700 such planes had been delivered to the USAF by FRC. 3,000+ M1 Abrams tanks have been delivered, alongside Bundeswehr Leopard 2s, and troops would have had good training with them. M2 Bradleys would also have been in operation (but useless deathtraps). In a conventional forces battle, the A-10s and M1s should have been enough to allow NATO to hold until US production reached a war footing.

Politically, Republican Ronald Reagan would have just been re-elected as President of the free world. Given that he's the guy who told Russia to tear down the Wall, he absolutely has the stones to see the war through. Not that 80s America would give in to the Godless Commies who Hollywood was still demonizing.

By 1984, Mao has been dead for a while, and Deng Xiaoping and his technocrats are running the country. The US had normalized relations with China, so there's the potential to open the South-Eastern front for Russia with a second country that has limitless manpower and isn't afraid to use it. Offer China control of ALL of Asia if they support us in defeating Russia, and they probably bite, in order to gain absolute border security. The Sino-American alliance places Russia in the position of Nazi Germany during WW2... fighting two fronts, one of them being a land war in Asia.

If the win condition is to drive the USSR back to WWI era borders then NATO would win. If it's to actually occupy Russia west of the Urals than it's push. That's one of those regions that would be nearly impossible to conquer and control without openly killing all natives en masse and NATO wouldn't do that.

Move the start date to 1974 and I'd vote USSR in a non nuclear war.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

Sure, that gives them a good amount of production on the front end. The real issue is when longer term logistics become an issue.

The Soviets had massive food supply problems even without an active war going on. Millions were starving to death as it was, add a war and their manpower would quickly dry up. It doesn't do much good that you have a lot of industry set up if your entire labor force starves to death. And thats before any damage from air raids is considered.

As you say, it would probably devolve into a stalemate with neither side being able to make headway. Both sides would also quickly use up all of their expensive modern equipment. Modern aircraft and tanks are incredibly expensive and simply can't be churned out in the numbers WW3 would destroy. So you'd probably have a stalemate where most of the combat devolves back to just infantry warfare, with the occasional tank or plane making an appearance.

Its possible that you might see both sides start kicking back up production of WW2 era vehicles, just because they're cheaper and it doesn't hurt as much when they're lost, and hey you need something out there!

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I'm more North German plain myself when it comes to invasion, because it has the advantage of securing Denmark, a natural choke point, which could have stopped the Soviet Baltic fleet from coming into play, and it allows for an attack on the Low Countries, which is where NATO HQ is located.

To win in this scenario, the Warsaw Pact don't have to conquer the whole of Europe. Capturing a few countries could have led to a domino effect a la 1940, when the Allies fell like flies, and other nations like Hungary and Romania joined the Axis soon after.

I think a Korean War style stalemate would have been the likely outcome, and I really should stop playing Team Yankee.

I suspect a stalemate of some sort would be the most likely outcome. Being that I wouldn't hazard to guess too much, especially with the weirdness of the mid 80's

As an aside, how long would it have taken for your nation's military to rush major reinforcements to Europe? The 101st and 82nd would be there in what, 3-4 days, with Special Forces there sooner??? But I suppose a serious build up, say, 250,000 men, would have taken weeks. It might have been all over then...


Was it limited to just the US Army, or would the US Marines have made an appearance?

I'm sure if it was the real "Big One", the Marines would be there, hell I'd expect half the Coast Guard to get called into the Navy and sent in

IIRC during the Gulf war the US sent over half a million troops and tens of thousands of of vehicles to Saudi Arabia in like 15 weeks. With the developed NATO infrastructure of Europe, the closer distance, the UK staging area, and predeveloped deployment plans, I'd expect that time would be substantially less for a quarter million, and US air/naval support would be available immediately.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact nations faced a couple primary issues in the economics regard, aside from the fact that they're starting with a much smaller economic engine to begin with if the US is included on the NATO end.

First, their ability to maintain the logistics train or dynamically adapt it was significantly behind that of the NATO nations, so while I don't doubt that the USSR would and other Warsaw pact states would continue to produce, I think the problem becomes in getting that to the front adequately and communicating between elements efficiently. The NATO nations had dramatically better communications, transportation & fuel infrastructure, substantially more transport vehicles (both ground and air), etc.

Second, the sum total of Warsaw Pact industry was in much more danger of direct non-nuclear strike (via long range bombers, cruise missiles, carrier launched aircraft, etc) than NATO industry was, particularly with the bulk of that being tucked away in the US. Even with lots of stuff tucked away in Siberia, it was more vulnerable than the industrial base in the US was given the general strategic air situation.

That's not to say that NATO wouldn't face these to some degree as well (NATO would undoubtedly face extreme economic distress and destruction), or that they wouldn't have their own issues, but I think these are the critical points of difference.

Likewise, international market exposure will generally provide greater stability in the long run over a more closed economic model, as while you're more vulnerable to being impacted by world events by dint of simply being exposed to more stuff in general, you're also able to access stuff you otherwise wouldn't and surpass constraints not possible on the value or availability of one's own domestic resources. Being able to turn to another supplier for oil, or steel, or other such resources is a game changer. If you can't make enough guns or tanks, being able to buy them from someone else is a huge deal. If you can't raise enough money domestically for your war needs, being able to borrow money from the international market is important. The previous world wars were won by the sides that could call upon the power of the international market, while those cut out by blockade or combat or sanction were crushed or collapsed.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.

I'm not sure why you reasoned the conscript versus volunteer angle like this. countries like France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc. all had conscription too, and to an extent a mandatory service period thay only got scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now most countries still enable conscription in a time of crisis, they just do not have a mandatory service period anymore. If WW3 breaks out its unlikely such a large scale build up would be missed, but in that case why wouldn't NATO countries start mobilizing under their own conscription laws? WW3 is pretty much the mother of all hands on deck scenario for NATO countries to conscript. In the 1980's context of course.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.

I'm not sure why you reasoned the conscript versus volunteer angle like this. countries like France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc. all had conscription too, and to an extent a mandatory service period thay only got scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now most countries still enable conscription in a time of crisis, they just do not have a mandatory service period anymore. If WW3 breaks out its unlikely such a large scale build up would be missed, but in that case why wouldn't NATO countries start mobilizing under their own conscription laws? WW3 is pretty much the mother of all hands on deck scenario for NATO countries to conscript. In the 1980's context of course.

Indeed. I think this gets missed a lot.

The current volunteer only armies that exist would not remain volunteer only for long in the event WW3 actually happened. Assuming nukes are avoided, you've still got a huge conventional war to fight. And everybody is going to run out of fancy tanks, missiles, and airplanes very very fast.

No country today really has any sort of stockpile for fighting a long term war with missiles and aircraft vs a peer level military. The US doesn't even have large stockpiles of conventional bombs anymore. Its just a relative handful of insanely expensive smart bombs and missiles, which would be completely used up within the first week of a full on war with, say, Russia or China.

In the event of WW3, in 1984 or today, we would be reduced to fighting with mostly infantry if the war lasted any longer than a few weeks. Which would mean whoever can conscript the most manpower wins. And high tech equipment would be a luxury nobody could afford. Better to crank out 100 M4A3E8 Shermans than a couple M1 Abrams. 100 simple tanks is 100 targets instead of 2-4 targets, and 100 Shermans would provide more ground support than a couple Abrams anyway.

I think nowadays conscription is less likely because thinking has moved away from it and with abolishing mandatory service it will take a while to train up people. Combine that with even more reliance on technology and its unlikely that a war would drag on to a point that conscription would be the deciding or even large factor.

Where the 'fight' happens would likely affect the choice too. But right smack in the middle of Europe with so many countries nearby with conscription and mandatory service directly under threat? In the 1980's it would be bound to happen if there is any run up to a hot war, which I assume there is if the Warsaw Pact has had time to mobilize its own conscripts.

One thing I'm hoping to explore with this question:

I know the OP said no nukes but I'm curious as to if both sides could use nukes, would they? Would it be total nuclear armageddon or would both sides even be a bit reluctant to do so? The land they'll seize will be contaminated and destroyed, would they be hesitant to actually go nuclear?

Hesitant for sure, but this isn't about seizing land, in the context of a full scale WW3 this would be about the survival of their 'way of life', small tactical nuclear weapons have always been part of doctrine but if one side gains the upper hand and start pushing too hard nukes would come to the table to ensure their 'survival'. France having nukes puts a trigger relatively close in the case of a succesful Pact push (one of the reasons France wanted them, the question if the UK and the US would MAD over France). But this is basically an entire other debate on the deterrence value of nuclear weapons and triggers to deploy them.

 Valkyrie wrote:
One thing I'm hoping to explore with this question:

I know the OP said no nukes but I'm curious as to if both sides could use nukes, would they? Would it be total nuclear armageddon or would both sides even be a bit reluctant to do so? The land they'll seize will be contaminated and destroyed, would they be hesitant to actually go nuclear?

2 scenarios really;

A: nukes are used as a last ditch effort if one side get's completely rolled over, both sides try to actively avoid nuclear weaponry. IN this scenario it would all depend on the rationality of the commanding officers and if the conflict parties were to make a peace before the last escalation.

B: Firststrike kicks in and both sides bomb the living gak out of each other in order to gain a numerical advantage.

As for the question, Stalemate in france, germany is indefensible so long it is not unified, however and that is the key point, the soviets can't rely on Hungarian and polish, or chezch conscripts, even romanian ones. So the Rhine it is once more. Austria and Switzerland would probably act as a funnel, so Italy is not attackable via conventional means easily.

 Vulcan wrote:
Depends on exactly WHEN the war happens.

The 'no nukes' rule eliminates the fifties. NATO depended heavily on tactical nukes at the time, ruled by the American mindset that nukes were literally the only way to go.

In the sixties, it's possible the Soviets would have held the upper hand. In the aftermath of Vietnam, they DEFINITELY would have won; the American conscript were that demoralized at that point.

By the mid-eighties, the U.S. military had transitioned to all-volunteer, and was getting useful numbers of the new equipment like the M-1 tank and the F-15 fighter. At that point Soviet odds of winning drops off steeply.

Of course, working against NATO is the German insistence upon a forward defense, and the NATO allies all using different equipment which complicates their logistical needs. Not to mention the logisitical nightmare of having the most powerful of the NATO allies several thousand miles away across the ocean...

In contrast the Warsaw Pact forces all use the same equipment and tactical doctrine across the board. It doesn't hurt that the Soviet tactical and strategic doctrine were so good that by the eighties the U.S. was actively copying that doctrine. They were also VERY big on planning out for every conceivable possibility and condensing it all into One Big Plan.

The flip side of that is that the Soviet OPERATIONAL doctrine was badly hampered by a total lack of flexibility at anything less than the Division level... and even they had to contact STAVKA for permission to deviate significantly from the One Big Plan. NATO, on the other hand, tended to give local commanders a mission, and then allow them a great deal of latitude and flexibility in carrying it out. This could work out well, as these junior officers could take advantage of momentary opportunities that the senior officers were too far away to react to.

Or it could work out very badly if the junior officer was a real tool, which still happens to this day.

At any rate, all of this hinges on the Soviets NOT threatening France directly. If France feels that NATO is not going to stop the Soviets, they WILL unleash the nukes to keep them off French soil. I expect a NATO counterattack would also get nuked if it threatened to reach Russian soil. So this is a self-limiting scenario, basically a War of German Reunification instead of World War III.

Good point. I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict, because even in the mid-1970s, the morale of the US military was rock-bottom.


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 Easy E wrote:
WWI all over again, but a bit further East and with a slightly less static frontline.

True, but Britain and West Germany on the same side against Russia...

That always felt weird to me, because obviously in the previous wars, Mother Russia was our ally.


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 Frazzled wrote:
No nukes changes the situation big time.

Warsaw Pact would face a substantially harder and more powerful NATO. Germany alone would have been 4x -6x larger, and not the joke it was in the 1980s but a serious force ready to fight.

US would have deployed bulk of it's forces in Europe, would likely still have a draft. On the positive, side wars like Vietnam likely would not have happened.


This also assumes we would not have attacked first, 6 Day War style. Bad assumption!

It's highly unlikely that Western Democracies like ours would ever have struck first - the voters wouldn't entertain it. We'd always be reacting.

Joe Commie, lacking our moral compass, had no such qualms.


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 Insurgency Walker wrote:
Warsaw Pact.

When it came to the balloon going up the moto was
" fighting the silent war, while maintaining a passport in case of a shooting war"

Looks like we've got some reds in the threads.

On a serious note, they were a serious and dangerous enemy, and a Warsaw Pact victory is not unlikely. War is such a confusing mess. even when highly skilled commanders like Wellington and Napoleon are commanding the show, so anything could have happened.


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 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The year is 1984, the season is Spring/Summer,

If it's 1984, the Berlin Wall still stands and NATO is still on a war footing in Germany. A-10 squadrons have been operational for years, and over 700 such planes had been delivered to the USAF by FRC. 3,000+ M1 Abrams tanks have been delivered, alongside Bundeswehr Leopard 2s, and troops would have had good training with them. M2 Bradleys would also have been in operation (but useless deathtraps). In a conventional forces battle, the A-10s and M1s should have been enough to allow NATO to hold until US production reached a war footing.

Politically, Republican Ronald Reagan would have just been re-elected as President of the free world. Given that he's the guy who told Russia to tear down the Wall, he absolutely has the stones to see the war through. Not that 80s America would give in to the Godless Commies who Hollywood was still demonizing.

By 1984, Mao has been dead for a while, and Deng Xiaoping and his technocrats are running the country. The US had normalized relations with China, so there's the potential to open the South-Eastern front for Russia with a second country that has limitless manpower and isn't afraid to use it. Offer China control of ALL of Asia if they support us in defeating Russia, and they probably bite, in order to gain absolute border security. The Sino-American alliance places Russia in the position of Nazi Germany during WW2... fighting two fronts, one of them being a land war in Asia.

A good analysis, but I'm sure the Red Army had some tricks up its sleeve. Was there advanced tank not out by 1984? T-80 or something????


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 trexmeyer wrote:
If the win condition is to drive the USSR back to WWI era borders then NATO would win. If it's to actually occupy Russia west of the Urals than it's push. That's one of those regions that would be nearly impossible to conquer and control without openly killing all natives en masse and NATO wouldn't do that.

Move the start date to 1974 and I'd vote USSR in a non nuclear war.

I shall return after having consulted Binkov's Battlefields on youtube. Great channel.

He ran 3 hypothetical wars between NATO and Warsaw: 60s, 70s, and 80s, and the outcomes are quite interesting.


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 Grey Templar wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

Sure, that gives them a good amount of production on the front end. The real issue is when longer term logistics become an issue.

The Soviets had massive food supply problems even without an active war going on. Millions were starving to death as it was, add a war and their manpower would quickly dry up. It doesn't do much good that you have a lot of industry set up if your entire labor force starves to death. And thats before any damage from air raids is considered.

As you say, it would probably devolve into a stalemate with neither side being able to make headway. Both sides would also quickly use up all of their expensive modern equipment. Modern aircraft and tanks are incredibly expensive and simply can't be churned out in the numbers WW3 would destroy. So you'd probably have a stalemate where most of the combat devolves back to just infantry warfare, with the occasional tank or plane making an appearance.

Its possible that you might see both sides start kicking back up production of WW2 era vehicles, just because they're cheaper and it doesn't hurt as much when they're lost, and hey you need something out there!

East Germany was a pretty decent industrial powerhouse for the Warsaw Pact nations, and doesn't it stand to reason that say, if they overrun West Germany and the industrial areas of Belgium, they could loot a load of good stuff or at least wreck it beyond repair for NATO?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I'm more North German plain myself when it comes to invasion, because it has the advantage of securing Denmark, a natural choke point, which could have stopped the Soviet Baltic fleet from coming into play, and it allows for an attack on the Low Countries, which is where NATO HQ is located.

To win in this scenario, the Warsaw Pact don't have to conquer the whole of Europe. Capturing a few countries could have led to a domino effect a la 1940, when the Allies fell like flies, and other nations like Hungary and Romania joined the Axis soon after.

I think a Korean War style stalemate would have been the likely outcome, and I really should stop playing Team Yankee.

I suspect a stalemate of some sort would be the most likely outcome. Being that I wouldn't hazard to guess too much, especially with the weirdness of the mid 80's

As an aside, how long would it have taken for your nation's military to rush major reinforcements to Europe? The 101st and 82nd would be there in what, 3-4 days, with Special Forces there sooner??? But I suppose a serious build up, say, 250,000 men, would have taken weeks. It might have been all over then...


Was it limited to just the US Army, or would the US Marines have made an appearance?

I'm sure if it was the real "Big One", the Marines would be there, hell I'd expect half the Coast Guard to get called into the Navy and sent in

IIRC during the Gulf war the US sent over half a million troops and tens of thousands of of vehicles to Saudi Arabia in like 15 weeks. With the developed NATO infrastructure of Europe, the closer distance, the UK staging area, and predeveloped deployment plans, I'd expect that time would be substantially less for a quarter million, and US air/naval support would be available immediately.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warsaw Pact likely has an advantage in the first few weeks/months but they eventually suffer economic ruin from the stress of the war.

You say no nukes, but I imagine you mean no strategic nukes. Both sides in this conflict would have lots of tactical nukes, and indeed NATOs strategy for a conflict was largely based on using tactical nuclear weapons(like the Davy Crocket) to slow the Warsaw troops down.

Warsaw Pact economies were geared heavily towards resource extraction, heavy industry and the military, based on the Soviet model. If the Soviet Union is any indication, they would have been able to keep the war machine running at full steam even after the rest of their economy has simply evaporated. And a WW3 would have ruined economies across the globe, not just in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO economies, being rooted firmly in international trade and the free market, do not have that kind of resilience that the communist economies developed. Especially not since inevitably much of NATO would come under Warsaw Pact occupation since the balance of forces in Europe was heavily skewed in favour of the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact nations faced a couple primary issues in the economics regard, aside from the fact that they're starting with a much smaller economic engine to begin with if the US is included on the NATO end.

First, their ability to maintain the logistics train or dynamically adapt it was significantly behind that of the NATO nations, so while I don't doubt that the USSR would and other Warsaw pact states would continue to produce, I think the problem becomes in getting that to the front adequately and communicating between elements efficiently. The NATO nations had dramatically better communications, transportation & fuel infrastructure, substantially more transport vehicles (both ground and air), etc.

Second, the sum total of Warsaw Pact industry was in much more danger of direct non-nuclear strike (via long range bombers, cruise missiles, carrier launched aircraft, etc) than NATO industry was, particularly with the bulk of that being tucked away in the US. Even with lots of stuff tucked away in Siberia, it was more vulnerable than the industrial base in the US was given the general strategic air situation.

That's not to say that NATO wouldn't face these to some degree as well (NATO would undoubtedly face extreme economic distress and destruction), or that they wouldn't have their own issues, but I think these are the critical points of difference.

Likewise, international market exposure will generally provide greater stability in the long run over a more closed economic model, as while you're more vulnerable to being impacted by world events by dint of simply being exposed to more stuff in general, you're also able to access stuff you otherwise wouldn't and surpass constraints not possible on the value or availability of one's own domestic resources. Being able to turn to another supplier for oil, or steel, or other such resources is a game changer. If you can't make enough guns or tanks, being able to buy them from someone else is a huge deal. If you can't raise enough money domestically for your war needs, being able to borrow money from the international market is important. The previous world wars were won by the sides that could call upon the power of the international market, while those cut out by blockade or combat or sanction were crushed or collapsed.

With regards to your last point, doesn't that cut both ways? If Britain is being used as a staging area and industrial production, we would also be at risk of Soviet air raids and mass bombing, just like WW2.


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 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.

I'm not sure why you reasoned the conscript versus volunteer angle like this. countries like France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc. all had conscription too, and to an extent a mandatory service period thay only got scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now most countries still enable conscription in a time of crisis, they just do not have a mandatory service period anymore. If WW3 breaks out its unlikely such a large scale build up would be missed, but in that case why wouldn't NATO countries start mobilizing under their own conscription laws? WW3 is pretty much the mother of all hands on deck scenario for NATO countries to conscript. In the 1980's context of course.

I was approaching it from the angle that volunteer forces are generally seen to be more enthusiastic and have better morale than conscripts, because obviously, volunteers want to be there in the first place.


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 Grey Templar wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.

I'm not sure why you reasoned the conscript versus volunteer angle like this. countries like France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc. all had conscription too, and to an extent a mandatory service period thay only got scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now most countries still enable conscription in a time of crisis, they just do not have a mandatory service period anymore. If WW3 breaks out its unlikely such a large scale build up would be missed, but in that case why wouldn't NATO countries start mobilizing under their own conscription laws? WW3 is pretty much the mother of all hands on deck scenario for NATO countries to conscript. In the 1980's context of course.

Indeed. I think this gets missed a lot.

The current volunteer only armies that exist would not remain volunteer only for long in the event WW3 actually happened. Assuming nukes are avoided, you've still got a huge conventional war to fight. And everybody is going to run out of fancy tanks, missiles, and airplanes very very fast.

No country today really has any sort of stockpile for fighting a long term war with missiles and aircraft vs a peer level military. The US doesn't even have large stockpiles of conventional bombs anymore. Its just a relative handful of insanely expensive smart bombs and missiles, which would be completely used up within the first week of a full on war with, say, Russia or China.

In the event of WW3, in 1984 or today, we would be reduced to fighting with mostly infantry if the war lasted any longer than a few weeks. Which would mean whoever can conscript the most manpower wins. And high tech equipment would be a luxury nobody could afford. Better to crank out 100 M4A3E8 Shermans than a couple M1 Abrams. 100 simple tanks is 100 targets instead of 2-4 targets, and 100 Shermans would provide more ground support than a couple Abrams anyway.

Would Shermans in the 1980s still be viable? I know that in Fate of a Nation for FOW, the Israeli Super Shermans are half decent, but in 1984?

I'm not so sure. I suppose you could upgrade them with modern weapons and defence, but would the Sherman be able to handle it?

It took a hell of an effort just to fit a 17 pounder on a Sherman during WW2.


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 Valkyrie wrote:
One thing I'm hoping to explore with this question:

I know the OP said no nukes but I'm curious as to if both sides could use nukes, would they? Would it be total nuclear armageddon or would both sides even be a bit reluctant to do so? The land they'll seize will be contaminated and destroyed, would they be hesitant to actually go nuclear?

This reply is for everybody. The reason why I went for no nukes is that, nobody would be daft enough to hit the red button, because we'd be entering end of the world territory.

I'd like to assume, unless things got really desperate (NATO at the gates of Moscow or the Soviet Navy sailing up the River Thames into the heart of London) that both sides would still be 'rational.'

But, who knows.

I do know that true story about the Russian guy who refused to panic when they detected a US nuclear missile heading towards them, and it turned out to be a bug. It was back in 1983 or something.

What was his name again? He died 2 years ago or something???


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Not Online!!! wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:
One thing I'm hoping to explore with this question:

I know the OP said no nukes but I'm curious as to if both sides could use nukes, would they? Would it be total nuclear armageddon or would both sides even be a bit reluctant to do so? The land they'll seize will be contaminated and destroyed, would they be hesitant to actually go nuclear?

2 scenarios really;

A: nukes are used as a last ditch effort if one side get's completely rolled over, both sides try to actively avoid nuclear weaponry. IN this scenario it would all depend on the rationality of the commanding officers and if the conflict parties were to make a peace before the last escalation.

B: Firststrike kicks in and both sides bomb the living gak out of each other in order to gain a numerical advantage.

As for the question, Stalemate in france, germany is indefensible so long it is not unified, however and that is the key point, the soviets can't rely on Hungarian and polish, or chezch conscripts, even romanian ones. So the Rhine it is once more. Austria and Switzerland would probably act as a funnel, so Italy is not attackable via conventional means easily.

Switzerland would be pretty hard to invade would it not? Isn't there a whole set of tunnels and redoubts built into the Alps? Would be a tough nut to crack.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Many of the Warsaw Pact troops were conscripts, and most of the NATO forces were volunteers. It usually meant that conscripts would out number volunteer forces, but I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets were impressed by the volunteer British forces against the Argentine conscripts in the Falklands War.

I'm not sure why you reasoned the conscript versus volunteer angle like this. countries like France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc. all had conscription too, and to an extent a mandatory service period thay only got scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even now most countries still enable conscription in a time of crisis, they just do not have a mandatory service period anymore. If WW3 breaks out its unlikely such a large scale build up would be missed, but in that case why wouldn't NATO countries start mobilizing under their own conscription laws? WW3 is pretty much the mother of all hands on deck scenario for NATO countries to conscript. In the 1980's context of course.

I was approaching it from the angle that volunteer forces are generally seen to be more enthusiastic and have better morale than conscripts, because obviously, volunteers want to be there in the first place.

But this isn't an either or scenario, this is a why not use both scenario. Both the Warsaw Pact as well as NATO would have deployed volunteers(career soldiers) as well as conscripts for WW3. If either side mobilized the conscripts would have outnumbered the volunteers by a good amount. The Falklands in this context is a bit of a red herring, that was a war to be won in the air and on the sea, with relatively limited forces because of the location. Even the most amazingly trained ground forces couldn't have won the war for Argentina if they were starving on an island out in the middle of the Atlantic. Europe would be a continental war, where ground forces would be much more important and can achieve more of import (say capturing the Ruhr versus the Falklands which on a whole meant extremely little to any UK war effort). The Falklands is a bit of foreshadowing why a modern war is unlikely to require conscription, conscripts played little to no role in the overall outcome, but in the 80's it still played its part in thinking.

As for the Vietnam angle, morale was bad because of the kind of war the US was fighting. Any conventional push by the NVA was still obliterated by massive US firepower. Just because US public opinion turned against an almost decade long guerrilla war with little to show for it is entirely different from a conventional attack on US allies by the 'evil empire'. On the reverse its like arguing the Soviets would be defeated in the 80's because of Afghanistan.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

With regards to your last point, doesn't that cut both ways? If Britain is being used as a staging area and industrial production, we would also be at risk of Soviet air raids and mass bombing, just like WW2.

I'm sure the UK would face terrible air attack under such an event, but that's still not reaching the bulk of American industrial production, and even then, NATO could put a whole lot more heat on Warsaw Pact industry than the WP could put over the UK in that regard. I suspect it would be much like WW2, where one will notice that the aerial destruction that reached Britain, while horrific, was a fraction of that visited on the continent. That particular ball, while not exclusive to NATO, would be in their court most of the time so long as the US remains in the equation.

Would Shermans in the 1980s still be viable? I know that in Fate of a Nation for FOW, the Israeli Super Shermans are half decent, but in 1984?

I'm not so sure. I suppose you could upgrade them with modern weapons and defence, but would the Sherman be able to handle it?

It took a hell of an effort just to fit a 17 pounder on a Sherman during WW2.

Shermans wouldn't be able to match anything 1v1 really, and nobody would make the Sherman again exactly (they'd make a really cheap L7 carrier most likely), but something along the same lines of "reliable, basic, ultra cheap, able to be produced insanely quickly". This is similar to the idea behind why the WP kept so many T55's for so long, basically until the WP collapsed. Aside from replacement cost issues, it was figured that while they may not be capable of fighting another modern MBT, unless they encounter one they're still the scariest thing around and they can throw so many into the fray that it's impossible to deal with them all, and they're so basic to maintain that they can be kept going very easily. How that concept would play out? Who knows, but I suspect that's what the war would be reduced to in short order.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

This reply is for everybody. The reason why I went for no nukes is that, nobody would be daft enough to hit the red button, because we'd be entering end of the world territory.

I'd like to assume, unless things got really desperate (NATO at the gates of Moscow or the Soviet Navy sailing up the River Thames into the heart of London) that both sides would still be 'rational.'

The problem with the really desperate scenario of Moscow or the Thames is that it glosses over France being a nuclear power and willingly rolling over. This is the issue, being rational for the French stops the moment tanks roll over the Rhine. Either we have to totally take nuclear weapons out of the equation in any event or were talking about WW3 being fought over Germany and Poland.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The year is 1984, the season is Spring/Summer,

By 1984, Mao has been dead for a while, and Deng Xiaoping and his technocrats are running the country. The US had normalized relations with China, so there's the potential to open the South-Eastern front for Russia with a second country that has limitless manpower and isn't afraid to use it. Offer China control of ALL of Asia if they support us in defeating Russia, and they probably bite, in order to gain absolute border security. The Sino-American alliance places Russia in the position of Nazi Germany during WW2... fighting two fronts, one of them being a land war in Asia.

Probably not. By the 1980's Chinese-Soviet tensions had mostly died down and China was looking towards economic improvement. It would have been a very strange move for them to risk absolutely everything for pretty much nothing. Remember that China has nothing really to gain from a war with the Soviet Union. Control over all of Asia sounds great on paper until you realise that all of northern Asia, which the Soviet Union controls, is an empty wasteland that is of very little value to anyone and which is very hard to defend. In other words, it would worsen Chinese border security rather than strengthen it.
Furthermore, the early 1980's was also a period in which Chinese-American relations were strained over disagreements such as the Palestine-Israeli conflict. It is virtually impossible that China would attack the Soviet Union on the bidding of the US. That would have been ideological suicide and would have most likely led to intense internal conflict within the Chinese Communist Party. China may have been a rival to the Soviet Union (after de-Stalinisation), but that did not make it a friend of the US or NATO. China would have almost certainly stayed neutral in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict, safe in the knowledge that no matter who would win that conflict China would be the laughing third.

That said, even if China were to attack the Soviet Union it would not significantly alter the balance of power in Europe. The Far Eastern areas of the Soviet Union are vast and almost completely empty, so the loss of those areas would not be felt in Europe, and after taking the few industrial/population centers in the area (Khabarovsk, Vladivostok) the Chinese military would have extreme difficulties advancing anywhere because of the almost total lack of infrastructure.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
The Warsaw Pact nations faced a couple primary issues in the economics regard, aside from the fact that they're starting with a much smaller economic engine to begin with if the US is included on the NATO end.

First, their ability to maintain the logistics train or dynamically adapt it was significantly behind that of the NATO nations, so while I don't doubt that the USSR would and other Warsaw pact states would continue to produce, I think the problem becomes in getting that to the front adequately and communicating between elements efficiently. The NATO nations had dramatically better communications, transportation & fuel infrastructure, substantially more transport vehicles (both ground and air), etc.

The vast bulk of NATO's production capability was and is located in North America, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Warsaw Pact's production capability was just a one or two days drive away from the frontlines.
NATO had much better communication and transportation infrastructure because they needed it to be able to coordinate between a dozen different nations all with dramatically different militaries, political systems, supply and command chains spread out over a massive distance. The Warsaw Pact on the other hand was only a handful of nations geographically clustered together all with the same political system and all using the same military equipment. They just had a whole lot less logistics and communication issues to deal with. The other Warsaw Pact militaries were just divisions of the Soviet Army in all but name.
Simply because of the geography, the Warsaw Pact would have been able to rush reinforcements to the front at a much higher rate than NATO, simply because they do not need to ship their reinforcements across the Atlantic first.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Second, the sum total of Warsaw Pact industry was in much more danger of direct non-nuclear strike (via long range bombers, cruise missiles, carrier launched aircraft, etc) than NATO industry was, particularly with the bulk of that being tucked away in the US.

Well within reach of Soviet bombers and missiles based in Asia. The Soviet Union and the US pretty much border one another after all. The US would not have escaped widespread destruction. And as the war is going to be waged in Western Europe for the most part, the still significant NATO industry there is going to be taken out of the picture entirely.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, international market exposure will generally provide greater stability in the long run over a more closed economic model, as while you're more vulnerable to being impacted by world events by dint of simply being exposed to more stuff in general, you're also able to access stuff you otherwise wouldn't and surpass constraints not possible on the value or availability of one's own domestic resources. Being able to turn to another supplier for oil, or steel, or other such resources is a game changer. If you can't make enough guns or tanks, being able to buy them from someone else is a huge deal. If you can't raise enough money domestically for your war needs, being able to borrow money from the international market is important. The previous world wars were won by the sides that could call upon the power of the international market, while those cut out by blockade or combat or sanction were crushed or collapsed.

That is not a conclusion you can draw from WW2. The countries that lost WW2 were capitalist market economies just as much as the US or Great Britain. The misfortune of Germany in that regard is just that they were stupid enough to wage a two-front war, allowing themselves to be cut of from any trade or supplies. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, the only non-capitalist country that participated in WW2, ended up on the winning side largely because it could keep producing stuff even after its economy had collapsed completely. It was not limited by financial constraints to the degree that capitalist systems were. Despite complete economic ruination and the destruction of the Soviet industrial heartland, Soviet war production actually continued to increase throughout WW2. Most of this was made possible by what was effectively slave labour, forcing workers to work extra hard in appalling conditions with little to no pay. Something like that would never be possible in a market economy like the US.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Would Shermans in the 1980s still be viable? I know that in Fate of a Nation for FOW, the Israeli Super Shermans are half decent, but in 1984?

I'm not so sure. I suppose you could upgrade them with modern weapons and defence, but would the Sherman be able to handle it?

It took a hell of an effort just to fit a 17 pounder on a Sherman during WW2.

Sure, after the war has gone on for 6 months or so. By that point, all of your high tech modern tanks and aircraft are destroyed, and the few that aren't are held in reserve in case the enemy makes a breakthrough. All of your missiles are used up, except a few kept to protect a very few key strategic targets. The enemy is in the same boat as well.

It doesn't necessarily have to be Shermans. There might be a new design of similar tech level rolled out, and they would probably have a 105mm gun on them, but the general gist is you are deliberately producing well below your current tech level simply because the war destroys anything more advanced faster than you can replace it.

This idea applies today too as I mentioned before. The modern 1st world military simply does not have the stockpiled material to prosecute a "real" war. We've become so focused on precision high tech equipment that gives a massive lopsided edge, that we've forgotten that that gear only gives an edge if we're fighting insurgents in the desert. It doesn't give enough of an advantage if fighting a peer level military.

To give a little perspective. Patriot Missiles. Out of the many many countries which use the Patriot Missile, and variants thereof, the number manufactured across all these countries is only a little over ~10,000. 10,000 missiles is nothing, and they cost $3 million each.

In WW2, the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs. That absolutely dwarfs by many orders of magnitude what conventional missiles and smart bombs are ready today, and WW3 would likely require many more bombs than WW2 ever did. All the drones, high tech tanks, smart bombs, and missiles would quickly disappear in WW3 simply because you could not make enough of them fast enough.
Russia's equipment might be technically worse than the US's equipment, but the difference is minor and doesn't justify the extra expense in the event of full blown WW3.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Would Shermans in the 1980s still be viable? I know that in Fate of a Nation for FOW, the Israeli Super Shermans are half decent, but in 1984?

I'm not so sure. I suppose you could upgrade them with modern weapons and defence, but would the Sherman be able to handle it?

It took a hell of an effort just to fit a 17 pounder on a Sherman during WW2.

Sure, after the war has gone on for 6 months or so. By that point, all of your high tech modern tanks and aircraft are destroyed, and the few that aren't are held in reserve in case the enemy makes a breakthrough. All of your missiles are used up, except a few kept to protect a very few key strategic targets. The enemy is in the same boat as well.

It doesn't necessarily have to be Shermans. There might be a new design of similar tech level rolled out, and they would probably have a 105mm gun on them, but the general gist is you are deliberately producing well below your current tech level simply because the war destroys anything more advanced faster than you can replace it.

This idea applies today too as I mentioned before. The modern 1st world military simply does not have the stockpiled material to prosecute a "real" war. We've become so focused on precision high tech equipment that gives a massive lopsided edge, that we've forgotten that that gear only gives an edge if we're fighting insurgents in the desert. It doesn't give enough of an advantage if fighting a peer level military.

To give a little perspective. Patriot Missiles. Out of the many many countries which use the Patriot Missile, and variants thereof, the number manufactured across all these countries is only a little over ~10,000. 10,000 missiles is nothing, and they cost $3 million each.

In WW2, the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs. That absolutely dwarfs by many orders of magnitude what conventional missiles and smart bombs are ready today, and WW3 would likely require many more bombs than WW2 ever did. All the drones, high tech tanks, smart bombs, and missiles would quickly disappear in WW3 simply because you could not make enough of them fast enough.
Russia's equipment might be technically worse than the US's equipment, but the difference is minor and doesn't justify the extra expense in the event of full blown WW3.

Don't get me wrong, I'm always in favour of Shermans Vs T-34s , but would they be scraping the barrel like this?

By that logic, the British would be getting WW1 whippet tanks out of storage.

But I agree with your last point.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The year is 1984, the season is Spring/Summer,

By 1984, Mao has been dead for a while, and Deng Xiaoping and his technocrats are running the country. The US had normalized relations with China, so there's the potential to open the South-Eastern front for Russia with a second country that has limitless manpower and isn't afraid to use it. Offer China control of ALL of Asia if they support us in defeating Russia, and they probably bite, in order to gain absolute border security. The Sino-American alliance places Russia in the position of Nazi Germany during WW2... fighting two fronts, one of them being a land war in Asia.

Probably not. By the 1980's Chinese-Soviet tensions had mostly died down and China was looking towards economic improvement. It would have been a very strange move for them to risk absolutely everything for pretty much nothing. Remember that China has nothing really to gain from a war with the Soviet Union. Control over all of Asia sounds great on paper until you realise that all of northern Asia, which the Soviet Union controls, is an empty wasteland that is of very little value to anyone and which is very hard to defend. In other words, it would worsen Chinese border security rather than strengthen it.
Furthermore, the early 1980's was also a period in which Chinese-American relations were strained over disagreements such as the Palestine-Israeli conflict. It is virtually impossible that China would attack the Soviet Union on the bidding of the US. That would have been ideological suicide and would have most likely led to intense internal conflict within the Chinese Communist Party. China may have been a rival to the Soviet Union (after de-Stalinisation), but that did not make it a friend of the US or NATO. China would have almost certainly stayed neutral in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict, safe in the knowledge that no matter who would win that conflict China would be the laughing third.

That said, even if China were to attack the Soviet Union it would not significantly alter the balance of power in Europe. The Far Eastern areas of the Soviet Union are vast and almost completely empty, so the loss of those areas would not be felt in Europe, and after taking the few industrial/population centers in the area (Khabarovsk, Vladivostok) the Chinese military would have extreme difficulties advancing anywhere because of the almost total lack of infrastructure.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
The Warsaw Pact nations faced a couple primary issues in the economics regard, aside from the fact that they're starting with a much smaller economic engine to begin with if the US is included on the NATO end.

First, their ability to maintain the logistics train or dynamically adapt it was significantly behind that of the NATO nations, so while I don't doubt that the USSR would and other Warsaw pact states would continue to produce, I think the problem becomes in getting that to the front adequately and communicating between elements efficiently. The NATO nations had dramatically better communications, transportation & fuel infrastructure, substantially more transport vehicles (both ground and air), etc.

The vast bulk of NATO's production capability was and is located in North America, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Warsaw Pact's production capability was just a one or two days drive away from the frontlines.
NATO had much better communication and transportation infrastructure because they needed it to be able to coordinate between a dozen different nations all with dramatically different militaries, political systems, supply and command chains spread out over a massive distance. The Warsaw Pact on the other hand was only a handful of nations geographically clustered together all with the same political system and all using the same military equipment. They just had a whole lot less logistics and communication issues to deal with. The other Warsaw Pact militaries were just divisions of the Soviet Army in all but name.
Simply because of the geography, the Warsaw Pact would have been able to rush reinforcements to the front at a much higher rate than NATO, simply because they do not need to ship their reinforcements across the Atlantic first.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Second, the sum total of Warsaw Pact industry was in much more danger of direct non-nuclear strike (via long range bombers, cruise missiles, carrier launched aircraft, etc) than NATO industry was, particularly with the bulk of that being tucked away in the US.

Well within reach of Soviet bombers and missiles based in Asia. The Soviet Union and the US pretty much border one another after all. The US would not have escaped widespread destruction. And as the war is going to be waged in Western Europe for the most part, the still significant NATO industry there is going to be taken out of the picture entirely.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, international market exposure will generally provide greater stability in the long run over a more closed economic model, as while you're more vulnerable to being impacted by world events by dint of simply being exposed to more stuff in general, you're also able to access stuff you otherwise wouldn't and surpass constraints not possible on the value or availability of one's own domestic resources. Being able to turn to another supplier for oil, or steel, or other such resources is a game changer. If you can't make enough guns or tanks, being able to buy them from someone else is a huge deal. If you can't raise enough money domestically for your war needs, being able to borrow money from the international market is important. The previous world wars were won by the sides that could call upon the power of the international market, while those cut out by blockade or combat or sanction were crushed or collapsed.

That is not a conclusion you can draw from WW2. The countries that lost WW2 were capitalist market economies just as much as the US or Great Britain. The misfortune of Germany in that regard is just that they were stupid enough to wage a two-front war, allowing themselves to be cut of from any trade or supplies. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, the only non-capitalist country that participated in WW2, ended up on the winning side largely because it could keep producing stuff even after its economy had collapsed completely. It was not limited by financial constraints to the degree that capitalist systems were. Despite complete economic ruination and the destruction of the Soviet industrial heartland, Soviet war production actually continued to increase throughout WW2. Most of this was made possible by what was effectively slave labour, forcing workers to work extra hard in appalling conditions with little to no pay. Something like that would never be possible in a market economy like the US.

I read somewhere that the major rivers in Germany/France/Belgium would slow up the Warsaw Pact forces for a while, and the bridgeheads across the rivers would be targets for NATO air forces. Soviet amphibious and river crossing capability was rated adequate, but not great, and there's also the problem that Western Europe has many major urban areas. The Soviets knew from their own experience how hard urban fighting is in a war, so urban areas being defended did concern them.

A question for everybody, but would there have been 5th column activity behind NATO lines during a third world war? Italy had a decent sized Communist movement for years, as did France.


Possible infiltration and industrial sabotage missions behind the lines by partisans allied to Moscow?


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 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

This reply is for everybody. The reason why I went for no nukes is that, nobody would be daft enough to hit the red button, because we'd be entering end of the world territory.

I'd like to assume, unless things got really desperate (NATO at the gates of Moscow or the Soviet Navy sailing up the River Thames into the heart of London) that both sides would still be 'rational.'

The problem with the really desperate scenario of Moscow or the Thames is that it glosses over France being a nuclear power and willingly rolling over. This is the issue, being rational for the French stops the moment tanks roll over the Rhine. Either we have to totally take nuclear weapons out of the equation in any event or were talking about WW3 being fought over Germany and Poland.

I think we could all live with France being sacrificed.

But would France nuke their own territory to stop it from being overrun again? I suppose it's possible, because another occupation would have been another utter humiliation for them, but they would surely hold out hope for a NATO victory, because after all, if the war was finished, re-settling irradiated French territory would be tricky. Nobody would obviously want to live on it.

The France factor is a good point, but a complex one. And you never knew if they were in or out of NATO half the time. Damn De Gaulle!

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


I read somewhere that the major rivers in Germany/France/Belgium would slow up the Warsaw Pact forces for a while, and the bridgeheads across the rivers would be targets for NATO air forces. Soviet amphibious and river crossing capability was rated adequate, but not great, and there's also the problem that Western Europe has many major urban areas. The Soviets knew from their own experience how hard urban fighting is in a war, so urban areas being defended did concern them.

I don't know where you read that, but it is incorrect. Crossing rivers quickly was a primary concern of the Soviet military since their attack plan relied on speed (and overwhelming force), and almost all Soviet military vehicles were amphibious for that reason. The Soviet Army did not need any bridges to cross rivers. Furthermore, engineering units were attached to combat units on most organisational levels which meant that the Soviet military could build bridges or erect defences at a very high speed.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
A question for everybody, but would there have been 5th column activity behind NATO lines during a third world war? Italy had a decent sized Communist movement for years, as did France.


Possible infiltration and industrial sabotage missions behind the lines by partisans allied to Moscow?

Of course. There were and are many communists in the West, and many of those symphatised with the Soviet Union and were recruited by the GRU. The Soviets put a lot of effort in preparing and planning all kinds of infiltration and sabotage up to the point that they hid weapon caches across the West for their agents to use in case of war. Their aims were to create chaos by assassinating key Western leaders and commanders, sabotaging industry and disrupting vital infrastructure (especially power plants) and communications.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The vast bulk of NATO's production capability was and is located in North America, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Warsaw Pact's production capability was just a one or two days drive away from the frontlines.

And thats the problem, because its all in easy attack range, same with all the EU Nato stuff like Rheinmetal and FN. Thats why the US was able to become such a huge power in the first two world wars, because we could produce in quantity and relative safety. Going nuclear takes this option out, but with nukes off the table its a powerful advantage.

NATO had much better communication and transportation infrastructure because they needed it to be able to coordinate between a dozen different nations all with dramatically different militaries, political systems, supply and command chains spread out over a massive distance.

Thats a secondary factor, its more that stuff like every vehicle has a two way radio that everyone knows how to use (whereas such was not the case in many WP forces), theres a color TV in every house able to distribute emergency information, tons more radio stations, more kilometers of rail and highway, more vehicles, more ports and airports, more devoped economic ties with other parts of the world, etc.

The Warsaw Pact on the other hand was only a handful of nations geographically clustered together all with the same political system and all using the same military equipment. They just had a whole lot less logistics and communication issues to deal with. The other Warsaw Pact militaries were just divisions of the Soviet Army in all but name.

The WP had its own issues to deal with. They too had lots of different peoples and nationalities to manage.

Equipment and command was more standardized, but the command structure had its own drawbacks, particularly in being able to react dynamically to events. Likewise, not everyone was in strict lockstep, as demonstrated by Budapest and Prague.

But yes, in many respects these factors do work in the WPs favor.

Simply because of the geography, the Warsaw Pact would have been able to rush reinforcements to the front at a much higher rate than NATO, simply because they do not need to ship their reinforcements across the Atlantic first.

In many respects thats true (though its not like Europe didnt also have its own industry and large reserves of manpower) and would certainly tell in the outset, but after the inital carnage is over and central europe is little more than rubble and ashes, thats likely to fall apart.

Well within reach of Soviet bombers and missiles based in Asia. The Soviet Union and the US pretty much border one another after all. The US would not have escaped widespread destruction. And as the war is going to be waged in Western Europe for the most part, the still significant NATO industry there is going to be taken out of the picture entirely.

It would have absolutely been apocalyptic for all involved with tremendous devastation everywhere. Nobody was going to get through unscathed. However, looking at the general strategic air situation, the USSR was substantially more vulnerable in this regard. That doesn't mean the US is invulnerable, or that stuff in Europe is safe, it's just noting which way the scale leans. I don't think anyone would achieve decisive victory in any such conflict, just a bloody stalemate.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, international market exposure will generally provide greater stability in the long run over a more closed economic model, as while you're more vulnerable to being impacted by world events by dint of simply being exposed to more stuff in general, you're also able to access stuff you otherwise wouldn't and surpass constraints not possible on the value or availability of one's own domestic resources. Being able to turn to another supplier for oil, or steel, or other such resources is a game changer. If you can't make enough guns or tanks, being able to buy them from someone else is a huge deal. If you can't raise enough money domestically for your war needs, being able to borrow money from the international market is important. The previous world wars were won by the sides that could call upon the power of the international market, while those cut out by blockade or combat or sanction were crushed or collapsed.

That is not a conclusion you can draw from WW2. The countries that lost WW2 were capitalist market economies just as much as the US or Great Britain.

Sure, but my point wasnt about capitalism, it was about international markets. Once WW2 kicks off, Germany's resource pool is basically what it can conquer and a couple smaller allied states. Japan had even less. The USSR, while not being capitalist, had access to the international markets, particularly after 1941. This allowed gargantuan amounts of materiel to come in to help support the Red Army's war effort and keep Soviet industry fed and put trucks on the roads that it otherwise would not have had access to.

The misfortune of Germany in that regard is just that they were stupid enough to wage a two-front war, allowing themselves to be cut of from any trade or supplies.

Right.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, the only non-capitalist country that participated in WW2, ended up on the winning side largely because it could keep producing stuff even after its economy had collapsed completely.

Yup, but it had extensive foreign aid during that time period as well, the Soviet Union was importing huge quantities of stuff from international markets. Steel, explosives, food, specialist chemicals, tanks, etc.

It was not limited by financial constraints to the degree that capitalist systems were. Despite complete economic ruination and the destruction of the Soviet industrial heartland, Soviet war production actually continued to increase throughout WW2. Most of this was made possible by what was effectively slave labour, forcing workers to work extra hard in appalling conditions with little to no pay. Something like that would never be possible in a market economy like the US.

The USSR was absolutely limited by financial constraints, it just had different choices on where to allocate those resources, and skimping on paying workers was one of those. That is a cost and has its own effects. Most everyone's production increased through the whole of the war, Germany's included up until the last few months.

When it comes to mid 80's Warsaw Pact stuff, hard currency was a necessity, as the USSR was importing food (lots of grain) and foreign goods and had to pay for those with currency, and likewise needed currency to prop up the other WP states and was borrowing heavily from European banks at the time, owing tens of billions to western creditors by 1985.

Not Sherman's but a cheap M 48 with a 120mm would work.

It's the aircraft that are hyperexpensive.

Edit: great discussion guys!

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's unlikely NATO would have struck first anyway

No more or less unlikely than WP forces attacking westwards in the first place.
IMO the Cold War was largely a western construct.

I honestly believe the USSR wanted security, buffer states to aid that and a say in global interests, not to increase its empire across Europe.

 War Drone wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's unlikely NATO would have struck first anyway

No more or less unlikely than WP forces attacking westwards in the first place.
IMO the Cold War was largely a western construct.

I honestly believe the USSR wanted security, buffer states to aid that and a say in global interests, not to increase its empire across Europe.

I would concur with this sentiment. Based on my own understanding of the Soviet Union during this era and the economic/political/military realities, I dont think it was any likelier for the WP to have attacked than NATO, and the WP was at least as paranoid about a NATO invasion as NATO was back. Any major confrontation likely would have been the result of misunderstanding or confusion rather than on either side looking to conquer the other, but there was a lot of potential for confusion and misunderstanding

From a demographic point of view, the Warsaw Pact in 84 has about 1/3 to 1/2 of NATO's population. This would leave their forces quickly and heavily outnumbered or their production diminished in any long conflict. NATO's countries are far more productive then those of the Warsaw Pact. The entire economy of the Warsaw Pact nations were geared toward military production. Those of the NATO's nation were not and yet produced about as much military material and equipment then the opposition. Should both nation ramp-up and go to war, the Warsaw Pact nations can hardly increase their current level of production, while NATO nations could quickly double or even triple it. In 85, the USSR was loosing its best and brightest in the fields of engineering and science. In any war, that would cost them a lot. The network of intellectuals and scientists in NATO nations were much, much stronger and more numerous. Simply on these fact, it doesn't bode well for any conflict. Even in term of experience, in 84, the US and NATO nations had more military experience then the Warsaw Pact nations.

 War Drone wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's unlikely NATO would have struck first anyway

No more or less unlikely than WP forces attacking westwards in the first place.
IMO the Cold War was largely a western construct.

I honestly believe the USSR wanted security, buffer states to aid that and a say in global interests, not to increase its empire across Europe.

To be fair, during the 80s, the Soviet Leadership, their parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents all had living memory of being invaded by Western Europe, first Napoleon, then Hitler. It's not an unreasonable concern, given the history. To that end, it is impossible to fault Russian annexation and occupation of any border country that does not completely Findlandize. A strong Russia with absolute border security makes for a safer Europe.

I think the biggest selling point for a NATO victory in my eyes is the year you picked. 1984, the Soviets had not yet started equipping their armor with Kontakt 5 armor.

It would be a turkey shoot.

Switzerland would be pretty hard to invade would it not? Isn't there a whole set of tunnels and redoubts built into the Alps? Would be a tough nut to crack.

Redoubts, pff, don't make me laugh.
Fortresses,nuclear safe, yes that is the correct word. Fortresses, bunker lines, rigged infrastructure, oh and the height of something that would probably classify as indoctrination.

But this are mere nuissances compared to the terrain. Invading switzerland with conventional means is on a scale from absolutely idiotic to lacking a brain. No a normal scale can't be used for such idiocity.
The alps to the south and center, the Jura chain to the north west, various lakes, rivers, swamps, forests and if nothing of the above, welcome to cities villages and other urban areas.

Also, let's just say that switzerland might have entred diverse weapons prohibition contracts, like not using chemicals, or phosphor, or cluster ammo for mortars and other howitzers, but frankly if push comes to shove we would absolutely use any of the named things above (and have any of the named things above probably somewhere in a bunker).

Not Online!!! wrote:

Switzerland would be pretty hard to invade would it not? Isn't there a whole set of tunnels and redoubts built into the Alps? Would be a tough nut to crack.

Redoubts, pff, don't make me laugh.
Fortresses,nuclear safe, yes that is the correct word. Fortresses, bunker lines, rigged infrastructure, oh and the height of something that would probably classify as indoctrination.

But this are mere nuissances compared to the terrain. Invading switzerland with conventional means is on a scale from absolutely idiotic to lacking a brain. No a normal scale can't be used for such idiocity.
The alps to the south and center, the Jura chain to the north west, various lakes, rivers, swamps, forests and if nothing of the above, welcome to cities villages and other urban areas.

Also, let's just say that switzerland might have entred diverse weapons prohibition contracts, like not using chemicals, or phosphor, or cluster ammo for mortars and other howitzers, but frankly if push comes to shove we would absolutely use any of the named things above (and have any of the named things above probably somewhere in a bunker).

Nobody really wants to invade Switzerland in the first place. They are always neutral anyways, the country is mostly just mountains making it not very useful for anything and their cheese is full of holes.
They also talk funny.

They also talk funny

Wait, that comes from a dutch?

I mean we are the only other people that actually can Correctly learn dutch and use the ch sound correctly and now we talk funny?

Get your wooden shoes outta here!

It always amuses me when people who live below sea level talk crap about people who live on a mountain. In 50 years, when the oceans have risen 10-20m, we'll see who's laughing...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It always amuses me when people who live below sea level talk crap about people who live on a mountain. In 50 years, when the oceans have risen 10-20m, we'll see who's laughing...

Na, laughing at dutch for that is unfair, they did not earn that.
Reminds me i need to go visit the northern venice before it drowns


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They are always neutral anyways,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_War

Or for a more recent one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuch%C3%A2tel_Crisis


Also forgot to add the regular occupations of Liechtenstein.
To this day i don't understand how one can not read a 1:25'000 map propperly....

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
By 1984, Mao has been dead for a while, and Deng Xiaoping and his technocrats are running the country. The US had normalized relations with China, so there's the potential to open the South-Eastern front for Russia with a second country that has limitless manpower and isn't afraid to use it. Offer China control of ALL of Asia if they support us in defeating Russia, and they probably bite, in order to gain absolute border security. The Sino-American alliance places Russia in the position of Nazi Germany during WW2... fighting two fronts, one of them being a land war in Asia.

Irrelevant.

If there's a serious danger of foreign invasion of Soviet territory there's NO WAY the conflict is not going nuclear, and that includes China. That means this is beyond the 'no nuke' threshold of the scenario being contemplated.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
As you say, it would probably devolve into a stalemate with neither side being able to make headway. Both sides would also quickly use up all of their expensive modern equipment. Modern aircraft and tanks are incredibly expensive and simply can't be churned out in the numbers WW3 would destroy. So you'd probably have a stalemate where most of the combat devolves back to just infantry warfare, with the occasional tank or plane making an appearance.

Its possible that you might see both sides start kicking back up production of WW2 era vehicles, just because they're cheaper and it doesn't hurt as much when they're lost, and hey you need something out there!

This is where the Soviets would eventually win at in the sixties and seventies. They had warehouses of WWII hardware and ammo still sitting around in case they were ever needed. Whole divisions of T-34/85s sitting around just in case. NATO... not so much.

By the eighties the technological gap between even T-60s and the most modern NATO tanks was becoming a severe handicap. You would basically have to run NATO out of ammo before they'd be seriously threatened by even second-line Soviet tanks, much less WWII relics.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Good point. I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict, because even in the mid-1970s, the morale of the US military was rock-bottom.

The simple answer is that despite all the rhetoric, the Soviets really didn't WANT to fight a third, massively destructive war in under a century that would cost them millions of men, and could very well cost them their very existence.

It that, they were simply being rational.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But would France nuke their own territory to stop it from being overrun again? I suppose it's possible, because another occupation would have been another utter humiliation for them, but they would surely hold out hope for a NATO victory, because after all, if the war was finished, re-settling irradiated French territory would be tricky. Nobody would obviously want to live on it.

Which is why they'd nuke the Soviet formations the moment they started assaulting the Rhine. Nuke them while they're still in Germany, and France stays (relatively) intact.

After all, France ALSO suffered two enormously destructive wars that cost them millions of men and, unlike England, cost them massive and systematic destruction of land and economy - in WWI by the majority of the trench warfare being held on French property, and in WWII by being outright occupied and then comprehensively fought over in 1944-45.

In comparison the bombing England suffered, while severe, was significantly less destructive than what France endured.


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 War Drone wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's unlikely NATO would have struck first anyway

No more or less unlikely than WP forces attacking westwards in the first place.
IMO the Cold War was largely a western construct.

I honestly believe the USSR wanted security, buffer states to aid that and a say in global interests, not to increase its empire across Europe.

Not entirely accurate. The Soviets would have been delighted to add the rest of the world to their state, little by little or all at once. That's why they worked so hard at espionage and propaganda about 'the inevitability of Communism as a worldwide economic system.' They just considered outright war to be too destructive to be worth the gain.

Consider it this way. The Russians are inveterate chess-players, especially in the military and political leadership. A skilled chess player plans the game up to a dozen moves ahead, and doesn't gamble on the other player not seeing a move. They conducted their military and political strategies in the same way - building up positions and maneuvering for advantage without risking their own position.

War, no matter how much you outgun the enemy, is the ultimate gamble. America showed the British that in the 1770s, then forgot it and had to relearn it in Vietnam. The Soviets re-learned it in Afghanistan.

And chess players HATE risking everything on one move.

Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

The best chess player in the world was American, not Russian.

 War Drone wrote:
Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

It's actually called game theory. It's quite regularly applied to political science; which includes conflicts and diplomacy.

Good post, thanks for bringing up this topic.

There is a considerable body of academic work on this subject in general, mostly created in the late 90's and early 2000's as old Soviet archives generally became available to Western academics and government think tanks. I was lucky in that both professionally and academically I got to study some of this material. Much of that material is now "easily" available to the more academically minded, especially from most major university libraries through internet and local collections.

There is a fairly big academic consensus on the matter concerning a military clash in Central Europe. Based on the replies Ive seen so far, many of you have come to the same conclusion: at no time, from 1945 until the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s, was there a significant challenge to the Western (primarily US) hegemony in that area. The Red Army, and by extension, the Soviet economy, was completely incapable of fighting the sustained, world wide effort that it would have taken to contain the NATO powers, and the US in particular, to be able to win a war in continental Europe. Academic study and soul searching by Western intelligence agencies found that the West wildly overestimated the capabilities of the Soviet military and economy. Secondly, the consensus is that it was highly unlikely that the Soviets ever even considered an invasion of the West a viable option to settle international affairs unless some hugely improbable turn of political events in the West made Europe more friendly to the Soviet economic model-which was abysmal.

To break it down by decades-and I'm remembering much of this off a few papers I did in my postgraduate days quite a few years ago:
1. In 1945 it is estimated that at least 60% of the war material (refined fuels, raw materials, trucks, aircraft, ammunition, food, cloth) used by the Red Army and the Soviet populace was provided by one source: the United States. Say we followed Patton's lead and continued East: after a few months of hard fighting, the Red Army collapses from lack of logistics, mass desertions (Soviet soldiers were shocked at the affluence they found in Eastern Germany) to the West and American tanks are quite literally liberating Eastern Europe and the Ukraine.

2. In 1954 the US is undergoing a massive increase in defense spending after the Stalin's go ahead for the NK's in the Korean War "proved" Red aggression (that's a whole other topic of discussion that as another poster said, was in many ways greatly exaggerated in the West). US nuclear forces are on the rise, and while seen as secondary to the nuclear deterrent, land forces are undergoing modernization and NATO is taking shape. The Soviets are still in recovery mode from WWII-with much Western aid, and the GSFG is just (re)forming. Only the US is able to project power world wide on a scale necessary to win a war.

3. By 1964 the Soviets are beginning to catch up. Their forces in Germany are modern and in many cases very close to technological parity with Western land forces, but their Air Forces are still significantly behind Western units and by this date, Western Europe, especially West Germany, are rearmed and well trained. However, the Soviet economy is unable to support or sustain large forces in peacetime without stripping their Eastern European "allies" bare of resources. They still receive large amounts of Western food aid, which could easily be cut off leading very quickly to starvation diets among the populace. Modern research suggests that their "allies" were dubious at best, and not a likely source of fighting strength. Some intelligence indicated that both Poland and East Germany may have been very averse to a war with the West. The US could easily expect almost all of Western Europe to rise up against any Soviet aggression.

4. In 1974 the Soviet economy and military is at its peak. Yet their GDP is still less than most Western European countries less than a quarter its size and with none of the raw resources. The reality was that while US defenses in Western Europe had been stripped to fight in Vietnam, and many consider this period the nadir of US military power, the reality is far different. The US remains the only global naval power and would have easily dominated the Atlantic crossing routes, had significant lift capabilities and a military packed with combat veterans with both conventional and unconventional military experience. Western European defenses continue to grow and improve (and the Soviets still cannot project power....).

5. In 1984 a Soviet invasion of the West ends in very rapid disaster. The Soviet economy is near collapse, thanks in no small part to the relatively tiny army they have fighting in Afghanistan, with very limited success. The military can barely support the !00K army in Afghanistan and the Western powers are now at the height of their technological and training superiority versus the Soviets. The West German army is a formidable force on its own, other NATO forces are well trained and equipped, the US forces in Germany are now highly trained, motivated and with new equipment, far superior to the GSFG (the best the Soviets have). In just seven years the Soviet nation collapses, a few years later their forces are roundly trounced in Chechniya (spelling?) and the US obliterates a Soviet trained and equipped army in Iraq in one of the most lopsided military victories in human history.

Key takeaways:
1. The West wildly overestimated Soviet power-wether purposely, through gross negligence, good Soviet counter-intel or just bad sources we'll likely never know.
2. The Soviets could not sustain a world wide military effort, only the US could do that.
3. The Soviets likely never considered themselves the equal of the West.
4. Although a war would have likely been very bloody, the West comes out the victor each time.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

This reply is for everybody. The reason why I went for no nukes is that, nobody would be daft enough to hit the red button, because we'd be entering end of the world territory.

I'd like to assume, unless things got really desperate (NATO at the gates of Moscow or the Soviet Navy sailing up the River Thames into the heart of London) that both sides would still be 'rational.'

The problem with the really desperate scenario of Moscow or the Thames is that it glosses over France being a nuclear power and willingly rolling over. This is the issue, being rational for the French stops the moment tanks roll over the Rhine. Either we have to totally take nuclear weapons out of the equation in any event or were talking about WW3 being fought over Germany and Poland.

I think we could all live with France being sacrificed.

But would France nuke their own territory to stop it from being overrun again? I suppose it's possible, because another occupation would have been another utter humiliation for them, but they would surely hold out hope for a NATO victory, because after all, if the war was finished, re-settling irradiated French territory would be tricky. Nobody would obviously want to live on it.

The France factor is a good point, but a complex one. And you never knew if they were in or out of NATO half the time. Damn De Gaulle!

Nuke its own territory? More likely everything east of the Rhine before they let the WP get that far. As for holding out hope for an allied victory, certainly the French will have remembered how the allies came back for Poland after WW2. That is the calculation to be made, if the WP had the strength to defeat Western Europe and occupy France itself, how likely would it be that the UK and the US would liberate them? Its taking big chances on any military or political outcome in the (possibly far) future.

The French already had 'trust issues' to some extent, hence they made their own nukes. But if this wouldn't be the time to use them nukes lose all deterrence value, why even invest in having so many? Reasoning this basically means UK and French nukes are irrelevant and don't have to be used as long as the US can still claw it back.

As for NATO, France was always part of it and never left, they just split from the top military NATO council to go do their own thing (they are back now though), but they never left the rest of the alliance.

1. Could the Warsaw Pact make its superiority tell in the opening days, and win quickly, which to the best of my knowledge was always their plan?

They had plans to quickly reach La Manche even under massive tactical nuke bombings. But great looking plans rarely works in reality.

2. Could NATO forces hold out long enough for American reinforcements to arrive?

Doubtful. It's possible only if Americans already prepeared to help somewhere. Otherwise, active part of war will be over before that. If the Soviets did not seize Europe or even rolled back, then the further conduct of the war loses its meaning and they will make an attempt at peace or a truce.

2. Could NATO forces hold out long enough for American reinforcements to arrive?
Doubtful. It's possible only if Americans already prepeared to help somewhere. Otherwise, active part of war will be over before that. If the Soviets did not seize Europe or even rolled back, then the further conduct of the war loses its meaning and they will make an attempt at peace or a truce.

@1/325AIR

An excellent post.

But I take issue with point number 4.

As I've said many a time before on dakka, American history is a hobby of mine, and few seem to appreciate just how rock bottom the US military was after Vietnam. The prospect of fighting another war against the Warsaw Pact would have driven them nuts. There seemed to be a conscientious effort to chuck the memories of Vietnam into a black hole. To paraphrase fight club, the first rule of the US military is that you don't talk about Vietnam.

And then Gulf War 1 came along, the US wins easily, and everything is rosy again, and it's high fives all around. And then Gulf War 2, and the insurgency, and the reaction is like feck, we're gonna have to learn the lessons from Vietnam again...

I appreciate there are US veterans on dakka, but IMO, from the literature I've read, the US military was badly scared from its Vietnam experience, and fighting the Red Army in the 1970s, is not something they would have relished. For sure, they would have been the ultimate professionals, I don't doubt that, but morale and prestige had been damaged...

Morale is so important in warfare, almost as important as training and equipment.

IMO, Bill Slim is one of the all time great generals of the 20th century, and when you read his book about the WW2 Burma campaign (defeat into victory) which I would recommend to anybody, he's always visting units, and making people aware of what the plan is, what role they as individuals play, making them confident in the cause they are fighting for etc etc

And the end result was a crushing victory over the Japanese by the British and Commmonwealth forces.

That's what excellent morale and a belief in your cause will do for you. The US military never had that after Vietnam for a few years.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:

 War Drone wrote:
Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

It's actually called game theory. It's quite regularly applied to political science; which includes conflicts and diplomacy.

Given the state of the world, I'm not convinced that it actually works, but that's for another day, and probably for a another website.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:
I think the biggest selling point for a NATO victory in my eyes is the year you picked. 1984, the Soviets had not yet started equipping their armor with Kontakt 5 armor.

It would be a turkey shoot.

I was watching Red Dawn. For this scenario, the wheat harvest in Ukraine has failed, just like the film.

 War Drone wrote:
Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

Russians do play an awful lot of chess. If you are a kid in Russia you are almost forced to play it. Especially if you come from a military family like mine.
Which reminds me that I haven't really played much chess since we emigrated years ago.

And I don't know if it has anything to do with chess, but the Soviet and Russian leadership definitely are not the kind of people who take gambles. If they do something it will have been meticulously analysed, planned and prepared beforehand. The annexation of Crimea is a brilliant recent example. At first it might have seemed like some massive gamble, but it clearly was very thoroughly planned and prepared. And to go back to the Cold War, it is why the Soviet Union would never have attacked NATO unless they were very certain they'd have an easy victory. And the existence of nuclear weapons takes that certainty away completely. So instead they went all in on developing espionage, sabotage and hybrid warfare, while attempting to promote communism more aggressively in the Third World.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The best chess player in the world was American, not Russian.

The best chess player in history is Norwegian. But Russia has by far the most chess grandmasters in the world. More in fact than most other countries in the world combined. Chess really is a national sport.

That post of mine you just quoted was actually a bit of a dick post. I'm not gonna edit it away, but I do apologise to Vulcan

1/325AIR wrote:

There is a fairly big academic consensus on the matter concerning a military clash in Central Europe.

Since you claim to be basing yourself on a academic consensus, can you offer any citations to support your points?

Because with a casual browse of my university's library I am not finding evidence for such a consensus, and many of your points are in fact contradicted by many mainstream academic sources.

 War Drone wrote:
Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

I suppose I should report this as a personal attack, but it's just too amusing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The best chess player in the world was American, not Russian.

And?

I said nothing about where the very best player lived. I said that Russians in general play a lot of chess (and they do) and that they tend to apply the same sort of strategies to their other undertakings.

Don't read more into it than that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 War Drone wrote:
That post of mine you just quoted was actually a bit of a dick post. I'm not gonna edit it away, but I do apologise to Vulcan

No problem, I found it more amusing than insulting.

Some of my relatives are Russian; when I met them after the Iron Curtain came down it seemed like chess was the main thing we had in common. Only...they were a LOT better at it than I was.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 War Drone wrote:
Chess? LMFAO ... you're delusional, or have watched too many movies ... or both.

Russians do play an awful lot of chess. If you are a kid in Russia you are almost forced to play it. Especially if you come from a military family like mine.
Which reminds me that I haven't really played much chess since we emigrated years ago.

And I don't know if it has anything to do with chess, but the Soviet and Russian leadership definitely are not the kind of people who take gambles. If they do something it will have been meticulously analysed, planned and prepared beforehand. The annexation of Crimea is a brilliant recent example. At first it might have seemed like some massive gamble, but it clearly was very thoroughly planned and prepared. And to go back to the Cold War, it is why the Soviet Union would never have attacked NATO unless they were very certain they'd have an easy victory. And the existence of nuclear weapons takes that certainty away completely. So instead they went all in on developing espionage, sabotage and hybrid warfare, while attempting to promote communism more aggressively in the Third World.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The best chess player in the world was American, not Russian.

The best chess player in history is Norwegian. But Russia has by far the most chess grandmasters in the world. More in fact than most other countries in the world combined. Chess really is a national sport.

I wouldn't put any more value on that then I would on Russia and China both producing more champion Olympic lifters than other countries. They've found a niche that other countries either can't compete in or have no interest in. Chess was very much a part of Cold War braggadocio that Russia one. Seems natural that it would continue to be significant since then.

I think it depends on when. In 1945? I think the USSR was at it's height then, and logistically in a strong position. 20 years later? Complete reversal.

Stale mate, all man kind would be wiped out from disease after a short amount of time, sort of like how all those millions prisoners of war who had all there clothing chemically cleaned because of the outbreak of that disease i forget the name, so it was definitly a issue in ww2, imagine ww3.

 Stormatious wrote:
Stale mate, all man kind would be wiped out from disease after a short amount of time, sort of like how all those millions prisoners of war who had all there clothing chemically cleaned because of the outbreak of that disease i forget the name, so it was definitly a issue in ww2, imagine ww3.

Wait what disease?
Are you talking about the spanish flue?
because that 'd be WW1.
However bio and chemical warfare would be an escalation that sooner rather then later would lead to massive retribution strikes with nuclear options, so in this scenario also unlikely to be used by both sides.

Interesting thing, that most military equipment was created specifically for Europe rush. Like BMP and BTR-70 -80 sacrificed many tactical and technical characteristics for the sake of swim ability and radiation protection. Yes, its armor - mostly protection from radiation, and only after that from bullets. And all the soldiers had medicines that allowed them to fight for two days after the radiation exposure. Medicine that didnt protect from radiation. Did not help from the harmful effects of radiation. But forced the soldier to act for a while. And what next is not important.

 Stormatious wrote:
Stale mate, all man kind would be wiped out from disease after a short amount of time, sort of like how all those millions prisoners of war who had all there clothing chemically cleaned because of the outbreak of that disease i forget the name, so it was definitly a issue in ww2, imagine ww3.

In the event of stalemate in Europe, sure much of Europe would get hit by disease, but the same conditions wouldn't be present in the rest of the world. We might see a pandemic claim millions, but humanity would survive it.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
Stale mate, all man kind would be wiped out from disease after a short amount of time, sort of like how all those millions prisoners of war who had all there clothing chemically cleaned because of the outbreak of that disease i forget the name, so it was definitly a issue in ww2, imagine ww3.

Wait what disease?
Are you talking about the spanish flue?
because that 'd be WW1.
However bio and chemical warfare would be an escalation that sooner rather then later would lead to massive retribution strikes with nuclear options, so in this scenario also unlikely to be used by both sides.

I think it was tuberculosis, or some thing like that and it was a huge deal in prison camps and was a big issue, so i imagine that would be alot larger in ww3, along with all the other causes of death.

And that's just that diseaase, what about the modern diseases like Ebola from the African continents etc? i imagine that would also spread

Ebola is really bad at killing people who practice basic hygiene.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ebola is really bad at killing people who practice basic hygiene.

War, mixed with famine and large amounts of death people will create the scenes where basic hygeine is impossible. Remeber, ww3 would involve more then just western countries.

 Stormatious wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ebola is really bad at killing people who practice basic hygiene.

War, mixed with famine and large amounts of death people will create the scenes where basic hygeine is impossible. Remeber, ww3 would involve more then just western countries.

Well we are restricted on the european Theater.

Technically, however when the yugo war broke out and we got some waves of asylants we also again had tuberculosis problems in switzerland, that was comparativly recent and european so i guess yes tuberculosis could get terrible consequences.

Also we talk about a timespan 20 years before the jugos decided to beat each other up.

yeah, i just know that with war comes massive disease, and if it was ww3, i imagine that would be a major factor in determining who wins and loses

 Stormatious wrote:
yeah, i just know that with war comes massive disease, and if it was ww3, i imagine that would be a major factor in determining who wins and loses

Has there been a disease in Iraq or Afghanistan as a result of the WoT? I don't recall hearing much about that specific issue.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
yeah, i just know that with war comes massive disease, and if it was ww3, i imagine that would be a major factor in determining who wins and loses

Has there been a disease in Iraq or Afghanistan as a result of the WoT? I don't recall hearing much about that specific issue.

Um is this 1945??


Either way there was disease spreading in a big way during the 1st and 2nd world wars, so i imagine 3rd... oh crap i forgot no nukes loool... Well would stil be lots of disease regardless

You said war brings disease. I'm asking if that is true at all times or is it impacted by the region, combatants, and/or scale.

I vote stalemate.

Two of the greatest armies of their time were defeated/stalled going into Russia. History repeats once again.

Logistically it’s a nightmare and the size of Russia and their will to defend the motherland turns this into something NATO would be unable to sustain.

I also disagree with the Chinese impact on this war. I can see China siding with Warsaw over NATO based on the tension of the South China Sea, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the Chinese that pushed into North Korea and fought US forces.

 trexmeyer wrote:
You said war brings disease. I'm asking if that is true at all times or is it impacted by the region, combatants, and/or scale.

Yep, generally breakouts of diseases especially cholera and diharea since the infrastrucutre for cleaning gets damaged destroyed.
Flues and other normal 08/15 diseases get also way worse thanks to scarcitiy, take a gander at yemen.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
You said war brings disease. I'm asking if that is true at all times or is it impacted by the region, combatants, and/or scale.

Yep, generally breakouts of diseases especially cholera and diharea since the infrastrucutre for cleaning gets damaged destroyed.
Flues and other normal 08/15 diseases get also way worse thanks to scarcitiy, take a gander at yemen.

But how great is the severity and how prevalent is it? I don't think it would impact mid 80's western Europe that severely. Or USSR eastern Europe for that matter.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
You said war brings disease. I'm asking if that is true at all times or is it impacted by the region, combatants, and/or scale.

Yep, generally breakouts of diseases especially cholera and diharea since the infrastrucutre for cleaning gets damaged destroyed.
Flues and other normal 08/15 diseases get also way worse thanks to scarcitiy, take a gander at yemen.

But how great is the severity and how prevalent is it? I don't think it would impact mid 80's western Europe that severely. Or USSR eastern Europe for that matter.

A fully waged conventional war....

The infrastrucutre of and for civillians would literally be dead.

There is no telling how much get's destroyed but after WW1 were massbombing became the en vogue thing to do, do you imagine that it matters where this battle takes place?

Hint it does not.

Take a look at yugoslavia, with the further outbreaks of tuberculosis etc. Yugoslavia before that was one of the better developped countries in regards to healthcare and infrastructure.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
You said war brings disease. I'm asking if that is true at all times or is it impacted by the region, combatants, and/or scale.

Yep, generally breakouts of diseases especially cholera and diharea since the infrastrucutre for cleaning gets damaged destroyed.
Flues and other normal 08/15 diseases get also way worse thanks to scarcitiy, take a gander at yemen.

But how great is the severity and how prevalent is it? I don't think it would impact mid 80's western Europe that severely. Or USSR eastern Europe for that matter.

imagining that ww3 would be alot worse then 1 and 2, i just assume based on the severity of 1 and 2, that 3 would be alot worse if combined with nuclear war, which i forgot we are not allowed to do so, my thoughts are now irrelevant, but as i say disease does play a huge role and spread rampantly with war times. So diseases would be a large part of what could cause a stalemate which is why i voted it.

Of course it matters. Not every city across the whole of Western Europe will be suddenly, immediately destroyed. Civilians still have access to allied resources, to include medicine. The same would not be true in a less developed, scarcely populated area.

 trexmeyer wrote:
Of course it matters. Not every city across the whole of Western Europe will be suddenly, immediately destroyed. Civilians still have access to allied resources, to include medicine. The same would not be true in a less developed, scarcely populated area.

No they do not, between cruise missiles mass Bomber attacks and the lack of proper anti rocket technology it could've turned Europe into the fething stoneage.

Take a look at yugoslavia, with the further outbreaks of tuberculosis etc. Yugoslavia before that was one of the better developped countries in regards to healthcare and infrastructure.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
Of course it matters. Not every city across the whole of Western Europe will be suddenly, immediately destroyed. Civilians still have access to allied resources, to include medicine. The same would not be true in a less developed, scarcely populated area.

No they do not, between cruise missiles mass Bomber attacks and the lack of proper anti rocket technology it could've turned Europe into the fething stoneage.

Take a look at yugoslavia, with the further outbreaks of tuberculosis etc. Yugoslavia before that was one of the better developed countries in regards to healthcare and infrastructure.

Or even the black death, that wiped out like what half of eu's population, i imagine in ww3 things could easily reach that intensity. Maybe a new type of black death or the same one would appear or re appear.

Question: would North America support a European front or start another front in the Pacific? Alaska is pretty damn close to Russia and America could use the conquered island of Japan as a staging post into China.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Question: would North America support a European front or start another front in the Pacific? Alaska is pretty damn close to Russia and America could use the conquered island of Japan as a staging post into China.

What else is PACFLT for?

IIRC, Palin could see Russia from her window!

Why would America use Japan to invade China? By 1984, China had split with Russia for a very long time, and was busy getting their own house in order. Given that China was America's ally in WW2, and neutral WRT NATO vs Warsaw Pact, invading China invites a Chinese nuclear response, starting with Washington, D.C.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Question: would North America support a European front or start another front in the Pacific? Alaska is pretty damn close to Russia and America could use the conquered island of Japan as a staging post into China.

What else is PACFLT for?

IIRC, Palin could see Russia from her window!

Why would America use Japan to invade China? By 1984, China had split with Russia for a very long time, and was busy getting their own house in order. Given that China was America's ally in WW2, and neutral WRT NATO vs Warsaw Pact, invading China invites a Chinese nuclear response, starting with Washington, D.C.

My Cold War history is... basic. I assumed a communist China would be allies with a communist Russia. Never mind China then. The North Pacific still seems like the most direct route for North America to attack Russia from.

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Question: would North America support a European front or start another front in the Pacific? Alaska is pretty damn close to Russia and America could use the conquered island of Japan as a staging post into China.

What else is PACFLT for?

IIRC, Palin could see Russia from her window!

Why would America use Japan to invade China? By 1984, China had split with Russia for a very long time, and was busy getting their own house in order. Given that China was America's ally in WW2, and neutral WRT NATO vs Warsaw Pact, invading China invites a Chinese nuclear response, starting with Washington, D.C.

My Cold War history is... basic. I assumed a communist China would be allies with a communist Russia. Never mind China then. The North Pacific still seems like the most direct route for North America to attack Russia from.

The chosen year being 1984 is very important. In 1984, China is neutral, unlike1954, they're definitely on Russia's side.

The North Pacific is a sideshow. The Russian Pacific Fleet was always fairly minimal aside from the SSN/SSBN forces, and really no match for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

On the other hand, invading Siberia and expecting to do much good in an otherwise European war is on the dumb side of optimistic. Aside from the Trans-Siberian Railway there is NO infrastructure for moving much of anything the several thousand miles west to get at anything meaningful to Russian combat and economic capabilities from 1945-1991.

Russia, on the other hand, has stockpiled a lot of equipment and fuel, and has lots of airbases scattered around to defend against a theoretical SAC nuclear strike.

A land war in Asia is generally a losing prospect. And don't forget, this is Siberia we're talking about. General Winter is still Russia's greatest ally.

Fascinating discussion. I think the no nukes rule is a red herring in WW3. If it truly was WW3 it would escalate to the point that somebody used nukes.
More likely is some fighting breaks out, say the USSR annexes part of eastern Europe, then the treat of it going nuclear brings everyone to the table and a deal is done. At this point it wouldn't be considered a world war as the scale would he off.
No way they get to France, as the French would have used theirs to defend themselves before pact troops touched their soil. That's litterelly why they had them.

I think more interesting would be if the USSR decided to expand in a different direction, say towards India. They weren't a nuclear power at the time, and would the US etc really risk MAD to protect them?

This is a historic little tidbit.
After WW2 switzerland was preparing to build nuclear weapons.
Infact strategists at the time even considered a first strike against the soviet Union.

Why?
Because we are insane sometimes.

My point: sooner or later the wrong Person get's to press the redbutton and we would all be fethed. In this case i agree with tamereth would however add to that the longer the conflict lasts and the more desperate a side becomes the higher the chance that common sense will not be applied anymore.

Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

In what way?

Rail guns will be able to do tons of things.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

In what way?

Rail guns will be able to do tons of things.

And the development of other branches just magically goes puff?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict,

Hans, are we the baddies?

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict,

Hans, are we the baddies?

Didn't they try to do more subversive stuff then?