Challenge: NATO attacks WP
- Thread starter juanml82
- Start date
NATO was not in position to attack the USSR/Warsaw Pact. NATO was a defensive alliance and it suffered of conventional inferiority until the late 80's. Any attack on the USSR would have been a suicide, even if the war had been purely convention, which is totally unlikely anyway.
You would probably have to move the Warsaw Pact nations away from the USSR before such an attack could even be considered, and you would probably have to get rid of the USSR's nuclear weapons.
It's not a challenge, it's impossible. It's like making water flow upwards
Without something really, really improbable (like US president going completely insane), it can't happen.The Warsaw Pact was a defensive alliance in response to NATO and the latter esposed a tactical nuclear response as part of its policy from the late 1970s at the latest. Soviet military doctrine was defence in depth backed by local superiority to counter attack immediately once hostilities began. Every western power from Nazi Germany to USA used this as a propaganda tool to argue the Soviets were building an offensive war making capability.
The question is what if NATO attacked.
NATO would open with a nuclear barrage and then most of the European members would immediately withdraw from the alliance. While British,American,West German and maybe French tanks rolled across the devestated landscape the Soviets would retaliate by nuclear attack against the western alliance convential forces in Poland, East Germany and probably the capitals as well. Total exchange would soon follow since control of the strategic nuclear weapons systems would be broken. No Fail Safe then.
LOL,when I first saw the title I thought why the hell would NATO attack wikipedia?
OOOH, great. LOL
Well, guys, we can always have NATO launch a prepmtive strike against those Red bastards. Maybe, if the commies would be more eager to aid and fund their fellow Workers of the World in other European countries, such as Greece, Italy, and West Germany - enough to cause some serious trouble - the west would have to act before there is some Internationalist Revolution.
Joe Weber wrote a novel entitled "DefCon One" (it was either that or "DefCon 5") where Gorbachev is assassinated by hard-liners, who upon assuming power begin plotting a nuclear first-strike on the West.
Eventually a CIA mole in the Kremlin kitchen manages to get out and warn the West, which launches a pre-emptive attack. Several Soviet bomber formations waiting the word to attack US carrier groups are eviscerated.
The chief hardliner, who had recently had a stroke, is overthrown and killed by the other Politburo members before the missiles start flying. One of the CIA characters, upon hearing of this, stops the US launch by running through the empty White House towards the bomb shelter screaming his head off.
Basically NATO might attack the USSR if it thought the USSR would attack first.
Eventually a CIA mole in the Kremlin kitchen manages to get out and warn the West, which launches a pre-emptive attack. Several Soviet bomber formations waiting the word to attack US carrier groups are eviscerated.
The chief hardliner, who had recently had a stroke, is overthrown and killed by the other Politburo members before the missiles start flying. One of the CIA characters, upon hearing of this, stops the US launch by running through the empty White House towards the bomb shelter screaming his head off.
Basically NATO might attack the USSR if it thought the USSR would attack first.
Yeah, right, and I am the Pope.
Every WP plan we know of was a plan for nuclear blitzkrieg in Western Europe. The plans for the Czechoslovak People's Army were not defensive, despite the first two sentences.
0% realistic.
First, Soviets and the WP had about 3 to 1 superiority in men and equipment, and since the 70's they also had more launchers and nukes. All NATO plans were defensive, the idea was to prevent the Soviets from achieving a breakthrough in Germany and to orderly withdraw to the Rhine, hoping to wear them down using tactical nukes if necessary.
NATO first strike would require a 180° turn in its doctrine and war planning and massive increase of the defence spending of its European members, which was simply not conceivable at the time.
lichtbringer
Banned
mhm,
a late POD could be the events of 1989. It is well known that the NVA (the east german army) was alerted during the demonstration in Leibzig and several other german cities. So if the NVA would be activated to take down the demostrations in east germany and kills by "accident" some west germans or even bettter some americans in berlin it could have been ugly.
a late POD could be the events of 1989. It is well known that the NVA (the east german army) was alerted during the demonstration in Leibzig and several other german cities. So if the NVA would be activated to take down the demostrations in east germany and kills by "accident" some west germans or even bettter some americans in berlin it could have been ugly.
bard32
Banned
I just read The Third World War: August 1985. It's about a Warsaw Pact attack
on NATO. NATO could have attacked the Warsaw Pact because the United States had, and still has, the AH-64 Apache. The Warsaw Pact armies were very tank heavy. The AH-64 could have taken out the armies of the Warsaw
Pact on the first day.
No bard, nukes could have taken out the armies of the WP. Helicopters don't decimate armies that quickly.
bard32
Banned
I think NATO had a no first use policy when it came to nukes. The AH-64
could have taken out the Warsaw Pact's tanks. If the Soviets went nuclear,
then NATO would have gone nuclear.
I know that. I was just saying that NATO isn't going to take out the entire WP army in one day with helicopters, which was what you had said.