How would the non Soviet Warsaw Pact countries do in a a war against NATO?

I would image that simmering below the surface for all those years was a lot of resentment and apathy from the general population of the Warsaw Pact members. The Soviets had to forcefully put down popular uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which would have also led to a lot of the populace wanting an end to perceived Soviet domination. You also had the natural long lasting hatred between the Poles and Russians that has went on for centuries. Poles resented the fact that their proud nation was now a Soviet satellite state. The alliance was basically held together by the implied threat of Soviet tanks rumbling through the streets to restore order.

There was that old saying in Eastern Europe about the Soviets : They are our brothers, not our friends. Because you can choose your friends, not your brothers.

How would the armies of the half hearted 'allies' of the Soviet Union fare in a WW3 conventional type war? Would there be mass defections of Polish and or Hungarian forces? The Soviets did allocate a division to shadow a Warsaw Pact unit in case of war. Even if there was no defections, there would be a lot of apathy and malaise among the Warsaw Pact nations.
 
Beyond the standard stuff of filling them with informants and political officers as well as subordinating the WarPacs military command structure to that of the Soviet armed forces, I know of three particularly special tricks the Soviets devised:

1. Not giving them anything of particular importance. A lot of them were to be used for rear area security and mop-up operations. Bonus that it means keeping them largely behind the line, less chance of defections there.
2. By never sending them against foes they might like (the Poles were to be sent against the West Germans, not the British or Americans, while the East Germans were to be used against the British or Americans and not the West Germans)
3. By keeping them divided. The rule of thumb were that any two WarPac formation on the line had to have a Soviet formation between them. This goes double for historically antagonistic countries like the Romanians and Hungarians or Poles and Germans.
 
Beyond the standard stuff of filling them with informants and political officers as well as subordinating the WarPacs military command structure to that of the Soviet armed forces, I know of three particularly special tricks the Soviets devised:

1. Not giving them anything of particular importance. A lot of them were to be used for rear area security and mop-up operations. Bonus that it means keeping them largely behind the line, less chance of defections there.

Could there be a mutiny/revolt in the Warsaw Pact with groups like Solidarity launching crippling strikes/protests or even staging an armed revolt.
 
Depending on how much of their equipment actually worked at any given moment, I'd rate the East Germans the highest, followed by the Poles.
 
Ua

WI Rumania and Hungary (pick any two Eastern European countries) turned their guns sideways and used the Cold War as an excuse to renew old squabbles over contested territory?
How would Russians wade into that mud-wrestling?
Hah!
Hah!
 
WI Rumania and Hungary (pick any two Eastern European countries) turned their guns sideways and used the Cold War as an excuse to renew old squabbles over contested territory?
How would Russians wade into that mud-wrestling?
Hah!
Hah!

Those two countries have always been squabbling. Even in WW2 when both countries were 'allied' , they were at each others throats. Both sides left troops to garrison their border instead of sending them to the Eastern front. Maybe the Russians could have sided with Hungary after Ceausescu denounced the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Soviets could have implemented a new Vienna award, and give Transylvania back to Hungary. It would be a pretty epic slap in the face to Romania and the rogue Ceausescu.
 
Could there be a mutiny/revolt in the Warsaw Pact with groups like Solidarity launching crippling strikes/protests or even staging an armed revolt.

This would have been a complete nightmare if the Soviets had invaded Poland in 1980/81 to crush solidarity. It is one thing to have solidarity crushed by your own domestic security forces, but having a foreign power do it is much more of an issue. It may have caused a civil war inside Poland where only the hardcore regime loyalists and Communists would have stayed loyal, while the rest of the army may have rebelled.
 
It's not the fulda gap operation though so essentially a secondary theatre.

Fulda Gap would have been a sideshow to the North German Plain, however.

While far from the ideal tank country it is always touted as (there is a LOT of untrafficable ground and natural choke points and the roads back then, meaning the all-important east-west roads, were not nearly as numerous as they are today), the main WP thrust would have been there. NATO had four corps there and III (US) Corps as well as III (FR) Corps/Force d'Action Rapide to back them up.

Having done a lot of research for Jan Niemczyk's The Last War, I'd rate the non-Soviet WP slaves, pardon, fraternal Socialist Allies :rolleyes: as follows, top to bottom: DDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungaria, Bulgaria, Romania. With the last three ranging from useless to worse than useless.
 
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I came of age just after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and I had a chance to meet many young people my age from the Old Iron Curtain who were studying in America. All of them loved the US and were thankful the Communist dictatorships were gone. We were all of the age where we would have served in the armed forces if a war had broken out. I asked every single one would they have fought the US/NATO if war had broken out. Every single one did not hesitate to say, yes, they would have fought. Even though it was a system they hated and they desperately wanted to join the West.

I would not expect any mass defections until either war exhaustion or defeat totally discredited/destroyed the Communist regimes.

I don't imagine there'd be much enthusiasm for it, but their main goals would be to survive the war just like anyone else so they'd fight well enough to do that.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
About as well as the Indians or Irish would under British command

I would image that simmering below the surface for all those years was a lot of resentment and apathy from the general population of the Warsaw Pact members. The Soviets had to forcefully put down popular uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which would have also led to a lot of the populace wanting an end to perceived Soviet domination. You also had the natural long lasting hatred between the Poles and Russians that has went on for centuries. Poles resented the fact that their proud nation was now a Soviet satellite state. The alliance was basically held together by the implied threat of Soviet tanks rumbling through the streets to restore order.

There was that old saying in Eastern Europe about the Soviets : They are our brothers, not our friends. Because you can choose your friends, not your brothers.

How would the armies of the half hearted 'allies' of the Soviet Union fare in a WW3 conventional type war? Would there be mass defections of Polish and or Hungarian forces? The Soviets did allocate a division to shadow a Warsaw Pact unit in case of war. Even if there was no defections, there would be a lot of apathy and malaise among the Warsaw Pact nations.

About as well as the Indians or Irish would have under British command after 1947 or 1922, respectively.

First rule of imperial fight club is don't trust local levies that have rebelled against the imperial power - unless, of course, the local state has been given political equality//path to independence/something AND the local levies have been purged, and even then its doubtful.

The Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, and Poles had all rebelled against the Soviets in the historical memory of the senior leaders (military and civilian) in all three; this is not a reality likely to lead to the troops of the Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Poles being trusted by the GSFG or other Soviet high commands with much of anything beyond holding the flanks or security duties.

The DDRs, given the propensity of East Germans to vote with their feet during the Cold War, probably will not be high on the list, either.

The Romanians and Bulgarians have their own problems, and if anything, can only be useful facing the Greeks, Turks, and Yugoslavs.

There was a lot of "10-foot-tall Ivanism" during the Cold War, for obvious reasons (both actual and contrived); very little of it panned out when the wall came down and afterwards.

Best,
 
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About as well as the Indians or Irish would have under British command after 1947 or 1922, respectively.

It is doubtful it would be that bad at first. General consensus among Cold War scholars is that the WarPac minors would jump when the Soviets tell them too and be... okayish at the start. The key word there is at the start. The longer the fighting drags on and the worse the Soviets do though, the greater the likelihood those WarPac Allies would try to bail.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Perhaps not, but put it this way:

It is doubtful it would be that bad at first. General consensus among Cold War scholars is that the WarPac minors would jump when the Soviets tell them too and be... okayish at the start. The key word there is at the start. The longer the fighting drags on and the worse the Soviets do though, the greater the likelihood those WarPac Allies would try to bail.

Perhaps not, but put it this way:

If you're Marshal Badunov of the GSFG, are you really going to want Colonel-General Polonsky or General (von) Deutchman to be anywhere important?

Beating up on the Danes or Austrians, or glowering at the Turks and Greeks, is one thing; holding a vital flank against the likes of NORTHAG or CENTAG?

Probably not.

Best,
 
Perhaps not, but put it this way:

If you're Marshal Badunov of the GSFG, are you really going to want Colonel-General Polonsky or General (von) Deutchman to be anywhere important?

Beating up on the Danes or Austrians, or glowering at the Turks and Greeks, is one thing; holding a vital flank against the likes of NORTHAG or CENTAG?

Agreed completely.
 
Wrong. Simply wrong. Sorry.

Karte.jpg


5th (NVA) Army. Does not look like a sideshow to me.

Source: Siegfried Lautsch, Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland, 2013
Mr Lautsch is a former NVA colonel who attended Frunze Academy and a former Bundeswehr light colonel. His last job with the NVA was war planning.

Note the idiotic placing of the defending NATO forces. Almost all of them are located on or to the east of the Elbe-Seitenkanal which marked - its primary funtion was not shipping but serving as one humongous anti-tank ditch with its profile almost making impossible east-west movement and favouring west-east movement - the eastern MLT. To the east, there would only have been screening forces.

A lot of the WP war planning seems to have been wishful thinking, assuming NATO were idiots.

But the NVA at least would have played a key role in the WP attack.
 
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