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There appears to be a surge of Polish-themed stuff. I've had this stuck in my head for awhile after a book I read on the Soviet military. I'll quote from the book and then make my pitch.

From The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine by Andrew Cockburn:

"As the marshals and generals of the Soviet Union become involved in factional struggles both within the military and with the civilian leadership, so officers are promoted primarily on the basis of their personal loyalty.

There could be no clearer example of this process than the astonishing story of Brezhnev's coup against the high command of the ground forces in the winter of 1980-81. The point at issue was POland. To put it simply: key elements both in the military and in the Politburo wanted to intervene forcibly to put down the Solidarity trade union in all it's manifestations (this was the year before the declaration of martial law in Poland). Leonid Brezhnev opposed the idea, and he got his way.

By the early winter of 1980, matters in Poland appeared to be coming to a head. The Communist government under Stanislaw Kania was steadily retreating before the independent Solidarity organisation. That the Soviets might intervene with troops, as they had in Czechoslovakia, was commonly accepted both in Poland and in the West. U.S. intelligence reported actual signs of military preparations for intervention toward the end of November. Such visible indications that the tanks might roll as the calling up of reservists and troop maneuvers on the borders were obliquely confirmed in the Soviet press.

The trouble for the bellicose generals was that although they seemed to have won the political battle, they were less adept at getting ready for a military operation. The actual mobilization turned ino a shambles. Reservists called up in key districts next to the Polish border promptly deserted in numbers too large to punish, and coordination between different units broke down."


So...there you go. That's what happened. You've got demoralized Soviet C-type divisions that won't mobilize. The only thing the Soviets had that could have invaded Poland would be they're Class A divisions that were in East Germany at the time. And it's probably 50/50 whether the Polish military would then just go over to the Solidarity movement, and make it a government.
The Polish military, out of all the Warsaw Pact countries, was one of the few that was actually considered worth a good deal in a fight. This was seconded by both the Soviet Union and NATO. It possessed MiG-21s, and -23s for air superiority which was about the equal of anything the USSR was fielding at the time.

That's the POD I'm pitching. The Soviets invade Poland in 1981 to put down the Solidarity movement, with what they can peel away from the Fulda Gap in East Germany and what Air Assault troops aren't already in play in Afghanistan.

They couldn't win in a straight up fight, mano a mano. But the Soviets would have to take frontline troops off East Germany to fight them, or pull out of Afghanistan. And the Poles would fight anyone who invaded them.
Or, they could recognize Solidarity and stop this war, and shore up their bases in East Germany.

Keep in mind I'm just spitballing, here. The more I spitball, the more I want to write a story about this when I'm done with the one I'm working on. What's your take, AH.commers?
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