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@gimmjl And that was a big tragedy. If there is any country on earth which needs compulsory education for girls and state enforced atheism, then it is afghanistan
I was an Armor Officer, Platoon Leader in 1980 with 3/32Armor. We were to fight in the Fulda Gap. We were told that Ivan had 10 howitzers per mile. We had the new M-60A3's and 1/32 had the M60-A2's with missiles and 152 mm main gun rounds. We didn't know that our positions were known to the Soviets, thanks to a mole at the ASA. The A-10 Warthogs were not mentioned here, They and the Cobra's would have clogged up the battlefield. It would have been bad for all involved and would probably have gone nuclear at a specific point.
@@lolmao500 I don't know for the other countries, but as soon as the Soviet tanks column would cross French, "tactical" nuclear strikes would be on the tables. I even think that France still had nuclear artillery in the 80s
Here's an odd bit of conjecture, but I wonder if in 1980 we could have done something with the Russian armor like Hannibal did with the Romans in the Punic Wars, in that Hannibal induced the Romans to bunch together too tightly, so that they were basically helpless and unable to maneuver and to fight. In this way Hannibal destroyed a huge Russian army with twice as many soldiers as he and the Cartheginians had. This would be a very dangerous maneuver, and I wouldn't recommend it if there were better options. What I feared from the Russians in 1980 was a "four yards in a cloud of dust attack". That would have been nearly impossible to stop.
@@Cailloumax We were told that if we were pushed back to the French border while repelling a Russian attack, the French would shoot us in the rear doors of our engine housing. I never understood why they would do that, but the US and France were in one of those on again, off again tiffs. You know, like we did with "Freedom Fries" a few years ago?
When I was young I served as an officer in the Czechoslovak People's Army and the task of our Army was following: In the case of the war with NATO, 130-150 massive nuclear strikes on the southern part of West Germany and France from the territory of Czechoslovakia would be used in the first tens of minutes to destroy the military facilities and troops, the command posts and underground headquarters of NATO and the important industry in the big German and French cities as well. This would be followed by a mass tank counter offensive (the scenario assumed we would be attacked by countries of NATO first) using vehicles equipped with elements of anti-nuclear and chemical protection. Mostly T-72, T-55 and BMP, over 4500 tanks and at least 5000 light fighting vehicles. The route of the offensive should be in the direction across the south Germany (in conjunction with the Czechoslovak airborne forces secure the bridges across the Neckar and Rhine rivers) to Strasbourg and Dijon in France defeating the French Army and reaching the Atlantic shores in two weeks. I remind you that in 1989 the Czechoslovak People's Army had 200 000 men in arms, plus 70 000 Soviet troopers deployed in the territory of Czechoslovakia. This would be the operational task for the Czechoslovak People's Army in the case of an aggression and the outbreak of war by NATO. I don't know if we would be able to do it, but we were young and determined. But what I do know for sure is that I would not be here today if the war really broke out. It would be Armageddon, and the survivors would envy the dead. Greeting from an old soldier of the Warsaw Pact.
Wow, that honestly sounds insane. I don't understand how the use of nuclear weapons is even helpful in this scenario, but I guess the assumption is that the USA striked first, and the USSR is just fulfilling its promise of Mutually Assured Destruction. I remember that the Soviets had a "No strike first" policy.
I know im late to this comment section but I find it amusing that when the Cold War ended it was found that both sides planned to be attacked first by the other side
@@somethingelse516 airland battle and red dragon, we mainly played red dragon but we needed "something new" and started to play airlandbattle again. At good times we get 4vs4 and 5vs5 games in airland, we have a steam group to announce games and times :P
@@mittens5789 store.steampowered.com/app/251060/Wargame_Red_Dragon/ and store.steampowered.com/app/222750/Wargame_Airland_Battle/, great strategy games if you like Cold War history/ alt history scenarios
I served in the army during the Cold War. Our European scenarios always orbited around the question of, "When will NATO be forced to resort to nuclear weapons to stop the Soviet advance?" After the Cold War ended, and particularly after the re-unification of Germany, we got access to some of the Warsaw Pact war plans courtesy of former East Germany, and they were interesting... Soviet war plans were simple: if war began, they were going to hit us with everything they had, from the beginning: not just an invasion, but the nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. They were not going to wait around for NATO to debate about when to use nukes. They'd already made that decision. Soviet war plans were for the Red Army to be on the English Channel and the Pyrenees Mountains within six weeks. With a radioactive, chemically contaminated, disease-ridden wasteland behind them. No doubt, their use of NBC weaponry would have provoked a similar response. The only question was whether a war that began as a "regional" conflict in Europe could be confined there, or whether it would spread to a global nuclear war.
Yeap, the Soviets had planned to level the Warsaw Pact counties, Germany, etc; with nuclear weapons and then role over the top to take the rest of Europe. Thank god for the work of Brixmis to confirm and reassure that the big soviet exercise was just that and not a mobilisation of Soviet forces to attack the west, which stopped any idea of a pre-emptive strike by NATO. In my role in the Armed Forces we where informed our survival time would be some 75 seconds, I think we knew it would have been a much shorter. However, what is often forgotten is that Soviet forces were more of a defensive force built up to spot the repeat of WW2. The cold war was a war of paranoia, on both side but particularly in the US.
But then we got the *Wonder Weapons* like AH-64 Apache and (still undisclosed at the time) Stealth strike planes! *** AirLand Battle 2000 *** *Would you like to know more?*
That don't mean jack sh*t. I was in the US Army during Gulf War I, and they told us to expect 20,000 body bags on the first day. The US military loves to fearmonger.
Somewhere I have a pic of a map that I downloaded from an old forum that doesn't exist anymore...Armchair General. IIRC, the map came from either East Germany or the USSR after the end of the cold war/fall of the communist regimes. It has big red bombs over Hamburg, Amsterdam, etc etc...the ports that would've been used to bring in reinforcements from the UK/USA...along with the Reforger sites. The big red bombs represented nukes.
Everyone makes the same mistake with these "What if" scenarios...they fail to factor in the variables of maintenance, logistics, weather and terrain. If you took a column of T-80 tanks and were able to drive, unopposed across Germany towards France, you might arrive at the French border with a third of your tanks after two weeks of slogging it cross country. Tanks can be defined by many features and description but one that doesn't get the attention it deserves is that of "gas guzzling, self-propelled self-destructing pillbox". Just a cursory look at World War Two, the last war with large armor formations hunting each other, reveals more losses from maintenance, logistics, weather and terrain than enemy action.
The video is also a bit misleading. Because "tanks rush" simply do not exist. There are armies, divisions and within the divisions are regiments and battalions which had assigned tank units. Tanks NEVER move alone. They are part of a larger organization. An in fact, even in a single mech. inf. battalion the APC/IFV outnumbers them with about 4:1 or 5:1 ratio + other support units of the battalion.
But when you outnumber your opponent many fold, you can have half of your tanks being lost to maintenance, etc etc, and still outnumber your opponent. The USSR always figured they would lose a lot of tanks/men in any attack against NATO. They intended to leave units in combat until they were totally ground down to nothing.
@@Ronald98 It's not about being "invincible", it's about the incredibly difficult task taking Western Europe would be even against moderate resistance.
"The beacons are lit! West Germany calls for aid!" ............................................................ .. "And America will answer! Muster the Air Cavalry!"
*Conflict of Nations features historical accurate borders* *Also Conflict of Nations shows Russia as USSR and other soviet republics somehow marked separately *
USSR was just a different way to rule the same Russian empire which had existed since 1721. Everything was controlled by moscow. The western, southern and eastern theater commands were headquatered at moscow in RSFSR. I still find it quite astonishing that one city could control 22.4 million sqkm. But that was a grand mirage. Once everyone realised that gorbachev was not another stalin or brezhnev after collapse of the berlin wall in november 1989, everyone start declaring state sovereignty and independence left and right. Moscow's empire collapsed at a rapid pace and ceased to exist on 26th december 1991.
According to a former US TC I worked with, he was given the choice of 1 year in Vietnam or 3 years in Europe. He picked Europe. His orders were that if attacked he was to hold for 3 weeks until help arrived, (or the world ends in a nuclear apocalypse, whichever came first). He just threw in that last bit.
Well I’d rather be in Vietnam, where it’s more isolated and likely to be overrun(due to logistical problems in the jungle) plus that jungle seems awfully nice to disease.
@@blackpigeon4743 Not always, it gets better late game, but that's if you build arms industries up at the beginning. I still always have resource issues though because I'm always really ambitious at the start.
@@blackpigeon4743 Yeah if you get attacked the start, especially by a noob and he kills all of the population in that city, production is really slow unless you build up hospitals to regrow population faster.
As a former danish soldier, I recall, when we were trained on the TOW system; even if you hit every target (which they expected of us), we won't have enough anti-tank missiles for you. It is a long time ago, however, if I recall it correctly, we expected the Warsaw Pact, to use its poor platforms first, in order to drain our missile stock. Hereafter, their better weapons would be employed. So, at least here in Denmark; bad odds. Not to mention the amount of tactical nukes they had planned to use; devastating. In Jutland alone, it was a huge number.
Верно, но это никто не берет в расчёт. Так же как и попадании и даже пробитие не всегда означает уничтожение техники и экипажа. В Дании, кстати был интересный форум по баллистике в 2008 году.
@@ThePRCommander там поднималась очень интересная тема, поражение взрывной волной при попадании противотанковым оружием. И приводились данные из первой чеченской войны.
Warsaw pact plans delegate Poland as a country that will attack Denmark in first wave. So basically if you look at the Poland potential given in this map you will know what exactly would came in first wave. Plus You should really add reserve troops because doctrine assumed that the army based on them not on professional once.
As I remember it those of us in Europe at the time were supposed to fight a delaying action to try to hold off the Warsaw Pact until reinforcements could arrive, Tactical Nukes were definitely in play as a force multiplier.
Night Vision would have given NATO tanks a really big edge in the 80s. Soviet tanks only had infrared or basic NV, while NATO tanks where already in 2nd or 3rd generation.
If you speak to any (former) soldiers stationed in key zones like the Fulda Gap, they all have the same account: They weren't expected to be able to stop the Soviets in a conventional war. Their only job was to try to delay the Soviet advance as best they could for as long as they could. Many of these soldiers are still alive today, since it wasn't that long ago. It would have been very easy to do the proper research for this one.
They would have massacred the ussr forces in Fulda. The clown youtuber here believes those USSR paper divisions represented operational forces. USSR would have collapsed due to logistics alone in 48 hours. With regards from former ranger in NATO. Tom Clancy got it right in Red Storm.
Slow ahh comment. Do you really believe in staff you're saying? That's fckn hilarious how nato boys believe that this organisation would hsve done shit against soviets 😂@@thecappeningchannel515
I would've set the scenario in 1983 when the Soviets thought that NATO's war games was a disguise for an invasion. You would also have Spain in NATO at that time too.
@@jrdougan Ah right. 1982 was when the Soviet satellite mistook flashes from clouds as 4-6 nukes being fired at the Soviet Union and nuclear war was averted because the Soviet officer trusted his instincts and not the machine.
I know an ex Chieftain tankie and he told me that due to the scandalous reliability of the thing his Bn would on average reach their firing positions with 40% of their Chieftains present.
You forget that the official numbers of men and material tell us nothing about some other key factors: 1. Troops morale, or will to fight; 2. Logistics; 3. NATO endurance (a combination of 1. and 2.); NATO strategy was centered about the following painful fact: not enough ammo and not even fully standardized small arms and artillery calibers. When NATO ran out of ammunition (not if, some calculated this would be as little as 48 hours), tactical nukes would be launched at Warsaw Pact armour concentrations, HQs and supply centers. And the Soviets would respond to those tactical nukes with strategic nukes then the conflict would escalate into a full blown nuclear Armageddon. NATO tried to counter this during the mid 1980s by emphasizing high tech weapons like helicopter gunships in anti-tank role and stealth strike aircraft to cut off the enemy's supply lines. In my opinion, neither side was ever ready to start fighting and troops' morale on both sides was rather low. Nobody wanted to die in useless war that would inevitably end in a global nuclear war. Much (propaganda) was made at the time of the wonder(ful) weapons like Cruise Missiles and Pershing II missiles which were specifically aimed at Soviet command centers but of course the propagandists forget to mention that the Soviets would strike back with strategic nuclear weapons in any case. P.S. Oh yeah, both Greece and Turkey would gladly take the opportunity to feign attacks into Bulgaria, when all they really wanted was to fight it out with each other.
i highly doubt they will run out of ammunition, beside they already covered it. It will be like a delaying battle and the battle for air is crucial. I recall A-10 can attack tank formation without escorts at fulda gap and even go deeper
Blinkov has never seriously considered morale because it was too nebulous to deal with. With that said, much of the Warsaw Pact countries would be very unreliable for offensive operations. Teh Soviets may have to keep some units back to keep some Warsaw Pact countries in like, like Poland.
I'm a Cold War vet. Yours is some of the worst analysis I've seen in years. Abysmal, to be fair. Pie-in-the-sky wishfulness. This video is more honest than most on the topic made in that region of the world. The Soviets knew they were in trouble economically and very seriously considered invading western Europe in order to save the Soviet Union from collapse. Historically, nothing brings Russians together like a war. Key factors which dissuaded them were the M1, proliferation of highly effective ATGMs, and aircraft such as the B-1B, the F-15, F-16, and A-10; and the evidence of how their systems fared against western systems in the hands of proxies. Fields of burned-out T-55s and T-62s in the Golan and Sinai could be denied to the public as due to the Arab crews; but inside, they knew the truth. As the 80s progressed, the option was less and less appealing. Finally, that dream out of reach, the USSR collapsed under its own weight. Russia still hasn't recovered, and is still ruled by oligarchs, with an economy smaller than several individual U.S. states. It's hard to grow an economy run by gangsters and thieves. The only Russian things anyone wants to buy are fuels and cheap weapons. They can't even make a car anyone wants, even Russians would prefer a western car. The Chinese are closer to selling their vehicles in the U.S. Nobody wants so much as a Russian clock radio. It's all cheap and shoddy. It's really sad that Russians have never had a chance to be a truly free people. The last feudal society in Europe, always lagging, still awaiting the Enlightenment. Always ruled by a strongman, whether a czar, a communist, or an oligarch, Russia tolerates its misery. Perhaps that's why their alcohol consumption per capita is so huge. You've gotta be drunk to put up with it. Still, they buy into those oligarchs, so the people bear some responsibility. Analysis from Russophiles is always of quality comparable to Russian cars.
I love how this video describes how the T-54/55 and the T-62 were obsolete 2nd line tanks in 1980 for a soviet tank rush across europe. Here we are in 2024 and the Russians are using them as frontline units in a tank rush that failed to even cross half of Ukraine.
It was common knowledge in the British Army in those days, that the NATO plan was an "elastic defence" based on Manstein's 1943 counter-stroke. After the war Manstein, following a spell in prison, was rehabilitated and became an important figure in NATO planning. The idea was to allow the Soviets to advance against a rolling defence to inflict attrition, till their supply lines were very extended, and their troops exhausted, then to counterattack in force.
Don't seem like a great idea to take ideas from a guy who lost to the Soviets. Many German officers post WW2 overhyped up their capabilities and downgraded the soviets on purpose to make themselves look good.
Love these historical ones. The very best book I've read on this exact topic is "The Third World War: August 1985" (1978) by General Sir John Hackett. Riveting stuff.
He wrote two, different, books on the subject. The first one was "The Third World War (1978)." The second one was "The Third World War: The Untold Story (1982)." The first book had rather implausible causes of the actual start of the conflict. The second book detailed about the 'classic' Warsaw Pact 'Blitzkrieg' with the objective of taking West Germany and the NATO HQ in Brussels within two weeks. At the start of the James Bond movie "Octopussy (1983)," a Soviet general impassionately pleas to the military high command to use this scenario.
@@AudieHolland Yup, I am fully aware of those details. I prefer the first book. I have always felt the "implausible causes" for which it was quite commonly criticised at the time of its publication, for instance in a review by a German NATO colonel, totally missed the point. The book is not really interested in geopolitics as such. Its focus is NATO European military strategy in the face of a Soviet general mobilisation and assault in the east. In that regard, it (the first book) is excellent. The second one is really an updated re-tread of the first which didn't really have the same energy or impact or focus for me. I am not a fan of James Bond.
@@Ingens_Scherz Yah, the first one didn't have a happy ending. The second one's ending however, in hindsight, was rather prophetic. At that point in time, I had no idea to USSR was ready to disintegrate. Don't worry about James Bond, it's just that in that movie there's a scene which describes the Warsaw Pact surprise attack option.
Same as World War 2 - allies may lose to begin with but when they increase their defense industrial base to full production the situation changes. Also taking control of a continent / peninsula is one thing. Keeping hold of it is another.
I was a Combat Engineer stationed in Germany in the 1980's. Every single key road through Germany had pre-made man holes specially made to put in explosives in case of Soviet invasion. We were task to blow them up. But I always though that if war came that it was very possible we might encounter Soviet special forces sent to stop us form doing that. I'm pretty sure they knew about those manholes, since they had tons of communist sympathizers among the Germans.
West Germany had also tank destroyers additionally to its tanks. 750 Kanonenjagdpanzer armed with a 90mm gun had entered service in the 60s. Additionally there were several hundred Raketenjagdpanzer tank destroyers armed with anti-tank missiles.
I agree. Tanks are overrated. You can make a much cheaper missile or bomb that can destroy a tank. Not to say they don't have value but if you charge recklessly they're all going to get blown up. This idea is like the charge of the light brigade. There is a fine line between fearsome war machine and expensive flaming wreckage.
From the mid-80s onward they had their Paratroopers upgrade from the old Kraftkarren (Kraka) to the new Wiesel tankette - some of which came with an ATGM-Launcher. Good luck spotting a Platoon of these hiding just behind the tree line...
1:09 I like how he is saying that the game represents the accurate historical map of the 80es and at the same time showing Russia of 2000es calling it soviet union.
They made it like that on purpose so you can play with ukraine belorussia and baltic because nato was to strong in the game and other warshaw pact countries were weaker
Your depiction of the conditions facing the Soviet Army, suggest a Kursk-style battle on a grander and more modern scale, except it would be Soviet Army/Warsaw Pact strength that would be getting whittled down on each successive NATO defensive line - do you suppose that possibility occurred to Warsaw Pact planners?
Which is why if there were to be a war there would be spetnaz sabotaging key areas and the element of surprise. However I do think it would still result in a statement where NATO is unable to advance and the Warsaw Pact unable to continue the push since they have over extended their supply lines.
It occured so therefore they planed to use large number of low yield tactical nukes to eliminate the living NATO force while rushing fast through the nuked land inside tanks that would protect soldiers from outer light radiation.
"The Red Army" is a fictional "What if" novel by Ralph Peters in the same vein as Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", with an interesting perspective exclusively from the Soviet POV. Mr. Peters was a former Intelligence officer in NATO, and he really nails the Soviet mindset and methods without getting bogged down in military hardware detail. I highly recommend it.
I once had a conversation with a very senior british intelligence officer. (an actual spy, then retired and working with the Intelligence Corps) about how accurate the book Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy) was. He said it was a pretty accurate representation of how NATO thought a war would be fought, though he didnt think the final outcome was likely, that it would end up going nuclear (as it almost did in the book) but the advantages and disadvantages of both sides along with the various stratagies he thought were pretty accurate.
I really don't like how these videos don't factor in terrain, logistics, or economics as much as they should. simple fact is the soviets literally could not afford to fight a war with NATO.
problem is that peoples still think money or any economics things have any importance in full scale war. when full scale war fires, money is nothing, u just build (as much as u can with your soil ressources) and fight. You think germany still had money in 1944/1945? they still mass produce, even more than before. This is the nowadays point of view of war , more money = win ... same for logistic, when u are in war, some really unbielivable things happens , that nobody would have expected , but if they want , they can. ( who expected so much from US and allies after DDay back then ? millions of troops fed and ready to fight after a very short period of time? nobody). Terrain , is the only thing i agree about it , but , terrain isnt all , Ardennes for exemple during french invasion of 1940. " hey you can't pass here!!!" --> "are you sure about that ?" 2 km wide open area can bring disaster, you dont need alot to make miracles. History showed us than in wars , anything can happen. and u can never predict it , that why this chanel is just "fun"
@@bastienmim1167 1st Economics ain't just about money it's the production distribution and consumption of goods and services. effectively can the supply meet the demand. money makes this process efficient by being a universal means of exchange. 2nd The soviets had a money is worthless just build shit and fight attitude, and it nearly cost them the war. because as it turns out money actually was invented precisely to make the process of building things with resources more efficient. 3rd I don't know if you know this but from 1944 to 1945 Germany was losing The View point isn't more money=win since a government can just make a fiat currency and literally print more the view point is being able to produce, distribute and consume products efficiently so as to meet the demands of the conflict better then the enemy can. and logistics is a fancy term for getting from point A to point B And if you cannot get your troops to the front lines in a timely manner nor supply them in a timely manner nor produce the supplies in enough quantity to meet the demand of the war then you will lose. FGermansResistance, and because France over committed their resources to the west, they couldn't react in time to cut off the German tank divisions allowing the Germans to encircle them, and then head straight to Paris. Germany would later lose the war for similar reasons but this comment is long enough so i won't get into it here.
Also they forgot that on the east dozens of nukes where placed underground and would detonate if they sovjets would reach a certain line. Plus the russian invasion of afganistan , the discontent of warsaw pact members it would fall apart real fast.
A very important aspect of the discussion is the mostly ignored mine laying capacity of especially the Bundeswehr. Mines like AT2 could be launched by MLRS and Scorpion mine layers with different activation time of the mines so that pre planned counter attacks were possible. When we had contact with Soviet Officers after the wall came down they were totally surprised how different and flexible the german understanding of defence is.
@@penskepc2374 what ignorance! You in the West think that in the Soviet Union everyone was poor and fought for a piece of bread, but I want to upset you, this is your fantasy. In the USSR, the production of military equipment was constantly going on and these were the latest weapons systems.
During WW2 Soviets estimated they needed a minimum 3:1 advantage when attacking to be successful against established defenses. It would get very bloody, very fast.
Soviet high command: NATO has been upping military presence in west germany greece italy and turkey what should we do? Soviet Advisor: rush across western europe with TONKS Soviet high command: hmmm im sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this...
Great video. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. I subscribed to your channel because of the quality and depth of your 1989 scenario, and wanted to see more NATO vs Warsaw Pact videos. PLEASE also do videos for what would have happened in 1970 and 1960! It’s interesting to see how the power differences at those times would have made a difference to the outcome of the war 😄(or at least how far the Soviet advance would have made it to)
Okay this Video is really disappointing in my opinion. I think you compleatly ignore the main goal of the soviet tank rush strategy Germany isnt flat terrain, only the northern part is. This was a key part of both Nato and Soviet planning. The soviet tank rush plan was desinged to combat the problem because as you said once nato could dig in in this harder terrain there would be no movemeant of the front. So the solution was to rush the tank forces through the few gaps in the "middle mountains area" of germany (the famous Fulda gap for example) and reach the rhine river around Frankfurt. The goal was to cut the nato forces into a northern and southern part and then spread out north and south in west germany using the Rhine river (a major natural obstacle even in the cold war) as the western flank to fend of any counter offensives from France. This entire operation was supposed to be done in a month and its goal was to take over the good defensive terrain of west germany without major fighting and then use it against the nato forces. It also gave the soviets the opportunity of crossing the rhine into the west at any point in time to threaten France. A march on France itself was only a secondary goal at best. The entire soviet military was desinged for this early rush task and this also shows how their miltiary was build up. You mentioned that they would use recruts for the tank units and how that was a bad idea but you didnt mention at all the planned soviet replacemeant rate of tanks for their first months offensive. The idea was basically a giant material battle so they planned with basically a complete lose of all tanks in the first months. This is why soviet tank factories always had the ressources stationed at the factory itself to immidiatly start pumping out masses of tanks without any additional supply from other factories to replace the initial loses entirely. In that context using recruits for tank crews makes sense because you are basically planning with an entirely new army to begin with so getting the material into combat however possible was the prime goal. The key difference in NATO and Warsaw Pact strategy for the first month was that the soviets planned with a total loss of all forces (tactical nukes also beeing an option) while NATO didnt have the capabilities, at least in Europe, to mass produce their high quality tanks at a similar rate. Short term Nato would literally swim in a sea of soviet tanks. Of course the soviets entire plan hindged on the succsess of the breakthrough to the rhine and taking of the bad terrain after their initial industrial and military push because their momentum was not sustainable. If Nato could hold the inital push to the rhine, the soviets would have been fucked. That is the reason why NATO placed bombs in basically every bridge in the middle german area to slow down the initial tank push at all cost and stationed most of their units in the area. There is a reason most US bases in west germany were around Fulda (the biggest gap in the mountains) and Frankfurt (the end of the central german mountains) to stop exactly this scenario. The soviets would have been lunatics if they planned to march on the open grassland of France and Belgium considerin long term NATO forces and especially US i ndustry would outproduce them in literally everything. Initial push to gain the best defensive positions on enemy terrain and then a defensive strategy including nukes. If the soviets ever wanted anything in their history following the trauma of WW2 it was fighting on enemy territory and keeping the frontline as far away from the Soviet Union proper as possible. Better have the enemy territory become a nuclear wasteland after tactical nukes would be thrown around the battlefield then allied territory.
Indeed and ignores the fact of all the planning put in place to attack the Soviet forces while they were being funnelled. The region would have been a equipment graveyard of Russian tanks, much larger than the death highway of Iraqi equipment during the first gulf war. Secondly, all those dead tanks would create quite a barrier for advancing forces behind. But, that was all irrelevant once we learned the Soviets had planned to nuck Germany to dust as a first strike.
@@adif7542 The soviets definitly would not nuke germany to dust though, they wouldnt gain anything by that. Although the soviet army was definitly better prepared for ABC warfare (NBC in english i think). And as I said the soviets literally planned for that graveyard to happen. I still believe the soviets would have broken through, maybe slightly delayed. They planned that thing for decades and cut concentrate far more forces then nato could in the area to break through. They would have to "only" overcome the west german and us forces initially that would have been massively outnumbered. The west germans could be stretched thin with attack by the soviets allied the east germans in the northern german plains and the czechs on the southern german area. Meaning the basic defense would have been only the us forces with a small contingent of west german forces. But holy shit the air battle over that area would have been an utter clusterfuck. I mean my main argument for it not turning into a direct tank graveyard would be that NATO groudnforces in the area alone lacked the firepower to do it against this mass and both sides airforces would basically rip each other compleatly appart the first mo nth over the area protecting their respective forces. I think this, depending on the succsess of the soviets, would have eather resulted in the soviets throwing a tactical nuke to finally break through or the us forces throwing one to stop the final soviet breakthrough. Nevertheless central germany would be a nice radiated wasteland as a result. On of the advantages of the soviet strategy was also that if they reached for example Frankfurt the west germans would propably stop NATO forces from throwing nukes in the area because while the Fulda gap is rather sparsly populated the Frankfurt open plain area east of the rhine has millions living in a dense area. You would think twice about nuking your own people. But lets not kid ourselfs, the moment one nuke gets thrown anyway it would continuesly escalate until yopu get a MC Arthur or a Stalin on eather side to go "push the red button" and then the entire arsenal of both countries goes flying and the war would be made irrelevant in an instant anyway.
@@adif7542 Yes, and he also didn't say about ammo types that NATO was using, many of the Nato mass tanks were still using APDS/HEAT, this kind of ammo were not able to penetrate T-72/T-64s from the frontal area.
Yes it really is a terrible and inaccurate video. The Soviets expected all bridges to be destroyed which is why all their vehicles were either amphibious or could snorkel quickly. 99.9% of people dont really know how the Soviets expected to fight but it seems you have a good idea. NATO air power would not have existed because the first target were airfields which didnt matter to the soviets because everything had rough field capability. Then there was their mobile AAA which, by US assessment, even the vaunted A-10 fleet would not have lasted a week. The Soviets would have AT LEAST contested the air if not controlled it. Most NATO AT weapons were ineffective against any modern Soviet MBTs. WARPAC would not have walked in but NATO would not have held and would have to escalate to nukes.
1. Dont diss conscripts - they have fought well in many conflicts. And at this scale of war conscripts will carry the brunt of the fighting on both sides. 2. The Leopard one wouldnt be so easily killed due to it "not being there" when being shot on. It would use its mobility to remove itself from the line of fire rather than sit still and slug it out.
@@ukaszw6623 It only had to move faster than the time it would take to spot it plus the time to fire the projectile plus the flight time of the projectile. You have a "lurking" position in cover, several firing positions and MOVE between them as needed during the engagement. When defending you have the huge advantage of being able to scout and prepare them in advance.
@@ukaszw6623 So you think it doesnt take time to discover and aim at the Leopard after it fires its shot and begins to leave its position ? The whole idea is that when you are ready to fire there is no longer any Leopard to fire at.
Falklands war proves how much worse conscripts are. They're not comparable to professional soldiers and even more so when they don't agree with the nation that forced them into war which would be the case for the nations in Eastern Europe
EU vs OIC(Organization of Islamic Cooperation) Feat. Another Crusade War DPRK, China and Russia vs ROK, Japan and US Feat. Second Korean War ASEAN VS China Feat. Myanmar Civil War
OIC is a joke they will never fight together tbh, they are different countries with different allies etc.. If OIC was a strong organisation like the EU then maybe..
"Fast movement of huge armored units through forests or settlements is not really possible" Nazi Germany: Do I need to show you how it's done yet again?
@@hillarysemails1615 Which are heavily forested. Hilly AND forested, both supposed to be impenetrable to armored troops, and they did it anyway. This was also the reason why France fell so quickly - with that daring move, they circumvented the main French army and cut off their supply lines, turning Belgium into a giant Kessel.
Funny how time has made this video seem completely out of touch. My favorite would be the overestimate of the Russian tanks' overall health and armorment and the underestimating of the Leopards armor. Many Russian tanks are simply broken needing parts, with poor active armor especially around the turret and the lack of battlefield information sharing capabilities among these many different variants.
Additionally, the Western European countries would be “fighting for their survival” and would put up as stiff a defense as possible at each defensive point. It’s not hard to operate an ATGM at close range, it could be said that anyone from 16-60 could fire one. Same as a light machine gun. If the reds thought the battle of Berlin was bad, I can’t imagine they would want to repeat that every time they get to a major city
Their plan was quite ready for that. They nuke the cities, sprinkle in chemical and biological WMDs atop that. The battle of britain would have been a cakewalk if London was a 50km series of anthrax-coated neurotoxic craters.
@@RobinTheBot Can you cite that ? I know they planned to use nuclear weapons in their 7 days to the river rhine plan but I've never heard of them planning to use biological weapons
@A Velsen Yup, seven days to the river rhine plan. I think they were delusional to think that plan would work but yes they did plan to use nukes to stop major resistance in those major population centers.
@@marneus lol for sure. There is no way NATO would allow russia to nuke all of western Europe with no response. The USA and UK would nuke the hell out of the USSR and France probably would have used nukes on the advancing soviet forces.
I would like to see one for 1965 someday. That was when my Dad was stationed in Germany. Would have been similar to this 1980 one if it didn't go nuclear, I think.
are you braindead the theres a difference between firing at villagers with no AA and a proper army sure the US destroyed the iraqi army during the american iraqi war but theres a difference between training and doctrine and not because they have export grade soviet tanks
Great video and as a historical what-if. But one thing missing is the Soviet/Warsaw production capacity during the course of such a war. Their tank numbers as at 1980 would only be a starting point. If they USSR mobilised their manufacturing as they did in the latter stages of WWII, it wouldn't be outrageous to estimate that throughout the course of such a war (not just the initial rush), the total tank numbers might be double or triple their existing armory.
The war would only last a few months at most. NATO would start loosing and would use tactical nukes en masse. Soviet forces would be decimated, but WARPAC nuclear counter strike would decimate NATO forces as well. This would make it so neither side could advance and my guess is the war would end shortly after with a peace deal to avoid further destruction of Europe.
Please read some Soviet army manuals first. The one I was taught by was "Мотострелковый (танковый) взвод в бою" (The combat operations of a mechanized infantry (tank) platoon). They are not classified, were available in my university library and must be still around. It pretty much explains what Soviet doctrine was to say about waging a war against a sophisticated adversary.
Or perhaps admit that Soviet doctrine was flawed? The U.S. military to this day would largely field infantry to counter any tank offensives due to the fact that infantry, while not nearly as mobile, can fortify and hold positions easily. We invest a lot of money into anti tank systems, the American Javelin system is a good example of this.
@@housetheunstoppablessed4846 Well it seems writing is less taxing than reading for some people. You know, there would be no "tank offensives" outside Binkov's festering imagination. There would be combined arms offensives, with infantry screening the tanks, field artillery suppressing anything near, division-level artillery and precision weapons striking at the enemy staging areas and C3 facilities, EW jamming comms and radars, bombers, fighters, SAMs doing their jobs, etc etc. You cannot just say one arm or unit counters another. And it is almost 100% sure that any realistic WP vs NATO conflict in Europe will include substantial NBC use at some point, it is inevitable, starting with the losing side maybe.
@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 right…and who’s at the tip of the spear thrusting forward? The artillery of course, or maybe the foot sloggers, perhaps it’s the EW units? No, it’s the armored units, those are the guys who stare the enemy’s lines in the face and make the breakthroughs Come on dude, let’s be real in basic logic, if the tanks/armored units weren’t making the breakthrough, why were they so heavily invested in more than anything else on the ground? Why was doctrine built around them and their capabilities and limitations?
@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 and, no shit it would be a NBC conflict, but one look at the first thirty seconds of every Binkov video that isn’t a nuclear exchange (except Israel VS Egypt and India Vs Pakistan) begins with “No nukes!”
@@looinrims Armor is the only thing what survives in NBC environment for any meaningful time. Every Soviet military vehicle has positive-pressure filtration unit. Tanks have a lot of metal around them to begin with so they are a natural choice for the breakthrough in nuked territories. I once asked an Army Major who was our lecturer on tactics "Why do we talk so little about urban warfare, after Afghan and all?". The guy replied "You are being trained to be a reservist. For the kind of war you might be called for, the cities will be smoking craters".
Clearly you know nothing of logestics and supplies. To day nothing of Frances promis to use nukes should russoa cross the rhein. A threat soviet generals took seriously.
They say that because their nation was subjugated somewhat quickly in the initial invasion They don’t realize being nazi puppets that the nazis were ripped to shreds in russia, and left Russia running for the most part, rather than fortified in strength in line
@@ohiobrian8993 repeat that in English and yeah no shit a west east war would’ve been nuclear It’s like saying a Russo American war of today would be nuclear, duh
I was there in Germany, in the US Army during is time. Our unit was nuclear capable, as well as fully manned. Any amassing of Russian troops, would have had an immediate response in build up in NATO forces. At that time, just as today, NATO would have enjoyed air superiority over all the WARSAW pact countries. Being in a defensive position, it is extremely difficult to pry loose those defenders, especially understanding how difficult it is, to not outrun your precious fuel supply line. In short, yes, an initial invasion would be successful, however, within 24hrs, the response from NATO would have been smothering.
I've been to Russia, met Army, Navy and spec ops guys. I even had my own shadow that I gave a souvenir to. What the take away was, I really liked the people I met. Damn, it's too bad we have to inflate our chests instead of appreciating and learning from our differences.
Given the rough parity of the forces here, the outcome might come down to the generalship of both sides. It could boil down to something like a Patton vs. Zhukov war. One weapon system not mentioned here is the infernal RPG7. I know it seems small and inconsequential, but that little rocket has inflicted enormous casualties every place it was used.
@@matthewharris8819 only the M1s and Leopard 2s would withstand a frontal hit M60s and especially Leopard 1s had very thin armour compared to their Soviet counterparts
Binkov always forgets about air power. Such as the scenario where the US focuses primarily on Germany in WW2 and specifically said they'd have a much larger air force. Then proceeds to never factor air power in again.
Would survive maybe 30 minutes over a Soviet battle group, assuming it ever got off the ground from it's airfield. Remember, the A10 has *never* faced an enemy that could really shoot back, and certainly not in the way a Soviet division (of any type) could.
In 1980, there's an important unexpectable point to take in count : France policy and strategy. France is not integrated to NATO, just allied to NATO and her forces are fully independent from NATO. french army had 2 armoured army corps in Germany, and immediately behind a third armoured army corp heavier than the 2 others. in 1980 then, France can field all its army in few days in Germany. Then French have 4 nuke vectors : 2 strategical ones (heavy long range strategical missiles with multiple nuke heads each, on the Plateau d'Albion and 6 SNLE with 16 M4 nukes with each 6 nuke heads) and 2 tactical (Mirage IV N and 2000 N in few squadrons with ASMP nukes and the most problematic : 2 regiments of nuke artillery with nukes called Pluton on AMX 30 base). French nuke and detterence policy and nuke approach have always been "different" : when most nuke powers were adopting the graduated riposte (if one nuke received, 2 answered), French had opted for graduated but also the total riposte... Here was the problem France posed to others : France were authorising herself to ripost nukes EVEN IF France was not impacted by nukes. France was considering to use nuke for 3 reasons : 1/ if she were attacked by nukes OR she was attacked by chemical/biological weapon OR (here the big difference) IF HER OWN VITAL INTERESTS WERE CONSIDERED UNDER UNBEARABLE THREATENS (still the case nowadays). This last option opened a large of possibility of use of nukes for France. Many USSR plans had been prepared by Soviets generals, they all take in count that before any war with NATO, it is diplomatically vital to obtain french neutrality cause USSR had a true conventional superiority (3 or 4 to 1), but french tactical nukes could change the things and all could go wrong then (nuke war, no winner). In one of the many plans, there was even a possibility to propose France to recuperate Saarland and even the Rhur in the right bank of the Rhine river and of course to assure france there would be no attack on the 2 french corps in Germany. These possibility has only very very few chance to be accepted by France. There's almost no doubt that france which had troops in Berlin itself was ready to put all her conventional troops and army at the NATO disposal, but to keep the total independance of her nukes. And we have to keep in mind that both NATO and USSR/Varsovian pact had mostly of their plans being defensive ones, not offensive ones. Thanks to the balance of terror (Nukes). USSR were convinced that USA and even UK would never use nukes if Soviets were not. But they were not sure about French. Why then ? simply because France metropolitan territory, a contrario to the 2 other western nuke powers had known harsh occupation and humiliation in WWII. Many think that french nukes were just here to show to world "hey we have them, we are strong too)... there's an even more important reason : independance towards our own allies (French have never forgotten nor forgiven AMGOT plan) and even more, avoiding any new occupation, better dead than occupied. And the french nuke force is the third stock pile after the 2 super powers (URSS/Russia now and USA) because De Gaulle was saying >..., he added "let imagine France is a human and the enemy a big Bear (you can see who he was targetting ;) ), >. Without french independence, USSR wouldn't surely have decided to attack (USA and NATO was a big fish anyway) BUT USSR could have thought about... With the french independence, it's almost impossible : it makes too much parameters and put hasard in the thing.
Initial plan called for 100s of nukes used mostly by NATO. France would be a minor player in this war - a bit bigger then say Poland. There was no win scenario for NATO without Nukes. Hence crazy idea of nuclear mine field - blowing up all of Germany. NATO was not about to just nuke in Germany but also in Poland and all over Warsaw pact. I think not nuking France b/c French have nukes would go out the window in the first 24h. Any work with neutral France was to simply limit NATO response - it is hard to believe that Soviets would manage to take Spain - even if it took few weeks to take out Germany and few more weeks for France uber extended nuked lines and mountains of Spain would prove 99% too hard. So why go there - make France neutral - an obstacle to NATO as much as to Soviets and consolidate Germany / Italy etc. I think it becomes clear that any war was simply not worth it for anyone. Tiny limited mini wars were of little payout and of high risk. Soviets just limited themselves to liberating different nations through proxy wars. This mostly had negative effect for colonial powers, which US was not.
@@tomk3732 France a minor actor ? French was the second in term of land army on the continent (just behind the german, but with a better air force for France), 3 times more troops than UK on par with German and USA... another one which didn't know the force in presence in the 80's... France was in 80's and still is the strongest european army on the continent... your anti-french opinion makes you saying bulshit it seems
@@tomk3732 Also France would have never been invaded as they would nuke full scale instantly ... France will never authorise a new occupation, what don't you understand guy ? better death than slavery. French nukes are here only for that goal.
A neutral France would have cut all reinforcement in Germany... all NATO plans ware using french ports of the atlantic and of the channel to reinforce the continent... it seems you have no knowledge in strategy... UK had only 2 light corps in Germany... the German had a big land army, but no air force compared to france. Italy, the third major power would have harsh time to pass the alps to reinforce Germany as well...
@@jpc7118 Myth of France or UK as major players died with WWII - especially France. France is by far not the strongest army in Europe today. I venture Russia is. I mean seriously, France has just 400 tanks total ;) Out of which just over 200 are in service (rest in storage). Also France only has wheeled APCS numbering less then 1000 unless you count armored cars as well. Army size is just around 115k. Air force has 200 jets but only half are modern. This is roughly similar land fire power as Poland. Poland has a bit more pp 144k, far more tanks & more modern (especially with 250 Abrams added) and just touch less modern fighters (F16 plus F-35) (80 vs 100). So much so for "French power". If not for Adolf Poland today would be roughly the same size country France is. In 1939 France had just few million pp more then Poland.
I was stationed at the only A-10 base in Europe, from 1977-1980. RAF Woodbridge, and Bentwaters, between them had FIVE squadrons of A-10's, of 24 planes each. Our twin bases would have destroyed a thousand pieces of Soviet armor between them. ALSO...by 1974, the US armed forces were an ALL VOLUNTEER force...and the Soviets had 85% two-year draftees, with 132 different language classes. Soviets had a shit army, with shit equipment, and shit morale. The Germans (West) would have stopped them cold, and the EAST Germans would have helped them. The Warsaw Pact would have disintegrated almost immediately.
During the Ukrainian war, it is becoming more clear that the answer entirely relies on air support. If you control the sky, then yes you can stop a tank rush. If you don't control the sky, it's a lot harder.
Except the Ukrainians nor Russians control the skies. The real answer is infantry sized anti tank weapons and massed artillery. Yes air superiority is best but apparently you don't even need that.
Buddy, you should probably learn that making conclusions out of events that haven’t concluded themselves, and of course haven’t been fully analyzed, is a recipe to getting proven wrong
I was US Army 11b Infantry in the late 80s. Our whole focus was slow the armor spearheads. Kill T72s till they pushed us into the channel. We also fully expected tactical nuke use by Russia at stopped points.
@@frankrenda2519 Soviet doctrine literally states that "Tactical" nuclear weapons would be used BEFORE ground invasion. They were essentially a gigantic artillery barrage to be used at strategic points before the main offensive. This is all publicly available information.
numbers tell one story, but there are further factors. While the terrain is mentioned, there are a number of larger rivers shich would make things difficult for the Soviets (hence their most popular war plan called for the river Rhine to be the goal of invasion) and it doesn't take into account that the air war would have been rather one-sided. The US had already introduced their 4th generation F-15 and F-16 at the time while the Soviets still only had 3rd gen aircraft available. The Soviets had only a handful of outdated AEW&C aircraft while the US started to put the E-3 into service. On top of all that, the A-10 was in service and built for exactly that kind of scenario. Maybe a NATO victory would have been costlier than "Red Storm Rising" but the Soviets would not have won.
Unfortunately even by US analysis all A-10s would have been lost in a matter of days. All US carriers too. People dont realize the attrition that would have occurred and the rate of it.
😂😂😂 y'all a bunch of commie suck ups, we already had a A10 vs Russian tank mash up in the early 90s in operation dessert storm "liberating" Kuwait fighting the Iraqi army and guess what the A10 fairs very very well and with regards to our aircraft carriers, y'all put your faith too much in scared, pressured scientists and engineers of a cold war era Soviet Russia, they might take a few of them but not all of them.......
@@ec329 Yes, America certainly won against a Soviet-equipped Iraqi army. You are right about that. ISIS won against an American-equipped Iraqi army. By your logic, Isis should be able to defeat an American equipped American army. The Saudis are American equipped, and they're performing poorly against rebels, too. You completely missed my point. Those American or Soviet equipped forces I mentioned aren't proper armies with experience and doctrine, whereas the Soviet army was a proper army with experience and doctrine. You can be patriotic, fine, just don't be an idiot about it. If you really think A10s would be backflipping through the sky dabbing on Soviet tank columns while the Russians manning the fighter jets and multi layered air defence were too busy covering their ears and shitting their pants and crying that they'll never be as good as Americans, then you've been watching too much Hollywood, my guy.
@@tehhappehhaps i don't understimate the Soviets, equipments aren't the only things that win battles, the soldiers training and adequacy and over all character does, however the video states that the Soviets in tjat time had a I'll equipped air force and seeing how you know about tactics and warfare you must see that in the battlefield following WW1 having a proper airforce in the difference between victory and defeat, in my opinion the real reason anf only reason we didn't take on the Soviets back then is is because they had nukes too, but if it came down to this fight they will shoot down many planes but our air support will be bery effective against them and in the war for Kuwait at the time Iraq was evaluated to be the fourth most powerful standing army in the world, and that speaks volumes to what our airforce and allied coalition accomplished, even the tank to tank battle of 73 eastings goes along way to show how lacking Soviet technology was to ours at the time, thanks for reminding me to not underestimate our enemies thou sometimesnational pride does get in the way of logic.......
"Rush attack point G comrades!" " Appologies comrade general, what is point G " " Gibraltar comrade. Onward! Over the corpses of Mcdonalds to the rock in the seas!"
@@duiveldoder what about Churchill's plans to nuke Ussr shortly after ww2, by the way if u read some of the memouars of us generals , it will prove u wrong, so that u don't take me as russiaan bot get on spotify and listen to dan carlin, u'll be surprised how us generals wanted to wage war against soviet union, cuban crisis is example
I think the chances of a nuclear exchange being started by NATO are about even with chances the Warsaw Pact would start it. I also think that if NATO and the Warsaw Pact found themselves in a non-nuclear war, the USSR would absolutely have to push the Fulda Gap immediately to keep peace talks on their terms. Edit: neither side would willingly chose to go to war if all information was available to them at all times, but uncertainty has a way of causing people to stumble towards harsh measures. Whether that ends with an American or a Russian hand on the button comes down to chance.
Did you know that Germany had most major bridges and roads mined? Bridges were deliberately constructed with a weak point for destruction. Even roads were mined with false sewer covers, Plans were to deliberately create traffic jams, German Motorways are at several places convertable into airfields. I am living near the rhine and there are for example still places prepared for tank crossings. There was a whole range of defensive measures Plus every man had to serve more then 2 years in the army. Given the high population the potential reserves were huge! Also Nato was aware of the fulda gap plans and it's defense strategy was tailored to that. I think your estimate is very optimistic. In this scenario the WP would have had a hard time to even reach the rhine. Plus it would then have had to face a lot of preasure on it's northern flank.
@@killdizzle Here is the video of the inefficient badly trained poorly motivated coca-cola starved conscripts of 36th pontoon bridge regiment building a 200 meter bridge over river Elba in about 7 minutes. ruclips.net/video/WpD7esUuwDU/видео.html Here is the second video of the same disillusioned ready to surrender to the first shopping mall conscripts breaking the bridge into two part and using them as barges to ferry 10 trucks per at a time. ruclips.net/video/V-hCTO00mPI/видео.html Now if all the bridges within 150 km from the border are blown up to slow down the Soviets how you gonna bring up the reinforcements or conduct a tactical withdrawal while slowing the momentum and blowing 42 tanks with 42 missiles while masterfully avoiding inept soviet artillery and nonexistent strike aircraft and tactical missiles? Over your own pontoon bridges? This attitude is the reason that a Russian army once in a while occupies its enemy capitol. On average once in every century some country or union under a dominant country visits Russia with new world order idea and then for several generation children learn how bad the Russians are and how they just dream of invading them to take everyone to Siberia.
The problem with this scenario is that it strictly follows what NATO assumed the Warsaw Pact would do: a tank assault through Germany. It doesn't take into account the ACTUAL Warsaw Pact plans for a war: since the Soviets believed such a war would eventually escalate into nuclear weapons, they had decided to use them right off the bat. So they planned for an immediate nuclear assault all over the Western Front, with over 400 nukes being used. THEN they would advance. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and NATO's delusions of a big battle with the Reds in Germany would not happen - all of NATO's major troop formations in Germany would have been vaporized in the very first hours of the conflict.
I imagine that the Soviets would intermingle their units to make their satellite states behave, or avoid using them as much as possible. Still, I do think that if one state mutinied, the rest would follow out of general resentment of the USSR and fear of being nuked by NATO. Thankfully the world never had to find out for real, but it's such a fascinating what-if.
@@TammoKorsai they could try. I work with a bunch of polish, Magyar, east German and ✔ guys that were conscripted in the 80s and they hated the Russians
There's a scene in "Yes Minister" where Humphrey talks with disdain about NATO's state of combat readiness. I remember from the newspapers at the time that American troops were not very motivated during large scale training excercises. Rather than crawl around in the snow and mud like their smaller NATO counterparts, the Americans would prefer to remain inside their armoured vehicles, where it was warm, cosy and coffee and a hot meal close nearby. The "Canadian Army Trophy" was a NATO competition in which all NATO members competed in tank gunnery. In all its years when it was open to all NATO members, the Belgians and the British won three times, the Germans won it six times while both Canada and the USA only won once. And the Dutch won the trophy twice, which in my opinion was all the more impressive because we had an army of conscripts at the time, so for each new competition, green recruits had to be trained untill they excelled in tank gunnery every year. In contrast, the British and Americans had teams professional soldiers of specially trained tank crews whose sole objective was to win that trophy. *After 1991,* both Canada and the USA won the tropy a few times but that was mainly due to the fact that the competition was restricted to Canada and the USA from that time onwards.
Here's the thing in 1980 the economy was already terrible, 12 years later the country fell apart in which many of its European territories joined nato, a county can stand much less fight if it's internal matters aren't solved
Yes it can. The exhaustion and near collapse of the german economy due to massive armament and other spendings was one of the main reasons Hitler started the war when he did, they needed plunder or face economical collaps. And they came pretty far considering the whole economy was fueld by slavelabor and plunder by the end..
The USSR in ww2 had no economy but they still managed to produce huge amounts of war materiel and win the war. Even besieged economically and on the backfoot Germanys highest production was in 44
@@Internetbutthurt The Soviets were better chess players. Always have been, always will be. The Germans had no strategic bombers. The Soviets moved entire factories to the east, out of reach of the Luftwaffe. They had more men, could continue manufacturing tanks and as time went by, they improved on their strategy and tactics. Also, look up any documentary about Operation Bagration 1944.
USSR's collapse was a sudden event. There was no question of unity till 1990. The core of the soviet union (Russia + ukraine + belarus + 5 central asian republics) all voted for preservation of the USSR. The lowest percentage was in Ukrainian SSR where 75% of the populous voted for the preservation of the USSR and all the central asian SSRs voted by more than 90% for the preservation of the USSR.
I think you have to factor in the A-10 warthog. I’m pretty sure it was developed and made available in large numbers by 1980 specifically because of a perceived need for the mass destruction of Soviet tanks in rapid succession.
The A-10 would have literally been flying into the lions jaws the soviets were well aware of NATO airpower hence why they had such an obserd amount of air defenses plus if u think soviet tanks would get torn to shreds by attrition aircraft have that tenfold u could reasonably expect half if not 3/4 of all nato aircraft to be rendered in operable due to fatigue and or damage/loses
@@logannicholson1850 Yes the A10 meant nothing to the Soviets. That's why they immediately scrambled to develop the SU25 to compete in close air support. And the A10s would be arriving at treetop level probably with the first wave specifically coming for the non fixed surface-to-air missiles. Ask Russian planners for the Egyptians in 1973 what happens when the ground forces advance more rapidly than the SAM protection.And they have to advance along a completely expected corridor. And in such an all-out war situation, any weapons system would have sustained many losses so I do not see a real point here.
Having been in the Army stationed in Germany during the 80’s I am pretty certain that NATO was completely unprepared for any kind of military conflict with Warsaw Pact forces until 1983. After 1983 everything changed and NATO forces rapidly modernized.
An auto-loader is not an advantage. A soldier can load a main gun as fast or faster then an auto-loader, and isn't prone to jamming. The soldier can also help spot enemy tanks when not actively loading, maintain the tank, pull security, and assist with maintenance. An auto-loader just means you don't need to recruit as many soldiers to fill your tanks roster, but when the tanks meet on the battlefield, give me a human loader every time.
He can also help replenish the vehicle with ammunition, fuel and other things. A soldier can stand watch, a autoload can't. A soldier can cook food for the rest of the crew, a autoload can't.
Autoloaders rarely jam though, and can load just as fast on the move. On the move a soldier can get moved around in the tank and if you hit a trench or something he might bump into something
Let me start off by saying I love your channel. I'm glad at the end of this video you finally mentioned training between the Warsaw pack and the NATO countries. The problem with comparing equipment to equipment and numbers and numbers is when you fail to take into account training and military doctrine. Even El ite troops of the Soviet forces didn't spend as much time with practical training as the NATO forces did. That includes the Air Force of both sides. The other problem that the Soviets had was their military doctrine of command control where individual unit leaders at the lower levels didn't have as much freedom to do what they thought best as NATO forces did. That has a big impact on combat efficiency.
Which brings the point of conscripts vs "professional soldiers"... while the video brings up the wars against Israel, it ignores the fact Israel in fact has a conscript army, difference being it is highly motivated and well trained.
Czechoslovak tank numbers are way too underestimated. In year 1980 there were 4223 tanks in Czechoslovak army. Actually Wikipedia has it right here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War_tank_formations#Czechoslovakia
Iirc, one of my colleagues, who was in the army in the 1980’s, said that American attack helicopters were projected to have a 42:1 kill ratio against Russian tanks with the TOW missile system, while they wouldn’t suffer any losses with the Hellfire system once it arrived.
@@Ronald98 nope. He basically said that because the TOW system was/is wire guided, a Cobra helicopter was expected to take out 42 tanks on average before getting shot down. But because the Hellfire is fire-and-forget, it was unknown as to the kill ratio the Apaches and Cobras would have so the Army just assumed a metaphorical unlimited number of kills
@@notbadsince97 quite possibly this was in an ideal world where they wouldn’t be facing said systems. Either that, or the Soviet’s didn’t really know how to counter attack helicopters as they didn’t seem to have an effective doctrine around them at the time. And I only say this because their main/only attack helicopter at the time was the Mi-24 Hind family
I see an issue with you not factoring in Bridges, I hardly doubt that there would be any chance to get over the River Rhine, all the Bridges where desingned and built with space for the explosives blowing them up, some are said to have included the explosives all year around with regular maintainance.
It's nice that we never found out how would this nightmare play out in practice. It would quite certainly escalate to tactical nukes within days, if not right away.
I don't think US would actually use nukes. I'm thinking Germany would be lost after about three weeks. That would lead to a slow Warsaw pact advance. US reinforcement would be less than expected and reserve US units would be slow to deploy. On the other side I based on 911 would expect US to have a hard time mobilizing all the volunteers. After four months I would expect a US Army adapted and equipped for the actual war to start pushing the Warsaw pact back and back and back.
In West Germany, your graphic had the Soviets taking southern (mountainous) Germany but not the flat northern plain leading up to Denmark? I think the reverse would be true.
Romania and Greece would have attempted to remain neutral regardless of alliances. And the Warsaw Pact would have invaded Austria regardless of neutrality.
Its not about how sophisticated the weapons are or how powerful and well protected the tank is. Its the training of the operator that matters. A well trained unit is a good unit. A well disciplined unit is a great unit.
@Drew Peacock I’m guessing any really full on war would have two phases. The first, where all the high tech weaponry is wasted on the other guy’s high tech weaponry. The second, where the nucs kill everybody.
@Drew Peacock This is just what I recall from official statements made in the 80's. I think the nukes were intended for the supply lines, but I'm not sure. Either way, once you pull out the nukes, its Armageddon. That may have been the point, to warn the Soviets that any attack would end up in nuclear annihilation.
@Drew Peacock Russian nuclear doctrine dictates a full strategical retaliation on cities etc. when conventional defeat is imminent. Plus biological weapons. I think i dont have to explain what that means. NATO meanwhile has limited response, that means attacking conventional assets with small tactical nukes. Which would escalate in the former pretty quickly. Lets hope no one is mentally ill enough to believe that you can keep such a war conventional or that you can win a nuclear war. I dont wanna rebuild civilization from the 14th century...
@@kenziestuff99 When Russia invaded, Ukraine had only Soviet weapons from the fall of the soviet union. It wasn’t until a few months after when military aid from other countries arrived to support Ukraine.
In the Norwegian army in the late '90s, we were still basically training to oppose a Russian invasion. The assumption was that we would be up against overwhelming odds and take staggering casualties. The broad idea was to fight a delaying action and slow them down as much as we could for 72 hours - after which we hoped we would have NATO reinforcements to help us. Whichever of us that were still somehow alive were expected to be behind enemy lines by then, and were then supposed to fight a guerilla war against their supply lines and such. It wasn't as scary as I think it would have been if I had been in the army during the actual Cold War - my father trained in the '60s as an interpreter - he learned Russian.
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Tesco vs Asda
Hey Binkov, Do a Brazil vs UK
Could Modern Japanese Air Force Navy Win the battle of Midway????
Indonesia vs myanmae 2021!!!!
Soviet commander: "Rush B!"
Staff: "Berlin?"
Soviet commander: "No. Barcelona!"
Gets halted at Düsseldorf xD
hmm, did they practice using Warthunder? "Attack the B point!"
Good luck crossing the Pyrenees
@@jwenting "Attack the D point!"
@gimmjl And that was a big tragedy. If there is any country on earth which needs compulsory education for girls and state enforced atheism, then it is afghanistan
I was an Armor Officer, Platoon Leader in 1980 with 3/32Armor. We were to fight in the Fulda Gap. We were told that Ivan had 10 howitzers per mile. We had the new M-60A3's and 1/32 had the M60-A2's with missiles and 152 mm main gun rounds. We didn't know that our positions were known to the Soviets, thanks to a mole at the ASA. The A-10 Warthogs were not mentioned here, They and the Cobra's would have clogged up the battlefield. It would have been bad for all involved and would probably have gone nuclear at a specific point.
Specific point being in the first week
Dammed if they , dammed if they don’t.
@@lolmao500 I don't know for the other countries, but as soon as the Soviet tanks column would cross French, "tactical" nuclear strikes would be on the tables. I even think that France still had nuclear artillery in the 80s
Here's an odd bit of conjecture, but I wonder if in 1980 we could have done something with the Russian armor like Hannibal did with the Romans in the Punic Wars, in that Hannibal induced the Romans to bunch together too tightly, so that they were basically helpless and unable to maneuver and to fight. In this way Hannibal destroyed a huge Russian army with twice as many soldiers as he and the Cartheginians had. This would be a very dangerous maneuver, and I wouldn't recommend it if there were better options. What I feared from the Russians in 1980 was a "four yards in a cloud of dust attack". That would have been nearly impossible to stop.
@@Cailloumax We were told that if we were pushed back to the French border while repelling a Russian attack, the French would shoot us in the rear doors of our engine housing. I never understood why they would do that, but the US and France were in one of those on again, off again tiffs. You know, like we did with "Freedom Fries" a few years ago?
When I was young I served as an officer in the Czechoslovak People's Army and the task of our Army was following: In the case of the war with NATO, 130-150 massive nuclear strikes on the southern part of West Germany and France from the territory of Czechoslovakia would be used in the first tens of minutes to destroy the military facilities and troops, the command posts and underground headquarters of NATO and the important industry in the big German and French cities as well. This would be followed by a mass tank counter offensive (the scenario assumed we would be attacked by countries of NATO first) using vehicles equipped with elements of anti-nuclear and chemical protection. Mostly T-72, T-55 and BMP, over 4500 tanks and at least 5000 light fighting vehicles. The route of the offensive should be in the direction across the south Germany (in conjunction with the Czechoslovak airborne forces secure the bridges across the Neckar and Rhine rivers) to Strasbourg and Dijon in France defeating the French Army and reaching the Atlantic shores in two weeks. I remind you that in 1989 the Czechoslovak People's Army had 200 000 men in arms, plus 70 000 Soviet troopers deployed in the territory of Czechoslovakia. This would be the operational task for the Czechoslovak People's Army in the case of an aggression and the outbreak of war by NATO. I don't know if we would be able to do it, but we were young and determined. But what I do know for sure is that I would not be here today if the war really broke out. It would be Armageddon, and the survivors would envy the dead. Greeting from an old soldier of the Warsaw Pact.
Incredible I loved reading this, ty
BS
Wow, that honestly sounds insane. I don't understand how the use of nuclear weapons is even helpful in this scenario, but I guess the assumption is that the USA striked first, and the USSR is just fulfilling its promise of Mutually Assured Destruction. I remember that the Soviets had a "No strike first" policy.
@@shiz777 Scares the **** out of me.
I know im late to this comment section but I find it amusing that when the Cold War ended it was found that both sides planned to be attacked first by the other side
Right, I’m off to play Wargame: AirLand Battle
we still have a small community there :D
@@justtheaverageone3840 do you play that or red dragon?
@@somethingelse516 airland battle and red dragon, we mainly played red dragon but we needed "something new" and started to play airlandbattle again. At good times we get 4vs4 and 5vs5 games in airland, we have a steam group to announce games and times :P
@@mittens5789 airlandbattle is a wargame on steam :P
@@mittens5789 store.steampowered.com/app/251060/Wargame_Red_Dragon/ and store.steampowered.com/app/222750/Wargame_Airland_Battle/, great strategy games if you like Cold War history/ alt history scenarios
I served in the army during the Cold War. Our European scenarios always orbited around the question of, "When will NATO be forced to resort to nuclear weapons to stop the Soviet advance?"
After the Cold War ended, and particularly after the re-unification of Germany, we got access to some of the Warsaw Pact war plans courtesy of former East Germany, and they were interesting...
Soviet war plans were simple: if war began, they were going to hit us with everything they had, from the beginning: not just an invasion, but the nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. They were not going to wait around for NATO to debate about when to use nukes. They'd already made that decision.
Soviet war plans were for the Red Army to be on the English Channel and the Pyrenees Mountains within six weeks. With a radioactive, chemically contaminated, disease-ridden wasteland behind them. No doubt, their use of NBC weaponry would have provoked a similar response.
The only question was whether a war that began as a "regional" conflict in Europe could be confined there, or whether it would spread to a global nuclear war.
Yeap, the Soviets had planned to level the Warsaw Pact counties, Germany, etc; with nuclear weapons and then role over the top to take the rest of Europe. Thank god for the work of Brixmis to confirm and reassure that the big soviet exercise was just that and not a mobilisation of Soviet forces to attack the west, which stopped any idea of a pre-emptive strike by NATO. In my role in the Armed Forces we where informed our survival time would be some 75 seconds, I think we knew it would have been a much shorter. However, what is often forgotten is that Soviet forces were more of a defensive force built up to spot the repeat of WW2. The cold war was a war of paranoia, on both side but particularly in the US.
Those weapons would have provoked an attack on the Soviet mainland. Everyone loses.
But then we got the *Wonder Weapons* like AH-64 Apache and (still undisclosed at the time) Stealth strike planes!
*** AirLand Battle 2000 ***
*Would you like to know more?*
That don't mean jack sh*t. I was in the US Army during Gulf War I, and they told us to expect 20,000 body bags on the first day. The US military loves to fearmonger.
Somewhere I have a pic of a map that I downloaded from an old forum that doesn't exist anymore...Armchair General. IIRC, the map came from either East Germany or the USSR after the end of the cold war/fall of the communist regimes. It has big red bombs over Hamburg, Amsterdam, etc etc...the ports that would've been used to bring in reinforcements from the UK/USA...along with the Reforger sites. The big red bombs represented nukes.
Everyone makes the same mistake with these "What if" scenarios...they fail to factor in the variables of maintenance, logistics, weather and terrain. If you took a column of T-80 tanks and were able to drive, unopposed across Germany towards France, you might arrive at the French border with a third of your tanks after two weeks of slogging it cross country. Tanks can be defined by many features and description but one that doesn't get the attention it deserves is that of "gas guzzling, self-propelled self-destructing pillbox". Just a cursory look at World War Two, the last war with large armor formations hunting each other, reveals more losses from maintenance, logistics, weather and terrain than enemy action.
Which, one imagines, factored into the US overall strategy of placing emphasis on air power over tanks.
The video is also a bit misleading. Because "tanks rush" simply do not exist. There are armies, divisions and within the divisions are regiments and battalions which had assigned tank units. Tanks NEVER move alone. They are part of a larger organization.
An in fact, even in a single mech. inf. battalion the APC/IFV outnumbers them with about 4:1 or 5:1 ratio + other support units of the battalion.
@mandellorian in before all the butthurt israeli and american comments flooding the section with : bUt wE aRe iNvInCiBle!
But when you outnumber your opponent many fold, you can have half of your tanks being lost to maintenance, etc etc, and still outnumber your opponent. The USSR always figured they would lose a lot of tanks/men in any attack against NATO. They intended to leave units in combat until they were totally ground down to nothing.
@@Ronald98 It's not about being "invincible", it's about the incredibly difficult task taking Western Europe would be even against moderate resistance.
NATO at The Fulda Gap
"This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die! " 💥 300
Hey!
Hopefully NATO would have more than 300 tanks.
"The beacons are lit! West Germany calls for aid!"
............................................................
..
"And America will answer!
Muster the Air Cavalry!"
♫Sasageyo! Sasageyo! Shinzou wo sasageyo!♫
@@OptimusWombat ah yes tanks , juicy targets ..
*Conflict of Nations features historical accurate borders*
*Also Conflict of Nations shows Russia as USSR and other soviet republics somehow marked separately *
As a CoN player, if you don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist.
Weren't they Autonomous Regions?
In the sense of, own Governments who follow their superior Ruler?
@@fabianmichaelgockner5988 yes
@@fabianmichaelgockner5988 but they still had to follow Warsaw pact
USSR was just a different way to rule the same Russian empire which had existed since 1721. Everything was controlled by moscow. The western, southern and eastern theater commands were headquatered at moscow in RSFSR. I still find it quite astonishing that one city could control 22.4 million sqkm. But that was a grand mirage. Once everyone realised that gorbachev was not another stalin or brezhnev after collapse of the berlin wall in november 1989, everyone start declaring state sovereignty and independence left and right. Moscow's empire collapsed at a rapid pace and ceased to exist on 26th december 1991.
According to a former US TC I worked with, he was given the choice of 1 year in Vietnam or 3 years in Europe. He picked Europe. His orders were that if attacked he was to hold for 3 weeks until help arrived, (or the world ends in a nuclear apocalypse, whichever came first). He just threw in that last bit.
Well I’d rather be in Vietnam, where it’s more isolated and likely to be overrun(due to logistical problems in the jungle) plus that jungle seems awfully nice to disease.
So in short, we get a “World in Conflict: Soviet Assault”
(It is an old RTS game for those who don’t know)
Brilliant game
Wait, WIC is old? Oh my god! Where have the years gone.
More like Wargame: Red Dragon
The red bear has awoken and now the world shall feel his might
A man of culture i see
This is Soko-1. Red Dawn. I say again: Red Dawn. Make me proud.
world in conflict, best rts ever.
Praying for another World in Conflict game one day
Checkout regiments. Look like a WIC spiritual succesor.
Where's that quote from?
@@freedomisntfreeffs From a game called ''World in Conflict'' it is pretty good rts game btw
All great powers train their militaries using Conflict of Nations
There is always scarcity of rare resources so you can't research everything
Hey Peter
@@blackpigeon4743 Not always, it gets better late game, but that's if you build arms industries up at the beginning. I still always have resource issues though because I'm always really ambitious at the start.
@@kevinl2482
Yah
So true but this won't work well if you get attacked at start
@@blackpigeon4743 Yeah if you get attacked the start, especially by a noob and he kills all of the population in that city, production is really slow unless you build up hospitals to regrow population faster.
As a former danish soldier, I recall, when we were trained on the TOW system; even if you hit every target (which they expected of us), we won't have enough anti-tank missiles for you. It is a long time ago, however, if I recall it correctly, we expected the Warsaw Pact, to use its poor platforms first, in order to drain our missile stock. Hereafter, their better weapons would be employed. So, at least here in Denmark; bad odds. Not to mention the amount of tactical nukes they had planned to use; devastating. In Jutland alone, it was a huge number.
Верно, но это никто не берет в расчёт. Так же как и попадании и даже пробитие не всегда означает уничтожение техники и экипажа. В Дании, кстати был интересный форум по баллистике в 2008 году.
@@andrewkachan4209 True words. I had no idea that there had been a ballistic forum here in 2008.
@@ThePRCommander там поднималась очень интересная тема, поражение взрывной волной при попадании противотанковым оружием. И приводились данные из первой чеченской войны.
Warsaw pact plans delegate Poland as a country that will attack Denmark in first wave. So basically if you look at the Poland potential given in this map you will know what exactly would came in first wave. Plus You should really add reserve troops because doctrine assumed that the army based on them not on professional once.
The commies didnt have those numbers. The video here uses paper divisions from Moskwa.
As I remember it those of us in Europe at the time were supposed to fight a delaying action to try to hold off the Warsaw Pact until reinforcements could arrive, Tactical Nukes were definitely in play as a force multiplier.
@Terry McConville No, a Flash Report.
USSR didnt have the numbers listed in this video. The sowiets would have been destroyed in Fulda easily. Tom Clansys Red Storm got it right.
Night Vision would have given NATO tanks a really big edge in the 80s. Soviet tanks only had infrared or basic NV, while NATO tanks where already in 2nd or 3rd generation.
They'd put the T55s out at night and use T72s during the day
@@johnstacy7902 So the T55s get slaughtered by NATO tanks with night vision instead of T72.
@@johnstacy7902 there'd be no T-55s left lmao
@@thelordofcringe cannon fodder
@mandellorian how long where you a tanker for?? Although most American tank battalions would of had 4.2 motars attached to them....
If you speak to any (former) soldiers stationed in key zones like the Fulda Gap, they all have the same account:
They weren't expected to be able to stop the Soviets in a conventional war. Their only job was to try to delay the Soviet advance as best they could for as long as they could. Many of these soldiers are still alive today, since it wasn't that long ago. It would have been very easy to do the proper research for this one.
They would have massacred the ussr forces in Fulda. The clown youtuber here believes those USSR paper divisions represented operational forces. USSR would have collapsed due to logistics alone in 48 hours. With regards from former ranger in NATO. Tom Clancy got it right in Red Storm.
Slow ahh comment.
Do you really believe in staff you're saying?
That's fckn hilarious how nato boys believe that this organisation would hsve done shit against soviets 😂@@thecappeningchannel515
You are absolutely right on this, sir. That was exactly what was asked if "the balloon went up!"
I would've set the scenario in 1983 when the Soviets thought that NATO's war games was a disguise for an invasion. You would also have Spain in NATO at that time too.
Maybe another video in the making. ; )
The Able Archer near disaster was in 1983 and I agree that would have been a better scenario
@@jrdougan Ah right. 1982 was when the Soviet satellite mistook flashes from clouds as 4-6 nukes being fired at the Soviet Union and nuclear war was averted because the Soviet officer trusted his instincts and not the machine.
@@Canada1994 no that is also in 26 September 1983, the man you refer is Stanislav Petrov.
@@febrian0079 yeah I know his name
I know an ex Chieftain tankie and he told me that due to the scandalous reliability of the thing his Bn would on average reach their firing positions with 40% of their Chieftains present.
The Swedish S-tank : can shoot longer than it can roll ..
You forget that the official numbers of men and material tell us nothing about some other key factors:
1. Troops morale, or will to fight;
2. Logistics;
3. NATO endurance (a combination of 1. and 2.);
NATO strategy was centered about the following painful fact: not enough ammo and not even fully standardized small arms and artillery calibers.
When NATO ran out of ammunition (not if, some calculated this would be as little as 48 hours), tactical nukes would be launched at Warsaw Pact armour concentrations, HQs and supply centers.
And the Soviets would respond to those tactical nukes with strategic nukes then the conflict would escalate into a full blown nuclear Armageddon.
NATO tried to counter this during the mid 1980s by emphasizing high tech weapons like helicopter gunships in anti-tank role and stealth strike aircraft to cut off the enemy's supply lines.
In my opinion, neither side was ever ready to start fighting and troops' morale on both sides was rather low. Nobody wanted to die in useless war that would inevitably end in a global nuclear war.
Much (propaganda) was made at the time of the wonder(ful) weapons like Cruise Missiles and Pershing II missiles which were specifically aimed at Soviet command centers but of course the propagandists forget to mention that the Soviets would strike back with strategic nuclear weapons in any case.
P.S.
Oh yeah, both Greece and Turkey would gladly take the opportunity to feign attacks into Bulgaria, when all they really wanted was to fight it out with each other.
morale is not considered on this channel as usual, not forgetting. he mentioned about logistic.
i highly doubt they will run out of ammunition, beside they already covered it. It will be like a delaying battle and the battle for air is crucial. I recall A-10 can attack tank formation without escorts at fulda gap and even go deeper
also you forgot the morale can differ if sides have excuse or a rallying cry
Blinkov has never seriously considered morale because it was too nebulous to deal with.
With that said, much of the Warsaw Pact countries would be very unreliable for offensive operations. Teh Soviets may have to keep some units back to keep some Warsaw Pact countries in like, like Poland.
I'm a Cold War vet. Yours is some of the worst analysis I've seen in years. Abysmal, to be fair. Pie-in-the-sky wishfulness. This video is more honest than most on the topic made in that region of the world. The Soviets knew they were in trouble economically and very seriously considered invading western Europe in order to save the Soviet Union from collapse. Historically, nothing brings Russians together like a war. Key factors which dissuaded them were the M1, proliferation of highly effective ATGMs, and aircraft such as the B-1B, the F-15, F-16, and A-10; and the evidence of how their systems fared against western systems in the hands of proxies. Fields of burned-out T-55s and T-62s in the Golan and Sinai could be denied to the public as due to the Arab crews; but inside, they knew the truth.
As the 80s progressed, the option was less and less appealing. Finally, that dream out of reach, the USSR collapsed under its own weight. Russia still hasn't recovered, and is still ruled by oligarchs, with an economy smaller than several individual U.S. states.
It's hard to grow an economy run by gangsters and thieves. The only Russian things anyone wants to buy are fuels and cheap weapons. They can't even make a car anyone wants, even Russians would prefer a western car. The Chinese are closer to selling their vehicles in the U.S. Nobody wants so much as a Russian clock radio. It's all cheap and shoddy.
It's really sad that Russians have never had a chance to be a truly free people. The last feudal society in Europe, always lagging, still awaiting the Enlightenment. Always ruled by a strongman, whether a czar, a communist, or an oligarch, Russia tolerates its misery. Perhaps that's why their alcohol consumption per capita is so huge. You've gotta be drunk to put up with it. Still, they buy into those oligarchs, so the people bear some responsibility.
Analysis from Russophiles is always of quality comparable to Russian cars.
I love how this video describes how the T-54/55 and the T-62 were obsolete 2nd line tanks in 1980 for a soviet tank rush across europe. Here we are in 2024 and the Russians are using them as frontline units in a tank rush that failed to even cross half of Ukraine.
It was common knowledge in the British Army in those days, that the NATO plan was an "elastic defence" based on Manstein's 1943 counter-stroke. After the war Manstein, following a spell in prison, was rehabilitated and became an important figure in NATO planning. The idea was to allow the Soviets to advance against a rolling defence to inflict attrition, till their supply lines were very extended, and their troops exhausted, then to counterattack in force.
Don't seem like a great idea to take ideas from a guy who lost to the Soviets. Many German officers post WW2 overhyped up their capabilities and downgraded the soviets on purpose to make themselves look good.
Bruh I've been waiting for like a year for this ever since the 1989 vid! Super hyped!
Love these historical ones. The very best book I've read on this exact topic is "The Third World War: August 1985" (1978) by General Sir John Hackett. Riveting stuff.
He wrote two, different, books on the subject. The first one was "The Third World War (1978)."
The second one was "The Third World War: The Untold Story (1982)."
The first book had rather implausible causes of the actual start of the conflict.
The second book detailed about the 'classic' Warsaw Pact 'Blitzkrieg' with the objective of taking West Germany and the NATO HQ in Brussels within two weeks.
At the start of the James Bond movie "Octopussy (1983)," a Soviet general impassionately pleas to the military high command to use this scenario.
@@AudieHolland Yup, I am fully aware of those details. I prefer the first book.
I have always felt the "implausible causes" for which it was quite commonly criticised at the time of its publication, for instance in a review by a German NATO colonel, totally missed the point. The book is not really interested in geopolitics as such. Its focus is NATO European military strategy in the face of a Soviet general mobilisation and assault in the east. In that regard, it (the first book) is excellent. The second one is really an updated re-tread of the first which didn't really have the same energy or impact or focus for me.
I am not a fan of James Bond.
@@Ingens_Scherz Yah, the first one didn't have a happy ending.
The second one's ending however, in hindsight, was rather prophetic. At that point in time, I had no idea to USSR was ready to disintegrate.
Don't worry about James Bond, it's just that in that movie there's a scene which describes the Warsaw Pact surprise attack option.
The best book of this topic... Is amazing
There is another book... Is a lot of ficcional but is funny is called "the quiet night by Cyril Joly
Same as World War 2 - allies may lose to begin with but when they increase their defense industrial base to full production the situation changes. Also taking control of a continent / peninsula is one thing. Keeping hold of it is another.
This was pretty much the "Warplan 2000" scenarios that was laid out to us in the mid 1980's
I was a Combat Engineer stationed in Germany in the 1980's. Every single key road through Germany had pre-made man holes specially made to put in explosives in case of Soviet invasion. We were task to blow them up. But I always though that if war came that it was very possible we might encounter Soviet special forces sent to stop us form doing that. I'm pretty sure they knew about those manholes, since they had tons of communist sympathizers among the Germans.
West Germany had also tank destroyers additionally to its tanks.
750 Kanonenjagdpanzer armed with a 90mm gun had entered service in the 60s.
Additionally there were several hundred Raketenjagdpanzer tank destroyers armed with anti-tank missiles.
I agree. Tanks are overrated. You can make a much cheaper missile or bomb that can destroy a tank. Not to say they don't have value but if you charge recklessly they're all going to get blown up. This idea is like the charge of the light brigade. There is a fine line between fearsome war machine and expensive flaming wreckage.
From the mid-80s onward they had their Paratroopers upgrade from the old Kraftkarren (Kraka) to the new Wiesel tankette - some of which came with an ATGM-Launcher. Good luck spotting a Platoon of these hiding just behind the tree line...
useless trash
@@Exodon2020 soviet recon troopers say hello exactly from this very tree line.
@@KenjaTimu конечно. Поэтому танки строят до сих пор. И разрабатывают новое поколение XD
There would have been a whole line of desertion from USSR's satellites.
And that is why there were no national units in Red Army.
This is something I thought of. The Warsaw pact was enforced alliance whilst NATO was a voluntary organisation.
@@zulubeatz1 all of them dogs of usa because germany fucked up europe in only 6 years
@@zulubeatz1 Spain and Germany didn't go ah yes now we really want to be ran by America, they lost a war.
@@username_3715 but unlike in the Eastern block, nobody in western Europe was "run by America".
1:09 I like how he is saying that the game represents the accurate historical map of the 80es and at the same time showing Russia of 2000es calling it soviet union.
They made it like that on purpose so you can play with ukraine belorussia and baltic because nato was to strong in the game and other warshaw pact countries were weaker
He is paid to advertise a shit game lol
Your depiction of the conditions facing the Soviet Army, suggest a Kursk-style battle on a grander and more modern scale, except it would be Soviet Army/Warsaw Pact strength that would be getting whittled down on each successive NATO defensive line - do you suppose that possibility occurred to Warsaw Pact planners?
Which is why if there were to be a war there would be spetnaz sabotaging key areas and the element of surprise. However I do think it would still result in a statement where NATO is unable to advance and the Warsaw Pact unable to continue the push since they have over extended their supply lines.
lol....no.....it occurred to you but not them
@@Wintersoap123 not significant,
It occured so therefore they planed to use large number of low yield tactical nukes to eliminate the living NATO force while rushing fast through the nuked land inside tanks that would protect soldiers from outer light radiation.
Of course. That's why they never tried it.
"The Red Army" is a fictional "What if" novel by Ralph Peters in the same vein as Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", with an interesting perspective exclusively from the Soviet POV. Mr. Peters was a former Intelligence officer in NATO, and he really nails the Soviet mindset and methods without getting bogged down in military hardware detail. I highly recommend it.
Is it a biased novel?
@@bianc5596 I found that Red Army was an excellent read. Written from the Soviet perspective, its a good book for readers who enjoyed Red Storm Rising
@@mr.muldoontoyouThat’s not what they asked.
@@bianc5596 A vague question
Nah, I like the western POV better
Comrade, please do a similar scenario during 1968, lots of people would love to see how Vietnam and social unrest would play into WW3.
Please don't call people comrade. Its not a joke.
@@joshschneider9766 but it's Commissar Binkov, isn't that the formal way to adress him?
@@lee6283 He might be the kind of Schneider that gets haunted by it.
In 1968 I was residing at the junction of the Rhine and Main Rivers, not sure I would have been comfortable with this scenario.
@@joshschneider9766 go to gulag comrade
I once had a conversation with a very senior british intelligence officer. (an actual spy, then retired and working with the Intelligence Corps) about how accurate the book Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy) was. He said it was a pretty accurate representation of how NATO thought a war would be fought, though he didnt think the final outcome was likely, that it would end up going nuclear (as it almost did in the book) but the advantages and disadvantages of both sides along with the various stratagies he thought were pretty accurate.
I really don't like how these videos don't factor in terrain, logistics, or economics as much as they should. simple fact is the soviets literally could not afford to fight a war with NATO.
problem is that peoples still think money or any economics things have any importance in full scale war. when full scale war fires, money is nothing, u just build (as much as u can with your soil ressources) and fight. You think germany still had money in 1944/1945? they still mass produce, even more than before.
This is the nowadays point of view of war , more money = win ... same for logistic, when u are in war, some really unbielivable things happens , that nobody would have expected , but if they want , they can. ( who expected so much from US and allies after DDay back then ? millions of troops fed and ready to fight after a very short period of time? nobody).
Terrain , is the only thing i agree about it , but , terrain isnt all , Ardennes for exemple during french invasion of 1940. " hey you can't pass here!!!" --> "are you sure about that ?"
2 km wide open area can bring disaster, you dont need alot to make miracles.
History showed us than in wars , anything can happen. and u can never predict it , that why this chanel is just "fun"
@@bastienmim1167 1st Economics ain't just about money it's the production distribution and consumption of goods and services. effectively can the supply meet the demand. money makes this process efficient by being a universal means of exchange. 2nd The soviets had a money is worthless just build shit and fight attitude, and it nearly cost them the war. because as it turns out money actually was invented precisely to make the process of building things with resources more efficient. 3rd I don't know if you know this but from 1944 to 1945 Germany was losing
The View point isn't more money=win since a government can just make a fiat currency and literally print more the view point is being able to produce, distribute and consume products efficiently so as to meet the demands of the conflict better then the enemy can.
and logistics is a fancy term for getting from point A to point B
And if you cannot get your troops to the front lines in a timely manner nor supply them in a timely manner nor produce the supplies in enough quantity to meet the demand of the war then you will lose.
FGermansResistance, and because France over committed their resources to the west, they couldn't react in time to cut off the German tank divisions allowing the Germans to encircle them, and then head straight to Paris.
Germany would later lose the war for similar reasons but this comment is long enough so i won't get into it here.
Also they forgot that on the east dozens of nukes where placed underground and would detonate if they sovjets would reach a certain line.
Plus the russian invasion of afganistan , the discontent of warsaw pact members it would fall apart real fast.
This is a RUclips video, not a masters thesis submission for a for a degree in logistical strategics
Yeah, not even a single mention of the Fulda Gap. Maps of topography and population distribution would have been nice.
A very important aspect of the discussion is the mostly ignored mine laying capacity of especially the Bundeswehr.
Mines like AT2 could be launched by MLRS and Scorpion mine layers with different activation time of the mines so that pre planned counter attacks were possible. When we had contact with Soviet Officers after the wall came down they were totally surprised how different and flexible the german understanding of defence is.
in the USSR there were mining systems for MLRS
@@ЛегоБот-г2з USSR was not good at doing more than one thing
@@penskepc2374 what ignorance! You in the West think that in the Soviet Union everyone was poor and fought for a piece of bread, but I want to upset you, this is your fantasy. In the USSR, the production of military equipment was constantly going on and these were the latest weapons systems.
@@penskepc2374 BM 21 "GRAD", 9 K 56 "URAGAN", 9 K 58 "Smerch" are Soviet MLRS systems and a lot of them were made
@@penskepc2374 ruclips.net/video/BCLt0c7I81A/видео.html
It reminds World at Conflict game
WIC itself is based on Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee. Worth a read.
Malashenko: "TODAY WE'LL SHOW THEM THE MIGHT OF THE SOVIET UNION"!
Hell yeah! Amazing game!
During WW2 Soviets estimated they needed a minimum 3:1 advantage when attacking to be successful against established defenses. It would get very bloody, very fast.
Soviet high command: NATO has been upping military presence in west germany greece italy and turkey what should we do?
Soviet Advisor: rush across western europe with TONKS
Soviet high command: hmmm im sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this...
Tank Commanders : *Giggle* I'm in danger!
/those who played WGRD will know ATGM PTSD in every bush and building
Great video. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. I subscribed to your channel because of the quality and depth of your 1989 scenario, and wanted to see more NATO vs Warsaw Pact videos.
PLEASE also do videos for what would have happened in 1970 and 1960! It’s interesting to see how the power differences at those times would have made a difference to the outcome of the war 😄(or at least how far the Soviet advance would have made it to)
Okay this Video is really disappointing in my opinion. I think you compleatly ignore the main goal of the soviet tank rush strategy
Germany isnt flat terrain, only the northern part is. This was a key part of both Nato and Soviet planning. The soviet tank rush plan was desinged to combat the problem because as you said once nato could dig in in this harder terrain there would be no movemeant of the front. So the solution was to rush the tank forces through the few gaps in the "middle mountains area" of germany (the famous Fulda gap for example) and reach the rhine river around Frankfurt. The goal was to cut the nato forces into a northern and southern part and then spread out north and south in west germany using the Rhine river (a major natural obstacle even in the cold war) as the western flank to fend of any counter offensives from France. This entire operation was supposed to be done in a month and its goal was to take over the good defensive terrain of west germany without major fighting and then use it against the nato forces. It also gave the soviets the opportunity of crossing the rhine into the west at any point in time to threaten France. A march on France itself was only a secondary goal at best.
The entire soviet military was desinged for this early rush task and this also shows how their miltiary was build up. You mentioned that they would use recruts for the tank units and how that was a bad idea but you didnt mention at all the planned soviet replacemeant rate of tanks for their first months offensive. The idea was basically a giant material battle so they planned with basically a complete lose of all tanks in the first months. This is why soviet tank factories always had the ressources stationed at the factory itself to immidiatly start pumping out masses of tanks without any additional supply from other factories to replace the initial loses entirely. In that context using recruits for tank crews makes sense because you are basically planning with an entirely new army to begin with so getting the material into combat however possible was the prime goal.
The key difference in NATO and Warsaw Pact strategy for the first month was that the soviets planned with a total loss of all forces (tactical nukes also beeing an option) while NATO didnt have the capabilities, at least in Europe, to mass produce their high quality tanks at a similar rate. Short term Nato would literally swim in a sea of soviet tanks. Of course the soviets entire plan hindged on the succsess of the breakthrough to the rhine and taking of the bad terrain after their initial industrial and military push because their momentum was not sustainable. If Nato could hold the inital push to the rhine, the soviets would have been fucked. That is the reason why NATO placed bombs in basically every bridge in the middle german area to slow down the initial tank push at all cost and stationed most of their units in the area. There is a reason most US bases in west germany were around Fulda (the biggest gap in the mountains) and Frankfurt (the end of the central german mountains) to stop exactly this scenario.
The soviets would have been lunatics if they planned to march on the open grassland of France and Belgium considerin long term NATO forces and especially US i ndustry would outproduce them in literally everything.
Initial push to gain the best defensive positions on enemy terrain and then a defensive strategy including nukes. If the soviets ever wanted anything in their history following the trauma of WW2 it was fighting on enemy territory and keeping the frontline as far away from the Soviet Union proper as possible. Better have the enemy territory become a nuclear wasteland after tactical nukes would be thrown around the battlefield then allied territory.
Indeed and ignores the fact of all the planning put in place to attack the Soviet forces while they were being funnelled. The region would have been a equipment graveyard of Russian tanks, much larger than the death highway of Iraqi equipment during the first gulf war. Secondly, all those dead tanks would create quite a barrier for advancing forces behind. But, that was all irrelevant once we learned the Soviets had planned to nuck Germany to dust as a first strike.
@@adif7542 The soviets definitly would not nuke germany to dust though, they wouldnt gain anything by that.
Although the soviet army was definitly better prepared for ABC warfare (NBC in english i think).
And as I said the soviets literally planned for that graveyard to happen. I still believe the soviets would have broken through, maybe slightly delayed. They planned that thing for decades and cut concentrate far more forces then nato could in the area to break through. They would have to "only" overcome the west german and us forces initially that would have been massively outnumbered. The west germans could be stretched thin with attack by the soviets allied the east germans in the northern german plains and the czechs on the southern german area. Meaning the basic defense would have been only the us forces with a small contingent of west german forces.
But holy shit the air battle over that area would have been an utter clusterfuck. I mean my main argument for it not turning into a direct tank graveyard would be that NATO groudnforces in the area alone lacked the firepower to do it against this mass and both sides airforces would basically rip each other compleatly appart the first mo nth over the area protecting their respective forces.
I think this, depending on the succsess of the soviets, would have eather resulted in the soviets throwing a tactical nuke to finally break through or the us forces throwing one to stop the final soviet breakthrough. Nevertheless central germany would be a nice radiated wasteland as a result.
On of the advantages of the soviet strategy was also that if they reached for example Frankfurt the west germans would propably stop NATO forces from throwing nukes in the area because while the Fulda gap is rather sparsly populated the Frankfurt open plain area east of the rhine has millions living in a dense area. You would think twice about nuking your own people.
But lets not kid ourselfs, the moment one nuke gets thrown anyway it would continuesly escalate until yopu get a MC Arthur or a Stalin on eather side to go "push the red button" and then the entire arsenal of both countries goes flying and the war would be made irrelevant in an instant anyway.
@@adif7542 Yes, and he also didn't say about ammo types that NATO was using, many of the Nato mass tanks were still using APDS/HEAT, this kind of ammo were not able to penetrate T-72/T-64s from the frontal area.
@@andrelunkes1038 specially the american m47 dragoon.... That was a shit to destroy tanks
Yes it really is a terrible and inaccurate video. The Soviets expected all bridges to be destroyed which is why all their vehicles were either amphibious or could snorkel quickly. 99.9% of people dont really know how the Soviets expected to fight but it seems you have a good idea. NATO air power would not have existed because the first target were airfields which didnt matter to the soviets because everything had rough field capability. Then there was their mobile AAA which, by US assessment, even the vaunted A-10 fleet would not have lasted a week. The Soviets would have AT LEAST contested the air if not controlled it. Most NATO AT weapons were ineffective against any modern Soviet MBTs. WARPAC would not have walked in but NATO would not have held and would have to escalate to nukes.
1. Dont diss conscripts - they have fought well in many conflicts. And at this scale of war conscripts will carry the brunt of the fighting on both sides.
2. The Leopard one wouldnt be so easily killed due to it "not being there" when being shot on. It would use its mobility to remove itself from the line of fire rather than sit still and slug it out.
Is leopard moving faster then the projectile speed?
@@ukaszw6623 It only had to move faster than the time it would take to spot it plus the time to fire the projectile plus the flight time of the projectile.
You have a "lurking" position in cover, several firing positions and MOVE between them as needed during the engagement. When defending you have the huge advantage of being able to scout and prepare them in advance.
@@CarlAlex2 so faster than thousand metres per second? I am sorry but i think Leopard is not that fast :D
@@ukaszw6623 So you think it doesnt take time to discover and aim at the Leopard after it fires its shot and begins to leave its position ?
The whole idea is that when you are ready to fire there is no longer any Leopard to fire at.
Falklands war proves how much worse conscripts are. They're not comparable to professional soldiers and even more so when they don't agree with the nation that forced them into war which would be the case for the nations in Eastern Europe
EU vs OIC(Organization of Islamic Cooperation)
Feat. Another Crusade War
DPRK, China and Russia vs ROK, Japan and US
Feat. Second Korean War
ASEAN VS China
Feat. Myanmar Civil War
@bruhhh depends on the crusade tbh, e. G. Reconquista of spain
OIC is a joke they will never fight together tbh, they are different countries with different allies etc.. If OIC was a strong organisation like the EU then maybe..
Jokes on u, only few country in OIC r strong, while EU is all powerfull
also, OIC would be spread out across asia instead of being concentrated like EU in europe
ASEAN vs China should also feature the south china sea naval theatre
Really good info. One of my fav vids you've made, will check out your 89 series
"Fast movement of huge armored units through forests or settlements is not really possible"
Nazi Germany: Do I need to show you how it's done yet again?
I'm 3 days too late to make this comment. :D
Through the Ardennes!
Durch die Ardennen!
Apparently Russia didn't know how to use line charges to clear strips through trees and minefields?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine-clearing_line_charge
@@hillarysemails1615 Which are heavily forested. Hilly AND forested, both supposed to be impenetrable to armored troops, and they did it anyway.
This was also the reason why France fell so quickly - with that daring move, they circumvented the main French army and cut off their supply lines, turning Belgium into a giant Kessel.
@@steveweidig5373 Exactly. ♥
Lmao “masses of Soviet tanks have been portrayed as unstoppable”
Funny how time has made this video seem completely out of touch. My favorite would be the overestimate of the Russian tanks' overall health and armorment and the underestimating of the Leopards armor. Many Russian tanks are simply broken needing parts, with poor active armor especially around the turret and the lack of battlefield information sharing capabilities among these many different variants.
Additionally, the Western European countries would be “fighting for their survival” and would put up as stiff a defense as possible at each defensive point. It’s not hard to operate an ATGM at close range, it could be said that anyone from 16-60 could fire one. Same as a light machine gun. If the reds thought the battle of Berlin was bad, I can’t imagine they would want to repeat that every time they get to a major city
Their plan was quite ready for that. They nuke the cities, sprinkle in chemical and biological WMDs atop that.
The battle of britain would have been a cakewalk if London was a 50km series of anthrax-coated neurotoxic craters.
@@RobinTheBot it's difficult to fight for London when all of Russia has just become a glass parking lot
@@RobinTheBot Can you cite that ? I know they planned to use nuclear weapons in their 7 days to the river rhine plan but I've never heard of them planning to use biological weapons
@A Velsen Yup, seven days to the river rhine plan. I think they were delusional to think that plan would work but yes they did plan to use nukes to stop major resistance in those major population centers.
@@marneus lol for sure. There is no way NATO would allow russia to nuke all of western Europe with no response. The USA and UK would nuke the hell out of the USSR and France probably would have used nukes on the advancing soviet forces.
I would like to see one for 1965 someday. That was when my Dad was stationed in Germany. Would have been similar to this 1980 one if it didn't go nuclear, I think.
"haha gun go brrr" - A-10 pilots
Mi-24:Hello there!
are you braindead the theres a difference between firing at villagers with no AA and a proper army sure the US destroyed the iraqi army during the american iraqi war but theres a difference between training and doctrine and not because they have export grade soviet tanks
@@CaptainSovereign Apaches and Cobras firing TOWs and Stealth bombers dropping SMART bombs: Hello there!
Shilka:
Great video and as a historical what-if. But one thing missing is the Soviet/Warsaw production capacity during the course of such a war. Their tank numbers as at 1980 would only be a starting point. If they USSR mobilised their manufacturing as they did in the latter stages of WWII, it wouldn't be outrageous to estimate that throughout the course of such a war (not just the initial rush), the total tank numbers might be double or triple their existing armory.
The war would only last a few months at most. NATO would start loosing and would use tactical nukes en masse. Soviet forces would be decimated, but WARPAC nuclear counter strike would decimate NATO forces as well. This would make it so neither side could advance and my guess is the war would end shortly after with a peace deal to avoid further destruction of Europe.
Please read some Soviet army manuals first. The one I was taught by was "Мотострелковый (танковый) взвод в бою" (The combat operations of a mechanized infantry (tank) platoon). They are not classified, were available in my university library and must be still around. It pretty much explains what Soviet doctrine was to say about waging a war against a sophisticated adversary.
Or perhaps admit that Soviet doctrine was flawed? The U.S. military to this day would largely field infantry to counter any tank offensives due to the fact that infantry, while not nearly as mobile, can fortify and hold positions easily. We invest a lot of money into anti tank systems, the American Javelin system is a good example of this.
@@housetheunstoppablessed4846 Well it seems writing is less taxing than reading for some people. You know, there would be no "tank offensives" outside Binkov's festering imagination. There would be combined arms offensives, with infantry screening the tanks, field artillery suppressing anything near, division-level artillery and precision weapons striking at the enemy staging areas and C3 facilities, EW jamming comms and radars, bombers, fighters, SAMs doing their jobs, etc etc. You cannot just say one arm or unit counters another. And it is almost 100% sure that any realistic WP vs NATO conflict in Europe will include substantial NBC use at some point, it is inevitable, starting with the losing side maybe.
@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 right…and who’s at the tip of the spear thrusting forward?
The artillery of course, or maybe the foot sloggers, perhaps it’s the EW units?
No, it’s the armored units, those are the guys who stare the enemy’s lines in the face and make the breakthroughs
Come on dude, let’s be real in basic logic, if the tanks/armored units weren’t making the breakthrough, why were they so heavily invested in more than anything else on the ground? Why was doctrine built around them and their capabilities and limitations?
@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 and, no shit it would be a NBC conflict, but one look at the first thirty seconds of every Binkov video that isn’t a nuclear exchange (except Israel VS Egypt and India Vs Pakistan) begins with “No nukes!”
@@looinrims Armor is the only thing what survives in NBC environment for any meaningful time. Every Soviet military vehicle has positive-pressure filtration unit. Tanks have a lot of metal around them to begin with so they are a natural choice for the breakthrough in nuked territories.
I once asked an Army Major who was our lecturer on tactics "Why do we talk so little about urban warfare, after Afghan and all?". The guy replied "You are being trained to be a reservist. For the kind of war you might be called for, the cities will be smoking craters".
"This NATO is bullshit, if the Russian wants, he can be in Paris in 1 day" - Every single grandpa from any Ex Eastern Bloc nation
Facts
well probably not paris but before US reinforcments would arrive they would be arround Berlin-Prague-Viena
Clearly you know nothing of logestics and supplies. To day nothing of Frances promis to use nukes should russoa cross the rhein. A threat soviet generals took seriously.
They say that because their nation was subjugated somewhat quickly in the initial invasion
They don’t realize being nazi puppets that the nazis were ripped to shreds in russia, and left Russia running for the most part, rather than fortified in strength in line
@@ohiobrian8993 repeat that in English and yeah no shit a west east war would’ve been nuclear
It’s like saying a Russo American war of today would be nuclear, duh
It would be an apocalyptic meatgrinder, that's for sure.
I was there in Germany, in the US Army during is time. Our unit was nuclear capable, as well as fully manned. Any amassing of Russian troops, would have had an immediate response in build up in NATO forces. At that time, just as today, NATO would have enjoyed air superiority over all the WARSAW pact countries. Being in a defensive position, it is extremely difficult to pry loose those defenders, especially understanding how difficult it is, to not outrun your precious fuel supply line. In short, yes, an initial invasion would be successful, however, within 24hrs, the response from NATO would have been smothering.
I've been to Russia, met Army, Navy and spec ops guys. I even had my own shadow that I gave a souvenir to. What the take away was, I really liked the people I met. Damn, it's too bad we have to inflate our chests instead of appreciating and learning from our differences.
I wonder if you would be saying this if they were still the communist USSR that was rising in power.
Given the rough parity of the forces here, the outcome might come down to the generalship of both sides. It could boil down to something like a Patton vs. Zhukov war. One weapon system not mentioned here is the infernal RPG7. I know it seems small and inconsequential, but that little rocket has inflicted enormous casualties every place it was used.
Rpgs would have been virtually useless against NATO tanks.
@@matthewharris8819 only the M1s and Leopard 2s would withstand a frontal hit M60s and especially Leopard 1s had very thin armour compared to their Soviet counterparts
@@logannicholson1850 laughs while sipping tea in challenger
@@mawdeeps7691 in 1980 the challenger wasn't in production it wasn't untill 1983 that it showed up
That’s sorta like saying the 7.62mm bullet is the most dangerous weapon in modern warfare
I mean, yeah? Cuz they’re not using anything else though
Talking about such a great offensive without discussing harrasment from the air and also probably bombing of logistic routes is... weird
He has a pretty obvious Soviet bias
Maybe because his other videos already discussed it....
Binkov always forgets about air power.
Such as the scenario where the US focuses primarily on Germany in WW2 and specifically said they'd have a much larger air force.
Then proceeds to never factor air power in again.
@@thelordofcringe Short attention span, sounds like.
Warsaw Pact anti-air defense was vastly superior to NATO's, and was built with the idea of neutralizing NATO's air supremacy.
I've always likened the cold war to 2 guys with hand grenades attempting to fight in a telephone kiosk.
I've been watching your videos for Years: always informative, data based and non bias videos. Your work is great, chapeau
Okay in the next three years we’ll get Nato Vs Warsaw Pact 1970
Warsaw pact will win easily in 1970.
A10 Thunderbolt: It's like... I was made for this
Would survive maybe 30 minutes over a Soviet battle group, assuming it ever got off the ground from it's airfield. Remember, the A10 has *never* faced an enemy that could really shoot back, and certainly not in the way a Soviet division (of any type) could.
In 1980, there's an important unexpectable point to take in count : France policy and strategy. France is not integrated to NATO, just allied to NATO and her forces are fully independent from NATO. french army had 2 armoured army corps in Germany, and immediately behind a third armoured army corp heavier than the 2 others. in 1980 then, France can field all its army in few days in Germany. Then French have 4 nuke vectors : 2 strategical ones (heavy long range strategical missiles with multiple nuke heads each, on the Plateau d'Albion and 6 SNLE with 16 M4 nukes with each 6 nuke heads) and 2 tactical (Mirage IV N and 2000 N in few squadrons with ASMP nukes and the most problematic : 2 regiments of nuke artillery with nukes called Pluton on AMX 30 base). French nuke and detterence policy and nuke approach have always been "different" : when most nuke powers were adopting the graduated riposte (if one nuke received, 2 answered), French had opted for graduated but also the total riposte... Here was the problem France posed to others : France were authorising herself to ripost nukes EVEN IF France was not impacted by nukes. France was considering to use nuke for 3 reasons : 1/ if she were attacked by nukes OR she was attacked by chemical/biological weapon OR (here the big difference) IF HER OWN VITAL INTERESTS WERE CONSIDERED UNDER UNBEARABLE THREATENS (still the case nowadays). This last option opened a large of possibility of use of nukes for France. Many USSR plans had been prepared by Soviets generals, they all take in count that before any war with NATO, it is diplomatically vital to obtain french neutrality cause USSR had a true conventional superiority (3 or 4 to 1), but french tactical nukes could change the things and all could go wrong then (nuke war, no winner). In one of the many plans, there was even a possibility to propose France to recuperate Saarland and even the Rhur in the right bank of the Rhine river and of course to assure france there would be no attack on the 2 french corps in Germany. These possibility has only very very few chance to be accepted by France. There's almost no doubt that france which had troops in Berlin itself was ready to put all her conventional troops and army at the NATO disposal, but to keep the total independance of her nukes.
And we have to keep in mind that both NATO and USSR/Varsovian pact had mostly of their plans being defensive ones, not offensive ones. Thanks to the balance of terror (Nukes).
USSR were convinced that USA and even UK would never use nukes if Soviets were not. But they were not sure about French. Why then ? simply because France metropolitan territory, a contrario to the 2 other western nuke powers had known harsh occupation and humiliation in WWII. Many think that french nukes were just here to show to world "hey we have them, we are strong too)... there's an even more important reason : independance towards our own allies (French have never forgotten nor forgiven AMGOT plan) and even more, avoiding any new occupation, better dead than occupied. And the french nuke force is the third stock pile after the 2 super powers (URSS/Russia now and USA) because De Gaulle was saying >..., he added "let imagine France is a human and the enemy a big Bear (you can see who he was targetting ;) ), >.
Without french independence, USSR wouldn't surely have decided to attack (USA and NATO was a big fish anyway) BUT USSR could have thought about... With the french independence, it's almost impossible : it makes too much parameters and put hasard in the thing.
Initial plan called for 100s of nukes used mostly by NATO. France would be a minor player in this war - a bit bigger then say Poland. There was no win scenario for NATO without Nukes. Hence crazy idea of nuclear mine field - blowing up all of Germany.
NATO was not about to just nuke in Germany but also in Poland and all over Warsaw pact. I think not nuking France b/c French have nukes would go out the window in the first 24h.
Any work with neutral France was to simply limit NATO response - it is hard to believe that Soviets would manage to take Spain - even if it took few weeks to take out Germany and few more weeks for France uber extended nuked lines and mountains of Spain would prove 99% too hard. So why go there - make France neutral - an obstacle to NATO as much as to Soviets and consolidate Germany / Italy etc.
I think it becomes clear that any war was simply not worth it for anyone. Tiny limited mini wars were of little payout and of high risk. Soviets just limited themselves to liberating different nations through proxy wars. This mostly had negative effect for colonial powers, which US was not.
@@tomk3732 France a minor actor ? French was the second in term of land army on the continent (just behind the german, but with a better air force for France), 3 times more troops than UK on par with German and USA... another one which didn't know the force in presence in the 80's... France was in 80's and still is the strongest european army on the continent... your anti-french opinion makes you saying bulshit it seems
@@tomk3732 Also France would have never been invaded as they would nuke full scale instantly ... France will never authorise a new occupation, what don't you understand guy ? better death than slavery. French nukes are here only for that goal.
A neutral France would have cut all reinforcement in Germany... all NATO plans ware using french ports of the atlantic and of the channel to reinforce the continent... it seems you have no knowledge in strategy... UK had only 2 light corps in Germany... the German had a big land army, but no air force compared to france. Italy, the third major power would have harsh time to pass the alps to reinforce Germany as well...
@@jpc7118 Myth of France or UK as major players died with WWII - especially France. France is by far not the strongest army in Europe today. I venture Russia is. I mean seriously, France has just 400 tanks total ;) Out of which just over 200 are in service (rest in storage). Also France only has wheeled APCS numbering less then 1000 unless you count armored cars as well. Army size is just around 115k. Air force has 200 jets but only half are modern.
This is roughly similar land fire power as Poland. Poland has a bit more pp 144k, far more tanks & more modern (especially with 250 Abrams added) and just touch less modern fighters (F16 plus F-35) (80 vs 100).
So much so for "French power".
If not for Adolf Poland today would be roughly the same size country France is. In 1939 France had just few million pp more then Poland.
I was stationed at the only A-10 base in Europe, from 1977-1980. RAF Woodbridge, and Bentwaters, between them had FIVE squadrons of A-10's, of 24 planes each. Our twin bases would have destroyed a thousand pieces of Soviet armor between them. ALSO...by 1974, the US armed forces were an ALL VOLUNTEER force...and the Soviets had 85% two-year draftees, with 132 different language classes. Soviets had a shit army, with shit equipment, and shit morale. The Germans (West) would have stopped them cold, and the EAST Germans would have helped them. The Warsaw Pact would have disintegrated almost immediately.
During the Ukrainian war, it is becoming more clear that the answer entirely relies on air support. If you control the sky, then yes you can stop a tank rush. If you don't control the sky, it's a lot harder.
Except the Ukrainians nor Russians control the skies. The real answer is infantry sized anti tank weapons and massed artillery. Yes air superiority is best but apparently you don't even need that.
Buddy, you should probably learn that making conclusions out of events that haven’t concluded themselves, and of course haven’t been fully analyzed, is a recipe to getting proven wrong
If NATO can’t stop it, guess I have to 😤
Built different
A bona fide maniac
I was US Army 11b Infantry in the late 80s. Our whole focus was slow the armor spearheads.
Kill T72s till they pushed us into the channel.
We also fully expected tactical nuke use by Russia at stopped points.
russia wouldnt use nukes when there winning
@@frankrenda2519 Russia would have nuked the NATO port cities right from the start to prevent reinforcements.
@@floydlooney6837 wouldnt happen nato was a lot weaker soviets would have used cruise and anti ship missiles eliminating its enemies
@@frankrenda2519 Soviet doctrine literally states that "Tactical" nuclear weapons would be used BEFORE ground invasion. They were essentially a gigantic artillery barrage to be used at strategic points before the main offensive.
This is all publicly available information.
@@CarrotConsumer your wrong no such doctrine .the soviets and warsaw pact were very much superior in numbers and weapons.
Disappointing that the video not even mentions the A-10 which was built for this exact scenario. Can't take this serious.
The British army had no doubt about it. They knew they couldn't stop a Soviet assault, only slow it down, and then only for a few days.
numbers tell one story, but there are further factors. While the terrain is mentioned, there are a number of larger rivers shich would make things difficult for the Soviets (hence their most popular war plan called for the river Rhine to be the goal of invasion) and it doesn't take into account that the air war would have been rather one-sided. The US had already introduced their 4th generation F-15 and F-16 at the time while the Soviets still only had 3rd gen aircraft available. The Soviets had only a handful of outdated AEW&C aircraft while the US started to put the E-3 into service. On top of all that, the A-10 was in service and built for exactly that kind of scenario. Maybe a NATO victory would have been costlier than "Red Storm Rising" but the Soviets would not have won.
8:06 Turkey had ~1345 M47s and ~3008 M48/A2/A2Cs in the early 80s.
The Soviets couldn't cross the rhine. Absolutely impossible.
And then in the mist of defeat by tank hoard you hear a Brrrrrrrrrrrt coming frok the sky 🤣
Unfortunately even by US analysis all A-10s would have been lost in a matter of days. All US carriers too. People dont realize the attrition that would have occurred and the rate of it.
Yeah, flying sorties against villagers who have no AA is one thing, but flying against an actual army is another. Way easier said than done
😂😂😂 y'all a bunch of commie suck ups, we already had a A10 vs Russian tank mash up in the early 90s in operation dessert storm "liberating" Kuwait fighting the Iraqi army and guess what the A10 fairs very very well and with regards to our aircraft carriers, y'all put your faith too much in scared, pressured scientists and engineers of a cold war era Soviet Russia, they might take a few of them but not all of them.......
@@ec329 Yes, America certainly won against a Soviet-equipped Iraqi army. You are right about that. ISIS won against an American-equipped Iraqi army. By your logic, Isis should be able to defeat an American equipped American army. The Saudis are American equipped, and they're performing poorly against rebels, too. You completely missed my point. Those American or Soviet equipped forces I mentioned aren't proper armies with experience and doctrine, whereas the Soviet army was a proper army with experience and doctrine. You can be patriotic, fine, just don't be an idiot about it. If you really think A10s would be backflipping through the sky dabbing on Soviet tank columns while the Russians manning the fighter jets and multi layered air defence were too busy covering their ears and shitting their pants and crying that they'll never be as good as Americans, then you've been watching too much Hollywood, my guy.
@@tehhappehhaps i don't understimate the Soviets, equipments aren't the only things that win battles, the soldiers training and adequacy and over all character does, however the video states that the Soviets in tjat time had a I'll equipped air force and seeing how you know about tactics and warfare you must see that in the battlefield following WW1 having a proper airforce in the difference between victory and defeat, in my opinion the real reason anf only reason we didn't take on the Soviets back then is is because they had nukes too, but if it came down to this fight they will shoot down many planes but our air support will be bery effective against them and in the war for Kuwait at the time Iraq was evaluated to be the fourth most powerful standing army in the world, and that speaks volumes to what our airforce and allied coalition accomplished, even the tank to tank battle of 73 eastings goes along way to show how lacking Soviet technology was to ours at the time, thanks for reminding me to not underestimate our enemies thou sometimesnational pride does get in the way of logic.......
"Rush attack point G comrades!"
" Appologies comrade general, what is point G "
" Gibraltar comrade. Onward! Over the corpses of Mcdonalds to the rock in the seas!"
"Target rich environment"- A-10 pilot.
Вопрос: почему всегда рассматривают атаку Советов? Держу пари у НАТО был свой план "броска к Днепру", это рассмотреть было бы куда интереснее!)
@@duiveldoder what about Churchill's plans to nuke Ussr shortly after ww2, by the way if u read some of the memouars of us generals , it will prove u wrong, so that u don't take me as russiaan bot get on spotify and listen to dan carlin, u'll be surprised how us generals wanted to wage war against soviet union, cuban crisis is example
I think the chances of a nuclear exchange being started by NATO are about even with chances the Warsaw Pact would start it. I also think that if NATO and the Warsaw Pact found themselves in a non-nuclear war, the USSR would absolutely have to push the Fulda Gap immediately to keep peace talks on their terms.
Edit: neither side would willingly chose to go to war if all information was available to them at all times, but uncertainty has a way of causing people to stumble towards harsh measures. Whether that ends with an American or a Russian hand on the button comes down to chance.
I would rather have 1000 Apache's than 1000 sams. The choppers can fly under the sams radar. They did that in the 1991 Iraq war.
Only problem is that the soviet union is not iraq.
Apache didn't go into production until 1982
Did you know that Germany had most major bridges and roads mined? Bridges were deliberately constructed with a weak point for destruction. Even roads were mined with false sewer covers, Plans were to deliberately create traffic jams, German Motorways are at several places convertable into airfields. I am living near the rhine and there are for example still places prepared for tank crossings. There was a whole range of defensive measures Plus every man had to serve more then 2 years in the army. Given the high population the potential reserves were huge! Also Nato was aware of the fulda gap plans and it's defense strategy was tailored to that. I think your estimate is very optimistic. In this scenario the WP would have had a hard time to even reach the rhine. Plus it would then have had to face a lot of preasure on it's northern flank.
yeah thats why ussr had engineer troops
not just Germany my friend. most all of America as well. not mined..well not all of it. but most is engineered to be destroyed.
@@killdizzle Here is the video of the inefficient badly trained poorly motivated coca-cola starved conscripts of 36th pontoon bridge regiment building a 200 meter bridge over river Elba in about 7 minutes.
ruclips.net/video/WpD7esUuwDU/видео.html
Here is the second video of the same disillusioned ready to surrender to the first shopping mall conscripts breaking the bridge into two part and using them as barges to ferry 10 trucks per at a time.
ruclips.net/video/V-hCTO00mPI/видео.html
Now if all the bridges within 150 km from the border are blown up to slow down the Soviets how you gonna bring up the reinforcements or conduct a tactical withdrawal while slowing the momentum and blowing 42 tanks with 42 missiles while masterfully avoiding inept soviet artillery and nonexistent strike aircraft and tactical missiles? Over your own pontoon bridges?
This attitude is the reason that a Russian army once in a while occupies its enemy capitol. On average once in every century some country or union under a dominant country visits Russia with new world order idea and then for several generation children learn how bad the Russians are and how they just dream of invading them to take everyone to Siberia.
The problem with this scenario is that it strictly follows what NATO assumed the Warsaw Pact would do: a tank assault through Germany. It doesn't take into account the ACTUAL Warsaw Pact plans for a war: since the Soviets believed such a war would eventually escalate into nuclear weapons, they had decided to use them right off the bat. So they planned for an immediate nuclear assault all over the Western Front, with over 400 nukes being used. THEN they would advance.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, and NATO's delusions of a big battle with the Reds in Germany would not happen - all of NATO's major troop formations in Germany would have been vaporized in the very first hours of the conflict.
I have been waiting for this!
Does anyone really think the Non Russian Troops be that effective? Heck I think they'd switch sides
I imagine that the Soviets would intermingle their units to make their satellite states behave, or avoid using them as much as possible. Still, I do think that if one state mutinied, the rest would follow out of general resentment of the USSR and fear of being nuked by NATO. Thankfully the world never had to find out for real, but it's such a fascinating what-if.
@@TammoKorsai they could try. I work with a bunch of polish, Magyar, east German and ✔ guys that were conscripted in the 80s and they hated the Russians
Not surprising at all.
There's a scene in "Yes Minister" where Humphrey talks with disdain about NATO's state of combat readiness.
I remember from the newspapers at the time that American troops were not very motivated during large scale training excercises.
Rather than crawl around in the snow and mud like their smaller NATO counterparts, the Americans would prefer to remain inside their armoured vehicles, where it was warm, cosy and coffee and a hot meal close nearby.
The "Canadian Army Trophy" was a NATO competition in which all NATO members competed in tank gunnery.
In all its years when it was open to all NATO members, the Belgians and the British won three times, the Germans won it six times
while both Canada and the USA only won once.
And the Dutch won the trophy twice, which in my opinion was all the more impressive because we had an army of conscripts at the time, so for each new competition, green recruits had to be trained untill they excelled in tank gunnery every year.
In contrast, the British and Americans had teams professional soldiers of specially trained tank crews whose sole objective was to win that trophy.
*After 1991,* both Canada and the USA won the tropy a few times but that was mainly due to the fact that the competition was restricted to Canada and the USA from that time onwards.
I believe the Volksarmee (Army of DDR) would have been tasked to invade Denmark, and not thrown against West-Germans for this exact reason.
Here's the thing in 1980 the economy was already terrible, 12 years later the country fell apart in which many of its European territories joined nato, a county can stand much less fight if it's internal matters aren't solved
Yes it can. The exhaustion and near collapse of the german economy due to massive armament and other spendings was one of the main reasons Hitler started the war when he did, they needed plunder or face economical collaps. And they came pretty far considering the whole economy was fueld by slavelabor and plunder by the end..
In other words, economical crisis can be the main drive behind the war, and fuled by conquered resources it can kepp going on for quite a while.
The USSR in ww2 had no economy but they still managed to produce huge amounts of war materiel and win the war. Even besieged economically and on the backfoot Germanys highest production was in 44
@@Internetbutthurt The Soviets were better chess players. Always have been, always will be.
The Germans had no strategic bombers.
The Soviets moved entire factories to the east, out of reach of the Luftwaffe.
They had more men, could continue manufacturing tanks and as time went by, they improved on their strategy and tactics.
Also, look up any documentary about Operation Bagration 1944.
USSR's collapse was a sudden event. There was no question of unity till 1990. The core of the soviet union (Russia + ukraine + belarus + 5 central asian republics) all voted for preservation of the USSR. The lowest percentage was in Ukrainian SSR where 75% of the populous voted for the preservation of the USSR and all the central asian SSRs voted by more than 90% for the preservation of the USSR.
I think you have to factor in the A-10 warthog. I’m pretty sure it was developed and made available in large numbers by 1980 specifically because of a perceived need for the mass destruction of Soviet tanks in rapid succession.
The A-10 would have literally been flying into the lions jaws the soviets were well aware of NATO airpower hence why they had such an obserd amount of air defenses plus if u think soviet tanks would get torn to shreds by attrition aircraft have that tenfold u could reasonably expect half if not 3/4 of all nato aircraft to be rendered in operable due to fatigue and or damage/loses
@@logannicholson1850 Yes the A10 meant nothing to the Soviets. That's why they immediately scrambled to develop the SU25 to compete in close air support. And the A10s would be arriving at treetop level probably with the first wave specifically coming for the non fixed surface-to-air missiles. Ask Russian planners for the Egyptians in 1973 what happens when the ground forces advance more rapidly than the SAM protection.And they have to advance along a completely expected corridor. And in such an all-out war situation, any weapons system would have sustained many losses so I do not see a real point here.
Having been in the Army stationed in Germany during the 80’s I am pretty certain that NATO was completely unprepared for any kind of military conflict with Warsaw Pact forces until 1983. After 1983 everything changed and NATO forces rapidly modernized.
What was the program of NATO to modernize their army in 1983?
An auto-loader is not an advantage. A soldier can load a main gun as fast or faster then an auto-loader, and isn't prone to jamming. The soldier can also help spot enemy tanks when not actively loading, maintain the tank, pull security, and assist with maintenance. An auto-loader just means you don't need to recruit as many soldiers to fill your tanks roster, but when the tanks meet on the battlefield, give me a human loader every time.
He can also help replenish the vehicle with ammunition, fuel and other things. A soldier can stand watch, a autoload can't. A soldier can cook food for the rest of the crew, a autoload can't.
Autoloaders rarely jam though, and can load just as fast on the move. On the move a soldier can get moved around in the tank and if you hit a trench or something he might bump into something
Let me start off by saying I love your channel. I'm glad at the end of this video you finally mentioned training between the Warsaw pack and the NATO countries. The problem with comparing equipment to equipment and numbers and numbers is when you fail to take into account training and military doctrine. Even El ite troops of the Soviet forces didn't spend as much time with practical training as the NATO forces did. That includes the Air Force of both sides. The other problem that the Soviets had was their military doctrine of command control where individual unit leaders at the lower levels didn't have as much freedom to do what they thought best as NATO forces did. That has a big impact on combat efficiency.
Which brings the point of conscripts vs "professional soldiers"... while the video brings up the wars against Israel, it ignores the fact Israel in fact has a conscript army, difference being it is highly motivated and well trained.
Most of the tanks in those stock training footage have been destroyed lol
Czechoslovak tank numbers are way too underestimated. In year 1980 there were 4223 tanks in Czechoslovak army. Actually Wikipedia has it right here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War_tank_formations#Czechoslovakia
As everything else about Warsaw pact in this video.
Iirc, one of my colleagues, who was in the army in the 1980’s, said that American attack helicopters were projected to have a 42:1 kill ratio against Russian tanks with the TOW missile system, while they wouldn’t suffer any losses with the Hellfire system once it arrived.
XD
is this a joke?
@@Ronald98 nope. He basically said that because the TOW system was/is wire guided, a Cobra helicopter was expected to take out 42 tanks on average before getting shot down. But because the Hellfire is fire-and-forget, it was unknown as to the kill ratio the Apaches and Cobras would have so the Army just assumed a metaphorical unlimited number of kills
We’re shelled and tracked Soviet AA units not a thing in the 80’s or something?
@@notbadsince97 quite possibly this was in an ideal world where they wouldn’t be facing said systems. Either that, or the Soviet’s didn’t really know how to counter attack helicopters as they didn’t seem to have an effective doctrine around them at the time. And I only say this because their main/only attack helicopter at the time was the Mi-24 Hind family
I see an issue with you not factoring in Bridges, I hardly doubt that there would be any chance to get over the River Rhine, all the Bridges where desingned and built with space for the explosives blowing them up, some are said to have included the explosives all year around with regular maintainance.
It's nice that we never found out how would this nightmare play out in practice. It would quite certainly escalate to tactical nukes within days, if not right away.
I don't think US would actually use nukes. I'm thinking Germany would be lost after about three weeks. That would lead to a slow Warsaw pact advance. US reinforcement would be less than expected and reserve US units would be slow to deploy. On the other side I based on 911 would expect US to have a hard time mobilizing all the volunteers. After four months I would expect a US Army adapted and equipped for the actual war to start pushing the Warsaw pact back and back and back.
In West Germany, your graphic had the Soviets taking southern (mountainous) Germany but not the flat northern plain leading up to Denmark? I think the reverse would be true.
Having seen the Alps for real, I thought the same thing.
Yes, in fact, most Soviet armour units were based in Northern Germany. In the South there was just the 9th combined arms army.
Romania and Greece would have attempted to remain neutral regardless of alliances. And the Warsaw Pact would have invaded Austria regardless of neutrality.
Hard to see Sweden not joining the Nato side in 1980. That would have added 600 decent fighters, 700 tanks and ifvs and a massive artillery
Unless Sweden was invaded they would all stay in Sweden. There was no way our Centurions and S's would be ahopped anywhere.
I think a lot of WTO troops would be disloyal. How loyal would Polish, Hungarian and Czech troops would be to the USSR?
Its not about how sophisticated the weapons are or how powerful and well protected the tank is. Its the training of the operator that matters. A well trained unit is a good unit. A well disciplined unit is a great unit.
What about IFVs? Bradleys and BMP-2 have good ATGMs and would be very effective.
@Drew Peacock I’m guessing any really full on war would have two phases. The first, where all the high tech weaponry is wasted on the other guy’s high tech weaponry. The second, where the nucs kill everybody.
@Drew Peacock This is just what I recall from official statements made in the 80's. I think the nukes were intended for the supply lines, but I'm not sure. Either way, once you pull out the nukes, its Armageddon. That may have been the point, to warn the Soviets that any attack would end up in nuclear annihilation.
@Drew Peacock The scenarios I have heard about all end with progression from tactical to strategic.
@Drew Peacock Sensible people? No. But Germany attacked the Soviet Union, for no real reason. A sensible person would not do that, either.
@Drew Peacock Russian nuclear doctrine dictates a full strategical retaliation on cities etc. when conventional defeat is imminent. Plus biological weapons. I think i dont have to explain what that means.
NATO meanwhile has limited response, that means attacking conventional assets with small tactical nukes. Which would escalate in the former pretty quickly.
Lets hope no one is mentally ill enough to believe that you can keep such a war conventional or that you can win a nuclear war. I dont wanna rebuild civilization from the 14th century...
2024, Ukraine stopped a russian tank invasion.
Nato supply:😐
@@kenziestuff99 When Russia invaded, Ukraine had only Soviet weapons from the fall of the soviet union. It wasn’t until a few months after when military aid from other countries arrived to support Ukraine.
No it didn't
I imagine things like anti-tank mines and tactical nukes were invented by then. Just a hunch.
In the Norwegian army in the late '90s, we were still basically training to oppose a Russian invasion. The assumption was that we would be up against overwhelming odds and take staggering casualties. The broad idea was to fight a delaying action and slow them down as much as we could for 72 hours - after which we hoped we would have NATO reinforcements to help us. Whichever of us that were still somehow alive were expected to be behind enemy lines by then, and were then supposed to fight a guerilla war against their supply lines and such.
It wasn't as scary as I think it would have been if I had been in the army during the actual Cold War - my father trained in the '60s as an interpreter - he learned Russian.