The Cold War.....

...without nuclear weapons. If the a-bomb would not have been developed and the conventional warfare still stay alive without the nuclear deterrence in the background, would this mean that the Cold War would have become a Hot one. Would it just have been merely a matter of time till one of the powers try to overrun the other. Or in other words, did the nuclear weapons protect our world from another devasting World War ?

Che.

 

absolutely , and the red army would have poured through the fuldi gap and sweet old uncle joe would have ruled all of western europe ...sometimes if wish the liberal anti yankee euro elites could have tasted a whiff of life under pocked faced georgian antichrist ...just for comparisn ..

 

I love the smell of a can of worms being opened at 3 in the morning.

 

Stalin was crazy enough, his succesors (Hruschov, Brezhnyev) were not.

Imagine we survived even that ( not Georgian anticrist but a just as bloody local variety) and an Austrian Anticrist for good mesure.
Same could be said for warmongers across the pond. What they really need is a nice little war and occupation that would give them a bit of a perspective in such things. You might even have a bit different opinion on Freedom fighter/terrorist topic.

Lovely isn't it

 

when my dad maned the fuldi gap in the late 50s he said the russians were expected to come with some 36 divisions within the first 72 hours or so with another 20 behind that . what ,pray tell ,would nato be expected to do with 50 motor rifle divisions , what would preclude breznev or krushev from takeing this easy prize and being done with it....

 

I would think that western Europe woulve been overrun.

 

It wasn't as simple as that. The Warsaw Pact forces response to the AirLand Battle Doctrine developed for NATO in the early 80's was to explore the feasibility of increasing the rate of advance of their forces to 150 km per day. Their own studies concluded that for logistical reasons no more than 60 km. per day could be achieved. Keep in mind that the NATO plan for the defense of western Europe was a delaying action until more substantial forces could be brought into action.
They also had to contend with the possibility of the use of tactical nuclear weapons to slow that Warsaw Pact advance.
I found it interesting that when the participants (military leaders) met during the Parallel History Project the Russians were very surprised, even dubious, that NATO had no offensive plan to strike first and the NATO leaders were surprised that the Warsaw Pact also had no plan to strike first , at least according to the participants.

 

Would the East germans be part of such an assault ? Or would the ruskies feel that east germans would be to hesistant and unwilling ? Where they there just to guard the border ?

 

No offence, Woody, but have you ever considered that maybe your views are a little tainted by cultural conditioning due to the age and country you grew up in?

Of course, even in the Netherlands there were many people who screamed that the Reds were coming and would soon rule us with the iron fist in which they already held Eastern Europe. However, other voices were heard saying that it wasn't the Soviets who stationed soldiers and stored nuclear weapons on our soil. I'm pretty sure we were better off ruled by capitalism than we would have been under communism, but there are two sides to every coin; as much as the Soviets were vilified by the US, the US was vilified by the sizeable Communist organizations in Europe, and it was hard to distinguish information from propaganda either way.

As for the actual what-if, I seriously doubt the Soviets would have attacked Western Europe any more than the US would have sought to liberate Eastern Europe. For both powers the cost would simply be too great. I think only a sheer fit of madness on the part of characters like Stalin could have provoked all-out conflict in the postwar situation, and for a very long time Stalin was apparently deterred by the threat of a mere few atomic bombs - for there was no such thing as MAD during his lifetime. This means that we must either assume Stalin cared so much for his major cities that he refused to go to war just to spare them (and how likely is that), or that he did not want to invade Western Europe regardless of the nuclear threat.

 

I can recall reading a Time magazine from about 1995 which had an article in which they discussed declassified plans from Polish sources, including photographs of the maps showing what would have been the Cold/Hot war invasion of western Europe. The plan IIRC called for the Polish Army invading from the North, the East German Army would have formed the central thrust, the bulk of the Red Army behind. One thing I can recall was that it appeared the location of practically every significant NATO base was marked on this map to be on the recieving end of a tactical nuclear strike, it seemed particularly notable since I was living on one of those due to get the "Instant Sunshine" treatment at the time.

Please allow for discrepencies due to time differences here, but if anyone can find a way to access Time's archive the article was probably between September 94-June 95.

 

someone should answer CSP's question because im interested in it as well

As for the Germans after WW2 and the nazis were gone, they continued to make weapons such as the leopold tank, I know the Allies were going to use West Germany as a buffer zone but since Germany was pretty much going to be in the middle it was going to be turned into a burning hotcake...

as for weaponry would most of NATO use M-16 or others such as the FN Fal?

 

Very little of NATO in western Europe used the M-16 in the cold war most European nations adopted their own or locally licence produced guns, in fact AFAIK it was something of a bone of contention that the US apparently insisted on the adoption of the 7.62mm NATO as the standard round then fairly promptly dropped that as their own standard in favour of the 5.56mm, the rest of NATO didn't reach this standardisation until the very late 80s early 90s.

In the early 1990s regular British Army units still used the Sterling SMG (Looked like a tarted up Sten gun), SLR (FN-FAL) and the Bren Gun.

Although a lot depends on what time frame you're considering, personally I do not believe the cold war would have got hot even without Nukes, warfare by then was simply too expensive. The Empire was disintegrating, Britain was bankrupt, France as too occupied overseas, the Soviets were exhausted having lost 25 million dead. I'd say probably only the US was in any position to finance a major war and as a whole they, quite rightly so IMO, weren't interested without major provocation.

The longer after 1945 you leave things the more entrenched (And relatively comfortable) behind their own lines people get and the less of a likelihood of a "Hot War" the Cold War becomes.

 

IIRC I know theres a plan operation ?crazy? (or somewere along those lines)

Of churchills idea to rearm the German army to press into the soviet union and take them out quick while using nuclear weapons. but they decided on playing defensive.... as for there attack on the soviet union do you think it would've worked?

 

how many combat ready divisions were on line to defend western europe from a possible soviet -warsaw pact armoured offensive in the 50s ,60s ,80s ? us ,brit ,w german ,french ? ...anyone know how to find this info , i havent been able to figure it out...

 

roel , i grew up , as you did in a democracy . we both enjoyed freedom of speech ,movement ,assembly ,free elections , a free press and a mostly free market economy . these freedoms which we take for granted were not enjoyed by those behind the iron curtain .if you ignore the freedom issues altogether , the economic issues and quality of life differences are worth fightnig tooth and nail for .

the tiny us and british forces stationed in western europe were expected to die in the avalanch of soviet -w pact armour and thereby cause the american and british people to be de facto victims ( along with those in the netherlands ) in any soviet lead aggression ...a sacrificial trip wire of brit and yankee blood which assured stalin that while he was crushing the armies of western europe he would also be starting a war with america and the UK .

The only real hope of even slowing down the soviet blitzkrieg was the tactical nukes in europe .for anyone in europe to pretend that life in a soviet puppet state would be no worse than haveing a few tousand american servicemen stationed here and there is twist of logic that is astoundingly silly imo .the gun towers ,searchlights and mine feilds were not built by the communists because hordes of dutch , belgian and german nationals were clamouring to get into the eastern european sphere of prosperity and freedom .

 

Oh, freedom and democracy sound lovely, but how does your argument explain the phenomenon called Ostalgie? Many people were trying to get out of the DDR, no one was trying to get in to it; yet many more people still regarded it as their homeland.

I don't know if I'm jumping too far ahead here, but it looks like you are trying to make it seem as if I'm arguing in favour of Communism. Once again I just want to get it out of the way that I'm not. I have never done so before. I keep having to point this out whenever a debate on here goes this way because apparently many Americans still can't see the difference between a somewhat detached central perspective and outright fervent extreme-left rallying of the proletariat. Just because I'm not groundlessly assuming that "of course" the Soviets would promptly invade Europe if the US hadn't had nukes, and just because I'm not brushing aside the 30% Communist vote in many Western European countries as a "lunatic fringe", that doesn't make me a Communist.

 

During the early to mid 1980's the US Army had garrisoned in West Germany the 3d Infantry Divison, 8th Infantry Division, elements of the 1st Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, 3d Armored Division, 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (sitting right in the middle of Fulda). There were also brigades from the 4th Infantry Division, 2d Armored Division, and a brigade of the 82d Airborne was in Italy.

I don't really know how much the USAF and other NATO forces were there but would imagine it was a sizable force and both well equiped and well trained.

 

Yeah, in the 40's after the war. War torn countries and a record high level of sympathy for communism. That didnt last too long

 

"Outright fervent far-left rallying of the proletariat"? Really, Roel, people don't talk like that except in Communist propaganda and bad Hollywood movies.

Seriously, no one should accuse you of being a Communist supporter; you've said often enough how much you oppose it. And the situation in Europe was more complex than many people seem to realize, be they on the left or the right. Would the Soviets have invaded Western Europe in the absense of American nukes? Possibly. Given the economic prosperity of the West compared to the Warsaw Pact nations, the perceived dividends of such an attack might well have proven irresistibly tempting for the Russian government. Fortunately, we'll never have to find out.

As for the 30% Communist vote you mention in Western Europe, that just proves the wisdom of the old adage about how you can fool some of the people all of the time.

 

Not to mention the slingshot effect. Plus, countries like France are politically curious.