Does anyone have any information of troop strength for NATO during the Cold War?

I've found a few websites such as global security but other than that I can't find other websites that talk about troop strength for various NATO countries during the Cold War.

By troop strength, I mean numbers of men in their various military branches. For example how big was the Italian military during the Cold War? How large was it army, navy and air force (including how many aircraft in the air force).
How large was the Bundeswehr including the Heer, Airforce and Navy? How many troops were in the Turkish Armed forces during the Cold War?

Other urls found in this thread:

dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA229656
twitter.com/AnonBabble

For the Bundeswehr:
490.000 total
340.000 Army
110.000 Air force
38.000 Navy

about 1,5-1,7 max. million reserves in the case of war

MBT's:
1170 M47
1690 M48
replaced by:
2400 Leo 1
replaced by
2125 Leo 2

In addition:
750 tank destroyers (Kannonjgd.pz.)
about 300 rocket TD's at any given time

Begone, Soviet time traveler!

IFV's:
1600 Spz. kurz Hotchkiss
2176 Spz. lang Hs 30
replaced by:
2130 Spz Marder

APC's
about 300 various designs at any given time until '84
replaced by:
4000 m113

AA:
450 M42
replaced by:
420 Flakpz. Gepard
140 Roland on Marder-chasis
Artillery:
580 M109
280 M107/M110

Air force:
(1980's)
586 F104 Starfighter (gound attack, interceptor, nuclear capable)
163 F104 (recon)
175 F4F (fighter/bomber)
88 RF4F (recon)
334 Panavia Tornado (bomber, naval strike, recon, nuclear capable)
175 Dornier Alpha jet (Trainer, recon, ground attack)
not listed are various transports, trainers etc.

Helos:
212 Bo-105 (mainly Anti-Tank)
250 UH-1 (transport)
112 CH-53 (transport)
another 200-300 trainers, transports, recon helo's of various types

Navy (small and insignificant)
13 destroyers
6-8 frigates
30-40 fast attack boats
5 Sub chasers
about 25 submarines (80's)
a bunch of smaller mine sweepers/coastal partol boats

That little mini-panzer in the background is cute! Cute!

That would be an IFV Spz. kurz, Hotchkiss. But yes indeed cute

>MBT's:
>1170 M47
>1690 M48
>replaced by:
>2400 Leo 1
>replaced by
>2125 Leo 2

Suggesting that either M47's or M48's replacement in German service was fast affair is silly. M47's was replaced relatively fast and first M48's were surplussed and sold to certain US-client states around the world in mid-60's and in 70's, but that was more about international politics than technology. Certain countries, mostly in middle east, had occasionally acute need for serviceable tanks and most US M47's and M48's weren't being maintained while in storage, Bundeswehr had plenty of working tanks in storage. M48's stayed in German service until 90's and with Leopard 1's those weren't replaced with anything, those were simply retired without replacement, both just before end of the Cold War and after said event. Bundeswehr still has about 30 mine clearing variants of M48 in service.

>Soviets realize they are going to loose the CW
>send a highly skilled KGB operative to obtain information (pic related)
>operative quickly goes to Veeky Forums and becomes a /pol/tard
>returns and advises the Politbureau in the worst possible way
>SU collapses
>political career
>slowly builds a political system that is the descendant of Fascism
>russians being russians (and Fascism being shitty) its still shitty and corrupt

*forgot pic

Yeah, you're right. I threw the list together from various sources, as OP has a point, that there are few comprehensive lists on the topic. I didn't mean to say, that suddenly everything replaced was immediatly scuttled, just withdrawn from frontline service.
I also forgot:
160 MARS/M270 MLRS
about 200 LARS MLRS (can't find any decent number source)

Also, the number of reserves is to high, it would've been 8-900,000 reserves for a total army strength of 1,3-1,4 million

NATO - Warsaw Pact Force Mobilization 1988

dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA229656

should have figures for everyone plus interesting analysis of their force posture. I'll excerpt some for tl;dr later

West Germany:
As of 1987, West Germany, as the main front line alliance member, contributed 50% of NATO combat ready ground forces, 30% of its combat aircraft and 70-100% of its Baltic Sea naval aviation. In the event of mobilization the Heer would have expanded from 300,000 to 1,000,000 active duty personnel.

Under the Heerstruktur IV reforms of 1980, the Heer fielded 12 divisions: 1 Alpine, 1 Airborne, 6 Armor and 4 Mechanized. These totaled 36 maneuver brigades, of which 17 were panzer, 16 were panzergrenadier and 3 were airborne.

They were backed up by the Territorial Army, which consisted of 15 regiments, mostly reserve.

The authorized strength of a Heer Panzer division was 18,000 men with 308 tanks and 310 IFV/APCs. A PzGdr division was 21,000 men with 110 tanks, 222 IFVs and 150 APCs, so the baseline strength of the West German maneuver force would be about 242,000.

This shouldn't be taken to contradict the figure given by since 242k doesn't include corps level elements or a shitload of other personnel - just the total authorized strength of the Heer's regular divisions.

As pic related shows, in event of war the Bundeswehr (together with the British Army of the Rhine and USAREUR) would have borne the brunt of the initial fighting while the other NATO armies mobilized and REFORGER got underway.

Pic is a comparison of total baseline strength for the West Euro NATO powers and their standing forces in West Germany. Obviously the US was the largest with over 200,000, 26% of the US Army.

As a proportion of their entire army, Belgium had the most stationed on the "front line" at 37%. The British Army of the Rhine was a close second at 35%. In absolute terms the BAOR was the 2nd largest foreign force in West Germany. France was the 3rd largest force in Germany but their overall army was larger than Britain's.

France
The French Army OOB in 1987 is on the right. It consisted of 10 divisions organized into 3 corps, plus a Rapid Action Force (FAR) of five divisions. The total combat strength of these formations was 200,000 men, 1,200 MBTs and 400 artillery pieces - approximately the equivalent of 1 Soviet Field Army.

The 2nd Corps was forward deployed in the Rhineland and the 3rd Corps was deployed in North France, where they could advance to meet penetrations in Bavaria or the Ruhr respectively. The 1st Corps was stationed in Eastern France and, together with the light divisions of the FAR, would have acted as a reserve in support of 2nd or 3rd as necessary. In event of war, the French Army's mission would have been to launch operational-scale counterattacks against PACT second-echelon armies and operational maneuver groups penetrating into West Germany.

A French Corps was relatively light, with 400 MBTs total, compared to 800 in a Bundeswehr Corps or 750 in US Army Corps. These would have been equipped with the AMX-30B2, an older generation tank significantly less capable than the Leopard 2 or the M1a1. This partly reflects France's strategic interest in maintaining mobility to deploy overseas, which they had to balance with NATO's requirement for heavy forces deployable on the continent. France in the 70s and 80s had probably the largest ongoing overseas force commitments of any non-US NATO power, and devoted substantial resources to building up expeditionary force projection.

French mobilization would have been slow due to their reliance on reservists to fill out the Corps strength. At the very end of the 1980s they were making progress on improving their ability to rapidly deploy across the Rhine, but the main French force would still have arrived relatively late in event of war.

I'm the OP that asked this question. Thank you this is very helpful for future research and for possible AH scenarios for my friend. Any information on the Italian Armed Forces, the Greek Armed Forces and the Turkish military? I didn't realize that the Bundeswehr had close to a thousand helicopters and the large fleet of aircraft in the Luftwaffe. I think the Luftstreitkräfte der Nationalen Volksarmee of East Germany had around 800 aircraft.

Also I didn't realize that the FRG could mobilize at least a million men in reserves. I'd assume that given the nature of NATO and how its collective of nation states in the organization that a large German reserve force wouldn't be necessary and given the fact that the defeat of Nazi Germany would mean that the United States wouldn't allow for such a large German military force. Was it really a million reserves? This is reminding me of the Swedish military during the Cold War which could mobilize at least a million men for such a small population of only 8 million people or so during the Cold War in the 1980s.

I had to correct myself in
The about 850,000 reserves that were planed with in the 80s (total available manpower when scraping the barrel, would've been about 2,3 million) would have comprimised the Territorialheer, similiar to the NG or Territorial Army. Their main purpose was security and logistics in the rear, keeping shit together before Reforger would arrive. They were mainly organized in light infantry battalions (Heimatschutzbattalione) without heavy weapons, as well as support/logistics/medical detachments and under German, not NATO command.
This wasn't an army with which one could conquer France with, so having the more or less paramilitary (but don't say that to loud) forces wouldn't really rustle many jimmies, compared to large, well equiped main army. Since by the time the Bundeswehr was really up to strengh, they were fully integrated in European and NATO structures, it was in American/British interest to have the BW/TH as strong as possible.

Ah I see. Well still 850,000 reserves is pretty significant in size for the Bundeswehr during the Cold War. I highly doubt though that the Territorialheer would be sent in combat and as you said they would be providing security and logistics in the rear. Still 850,000 is a pretty huge for the end of the 80s. The style of warfare and the method of warfare can change but any state with a huge amount of reserves is significant in terms of size and strength. Of course numbers don't win wars all the time.

Well, it's a conscript army so they will naturally build up a pool of trained personnel three or four times larger than their standing army as draftees cycle through the system. By 1980 the US was far more concerned about having a manpower pool available in Europe than about German rearmament since it meant the US could deploy fewer of its own troops abroad. Similar to how the postwar US was very keen for the Japanese to stand up the SDF as a combat-effective military despite the Peace Constitution.

Unfortunately that doc only has info on the northern and western NATO powers. It does have info on the southern PACTs though like Bulgaria (absolute trash, useless for anything that isn't rear area security) and Romania (partially capable army, but mainly postured to fight a Soviet invasion rather than support them)

Germany was the Bolan of the anglos and Bolan was the Bolan of the soviets.