Just how bloody would a conventional NATO-Warsaw Pact war be?

>Because EVERYONE knows this, conflict between these powers would then be avoided at all cost. That's why they have proxy wars between pissant little no-name states like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Syria.

That's what they were saying before 1914 too.

They didn't have nuclear weapons to worry about.

>There's no such thing as a conventional war between nuclear powers.
Indo-Pakistani war in 1999

incredibly bloody, but it would most likely be a western victory (at an incredible cost) if not just going into an endless stalemate

*gets past your air defenses and lands in red square*

And look where it went, the total collapse of the two greatest powers in the world and their rapid decline into (military) irrelevancy

It always ends in decisive WP victory, we can see the paradox of Cold War, Warsaw pact spent huge amount of money on army, about 1/3 of GDP, unlike NATO, but it wasnt possible for WP to start a war for ideological and political reasons, while for NATO it was impossible due to the weak army compared to the WP. You can even see that NATO´s plan was to just destroy as many tanks as possible, thats why they made so many helicopters and ATGM´s. War would still eventually lead to the nuclear war anyway. It just depends on who would push the button first, for example ČSLA alone had a plan to use 100 100kt nukes in Bavaria.

NATO had always controlled they skies. if you controll they skies, you control the ground. WP would loose hard

mate, red army was the strongest conventional military in the world even until late 80s

Airland battle doesn't help the sheer manpower of soviet mobilized infantry.

billy stopped the pakis from using their nukes when they began to get their asses kicked.

NATO airforce superiority is a meme that works only against African countries with technologies from late 50´s

t. airpower armchair general

are you retarded? ever since the 60s soviet air tech had always been one generation behind

>t. ivan vladoskavich

>this is what vatniks honestly believe
their tech always lagged behind the west by a decade. they would have been stomped anytime past 1960

>365+ thousands of active soldiers
>with well over a milion total in case of reserve mobilisation
>second only to the Soviet Army
>backed by Soviet Army

that feel when
>we had a plan of nuclear holocaust against the west with the soviets
>polish army alone reaching shores of atlantic within 14 days
>7 days to the river Rhine
>Atomic Bogaloo in full force, 18 warheads on polish front alone
>preemptive strikes crushing everything in front of the marching armies
>Hamburg, Hanover, Wilhemshaven, Bremerhaven,
>The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Amsterdam
>Antwerp and Brussels
>all fucking nuked to oblivion
>5 warheads on tiny faggot Denmark, effectively obliterating the country from the face of the earth
>2 on Copenhagen alone

What's with all the poleaboos on Veeky Forums?

What's with the total anal devastation every time Poland gets mentioned? Grow up, fatty.

not attacking was a mistake

Not him and I think he’s a right cunt but in 03 I was deployed to Iraq and I was pretty consistently moving through the American and Polish controlled occupation zones.
Poles are good people for the most part. Better than half the boys we deployed. Makes it shitty to look at them from a historical perspective
Also one of the few coalition countries that didn’t mouth off whenever it got the chance. Good soldiers too.

Also, bet you didn’t know Poland got its own occupation zone in Iraq.

>5 warheads on tiny faggot Denmark

...Why? For what purpose other than spite?

>pole immediately triggered
Lmao

NATO anti-chemical units were absolute garbage, during the Iraq deployement of Czechoslovak troops 1990-1991, Czechoslovak "chemical detectors" reported extreme chemical contamination, US stuff reported no chemicals at all, our (((government))) banned talking about the differences in reports and this later caused death of several our soldiers back home due to poisoning because command banned wearing chemical suits.

Fallout

>gets anally devastated because of something Poland-related
>N-NO YOU BUTTHURT

I wasn’t in the forces in the 90’s, only 01-05, so I can’t speak about that but it sounds about right
We had more scandals to keep quiet than you could imagine, I’m really surprised I haven’t heard anything about it since

btw i made a mistake, correct number is 546 nukes, we wanted to use 251 in first phase of attack (first 3 days), later 248, mostly against the forces in France, but about half of them for Austria if they decide to support NATO. 47 nukes were reserve for crossing of Rhine if something goes wrong.

>I wasn’t in the forces in the 90’s, only 01-05
it was mate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia_in_the_Gulf_War

Nah mate this is completely different conflict I’m talking about
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

>1975
USSR enjoyed massive military superiority right until late 80's.

i talk about that our troops were here in 1990-1991

I think you switched the first and second period.
The red army was, in 1945 the best, battle hardened war machine in the world.

NATO themselves knew that wasn't the case.

The joke goes that two Soviet tank commanders are having coffee in Paris, and one asks "So how did the air war turn out?".

Overall, I'd have to say that the first year NATO would be able to hold it's own without nukes is 1985, with the odds going in NATO's favor into the late 80's. The worst time for NATO is likely 1975-1980, as the failure of MBT-70 left NATO without a single 3rd generation MBT until the first Leopard 2's entered play in 1979.

1980-1985 would see the TOW-2, Stinger, Abrams, Challenger, Bradley, Apache, Blackhawk, F-15C, and F-16C enter service.

That's actually a pretty good joke.

Man for man the Western Allies still had better troops, but the Soviets were superior operationally and had many more units.

However, a protracted slog is not as favorable for the Soviets as one would think, because they were running out of 18 year olds.

The Soviet Famine of 1930-1933 greatly depressed birth rates. The last year with full birth rate was 1929, and those kids would come of age in 1947. However, the famine affected those born shortly before it, as the lack of nutrition in their earlier years made them shorter and less physically capable than the men that fought WW2. Go back a bit further and there was another famine in 1922-1923, before that you had a famine during WW1. The fact that the Soviets mobilized as many people as they already did was incredible.

Older men can conduct defensive operation, but for an attack, you need lots of fit soldiers younger than 30, and the Soviets had surprisingly few of those left.

Those weapon systems didn't enter service in relevant numbers until mid 80's.
Late 70's/early 80's would be pure rape for NATO. USSR wasn't in crisis mode yet, they had a huge army, more nukes, better weapon systems (thousands of T-64s against M60A1).
There would be no stopping them without nukes. Even with nukes, who knows how it would unfold. Soviets did plan for nuclear conflict.

>Man for man the Western Allies still had better troops
imgaine unnironicaly bealiving CoD memes

i thought that you talk about cold war, nevermind, Red army still had about 11 milion soldiers, thats more than enough and unlike Burgers, they can afford heavy losses,

I’d say the only time when the Soviets could have actually won, would have been between 1968 (Tet Offensive) to 1981 (election of Reagan).

>PPA has over 1,000,000+ reserves for mobilization
Do you have any sources on the Polish People's Army having over 1 million reservists?

...

...

> Those weapon systems didn't enter service in relevant numbers until mid 80's.

Yeah, which is why I said NATO would only be able to hold in 1985 and later, when more of the cutting edge equipment got to the field. Date of introduction can also be deceiving, because while the M1A1 "entered service" in 1985, the first division equipped with M1A1's only deployed to Germany in 1987. However, that holds true for both NATO and Soviet equipment. While T-72A was accepted for service in 1979, the first division to be trained and equipped with T-72A was only in 1982.

It's not CoD memes, but just looking at equipment availability. The Western Allies had considerably more AFV's per soldier, considerably more fighters, more trucks, more machine guns, and more food/fuel. The one equipment parity was in tube artillery and mortars, and inferior in SMG's. I think that would qualify that the average Western Allies soldier would be more effective due to having better equipment availability and likely a bit more fit due to better nutrition.

You said 45, so I'm relating the readiness of the Red Army in 45. The Red Army can afford heavy losses, but not 41-43 heavy. You can't overcome demographics.

NATO outnumbered PACT in total population

1960-1970 is the only time the soviets could have won

that first post wasnt me, hoewer, my point is that US losses were about 400 000 dead. Even if we take lets say 3 dead soviets per one american (i bealive that actual number would be between 0,75-1,5 dead Soviets per one dead american at most.
Still imagine this.
You just betrayed your ally you praised as almighty freedom fighter for past 4 years, you allied with your former enemy, you are trying to nuke his civilians, you are now loosing hundreds of thousands more soldiers in war that is seen as ultimate evil caused by your by your civilian population.
There were even major strikes in 1945 caused by the "slow demobilization" both in army and civilian sector, imagine this after you start another war and hunders of thousands of young boys that were preparing to spend christmas with their families die. For Soviets it wont change that much, since it wouldb e the same scenario as in 1941, but seen as much worse betrayal. Soviets wont realy mind loosing lets say 3 milions soldiers, since for them it means that more than one and half milion americans die. Iam not even taking in account communist insurgency in France and Italy.

because NATO states totaly had conscript armies like WP

How many troops could NATO forces mobilize in their reserves? I don't mean active duty personnel but in terms of reservists.

Rommel, his son and wife war gamed it.

> because NATO states totaly had conscript armies like WP

The majority of NATO conscripted, by 1990, only the US, Canada, France, and the UK did not.

youd get a better answer here

Most weapons used wouldn't produce much blood.

Polish Ground Forces consisted of 210,000 active troops in 8 Mech Divs, 5 Armored Divs, an Airborne and Marine Divs and a Mountain Bgd plus internal security regiments and battalions along with 500,000 reservists, with a 2 year conscription period for all men age 19, making it the largest non-Soviet Warsaw Pact military.

“Warsaw Pact Ground Forces” Gordon Rottman, 1987.

Anybody over in /k/ who knows anything about history or has any interest in it, is already here in Veeky Forums.

Literal mental retardation: the post

Based Rommel as usual

>mfw AAA

Thanks for the input, reddit. Got anything substantive, though?

Why would WP members fight for the Soviets if they knew NATO was going to assist in liberating them from the Soviets?

Hmm pretty impressive for a country that had about 37ish million people in the 1980s. That's about over 700,000 troops in the ground forces. That's a lot of forces but yet again I don't know how well motivated the Polish Ground Forces would be in a fight against NATO. But wow 500,000 reservists in the People's Army.

I think that we can figure out the relative effectiveness of the Western and Soviet allies in an immediate post-war WW3 scenario via their loss ratios in 1945 against Germany. Table 15 of the Price of Victory has irrecoverable German losses on the Eastern front in 1945 (note this table already cuts everyone captured after the surrender) at exceeding 1.8 million, while the Red Army lost around 900,000. Incredibly enough I'm failing to find a good source on 1945 irrecoverable losses in the West. I'm sure someone here has one though.

Control of the Baltic

The Soviets were pretty careful about deployment of NSWP troops against their NATO counterparts.

Polish forces were not deployed in the American sector, and instead backed up Soviet forces attacking German formations.

East German forces were concentrated against the British Army on the Rhine in NORTHAG, and not against West German formations.

There's a certain truth to that, military history posts disappeared from /k/ and it's now mainly sovcits and 3%er's screeching "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED".

>Polish forces were not deployed in the American sector, and instead backed up Soviet forces attacking German formations.

As can be seen here Polish forces were tasked with invading into Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium.

How does one fight with no army left?

If the soviets fired the first shot( or could be reasonably depicted as firing first) the the US would get away with conscription pretty well.

Isn't that par of the course for the Warsaw Pact? The NVA had about 105000 active troops in the ground forces and ~400000 when mobilized while having about half of Poland's population

American strategy literally called for them nuking Europe, blowing up Rotterdam, Antwerp, and a few other big ports so Russians couldn't use them allowing it to be overrun and hoping the irradiation would prevent them from using the area to make more missile silos to attack the us.

The Russians hoped to nuke Rotterdam and a few big port cities and made a plan called '8 days to the river Rhine' and a follow up invasion to the Seine and desu there wasn't much to stop Warsaw Pact conventional Arms advantage as NATO military was so spread apart.

>it's the economy, stupid

Russia's GDP has always been shit. Fucking Spain outproduced the Soviet Union during the 70's and 80's - the supposed height of Soviet power.

Damn, can you imagine the sheer insanity of such a war? The Cold war was such a shitshow, even though I like the Soviet Union, I am glad that kind of scenario ended.

And in 1945 the red army had no nukes.

If america and russia did use nukes they'd both be fucked. Detonating that many nukes could send the world into a nuclear winter that'd kill everyone

desu the only thing America could ever do against the Warsaw Pact was annihilate the Fulda Gap with tactical nukes and hope the Russians didn't retaliate with something worse

mayyybe, but as I said, its impossible for Stalin to do, he would never do such a thing, its completely against his thinking. Also even if he did invaded, American population could try to ask their government for peace since "Europe is not our bussines" or something like that.

Soviet Union would win every time up until 1985, at that point it could go either way.

Also, "muh technology" is a NATOboo meme. Anybody who thinks that the West held a decisive advantage in that regard (They didn't) or that technology would have actually mattered in a NATO vs. Pact scenario (It wouldn't) needs to stop masturbating to AirLand Battle.

wat? USSR had 2nd GDP in the world untill late 80's.

>Just how bloody would a conventional NATO-Warsaw Pact war be?
lets try it and find out

Does anyone have any good books on Soviet and Warsaw Pact military forces? I've not been able to find any works on anything but the Soviet Army; the Polish, East German, Czech, etc. militaries don't seem to have much on them. Any PDFs would be great.

Also, what was the morale/loyalty of the WarPac forces? I've heard a claim from my friend the Poles planned to try and nuke the Soviets after they'd fired their first wave at the Western Powers, and that they were 'entirely on the fence and had no loyalty to the Soviets'. Is there any truth in this or is it just total bullshit?

>Warsaw pact spent huge amount of money on army, about 1/3 of GDP, unlike NATO

>1/3 of GDP
>Warsaw Pact

Soooo not too much. These countries were poor shitholes before socialism kicked in. They were able to field larger armies and due to command economy had a very effective military-industrial complex.

When the USA started spending serious money the Soviets had no chance in hell to keep up.

A close friend of my uncle was a tank officer in the NVA (the GDR's army). He often tells the story where his commanding officer answered his questionabout NATO night vision in tanks with an angry remark about Warsaw Pact headlights.

>It always ends in decisive WP victory

No the NATO always controlled the oceans and the NATO always controlled the skies. The NATO always had superior technology and industry.

There are some periods where the soviets might have won with a decisive and quick push to the channel and a political settlement. But in any prolonged non-nuclear conflict the NATO was superior.

Kek.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20

The soviets lacked the training and the tech to seriously contest with western airforces after 1960ish.

The Reich had decent tank formations in the west in 1944. Guess what. They weren't able to operate in daylight because the Allies bombed the everloving hell out of every large formation that moved.

So lets imagine what would happen in 160 or 1970 where air power is much more advanced,precise and devastating. Soviet supply lines would be wrecked, larger formations would be destroyed etc.

Ofc the allies would have to win these air superiority against the soviet airforce and air defense systems but the further the soviets advance the thinner their airforce is spread.

This. And since circa 1970 maintenance became a real problem. A lot of soviet hardware would have broken down or not worked at all.

The US alone had 50% of the world's GDP in 1945. 50%. No one could defeat them, especially not the ruined and burned USSR that just fought a massive war on their own territory and lost tens of millions. Then add in the rest of the western allies and remember the fact that the USSR would immediately lose its lend-lease agreements with everyone. It would be a bloody war no doubt, but the USSR simply could not continue to fight for long at that stage.

The plan was to let the Soviets get deep into Germany then nuke them. So bloody for the Soviets

>They were poor shitholes before socialism kicked in
>Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia literally dismembered and forced to cede lands to the Soviet Union

Your blood would evaporate in the nuclear fire. Thanks Jesuits!

This is probably the best there is out there, also somewhat contradicts the myth of absolute Soviet conventional superiority.
php.isn.ethz.ch/lory1.ethz.ch/documents/ZB79_000.pdf

lmao based Poles

The Soviets had the best ground based air defense systems in the world, no one can doubt that. Those bombers your talking about would be delayed by their volume alone. Even in Iraq around a dozen of A-10s were lost to triple A fire alone. The combined SAMs and AAA systems of the Soviets and the eastern block would be very difficult to deal with in time.

For every SEAD jet you might have what 10 to 20 SPAAGs in battalion sized groups of 4 supporting mechandized infantry and armor on a lets say 10 km front. Now multiply that exponentially for how many thousands of short and long ranged SAMs the Warsaw Pact fielded and you tell me how your supposed to establish air supremacy

Not to mention the volume of the Soviet air forces alone, reguardless of a victory could still keep NATO air forces busy and hit airfields. The commies arent going to just stay in their hangers because NATO air superioty is a foregone conclusion

The germans

nice air superiority meme

Burgers lost around 10,000 aircrafts to army which was armed with sticks and stones in Vietnam.

>10,000
citation very much needed

Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft by Peebles Curtis
It includes helicopters + about 500 UAVs and 3500 South Vietnamese planes, helis and UAVs, North lost about 200 planes.