Genuine WP War Plans?

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Genuine WP War Plans? - 10/8/2002 2:34:23 AM

IronManBeta

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From: Burlington, Ontario
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Does anyone have any info regarding the matter referred to in the posts below? The came off of Google / Usenet when I was trolling around yesterday. I seem to remember about it from the time but it is pretty darn hazy.

It seems to me that if a genuine plan was left behind by accident the Soviets would then be bound to plant some pretty convincing info to discredit it. Alternatively, if it was a fake from the start they would try to give it credibility later. From where I sit there is no way of telling if it was ever real or not!

Comments?

Cheers, Rob.

>> Post #1:

According to Danish newspapers a few years ago (1993 or 1994?), the detailed Warsaw Pact plans for the attack on the NORTHAG and BALTAP areas had been found intact by Germany in the East German general staff archives.
Is this true? If so, they have of course been studied extensively and compared with NATO's defence plans. Do anybody know the details and outcome of these studies? According to the Danish newspaper report, the Warsaw Pact would use solely East German and Polish troops against Denmark, Polish marines against Zealand and the East German army against Jutland. According to those reports the whole purpose of the Polish marine corps (and all training they received) was to capture Copenhagen on day one (the main beach for landing the Polish marines would be southern end of Koege Bugt, the large bay south of Copenhagen). According to these reports the plans included generous use of tactical nuclear weopons, specifying detailed plans (target and timing); there were NO plans for attacking NATO without the use of nuclear weopons. If I remember right, 12 nuclear weopons would be used on specific Danish targets. Do anybody (especially Danes) have more detailed information on this? Any Polish comments?

>> Post #2:

The Soviets planned a massive nuclear/chemical first strike against NATO in the event of war: HQ's, depots, air-bases, airports, harbours etc. TIME published part of a map with targets and areas marked out.
As an illustration of the intensity of the bombardment, Schleswig-
Holstein had 25 nukes earmarked for it...
The goal seems to have been to put the US before an accomplished fact: "No matter what you do Europe is lost, are you prepared to commit suicide for a lost cause?"
Remember that the Soviet military had inflated NATO troop levels in their reports to their political superiors.

Post #: 1

- 10/8/2002 8:06:12 AM

byron13

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No, I have nothing on this. Interesting, though.

Using that level of nuclear and chemical weapons on day one is certainly the ultimate game of chicken. NATO and especially the U.S. would have the choice of surrendering Europe or plunging into global nuclear war. And what would England do?

I would have to believe that this was just one of several plans. Of what value is Europe if it is a nuclear wasteland? And why would they spend so many resources building an army that wouldn't be needed? The only value I see is to eliminate military threats on its western flank. I have to believe that this is a contingency plan clearing the decks for some other possible action. This could be a confrontation with China or the U.S. not necessarily of the Soviets' making.

It just shows me that they were never serious about attacking Europe without provocation. The taps of the telephone Soviet cables by our subs proved they were not nearly as aggressive as we assumed. The WP was established as a defensive pact with the memories of two German invasions of the Motherland still fresh in their minds. If pushed to the wall somewhere in the world, this is how they would respond. Otherwise, the Soviets are perfectly happy letting Europe live in peace.

That's my take.

(in reply to IronManBeta)

Post #: 2

- 10/8/2002 9:05:48 AM

Sabre21

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Interesting Rob

I know there were nuclear options, but as Byron mentioned this would have been one of many possible scenarios. Almost all the scenarios I ever knew about had the Polish marines, East German Marines, and a Soviet Abn Div attacking Denmark.

It was also known that heavy chemical use was a possible opening scenario. I wouldn't expect that though unless the west had ample warning and had reforger pretty much in place. The soviets would have had to do something drastic to open the way, and chemicals or a few tac nucs would have probably been the answer.

Sabre21

(in reply to IronManBeta)

Post #: 3

- 10/8/2002 10:40:05 PM

IronManBeta

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Lord knows the Soviet regime was capable of anything but they were also great calculators of advantage. There was no point to starting a war if the net economic advantage would be negative in the long run. They had a fancy name for this this type of calculation but I forget what it is off the top of my head. Going full nuclear or even chemical from day one would guarantee so much collateral damage that it simply would not be worth the win. There would not be enough left to justify the damage to their own economy from the mobilization.

The most plausible plan I heard was to launch a 'bleeder campaign'. The idea was to launch a campaign aimed at killing as many NATO soldiers as possible as quickly as possible, and not to capture great swathes of territory per se or to launch high risk raids into the rear. These latter can only work when there is friendly air superiority and there was so little chance of that even if you nuked nearly all NATO airbases that IMHO was presented only as a scare tactic and a distraction.

The real campaign would focus on the western powers extreme distate for heavy casualties. This is our psychological Achilles heel. WP armies would make only shallow penetrations into West Germany, hunker down, and then concentrate on grinding down as many NATO units as possible as quickly as possible with firepower. The IGB is only thinly populated and has lots of good defensive terrain for the WP as well as us, and they could operate under a thick SAM umbrella to minimize the effects of NATO air power. As a strategy it is not without risks, but it is infinitely less risky as long as you can 'bear hug' substantiall all of the NATO ground units and not let NATO seize the initiative back with fresh reserves.

If faced with a relentless meat grinder televised every night for the home front and mile long casualty lists in the newspapers, how long could our governments have held out? Attrition warfare is more the Russian's metier and our weakness (viz our early discussion of relative scarcity of our infantry). They had the reserves to keep up the pressure. Did we? We had some of course but it would be hard to say how many we would would commit week after week to keep the front from falling apart...

Just an alternative thought to consider. Wars never go the way you expect them to, and IMHO a lot of people had this one pegged as a stereotyped 'go for broke red Schlieffen blitzkrieg' without thinking further. (One of my own scenarios way back was "Red Schlieffen" because of simililarity of their meticulous pre war planning combined with a strong right hook into the enemy rear.) There are so many more possibilities than that!

Cheers, Rob

(in reply to IronManBeta)

Post #: 4

- 10/9/2002 12:58:01 AM

Paul Vebber

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Remeber that the basis of Soviet doctrine (at least in the 80s - the fall) was DEFENSIVE not offensive. The rationale for an attack on the West was not conquest, but survival. I have heard of such a plan as you decribe - it was likely one of many based on contingencies - and could have been disinformation, one never knows for sure.

but the declassified info I have read points to a plan of the type mentioned (whether its the exact one I don't know) when the Soviets had "proof" in their eyes of attack by the West. What constituted "Attack" was potentially fuzzy, but could be non-military in theory.

Such a plan would remove the possibility of any threat from Western Europe and result in a situation where US intervention (nuclear or conventional) would be moot, and only result in MAD. In theory, the threat (what ever it might have been) to Soviet regime survival from Western Europe would be gone (since in effect Western Europe would have its clock set back about 3 or 400 years) and the only thing the US could do is occupy the rubble and try to rebuild it (which the Soviets would not allow)

The myth of Soviet expansionism into Western Europe for the purposes of some sort Empire expansion simply never existed, if what we have learned post-breakup is to be believed. There was no WWIII becasue both sides where inherantly defensive (though they perceived each other as fundamentally expanisionist).

Note that this may have been different earlier. in the 50s and 60s the potential expansion into Western Europe as an expansion of Empire was (I believe) considered more possible (though even then the strategic defensive was the doctrinal imperative).

(in reply to IronManBeta)

Post #: 5

- 10/9/2002 1:25:05 AM

jjjanos

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These aren't Warsaw Pact plans but a comment on 1960's NATO plans. My father was a staff officer in a battallion of the 3rd Armor and he said that one of the plans called for the division and UK armor division to bust through to Berlin... :eek:

The unit had some of the massive US tanks that were built because the Soviets had some massive tanks. He said these tanks were so unreliable that during alerts, that part of the unit would drive to the outskirts of town and wait for the rest of the unit to come back from the alert location. In the 3 years he was in Germany, the tanks managed to make it out and back only once without having a tank breakdown.

But we had our own super tanks....

(in reply to IronManBeta)

Post #: 6

Re: Genuine WP War Plans? - 10/9/2002 8:00:16 PM

Jo van der Pluym

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[QUOTE]Originally posted by RobertCrandall
[B]Does anyone have any info regarding the matter referred to in the posts below? The came off of Google / Usenet when I was trolling around yesterday. I seem to remember about it from the time but it is pretty darn hazy.

It seems to me that if a genuine plan was left behind by accident the Soviets would then be bound to plant some pretty convincing info to discredit it. Alternatively, if it was a fake from the start they would try to give it credibility later. From where I sit there is no way of telling if it was ever real or not!

Comments?

Cheers, Rob.

[/B][/QUOTE]

Bob

On the following link are differend documents about the Warsaw Pact.
Examples:

Warsaw Pact War plan of 1964
Warsaw Pact War game of 1965
And the following is new: A Landing Operation in Denmark

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/

_____________________________

Greetings from the Netherlands

Jo van der Pluym
Crazy

Dutch