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THW -> New Scenario: Central Front 1989 (NATO vs Warsaw Pact) (1/10/2022 8:56:40 AM)
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G'day everyone,
It's taken more than 10 years of chipping away at this, but it's finally at the stage where it's ready to pass on for your enjoyment. I'd like to thank Bill Lott for making the excellent map, as well as doing a lot of playtesting over the years.
Date: May 1989
Unit scale: Brigade, Regiment, Battalion
Map scale: 10 km
Turn length: 1 day
Turns: 29 (1 turn cease-fire, 28 active turns)
The exact details of why the Soviet Union decided to go to war in the spring of 1989 are uncertain. Maybe the Communist leadership could see the crumbling of their empire, and decided to stake everything on a last desperate effort to hold onto power. Maybe they thought that they had to overwhelm the West before NATO became too powerful and attacked them in turn. Whatever the reason, the result was the same.
Preparations for mobilisation were begun almost immediately, but kept deliberately low-profile, to avoid alerting NATO. Western intelligence agencies picked up some of the signs, but not enough to justify a higher alert state. Full Warsaw Pact mobilisation began only eight days ago. It took NATO three days to assess the situation, longer for political leaders to be convinced, and for its own mobilisation to begin. With less than a week to mobilise, a number of NATO countries are still scrambling to get into position.
US reinforcements have been arriving for some days, but many units are still enroute. Air Force wings are preparing to reinforce the 2nd and 4th Allied Tactical Air Forces in Central Europe, as well as Iceland, Norway and the Mediterranean.
The Poles, East Germans and Czechoslovak peoples are not enthusiastic about the war. But a mixture of propaganda, nationalism and fear of the secret police has meant that enough reservists have reported for duty. However, the Warsaw Pact generals know that only victory and success will keep these troops fighting for long. Defeat, or even a drawn out war will see these countries withdraw from the conflict, and their armies put down their weapons.
A high-intensity, conventional war in such a densely populated area as Central Europe will have terrible consequences for the local population. While this might harden the resolve of some, it will test that of others, including many of the politicians in charge of their countries. NATO’s weakest point is likely to be the willingness of national leaders to watch their people become casualties as their homes are destroyed and their country devastated, live on colour TV.
NATO intelligence analysts have noted that the mass movement of Warsaw Pact forces across Eastern Europe has stopped, and a calm has descended along the border from Lubeck in the north to Passau in the south. Rather than breathe a sigh of relief, the consensus is that the Warsaw Pact forces are simply carrying out a last round of maintenance checks prior to combat. The war is about to start.
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