The War Nerd on the Soviets’ plan to swarm the Fulda Gap.
Great post by the Ward Nerd, the cherubic armed-conflict groupie we all have come to love, on how the Soviets planned to sink NATO in a “sea of tanks.” If you’re an old Cold Warrior like me, this is a must read. Also, read the whole interview.
From the War Nerd:
If you get the impression the {old Soviet] General [Matvey Burlakov] was pretty confident about his chances, you’re right. He says if the Soviet leaders had just given the word, “We would have burned and destroyed everything [NATO] had.”
After he says that, it’s like Burlakov gets a little nervous that he might be sounding too aggressive, because he adds, “I mean military targets, not civilians.”
Now that bit, about how they wouldn’t have targeted civilians, is classic bullshit. A huge conventional war in Germany would have killed millions of civilians, no matter how you war-gamed it. But I’m inclined to believe the old general when he says the Soviet tank armies would’ve kicked ass. The NATO forces were in a hopeless deployment: jammed into West Germany, an indefensible strip of heavily-populated territory. No strategic depth available, meaning the advantage was with whoever struck first. Once the population realized the Russians were coming, every Beemer and Merc in Germany would have hit the roads, those same roads our tanks were supposed to use. In that chaos, the Bundeswehr would have dissolved into a bunch of terrified locals looking for their families.
Burlakov is not too respectful, to put it mildly, about the West German military: “We had a sea of tanks on the [Soviet] Western Group. Three tank armies! And what did the [West] Germans have? The [German] workweek ends Friday and then you wouldn’t find anyone, not a minister or a soldier. Just guards. By the time they realized what was happening, we would have burned up their tanks and looted their armories.”
There you see it again, that obsession with tanks. The conventional wisdom right now is that the MBT’s day is ending, but luckily we never saw what would happen if those three tank armies had poured through the Fulda Gap on some fine Sunday morning. (You definitely get the feeling that the plan involved attacking on a weekend, don’t you?) With Soviet soldiers at the controls, and Soviet air support limiting USAF missions, a T-72 would have been a totally different machine from the Arab-crewed junkers littering the Middle East.
From the interview, a question regarding the Soviet Army’s withdrawal from East Germany:
You weren’t worried that they would come home as an uncontrollable mob?
No. We left in an orderly manner down to the last soldier. There were difficulties at the end. I prepared the Berlin brigade for a ceremonial departure. I told Grachev, “Give me 1000 Russian guys who are 185 cm. or more tall.” I sent officers into the European part and found 1100. They were all 185 cm. tall and weighed 50 kg. Their uniforms just hung off them. I asked my deputy, “How many pigs do we have left?” When I took the group, there were 44,000 pigs. Now he said there were 280 left. I ordered them brought here the next day. I told the brigade commander, “You eat four times a day. Every day, three hours of combat training, two workouts before lunch, lunch, an hour’s rest, then a piece of bread and fatback, tea with sugar.” February passes, March passes, no movement. They’ve eaten all the pigs. I say, “Bring in all the preserves.” They ate the entire emergency supply. In May, the brigade commander says, Comrade Commander, they are beginning to burst through their uniforms.” I called them together, and see how great they look now. And they were dressed well, and they performed well.
Burlakov did not go quietly into the night after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Update 09-26-2006: Changed the link to the interview. The old one had gone 404.
