I stumbled upon this article on TV Tropes and was curious about how reliable the info there was. It seems to make sense what they say, but it also seems to paint the Soviets in a bit too good a light. What do you guys think?
The introduction in particular caught my attention:
From the outset the Western Allies and, later, NATO would've failed to use their inferior numbers as a unified force (France was always a bit of a wild-card and it's anybody's guess whether they would have stuck their neck out over an 'Anglo' issue, especially while Stalin was alive - he and De Gaulle were relatively chummy. Worse, even when they finally formed a military of their own in 1955 Western Germany's politicians insisted on using their forces to defend their peace-time borders... which were often totally indefensible, let alone the fact that (because they were right on the border) they could quite easily be encircled, cut off from all food and ammunition supply, and be forced to try to punch their way out through the Soviet defenders or simply sit on their laurels contributing little to NATO's strategic defense), and they had no campaign-plan to counter the Warsaw Pact's (a massive knock-out blow to split NATO's forces in half on the North German Plain, crush the isolated northern pocket, and move on to break up and finish off what was left).
The Soviets military's ability to actually live up to its rhetoric depended very much on the time-period. From 1945-53, Stalin gave the military the resources it needed to carry out this mission - with the expectation that it would fulfill it even with its forces and the German, Polish, Soviet, etc cities that supplied it taking the USA's several-hundred nukes. From 1956, whatever ability the Soviet military might have retained after its one-fifth downsizing by Khruschev was totally negated by his insistence that they adopt and use tactical nuclear weapons (which, in all probability, would've led to the war going nuclear within a matter of days if not hours). Under Brezhnev in the late 1960s the Soviet military was gradually 'restored' to the point that they again had confidence in fulfilling the operation (without any use of nukes, of course). But in the late 1970s Soviet theorists began to fear what they saw as a coming 'revolution in military technology' which would make the campaign difficult if not impossible by the late 1980s, something subsequent studies (using NATO and WP records) have tended to confirm.
On the other hand, the actualy likelhood of the Soviets achieving this operational goal - regarldless of their capabilities - depended very much on how the USA chose to respond with its nuclear arsenal. Throughout the 1940s-70s the USA initially, and later unofficially, had a policy of 'Massive Retaliation Doctrine'. In other words, in the event of any Russo-American conflict whatsoever the USA would have attempted to immediately glass the entire Warsaw Pact. In the 1970s-80s this was replaced by 'Follow-On-Forces' (FOFA) Doctrine, which mandated that the USA would only use tactical nuclear weapons, and only when NATO forces looked like they were losing to boot. The problem with this was that, due to the incredible vagaries of NATO doctrine (which did not have an 'operational' level) it was not clear where the 'tactical' use of nuclear weapons ended and the 'strategic' use of nuclear weapons began (For instance, nuking all the major cities of Poland would have been a key element of stopping Soviet reinforcements, ammunition, and food from transiting through Poland to the frontlines. However, Poland would not have been on the frontlines (and may have been as far as 500km from them) and Polish forces might never have attacked any NATO units up to that point). At pretty much every stage of the Cold War, then, if the US president of the time had adhered to his military's official doctrine then he would've made the war go nuclear rather than lose western Europe. Depending on the Soviet leadership of the time's response, this could've led to the northern hemisphere being cleansed of human life. But, hey, at least it wouldn't have meant negotiating with the Dirty Commies.
That said, tensions between the alliances were low throughout this period until the "Second Cold War" of 1979 onward, which saw the first proper (i.e. intense) arms race between the two. The former Sovietologist Christopher Donnelly has likened the Cold War to two players preparing for a game of chess, in which NATO focused on crafting the best pieces possible...and the USSR focused on becoming a Grand Master. Broadly, the Soviets focused on fighting simple and fighting smart - using simple and easy to maintain weapons, focusing on logistics, planning, and leadership. Similarly, the Soviets had (simple, but devastatingly clever) campaign plans that they would make months and years in advance and in agonising (and astonishingly accurate) detail.
If you're curious about specific conventional weapons, munitions, or vehicles of this era from either side or a comparison let me know. It is a topic that can and has had numerous books written on but it is also my bread and butter for my time in the Military as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, and a personal hobby as well.
The back and forth of tanks, helicopters, jets, and the weapons designed to kill them is the most interesting in my opinion, and the strategic reasons behind the race and mass production of all of these respectively is why certain items from both sides are so prolific all over the world to this day.
Is "Allies" an anachronism? Wouldn't it be NATO or Western World?