"How likely to go nuclear?" Topic

Reading the previous topic on possible Soviet rates of advance got me thinking about some of our assumptions about when nuclear weapons might be used.

Both sides were trained to use tactical weapons early on in a conflict with NATO ADM's on choke points and the WP with a plethora of delivery systems. Assuming there was no nuclear release initially and the battle stayed conventional, what was the chance things would escalate? This all pure speculation of course, but I am interested in opinions.

Scenario 1: The Soviet juggernaut makes it to the Rhine and Brussels in 5 days. Would the US or the UK risk a strategic nuclear exchange over Germany? Or would they open ceasefire talks and throw in the towel, not willing to risk their populations for the FRG?

Scenario 2: Soviet invasion runs out of steam, NATO counter offensive strikes into East Germany, Warsaw Pact begins to come apart at the seams. Would the Soviet Leadership start using tactical nukes and risk a strategic exchange? Or negotiate a cease fire with GSFG pulling back to Western Russia?

Scenario 3: Soviet invasion grinds to a halt after 3 days, stalemate ensures. Who gets tempted to start using tactical nukes and risk their populations?

I know the weapons and tactics were in place, but assuming they were not used initially, how likely would they to be used except as a threat to force the other guy to the bargaining table? Or would the logical insanity of war take over, sort of like "The Nukes of August?" Use them before you lose them?

What do you think?

Each Polish communist division advancing from Denmark to Benelux were supposed to be using 2 tac nukes per day.

Or so they had repeated us at cannon fodder medical officer training.

In most scenarios NATO would have to nucleary glaze whole Poland to stop "second strategic" from USSR. That was the reason Kuklinski started to inform USA:
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YouTube link

From some of the reports I've read, scores, if not hundreds of nukes were planned to be used, around the Fulda region alone.

Not sure why people would be fighting over such contaminated, radioactive ground, but I guess conventional wars don't make much sense either, when you really think about it.

Scenario one misses out how happy would Germany be about USA and UK wanting to nuke their country.

Imagine German forces surrendering rather than seeing nukes used.

As for Holland and Denmark would the governments of those two liberal countries be prepared for nukes to be used. The threat to go nuke could have meant the collapse of NATO.

Yes I know we practiced it BUT if push came to shove would real politicians in real world go through with it.

Thanks God they didn't actually go thru with it. I don't expect this will be the case in the near future with different players and a different playground.

One reason why I think the Red Storm Rising scenario was so strong. With the prevailing wind from West to East who is going to get covered in all that nastiness? NATO release would really depend on how big a hole there was and how hard it would be to choke off. And I the leadership was OK with being the person to order a first strike

I would have thought the WP was willing to go chemical before nuclear.

To "get" this you are better placed if you lived through it. The further back you go ie to cruise in the UK and earlier still bombers on constant patrol you need to realise we still believed nuclear wars could be won. Many of our military believed tacticals would be used even by the second day. How else do you stop the second and 3rd wave units and these would be nuked in Poland, east Germany and czechoslovakia. It's hard to believe with our modern thinking,attitudes and retrospective vision but back in the 60's and 70's ten to midnight was a way of life and we had no doubts whatsoever that any war in Europe would soon go nuclear. As for chemicals they were a standard component of Sovpac warplanning

If Russians used Checmical/Biological weapons (which seems to have been part of their plan) the West would have responded with nukes.

France probably would have started using nukes no later than Soviet elements 30 minutes from the French border (since there's about 30 minutes from "we are going to launch" to warheads arriving on target, and that's with weapons on instant-response.)

TMP link

FYI, this is a post I started years ago on the subject of chemical weapons vs. tac nukes in the Cold War gone Hot.

TMP link

Based on some of the comments here and what I've seen elsewhere I get the impression that the Russians really didn't understand what nuclear weapons do. 2 Tactical nukes per division in the advance? Exactly how did they intend to drive through the fires that would cause in forests and cities? As pointed out above the prevailing winds would carry fallout right back over the Russian staging areas first then their own cities. They'd have to take Europe so they'd have someplace to live after they irradiated their own countryside!

The Soviets would have used nukes from the start against the US mainland.

Even if the Pact captured Paris in a week that doesn't mean the war is over. NATO would eventually counter attack.

The Soviets were aware of there weak economy. Their military almost collapsed during the Prague Summer of '68. They could not sustain a long war.

The US and UK would produce more units and grind away Pact forces.

My understanding is that the Soviets didn't subscribe to the same view of gradual escalation (conventional-chemical-tactical-strategic).

If the balloon went up, unload everything available to shock the enemy into submission, then hope the war is won in a week.

As far as Denmark, our attitudes would be irrelevant sadly. Post-1991 reveals of war plans showed that we'd be nuked and then airborne troops would land there to roll down into Germany.

Soviet planning documents released after the Cold War showed the Soviets would have used nukes in western Europe from the beginning, so this point could have been mute.

Scenario one misses out how happy would Germany be about USA and UK wanting to nuke their country

NATO wouldn't have used nukes in NATO, they would have been used against Soviet follow on forces in the east.

The other question Europe had was whether or not the US would have nuked the Soviets, if the Soviets had nuked western Europe.

Fortunately, all the discussion on nukes was theoretical!

This question is impossible to answer, although of course we can speculate wildly. Attitude and doctrine for nukes evolved through the Cold War as well. In the 60s and early 70s the Sovs just viewed than as another form of artillery, and the US air force commanders seemed very keen indeed to drop nukes on Korea, China and Vietnam.

As noted above, you had to be there really. Nothing like a Vulcan flying 200 feet overhead with live Blue Steel hanging off the bottom to bring it all home.

For gaming purposes, I assume a gradual escalation to chem then nukes depending on the degree of resistance.

Who knows for real, bear in mind the BMP was designed to fight through a contaminated battlefield.

Most of our exercises in the 80s ended up with an announcment that a big bucket of instant sunshine had been delivered!

Tally Ho!

Those hundreds and/or thousands of little Davy Crocketts had only a 1.25 – 2.5 mile range, depending upon the model. They were launched from the rear of jeeps, and/or tripod, recoilless rifle mounts, and were intended to defend Fulda, and other areas. They couldn't reach Soviet/WP controlled territory, unless they were launched from right on the border.

They were deployed from 1961 – 1971, to keep the Soviets from swamping West Germany with troops and armor.

"One of the most fervent supporters of the Davy Crockett was West Germany's defense minister Franz Josef Strauss, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Strauss promoted the idea of equipping German brigades with the weapon to be supplied by the US, arguing that this would allow German troops to become a much more effective factor in NATO's defense of Germany against a potential Soviet invasion. He argued that a single Davy Crockett could replace 40–50 salvos of a whole divisional artillery park – allowing the funds and troops normally needed for this artillery to be invested into further troops, or not having to be spent at all. US NATO commanders strongly opposed Strauss's ideas, as they would have made the use of tactical nuclear weapons almost mandatory in case of war, further reducing the ability of NATO to defend itself without resorting to atomic weapons".

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So yea, there's a pretty high chance of a war going nuclear.

As mentioned, we stated openly that the Soviet/WP use of chemicals could/would bring a nuclear response.

Lion is, I suspect closer to the truth than anyone.

The French were adamant that France would not be invaded again, if it took 20m dead West Germans to stop the Russians, I suspect the French High command would see that as a win-win.

French policy was a gradual escalation of nuclear warfare up to nuking Russian cities. The Wikipedia (font of all accurate informtion) is quite good on the subject..

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I think most armies would be lobbing tactical nukes around quite early, but as the Russians get further across FDR, the French would be escalating very rapidly. The Russians would simply not think taking France would be worth the casualties…

All very good, thoughtful, responses. Like I said and has been pointed out, this is wildly speculative, particularly as one part of nuclear deterrence theory was making your opponent uncertain as to what your threshold for use was.

Martin nailed an important point, I think, it very much depends on the era. In the 1950's nukes were almost guaranteed (Pentomic divisions anyone?) 1960's and 70's highly likely, by the 1980's NATO doctrine had moved to flexible response, but who knows what would have happened once the shooting started.

Thank goodness the balloon never went up. I was never a fan of MOPP 4. It is ironic that the probability of nuclear weapons being used in a conflict has gone up since the end of the cold war, as the weapons proliferate, although the chance of a civilization ending exchange has dropped. But that is a topic for another thread.

For my Cold War games, I am going with a Red Storm kind of scenario with no nukes and no chemical weapons, Warsaw Pact stated war aims are to liberate and demiliterize West Germany and will not violate French territory to try to keep them out of it. A conventional grab to push the Americans out of Europe.

Happy gaming, all!

check this out ; nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap

IIRC, there was another problem about the use of Nukes. As the declassified documents showed, the Soviets saw tactical nukes as really big bombs. The US saw *all* nukes as strategic.

The Soviets were downright panicked to discover that about 30 minutes after the first nuke went off in Germany, there would be US strategic nukes landing on Moscow.

A few us in school tried to keep up with the Cold War at the time (Keegan's 48 hours to the Rhine moment really had us going) we were hopelessly ill-informed of course but for what it's worth, we reckoned 2-3 days before someone went nuclear. We saw a war in Europe as marginally less scary because we thought it gave a chance for some kind of diplomatic effort before the end. The ugly details were beyond our comprehension but we were very much aware that survival was simply not an option and I think we were more worried about a sudden accidental nuclear escalation than anything else.

I remember when one of us told the rest that there was such a thing as a "battlefield nuke"; we simply laughed as to our minds, a nuke was a nuke. We weren't CND though, we broadly accepted the concept of MAD (we had no choice, really) but I remember quite intense discussions about the balance between conventional and nuclear – for what it's worth to any ex BAOR, c1979, I was arguing that a few nukes less wouldn't really be missed and the more kit BAOR had the better. On a tangent, I'm proud to say that our verdict on Russia in Afghanistan was "they'll regret this".