Re: Red Army = most effective force !
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How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?
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depending on operational/ and some strategic suprise being achieved by the WAPA, assuming moderate WP air superiority for the first few days, and moderate SF action, all within the 1980-85 timeframe, i would give the WP good chances in breaking NORTHAG completly. the belgiums and dutch are good soliders and each have national distinctive charachteristics (IIRC the belgiums could mobilise very quickly, and the dutch had a very smart supply system), but the real question would have been if they could retreat fast enough to keep their armies intact. if NORTHAG was smart and the germans did not insist on saving Hamburg AND the dutch and belgiums could save their army in a retreat they, together with BOAR and the germans, could probablly have stablised the line at Hannover by D+3/5. OTOH the chance that the dutch or belgiums would simply disintigrate given the equipment pairing (old Leos against T-72/80s/ BMPs) was simply very large in such great terrain. CENTAG and US VII Corps OTOH would probablly have stopped them within 20-50km, at least until the second echalon would hit.
@on supply and obstacles.
austria was "obstacle mad" and prepped everything imaginable for demolition, also it had the heaviest fortified lines in europe (possible exception of the swiss), and still the ability of solid engineers and good planning to overcome these hindrances are not that great, IF terrain and weather play their part. having said this the germans were perfectly willing to blow everything to hold the WP, this included even "over the road canals" (water cannals that are in effect "reverse bridges" over a roadway, if you know what i mean) - the questions is how often you are actually able to do this: demo lines are very easily cut by arty fire, especially 120mm airburst (i have no idea why, angle maybe?), also you can simply kill the demo team instead, there are a lot of options, the point being that at 10-25% faliure rating for each obstacle you will have a lot of obstacles left open that you PLAN on being closed, it makes your reserves very hard to position. as PLASMACRAB correctly pointed out, most of not all transportation infrastructure build in many european countries (incl. germany) post war had very definte national defence guidelines, there are dozens of interesting websites and pictures on the web for anyone that is intersted. NARWAN i talked to a HV District commander (Tromso) some years ago and he also confirmed that you, like austria, had pre-mined basicaly everything he said however the main problem was not the 51st(?) MRD advancing out of Kola but was the SOV airborne and marine forces landing in your area and capture the mob locations.
BAGGYPANTS talked about the high casulties needed to "breach" obstacles with speed - i agree. the only real cliche that is certainly right was the WAPA acceptance of casulties compared with western armies - you can see it in what they consider the minimum for combat effective (a MRR)= 30-40% (!!) while IIRC in the US it would be 50-60%.
if the WP was unlucky and the terrain was really muddy and wet, fine, little off-road movement of supplies possible, but in the NORTHAG area the monster ZIL trucks were perfectly capable of driving over fields, and most trucks have a recovery winch anyway. furthermore you cannot compare germany WWII with germany of today, there are MANY TIME more roads and villages today and the armies really are SMALLER then they were then (the amount of vehicles actually in use is not disimilar).
logistics is a science, not (or not only) an art, and people learn how to do it for YEARS. as i mentioned, the WAPA had some very easy solutions to complex problems, and traffic management for WAPA was very easy as they have their own "Kommandanten Force" troops that were its own command and purly in charge of managing traffic and logistic flow, unlike the west, that left it all the poor MPs who would be complelty overwhelmed. just imagine an expected 3-6 MILLION german refugees heading west in their own personal autombiles, all within 1 week, and you can see that the main thing getting in the way of the WP tanks could very well be VW Beatles...
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