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Marcello said:
There are others places that highways can be entered or left, especially for the combat vehicles. Service areas may have connections with the road network, there are often dirt roads within reach of highway in cultivated areas etc.. This quite beside the fact that taking out a significant numbers of off-ramps is quite a lot of work.
It is not like drilling thought the tarmac is the only problem. Even in the earth you still need to dig a lot of deep holes, or otherwise the damage will not be sufficient.The practical experience with bombing runways that I am aware of has shown that paved surfaces are more difficult to damage and quicker to repair than many (included myself before I found out) imagine.
"digging of deep trenches to block trucks"
If you have ever seen digging trenches in paved roads, you would realize that is not very practical.
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If you reread my post you'll see I said digging deep trenches (easily done even with commercial diggers) to block trucks driving around blocked roads not in order to block the roads. So that'd be next to roads and in fields, not the roads themselves. Also a good and very quick way to make those exit points a lot harder to make work.
Quote:
Marcello said:
"blowing up (high) buildings next to roads"
Outside urban centers that would be a pretty rare option.
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But since there are plenty of those not rare at all. The large number of roads and urban centres are being used as advantages to the WP so also take into account the drawbacks. Devastated towns are hard to advance through.
On the whole your argument seems to be that it would be hard for NATO to demolish things effectively while it would be fairly easy for the WP forces to overcome them. I think you've got it the wrong way around. It is much, much easier to demolish and block than it is to clear and circumvent.
It's also being stated that the WP had prepared and developed for this, etc. Well so did NATO, the germans in particular.
Another point is the opening of hostilities itself, the assumption is, I assume, that firing will be initiated by the WP with the comencement of the cross border attack and/or preparatory artillery strikes. I doubt it would happen that way. The war would be on before any troops crossed the border. NATO wasn't stupid and would know full well what the massing of WP troops near the border would mean. Stern warnings and ultimatums would be given. When those were not met, (conventional) cruise missile and air strikes on the forces in east germany were extremely likely. I won't sepculate ont he results of those, the point is that in my opinion there would likely already be a shooting war before any WP ground forces crossed into NATO terrirtory. That would make the intial attack much harder still.
Narwan