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Originally Posted by RN7
Thanks Jason that was a great article.
However in T2K this Soviet plan for an occupation of West Berlin would have been thrown out as the Germans themselves decided to reunify, and the NVA changes side very quickly. So if the Soviets won't "liberate" West Berlin themselves then there is only the remnant loyalist regime and security forces in East Berlin to take on the Allied Garrisons in West Berlin.
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My point exactly, most of the East German force that was slated to take West Berlin was pulled from a variety of sources:
First, there was the NVA's 1st MRD, which would have invariably joined the revolt. Next, was the various formations of the People's Police Alert Battalions (read: well armed riot cops, whose loyalty would have been suspect at best, and at worst, would have certainly balked at taking on NVA troops armed with AFV and all manner of artillery), the Frontier Troops (same boat at the People's Police, and the NVA might have enjoyed gunning them down, these were the hated Grenztruppen, after all.), and elements of the "Combat Groups of the Working Class" (party militia meant as a counter-balance to the Army and the Stasi, read more like a communist version of the Volkssturm to me.)
In short, could the Soviets have trusted anyone enough to launch an assault on West Berlin? Probably not. And more likely, their Motor Rifle Brigade at Karlhorst would have been under siege as some, if not all of these units, turned on them. And where might the Willi Sanger battalion (which I believe was expanding about this time), have come down? All in all, the Allies in West Berlin might have been more than happy to simply seal the borders themselves and hunker down, hoping nobody noticed them..
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Its hard to find information about how much was stockpiled in West Berlin. There is a NY Times article that states that there was 300,000 tons of food and supplies worth $480 million stockpiled in 280 warehouses across West Berlin. And that is what the government of West Berlin stockpiled alone, not the Allied garrisons.
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I spoke to some folks who might have been in a position to know. Those were the answers I got. Frankly, I would think the West Berlin garrison would have run out of people before they ran out of supplies, there wasn't enough of them and they were not, in my opinion, well armed enough to deny the East Germans forever..in a normal scenario. In a T2K scenario? Their best defense is to scream their neutrality to the heavens and hope neither side notices them till the Bundeswehr arrives, or sanity breaks out. Of course, once the wider war starts...that is a whole other kettle of fish, but again, are the Soviets going to spend lives to take West Berlin when they have three US Heavy Corps, along with two British Corps and at least a division's worth of Canadians come crashing over the IGB to deal with?
Something tells me that within days of NATO's entry into the war, a decision is made in the Kremlin to write off Germany. It cannot be held with the current correlation of forces. Best to withdraw across the Oder and dig in, hoping that they can reinforce in the spring and counterattack. Of course, NATO gets there first, but in short, by December of 1996, Germany is a lost cause to the Warsaw Pact. Anyone who can read a map can see that. And the Poles and Czechs worried about whether or not the Soviets will defend them? What is the better option in their eyes? Surrender to a resurgent Germany? No, they experienced that already once this century, better the devil they know...