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Old 04-26-2011, 01:00 AM
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Webstral Webstral is offline
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My take on the NATO Summer 2000 offensive in Poland has been that NATO was looking to position itself as favorably as possible for the post-2000 collapse. The Summer 1998 campaign in Central Europe would have demonstrated that the Soviets weren’t ready to throw in the towel. At the same time, the destruction of the modern economies would have had the logistics types re-schooling the generals on the relationship between motorized armies and their supply needs. The 1999 campaign season was dominated by infantry action because circumstances dictated a sort of hyper-conservative attitude among the surviving generals. No doubt some of them would have liked to take offensive action for the sake of establishing more favorable positions. However, the senior military leaders, having observed that the 1998 fighting accomplished little more except massive reduction in perilously small stockpiles of fuel, ammunition, and spare parts, probably wanted to husband what they had left for some sort of decisive action.

The formations of XI Corps seem quite well equipped on the eve of the offensive. Perhaps the offensive was a year or more in the building. Various US Army units throughout Germany might have been coerced into giving up precious materiel with the idea that one last great effort in Poland would finally finish the Soviets in Europe by demonstrating that the Soviets no longer possessed the strength or cohesion to hold Eastern Europe. Certainly, reports of ongoing collapse on the part of Soviet forces in Poland would have been welcomed during the run-up to the Summer 2000 offensive.

There are some reasons for a NATO offensive along the Baltic that might not be so obvious the American military planner. The main effort of the offensive was directed along the Baltic coast. East Prussia lies here. Although the German population in this part of Europe is much less than it was prior to the end of World War Two, East Prussia is still East Prussia in the minds of many Germans. We should bear in mind that the FRG, the DDR, and western Austria were under NATO control prior to the start of the offensive. Given that modern military operations were on the verge of final disintegration, and given the fact that anyone capable of looking into the future would see that a long-term rebuilding and repositioning based on natural resources and population was in the cards, the Anglo-Americans might well have supported trying to bring as much of the surviving German population under German control as possible to counter-balance France and the remnants of Russia. At the very least, the reestablishment of the pre-World War One borders in the East would have put Germany in a better position to deal with France and Russia twenty to thirty years down the road. The English speakers might have supported such an action under the premise that Anglo-American forces no longer would be in much position to affect events in that part of Europe; therefore, best to strengthen the local allies for the long-term.

Of course, the Soviets were afraid of exactly this sort of thing, which is why they had Fourth Guards Army on stand-by in Belarus.

Webstral
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