Soviet War Plans article - 1970 War Plan found in Poland

[Olefin]

http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/the-soviet-unions-insane-plan-crush-nato-battle-13355

Lots of interesting details in the article and posts tied to it

"Regardless, nuclear weapons were a central part of the Soviet Union’s strategy to conquer all of Western Europe. As War Is Boring has pointed out, on the Northern front alone, “Warsaw Pact plans called for 189 nuclear weapons: 177 missiles and 12 bombs ranging in yield from five kilotons—roughly a quarter the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—to 500 kilotons.” Additional nuclear weapons would have been used in the Central and Southern fronts as well.

The larger nuclear weapons would be used to destroy major cities in Western Europe, including Hamburg, Bonn, Munich and Hannover in West Germany; Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam in the Netherlands; and Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium.

No fewer than two nuclear weapons would have been used to destroy Copenhagen, and five nuclear weapons in total would have been unleashed on Denmark as well. A number of Italian cities would be targeted as well.

Even Austria, which was a neutral country in the Cold War, would not be spared from atomic destruction. Soviet war plans called for dropping two 500 kiloton nuclear weapons on Vienna"

War is Boring article is here https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-is-how-the-world-could-have-ended-1ecd1db17ff2

[Webstral]

One wonders what the point of conquering Western Europe would have been after all that.

[Olefin]

I am in agreement with you there Webstral - what I thought was interesting as well is that the Soviets were planning to send their troops straight thru radioactive areas and have them fight there - as well as the Poles and the Czechs troops as well - i.e. basically they were sending them on suicide missions to die from radioactivity

[Matt Wiser]

That plan dates from the time that Marshal Grechko was Defense Minister. He wanted any war between the Pact and NATO to be nuclear from the start. After his death, they began shifting to a primarily conventional strategy, because they realized that fallout from their own strikes on NATO would drift onto the Soviet Union.

You can find that stuff here: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/index.htm

[Silent Hunter UK]

I am in agreement with you there Webstral - what I thought was interesting as well is that the Soviets were planning to send their troops straight thru radioactive areas and have them fight there - as well as the Poles and the Czechs troops as well - i.e. basically they were sending them on suicide missions to die from radioactivity

Considering that they did actually do a nuke test right as part of a major exercise once (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totskoye_nuclear_exercise), I'm not surprised.

[swaghauler]

Considering that they did actually do a nuke test right as part of a major exercise once (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totskoye_nuclear_exercise), I'm not surprised.

Talk about "Company Punishment!" This is why the US resolved to use Tactical Nuclear Weapons on Soviet soil in order to "disrupt" any military activity. The Germans and British always argued for a "demonstration strike" on an "unessential target" and the US disagreed. It's a good thing the US chose the "use on Soviet military capability" in the 1986 Geopolitical Guidelines. Practicing a strike on a section of Germany (for area denial) would have played right into the Russian's hands. Luckily, the Soviets came to the conclusion that even the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons would escalate to a general exchange and signed the INF treaty eliminating almost all Theater Tactical Nuclear Capability by the 28th of May 1991. I believe that this was just a "magic trick." Those weapons were remanufactured and put on aircraft and Naval assets that were much harder to track and kill than the ground based missile carriers were. Just like the removal of almost all of the short range Tactical Weapons which occurred immediately after the INF treaty met compliance. Most of our artillery rounds and bombs were 30+ years old and were at the end of their service life and a new weapon allowed the practices of "Thermal Saturation" or "Scorched Earth" without the radiation. This is why Thermobaric Weapons replaced short ranged nukes in both the US and Soviet armies from the late 80's on.