Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I...the units that smashed it were thought to be in the Ukraine or thereabouts.
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The 22nd Cavalry Army had in fact been confirmed to be in Byelorussia at the beginning of the offensive.
The 4th GTA were also confirmed to be in the Ukraine.
As of November 2000, there is little to indicated that either of these formations (particularly the 4th GTA) were short on fuel. It can be assumed though that the destruction of the US 5th ID took a lot out of them, requiring weeks, or even months to rebuild.
Throughout all the available resources, we see that there was widespread activity in the summer of 2000 all along the Poland / German front. It can be presumed that few units were not in contact to varying degrees with the enemy. It can also be presumed (or should have by the various commanders) that units pushed back from the front and relieved would have been rallied and held in reserve. Without modern recon abilities (air, satellite, etc) a commander could not know the exact state of these units and had to assume (until evidence was provided otherwise) they could be a problem for any operations.
We, as players, GMs, writers, etc know that the real state of affairs was one of utter confusion. Almost no unit retained much structural integrity, let alone offensive capability. The people on the ground however had lived, fought, and seen men die for up to five years. Even after units, cities, factory complexes and civilisation in general had been nuked almost back to the stone age, the military had remained. A relatively small (compared to a few years before) offensive wasn't likely to do what the nukes couldn't...
So, right up until physical confirmation had been received that the enemy had given up and gone home, commanders HAD to assume the war was still being fought and react accordingly, or risk their entire unit, nay, the entire war being lost.
This fact has to be at the core of all decisions a commander makes - in our current topic of conversation, the decision to stay put in a defensible location and not withdraw as per Omega.
Now, NATO in general may have felt the US leaving to be a betrayal, however they left all their heavy equipment behind, allowing the Germans to rebuild their military. The reduction of tens of thousands of hungry mouths from Germany would also have been a welcome relief for those who stayed.
It wasn't until the following year, once the situation had apparently stabilised and information was available to indicate the Pact were no longer a credible threat that the British withdrew. With the situation at home, it was also quite clear to the remains of the British government that leaving the troops in Europe was probably going to cause more problems than it solved. Bringing them home and using them there was definitely going to solve more problems than it created.