Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
My understanding of Going Home is that the withdrawal was only made possible by the discovery by Germany of a oil tanker floating around at sea.
The US traded for this limited supply of oil with their heavy equipment - the Germans were absolutely in the drivers seat for the withdrawal and were able to name their price (which was the effective rearmament of their military).
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I don't want to contradict canon so I will have to take a close look at this. If I can't work this out, I may scrap my proposal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
It is (as I've said before) my view the objective of the summer offensive, which was primarily a German operation (just spearheaded by the US XI Corps) was to seize and hold the Baltic coastline and the coastal plains as far inland as possible. A side effect of this was to place the Estonian oil shale fields within striking distance. This oil would enable Nato to field aircraft once again and control of the Baltic would enable the oil to be quickly and efficiently shipped back to Germany for processing and distribution.
The holding of the Baltic coast was only possible in the longer term if the US and Britain were intending to stick around. Their troops were vital.
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This whole idea seems very hopeful to me. How is NATO going to extract and refine this shale oil? I think it is safe to assume that any pre-existing infrastructure for doing so has already bombed to ashes by the summer of 2000. From my understanding, just extracting shale oil is a more involved process than pumping "regular" crude. Then, one would either need proper refineries nearby or a pipeline with which to transport it to an distant operable refinery.
Turning shale oil into jet fuel is easier said than done. Assuming refinery facilities are available inthe first place, it's still not going to happen overnight. And what about the lack of spares and maintainance for the aircraft that have been grounded for a year or three? If you don't fly a jet aircraft every so often, it will need significant work in order to be made airworthy again. If a NATO airfleet could once again be fueled, it would be a fairly small one- hardly a game-changer.
And how would NATO plan to hold a long, isolated front running from west of Gdansk all the way to Lithuania? A second Baltic Shelf (llok at the first one from WWII) would be incredibly vulnerable to attacks from the south. Severing it would not be that difficult if a few strong divisions could be assembled (and, as canon bears out, the Soviets can and did, and that doesn't count the Soviet Corps in Belarus). This would not only sever the purported oil supply, it would also trap significant NATO military assets. As you yourself have pointed out, NATO does not have the shipping assets needed to remove the oil by sea, and/or support an isolated unit holding the oil fields (ergo, the 8th ID) in the Baltic states.
And what about the elephant in the room? Wouldn't NATO troops on Soviet territory prompt nuclear attacks? Why not just nuke the refineries that would be needed to deal with the shale oil? If Soviets could not retake their shale oil fields by conventional means, why couldn't/wouldn't they just nuke the source? Better no one have them, than NATO.
There are too many variables that your scenario does not address. In order to succeed, your proposed Summer 2000 offensive would require:
1. Sufficient combat strength to seize and hold a continuous front of several hundred miles along the Baltic coast,
OR (in lieu of a continuous front)
adequate shipping needed to both support a Baltic NATO pocket AND remove the oil.
2. Adequate infrastructure to transport and refine the shale oil, once it was extracted.
3. A way to ensure/protect against a Soviet nuclear response to an incursion on to its sovereign soil.
As far as I can tell, none of the above exists in the Summer of 2000. Oh, and if the oil from the shale beds in Lithuania is able to be extracted and refined in the Summer of 2000, why aren't the Soviets themselves already doing it?
This is just my opinion, but a large-scale raid (I believe canon calls the Summer Offensive a "raid" at least once)/ spoiling attack is a lot more plausible than a general offensive to seize and hold Lithuanian oil shale beds.