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Old 01-12-2009, 05:25 AM
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Legbreaker Legbreaker is offline
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One important factor, at least in the initial stages of reunification, has to be time.
Although the generals, etc who were involved in the talks probably knew well in advance what was going on, the average soldiers, even the vast majority of the upper ranks would certainly have been kept in the dark right up until the last minute. Therefore, there would have been next to no opportunity for preplanning or even stockpiling of supplies of almost any sort to reequip the army of what was until then a seperate country.

Even training of the troops to NOT shoot their allies/former enemies would not have been possible and so the chances of units attacking each other out of confusion (especially since the Poles are reported to have been equipped with similar uniforms) would have to be exceptionally high.

Put another way, can an entire army be expected to reverse it's political outlook in the time between the anouncement of unification and movement east?

Of course that assumes there was an announcement. From what I can see, there wasn't - according to the 1.0 timeline, West German units moved into East Germany and attacked Soviet forces on the 7th of October while East German units stayed in barracks. It wasn't until more than seven weeks later that the East German generals moved to take over the government and two days after that the East German army finally took the field.

Yes, that seven week period is a long time, but the way I read it, it wasn't until the end of Novemeber that the decision was finally made / action taken. In my mind there's no way the Communist civilian government would have used that time to prepare for integration with western forces but they may have ordered the production of pact supplies.

Perhaps the Generals delay was due to preparing the training plans, etc, but I doubt they'd have been able to initiate the programs before the coup as that would have tipped their hand and invited attack by the remaining pact units.

The 2.0/2.2 timeline is a LOT simplier with regard to reunification and integration - they had a few years to accomplish what was needed without the Soviets breathing down their backs.
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