[chico20854]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Interesting post, Webstral. What accounts for the dearth of trucks in the Red Army? Is this a a problem that the Soviet army had, IRL (as of the late '80s, when the alternate history of the Twilight World diverges from our own) or is this shortate something that you've created as part of your game world?

I agree that logistics would be a huge problem on both sides. As folks have mentioned, the strain posed by the Soviets' war with China would be great, getting worse, of course, when the second front opens up in Europe.

You've gotten me thinking seriously about NATO's logistics issues. With France uncooperative (and Belgium, to a degree), all war shipping would have to come in through ports in Holland and Germany, which would be incredibly vulnerable to bombing (conventional and later, nuclear) and mining. With only a couple of major ports in operation, supply problems for the NATO armies would become greater and greater as their operations headed closer to the Soviet Union and further from those ports.

There's a direct historical parallel here. Part of the Western Allies' difficulty in advancing across western Europe during WWII was logistical. Before Antwerp was liberated and cleared, supplies could only come in through a couple of damaged ports in France. Since Allied bombing had wrecked most of the rail system in France, most of the supplies had to be trucked. Even with the American's considerable stock of trucks, there was an incredible strain on operations and some Allied armies had to be held back so that vital supplies could be delivered to others. There was a constant struggle between Montgomery and the American generals over whose army/corps would get supply precedence and therefore be able to continue its advance. Ike almost sacked Monty a couple of times because of his incessant and sometimes insubordinate calls for supply precedence.

This problem also existed, to a degree, on the Eastern Front. The Soviets were bound by some of the same limitations. The Soviets were still able to conduct sustained operations across a very broad front and over much greater distances than the Western Allies, though. Of course, there were seasonal limitations on offensive operations and some offensives did have to be stopped due to supply issues but, on the whole, the Soviets did a better job managing logistical problems than did the Western Allies. It helped that the Soviet soldier required much less in the way of supply tonage to operate than the British or American soldier did.

It seems strange that the USSR would have forgotten these lessons from the past.

The dearth of trucks was a problem their entire economy faced, even with the massive KAMAZ and other truck plants. This shortage extended to the army - the mobilization stockpiles of equipment frequently had near-complete equipment sets as far as AFVs, artillery and small arms, with no cargo trucks (they did have communications vans and similar specialized vehicles). Late-mobilizing and low-readiness divisions use trucks rounded up from collective farms and industrial facilities. (However, in the 80s, as a reaction to American 'deep strike' tactics, the Soviet Army in Europe established a number of heavy truck brigades to counteract some of the anticipated NATO interdiction of rail lines across Poland. Many of these were tank transporters to bring forward second and subsequent echelons from the Western USSR). The callup of trucks from the economy furthers the strain on the already struggling Soviet state, reducing crop yields and production of war material.

The Soviets planned to get around these limitations with massively agressive tactics - as Web explained, to win the war before they ran out of supplies. And they, like NATO, stockpiled massive quantities of supplies in theater. (Sometime read up on the disposal problems the Germans faced after unification - something like 300,000 tons of abandoned ammo!)

The logistic issues drive a lot of the campaigning. (And in many ways the analysis I do is focussed on these sort of issues - I'm a former supply sergeant that worked at a variety of levels, I did sealift planning for the U.S. government for a while and still work for the U.S. Department of Transportation in the maritime field). We've been very aware of the ports issues - NATO faces some serious problems by being limited to Dutch, German and Danish ports. (They are for a while able to bring in non-war material through Antwerp and French ports - bulk food, fuel, some raw materials). I've proposed that one of the reasons the Dutch and Danes join the war is as a reaction to Soviet conventional attacks that attempted to interdict the flow of supplies (see my site's document). The strategic pauses in operations in the European theater - such as between the ejection of Pact troops from East Germany and the advance across Poland - serve several purposes. First, they offer a new situation on the ground for the diplomats to attempt to work out an end to the war. Second, they give the air forces an opportunity to attrit and interdict enemy ground troops (similar to the U.S. air war in 1991), and finally they give the logisiticians time to allow units to replenish after the last action, build up supply dumps and improve some of the infrastructure that will be needed to support the next advance (repairing rail, strengthening bridges, etc.)

As to the parallels with WWII, I heartily agree! Patton was famous (notorious?) for his disregard for logistics issues - he was extremely upset when the umpires in pre-war manuevers announced that he had "lost" an engagement after his tanks ran out of fuel and ammo. To sustain the advance across France, the US Army stripped units (such as air defense and tank destroyers) of all trucks larger than jeeps to bolster the Red Ball Express. The situation on the Eastern Front was worse than you describe - while the Soviet soldier received less support, the tonnages of artillery ammunition were staggering, and the Red Army frequently had to halt offensive operations due to logistic issues (the failure to link up with the Warsaw uprising was partially due to real logistic issues.

As far as NATO's advance across Poland, it will be difficult to maintain. First, I imagine that the east bank of the Oder will be fortified in multiple layers, similar to the defenses arranged for Kursk in 1943. As Pact forces retreat. the devestation they leave behind will present NATO with significant obstacles. Much of the Polish road network will need extensive reconstruction work (and my post-Cold War experience with Polish roads is that they are pretty damn atrocious, I can't imagine how bad they were in the 80s), and the requisitioned Western European civilian trucks (that bring supplies forward to corps-level depots, where Army tactical trucks pick up the load) will have a lot of maintenance issues (setting aside the issue of finding drivers after former conscripts are called back to military service). There will be little riverine traffic, with most tonnage on the Oder damaged or destroyed during the December-March strategic pause, and the rail network thoroughly destroyed by the Soviets (over the objections of the Poles, who are torn between wanting to slow the NATO advance but also not wanting to destroy their nation's infrastructure).