Originally Posted by
ORAC
We’ll if you mean throughout the Cold War until the fall of the Wall and the demise of the WP - yes.
Every exercise and plan involved a fighting retreat back to the Channel using the war stocks at hand and going nuclear around day 3.
Although with what we learned after the fall of the Iron Curtain and with what we have seen in Ukraine lately I have some doubts it would have worked that way for the WP. They can't supply 2000 tanks and 100.000 Troops anything above 50 miles beyond their door step. How would they have kept 20.000 Tanks and millions of soldiers hundreds of kilometers away from home and 1000km from their wide- gauge railheads happy and fed??? And how would the following tank columns and escpecially their road- bound fuel bowsers have passed the first 10.000 burning tank wrecks in the narrow and hilly Fulda Gap? How would they have prevented the scarce and road- bound fuel bowsers being among the burning wrecks? A tank that has run out of fuel is quite awkward to be pushed forward by its only 3 man crew. etc...
The more I see the more ridiculous the scenarios that were played through do appear in hindisght.