"400,000 soviet troops in East Germany and 150,000 or so East German NVA troops would have simply moved out of the way."
In fact they might have been marching/panzering west.
Could be. But Reagan was willing to take that chance. You OB "specialists" out there are forgetting one thing:
=======
NATO asked the United States to deploy intermediate range missiles to Europe in 1978 to counter the deployment of Soviet intermediate range, mobile SS 20 nuclear missiles, and the first Pershing II missiles arrived in the Brigade area in November 1983. By 1985 all three battalions of the 56th Brigade had achieved operational status.
=======
Ever wonder why the commies in West Germany were always going nutso over the Pershing?
So the Warsaw Pact had a huge numerical advantage over NATO. So why didn't they ever attack? Guesses?
Shades of the Fulda gap.