The great strength of Western troops in the Cold War was that we allowed our tactical commanders to be flexible, whereas that wasn't true in the Soviet Bloc model.
“we allowed our tactical commanders to be flexible, whereas that wasn’t true in the Soviet Bloc model.”
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Not so - or at least entirely so. In fact, WW3 almost got rolling because Soviet commanders had flexibility in certain situations to pop off a nuke during the Cuban Missle Crisis. Two out of three voted to do it, but the third said “Nyet”.
https://www.rbth.com/history/326253-arkhipov-cuban-missil-crisis
Bismarck said that Russia is never as strong or as weak as it may appear. When Hitler saw the Red Army floundering against Finland in the Winter War of 1939-1940, it gave Adolph too much confidence leading to his June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.