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[in each category, NATO was outnumbered anywhere from 8-10 to 1 ( or more), on a border which was only feet from CCCP. The only thing keeping Moscow from rapidly smashing all of Europe was MAD, and US nuclear artillery.]

That’s the theory. The question is how much of it was real, and how much of it was Operation Fortitude, but through corruption or the systematic under-reporting of problems rather than any intent to deceive the West. In other words, was the Warsaw Pact a Potemkin force? Milley rated the Russians as able to overrun Ukraine in 3 days on the strength of overhead imagery, sigint and presumably some humint. I’d say, at this stage, that nobody knows nothing about Russian capabilities. The question is whether anyone *knew* anything about Soviet capabilities, include the Soviet High Command. And by “knew”, I mean had a good, realistic grasp of.

In 1993, I was in a panel discussion with several retired Soviet (Russian) Generals on the North side of Moscow.

From NATO’s side, the “formal cold war” intel was actually very good.

The debate in our side wasn’t could they roll through Germany and France to the coast in approx 2-4 weeks. The debate on our side was what’s holding them back.

Apart from MAD, a significant number on our side believed it was our nuclear artillery, while the other half theorized it was MAD only.

However, the question really wasn’t about MAD, but rather if the Soviet’s didn’t go nuclear, and chose only to use armor and artillery, could we justify going strategic nuclear, which would have resulted MAD. This gaming and policy discussion was tricky.

On our side, there were at least a few who believed it possible Moscow could at any moment test us with their armor to see what our response would be. In such a test, they would begin by sending 2-3 armor brigades to learn our response. Of we didn’t respond with nuclear artillery, they had two options, ratchet up, or go all in.

We would then use nuclear artillery to halt Soviet armor, and the thinking by some was Moscow would perhaps not escalate to MAD, for their own preservation.

So a nuclear game of chicken -

Either way, they had the armor.ayne not enough tank drivers, but they had the armor.

We never knew why they never tested us, or went all in for sure, until 1993 (probably). The panel of Generals told us they knew we couldn’t stop them with NATO air, but they knew they would lose all.of their armor in a couple of days, because of our nuclear artillery, leaving the CCCP defenseless except for strategic weapons.

However, they had a lot of territory, and believed we could then take large areas of territory, with their only option to essentially nuke themselves to stop us.

This explanation was almost comical, but they were really afraid of our nuclear artillery regardless.

So the nuke artillery was the “conventional” blitzkrieg deterrent.

Craziness -

That’s the theory. The question is how much of it was real,
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It was not a theory - it was a fact - I sat across from 4 fully mechanized Russian Armies (400,000 troops, 35,000 tanks) at 4km in West Germany and monitored them continually. It was 72 hours for the Russians to arrive at the English Channel AFTER tactical nukes were used.

Operation Fortitude took place during WWII, not during the Cold War. Gen. Milley couldn’t rate used underwear.