What was the primary reason to abandone those plans, according to existing documents?
If I remember correctly, it was huge Soviet military advantage over Allied forces in Europe.
Nothing else was preventing notorious warmonger and ideological lunatic from putting those plans in action.
What do you think, was it reasonable for USSR to keep large conventional army back then, or it should have disarmed?
I don't know why Churchill abandoned those plans. I am sure that the inability of the British Army to make even a small dent in the Soviet war machine had a great deal to do with it, yes.
Whether it would have been reasonable for the USSR to decrease the size of the Red Army isn't even an academic question, I would think, because it seems to me that there was less than zero chance of it happening.
red_elk said:
I understand that the USA had neither desire nor much ability to achieve conventional parity with USSR in Europe.
Now put into the equation two factors:
1. Forces of another NATO members in Europe. France, Britain, West Germany.
2. USA's nuclear monopoly.
First strike with 20-30 atomic bombs, decimating Soviet industrial and military potential, killing tens of millions.
People are asking why the USSR kept large army - here are the answers.
Germany wasn't permitted to rearm until 1949, and the BRD's military remained incapable of pursuing an offensive against even a very much smaller Red Army, let alone the rest of the Warsaw Pact. The French weren't interested in invading East Germany and Poland, and the British were too weak to try. Suggesting that the rest of the European countries posed a serious threat to the USSR's control over Eastern Europe seems a bit disingenuous to me.
Similarly, I have a hard time understanding how a large conventional army is supposed to do anything about a series of nuclear attacks on Soviet industrial regions and population centers.
red_elk said:
Absolutely agree. Purely conventional attack from NATO side would be suicidal. The thing is that neither of two sides considered such scenario, both USSR and USA were confident that large scale conflict would quickly escalate to using tactical and then most likely, strategical nuclear weapons.
It would be interesting to hear your opinion on the question why the Soviet analysts made such decision, to continue keeping large army and achieving nuclear parity with the USA. Was it just paranoia?
I am not sufficiently educated on the subject to be able to say with any degree of confidence.
Oh, an interesting piece of information at last! What were the stupid and unnecessary reforms? I'm aware that a cut was necessary, for several reasons, including general war weariness (the reason why I regarded operation unthinkable as impossible to start by the western allies), but can you explain briefly what happened in the immediate post-war with the american army?
Well, first there were the absolutely, unquestionably necessary reforms, like desegregation. But the negative reforms I was thinking of were broad-spectrum things that weren't really conducted with a single overriding focus - except "make the Army crappy", but few people actually
wanted to do that. And the people who supported the latter frequently conflated those reforms with the unquestionably necessary ones.
For one thing, disciplinary standards for commanding officers and NCOs were tightened up considerably. The Doolittle Board was confronted in 1945 by the simple fact that the US Army, due to the manpower needs of a global war, had made many men NCOs and officers who were unfit for the post. In order to curb the abuses of power for which these men were responsible, the Board tightened up on the ability of
anybody to abuse power, instead of making the officer selection process more accountable. This effectively meant that non-private soldier were no longer able to discipline their troops in any real way. Contracting a VD was no longer a court martial offense. Sergeants were placed on a par with the men they were supposed to be in charge of. That sort of thing. This total breakdown of military discipline in noncombat situations made training soldiers
for combat situations effectively impossible. When war in Korea came in 1950, American privates had to learn the business of making war on the fly, and American officers who had commanded excellent bodies of troops in the Second World War that could hold objectives against five times their number in Germans were now in command of bodies of troops that would be hard pressed to secure anything but a local brothel or liquor store.
Other reforms destroyed the actual strength of the Army. The postwar cuts were deeper than at any other point in American history. Even the Army of 1919 was larger and better at fighting than the Army of 1916 had been. The Army of 1947 was consciously reduced to minuscule numbers considering its theoretical global mission. The Air Force was supposedly going to be able to stop any serious incursions on the perimeter in Korea or Germany or the Caucasus. What the Air Force couldn't do with 2,000 pound bombs and air-to-surface rockets, atomic weapons could finish. Need a rapid reaction force? Send the Marines.
Cuts not only affected the Army's numerical strength, but its technological strength too. Advanced bazookas developed during the Second World War that could penetrate the frontal armor of the T-34, the Tiger, or the Pershing were not even put into production. The Pershing itself was barely produced at all. American artillery remained good and in good supply, but everything else was unavailable to the soldiers of the late forties. (Even the artillery, which technically excellent, frequently lacked good quality ammunition. At the outbreak of war in June 1950, there were a total of eighteen anti-tank rounds in Japan for the standard American 105mm howitzers. And the American occupying forces in Japan were second only to the remaining forces slated for Europe on procurement lists.) The US was unquestionably
not technologically deficient, but it lacked the political desire to ensure that the Army, at least, was provided with the fruits of American technological prowess.
The Army was forced to deal with similar circumstances in the late 1960s and most of the 1970s in Europe. Once again, it faced debilitating cuts and lacked the teeth to impose discipline on its own soldiers. (Hence, for instance, the
Yes, Prime Minister joke about American soldiers in Germany being stoned out of their gourds. It was about eight to ten years late at that point, since by 1986 the US Army was as close to a world-beating force as it had been in 1945 and was certainly no longer suffering from the drugs problems it had dealt with in the 1970s, but there had at least
once been grounds for the comment.) But at least there was considerable institutional continuity, and its officers were able to retain knowledge and develop solutions to problems throughout the period. FM 100-5 was developed by the same commanders and staff officers who'd presided over the low point of disciplinary breakdown in the seventies. The same can't really be said for the Army in the late forties - they had to wait for the actual war to break out before they could figure out how to fight it.
