This TL was formally stopped because of (primarily my) criticism in this thread. Look, criticism and criticism that you consider unfair is just something that you're going to get if you write and present fiction. That's just the way it goes.
Sorry for the late responds to the thread but criticism is fine, we learn from it to make things better.This TL was formally stopped because of (primarily my) criticism in this thread. Look, criticism and criticism that you consider unfair is just something that you're going to get if you write and present fiction. That's just the way it goes.
This is only the NATO causalities i think, Polish, Czech (forces loyal to the official government and not the pro-East German forces) make the number higher i assume.Even though the TL has been stopped, just out of curiosity I used MCOAT (an unclassified Excel tool floating around the internet, attached here) to give rough estimates for the victor's casualties.
For one division-sized unit engaged in conflict with the best the GDR can offer (ie, only somewhat better equipment and comparable skill), there's about 80 KIA and 500 wounded per day of action. That's about half the Gulf War KIA in one unit in one day. For the force as a whole (I used 350,000 people as a ballpark estimate), I toned down the enemy proficiency because you're going to be facing a lot of second-tier units with T-55s who are only "good" by Iraqi standards. Combine that with a week's effort to reach Berlin in the first phase, and I got around 2,200 dead and 8,700 wounded. Around 20 years of OTL low-intensity war in Afghanistan, and it's accomplished in one week. The "Second Phase", assuming what's left of the NVA fights to the end, has around 400 NATO dead and 1,500 wounded in the final mop-up towards the Czech and Polish borders. Again, it would be the bloodiest, most conventionally challenging, and most ferocious post-1991 conflict the western powers have faced.
But their opponents are going to be utterly destroyed.
This is only the NATO causalities i think, Polish, Czech (forces loyal to the official government and not the pro-East German forces) make the number higher i assume.
And of course the civilian casualties will be high.Fair, although the bulk of both NATO/DDR casualties would be against each other once the former revved up.
You mean a Trabant APC.Having too much fun thinking of the hypothetical box-APCs the East Germans could make from their domestic truck and van chassis.
Probably something based on VEB Zittau's finest work - the Robur.
Looks nice but in a battlefield it would not last long.Yeah, stuff like this Italian truck. There are literally countless box-APC manufacturers that turn existing chassis into armored vechiles (There it's usually stuff like Land Cruisers and Ford Super Duty trucks). The first large-scale Soviet transport, the BTR-152, was such a vehicle, and I have a weird soft spot for it in spite (or because?) of its crude simplicity.
Of course, the boring realistic answer is "when the teetering regime finally falls, the nukes are unceremoniously and uncontroversially dismantled ie OTL South Africa", but for a technothriller, their ability to make nuclear weapons wouldn't be that big a contrivance.