Cuban Missile Crisis

[Rich46yo]

Lemay was a megalomaniac who liked to run his mouth. He liked to say a lot of stupid things about nukes. Who knows? Maybe it was a strategy, tho in burning Japan to the ground you have to believe he meant it. Heres another of his quotes.

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us, the decision to release them was not his. In fact it wasnt even an American Presidents, at least in Europe. NATO would have to concur. Dont get me wrong, I also believe either side would have used nukes before being defeated and overthrown. But it would have been the leaders of NATO who released them. And once released it wouldnt have ended there. By putting special weapons in Europe America also put her own population at great risk. I think a general nuclear war would have chain reacted.

Germany had its own thing going with the Reds. With "RealPolitik" they defused many tensions and helped open constructive dialogue. Thus decreasing tensions. They did not welcome the idea of special weapons being used on their territory. And lets not forget "nukes" were not the only scarey weapons. Both sides had very large chem/bio arsenals as well. Most of all the Reds who practiced fighting in a chem environment probably more then we did.

[GScholz]

The Soviets considered chemical weapons to be conventional, not "special", so any conventional-only war with the WP would have included massive use of CW in Europe. Also, NATO has no authority over the French and British nuclear arsenals. France wasn't even part of the military alliance in NATO after 1966, only the political. France stood alone for most of the Cold War.

[Rich46yo]

The Soviets considered chemical weapons to be conventional, not "special", so any conventional-only war with the WP would have included massive use of CW in Europe. Also, NATO has no authority over the French and British nuclear arsenals. France wasn't even part of the military alliance in NATO after 1966, only the political. France stood alone for most of the Cold War.

Not so alone. They did realize their survival was linked to the rest of NATO in case of hostilities and only a fool would think France would survive as a free nation with the entire Soviet bloc on their doorstep. I think Hackett was right when, in his book, he wrote how France unequivocally allied with NATO when the war broke out.

Yes both France and England had their own arsenals but compared to the Soviet one they were far, far smaller. A threat to use them unilaterally would have been taken by the Reds to be no more then a bluff. Again we would be left with NATO only releasing after a consultation. I agree about the chems, which is why I always had a MOPP gear on my hip or in my war bad while I was there. I think the Reds would have used them and we would have used them back. Their use would favor the forward defense strategy of NATO and eventually the Reds would have quit using them.

Again I think Hackett was correct.

[Stellaris]

France would doubtless side with NATO.  The question is, would France use nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets on their border?   Absolutely.  Would the US use nuclear weapons to prevent the loss of the half-million troops they had in Europe?  Absolutely.  Would Britain use nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets from sealing the English channel?  Absolutely.  Would a German artillery officer commandeer the US nuclear weapons tasked to his unit to prevent Germany from being over-run?  Absolutely.

When your enemy can obliterate your continent in twenty minutes, it is pointless to argue over who had more planes or better tanks.  You can construct a thousand scenarios and they will all end the same way.  However Hackett could hardly interest anyone in his story if it ended with the world wiped out, so he had everyone come to their senses at the very last moment.

The reality is - everyone has to keep their senses from the very first moment, and we're very fortunate that they did.

[GScholz]

The French policy was, and still is, that any attack on France, even conventional-only, will be answered by all-out nuclear war from day one. Their policy was also that any attack on France should be retaliated to cause at least the same amount of casualties on the attacker as the total French population, or about 60 million people. France is a lot closer to Russia so they don't need huge ICBM delivery systems. Today they have just under 300 warheads. In the late '80s they had more than 500. Easily enough to turn European Russia into a wasteland. Today most of France's nuclear weapons are carried on their four SSBNs. 16 missiles per sub with 6-10 warheads each. In the 1980s they had six SSBNs with 16 missiles each. In 2006, French President Jacques Chirac stated that France is willing to use nuclear weapons against a state attacking France via terrorist means. He noted that the French nuclear forces had been configured for this option.