quote:
The fact is, the WP had to win in 30 days or the Soviet economy would collapse.
I'm deeply sceptical for the excellent reason that this sort of argument has been proven false before. Prior to the First World War, economists everywhere predicted that a western economy could not operate under the conditions of mass conscription and that as a consequence the war could not have lasted more than a few months.
There's a big difference in the economies of WWI or even Soviet WWII and the 80's. In those earlier times most people lived in rural areas and it required much less transport to keep everybody fed. By the mid 80's I'll bet > 80% of people in the Soviet Union lived in urban areas and were absolutely dependent on those trucks that would be grabbed during mobilization. You probably have never talked to anybody who lived under the Soviet boot heel, but I've talked to plenty. There was such a scarcity of consumer goods, including food, during normal times that any disruption would cause widespread famine within a few weeks. Even western cities only have ~ 1 week of foodstuff on hand in the case of a disaster that it would be a problem for us if something took all the trucks off the road. That's why I tell my wife it's not such a bad thing to hold on to all those old cans of soup she keeps trying to throw away. [:)]
