Would France sit out the War?

[dragoon500ly]

From a logistical standpoint, it would be hard for NATO to standup to a Soviet attack. Leaving France out of the mix, the major ports would be Antwerp (Belgium), Kiel, Hamburg and Bremenhaven (West Germany), Rotterdam and Amsterdam (Holland). That's right! The major major supply lines for NATO run roughly northwest to south in Germany...rand in an excellent position for an advancing Russian tank army to cut...and I wonder what multi-star genius thought that idea would work during wartime!

Of these, Kiel and Hamburg would both be knocked out of action within a very short period of time, both are well within SSM range of the border and any major attack by the Russians would lead to their capture/isolation. Bremenhaven is a fair sized port, but the loss of Kiel/Hamburg would make this one of the major nuke targets for the Soviets,

Which leaves the Dutch/Begium ports. Of these Antwerp would be THE major port...and a ripe target for several nukes, not to mention being fairly easy to mine. Rotterdam/Amsterdam are good size ports, but their sea approaches are a nightmare of shallows that requires near constant dredging to keep open.

Which leaves France, and its support of NATO as the big question; Brest, Cherbourg and Bordeaux would be the key ports for NATO, all attached by major road/railways and fairly safe from air attack as well as being much harder for the Soviet Navy/Air Force to strike.

This makes France's decision to support, or not support NATO so important.

[Webstral]

France really had to sit out the NATO offensives into East Germany and across Poland for things to be somewhat in balance.

We know that China was all-in on the Far Eastern Front. The Soviets were so badly pressed that they were withdrawing forces from Eastern Europe and taking Warsaw Pact formations to make up the numbers. The West German invasion came reasonably close to success. The sudden introduction of 10+ Anglo-American heavy divisions, plus the full weight of the RAF and USAF, would have been absolutely devastating for the Pact forces in East Germany. Were it not for the contents of the Soviet Vehicle Guide stating otherwise, Id expect whole armies to be enveloped and destroyed in the DDR. As it is, the best interpretation of the given histories I can make is that the Anglo-American forces behaved much as NATO forces do after the counterattack into the Krefeld Salient in General Sir John Hacketts The Third World War: they push forward less with the intention of inflicting a decisive defeat on the enemy than getting the enemy off German soil. Falaise Gap-style openings would not have been closed, and tens or hundreds of thousands of Pact troops would have been allowed to withdraw. Combat equipment might have drawn very heavy fire, but streams of troops might not have been subjected to a Highway of Death-style punishment in an effort to end the fighting on somewhat good terms with the Soviets.

The addition of the French military, along possibly with the Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Belgian militaries, would have severely overpowered the Soviets. At the very least, French participation in NATO would have nullified the Italian intervention in Austria and southern Germany. Also, the French might have had the common sense to point out that the Soviets would go nuclear once NATO troops crossed the Soviet border. Thats not a given, of course. But the French at least would not be shy about disagreeing with SACEUR and POTUS. Cutting out the French and the other NATO members who bail makes the NATO-Pact contest in Europe more balanced than it otherwise would be. So in a very real sense, the French have to sit out the fight.

In hindsight, of course, we know that the French were willing to have Germany reunited. It actually happened. But who could have predicted as much in 1984 I had high school social studies teachers who swore on their mothers graves that Germany would never be reunited, and the Soviet Union would last forever. Their views reflected the conventional wisdom of the day.

[James Langham]

Do the French have the capability to hit Russia with nukes I'm no expert on strategic nuclear weapons. If they have sub launched what is the range If they do have the range maybe the submarine is destroyed by either side in error.

As for the Soviets they may have hit limited targets with a warning that any retaliation would be met with massive strikes. The trigger for this could be French action in the Middle East that threatened the Soviets, maybe small skirmishes or covert actions (about which the French government might be unaware - consider DGSE's actions over the Rainbow Warrior) and the Kremlin (or at least the survivors from the rubble of it!) wanted to send a message to stay out or else.

What really needs to be worked out is the political make up of the French Government, can anyone recall anything from canon on this

[dragoon500ly]

At the time, France fielded:

18 SSBS S-3 IRBM (1MT wearhead and range of 3,500km).
42 Pluton SSM (10KT warhead and range of 120km).
16 Mirage IVA with the AN-22 nuclear bomb (60 KT), max range of 3,200km.
18 Mirage IVA with the ASMP nuclear bomb (70-90KT), max range of 3,200km.
30 Mirage IIIE with the AN-52 (15KT), max range of 2,400km.
36 Super Etendard with the AN-52 (15KT), max range of 1,500km.
80 M-4 SLBM (6x150KT warheads and 4,000km range).
16 + 16 M-45 SLBM (6x150KT warheads and 5,000km range).
0 + 16 M5 SLBM (6x150KT with rqange of 5,000km, in service 1997-98).

[pmulcahy11b]

The question is, "Would the Russians let the French sit out the war" I can't see the Russians not hitting the French to deny NATO the use of their ports and to cut off the possibility that the French might throw in with NATO early in the war.

[Olefin]

Maybe the real question is how long will the French continue to sit out the war - the timeline basically stopped in the early spring of 2001. While the war in Europe has pretty much petered out in Germany and Poland the war in the Middle East is still very much on - and there the French are there in force directly in contact with the Russians or at least Russian backed forces in Iraq.

So will France finally get into the war with the Soviets directly but only in the Middle East Not so much by directly engaging the Soviets but possibly by taking on their proxy forces in Iraq Or maybe staging an excuse so they can hit the Soviets hard and get some payback. Especially if doing so allows CENTCOM to pull out for home with a Soviet defeat and leave them as the only power remaining in the Middle East

By the way - as to the Soviets using nukes on France by the 2000-2001 era I dont see that as very likely. The events of Boomer suggest that the Soviets may no longer have any operational nuclear missiles that can reach France - i.e. those missiles on the boomer they were trying to recover may be the only ones they have left

i.e. From the module "The potential of intact nuclear missiles and a submarine to launch them fanned the embers of vengeance in Kozlov's mind, and they soon burst into flame"

The Soviets may have done what MilGov did in the US - i.e. removed the warheads off their remaining missiles to keep them from being used against them by rebels. Thus the French by 2001 may be where they can finally hit back against the Soviets for what they did to them in 1997 and be able to do it without any risk of the Soviets being able to use their nukes on them.

[Rainbow Six]

I've always assumed that the French (and Belgian) "withdrawal" from NATO would have included refusing to allow NATO forces to use Belgian / French ports, in which case the Soviets wouldn't have had to take any overt action to deny NATO use of French ports before November 1997 if the French Government were already denying such use.

Obviously we know the French were nuked by someone at the end of 1997 -although I have in the past had a different position on this, arguments put forward on these boards have caused me to change my mind, and I'm now inclined to agree with the point put forward by Horsesoldier, i.e. that if the French join the war they risk getting a much heavier megatonnage dropped on them so stay out (I'm also inclined to agree that there may well have been some sort of communication between the French and Soviet Governments to that effect).

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I realize this is wandering further afield from Canon, but bear with me...

Maybe France staying in is exactly why it got nuked. As was said upthread, a united NATO would squash the USSR in Central Europe - maybe that's exactly what the USSR feared and struck preemptively. France is sitting on its hinder, waiting for things to sort out, and then starts mobilizing troops when it looks like a NATO win is a fait accompli, and they offer to open up le Harve and other ports to full NATO usage, and French "observers" are seen moving in to position in Western Germany.

This encourages Italy to start doing similar moves.

The USSR then nukes France and she quickly withdraws, and Italy "gets the message" and becomes neutral/belligerent (I mean they sank a good portion of the USN in being during the last attempt to send a resupply convoy to Southern Europe so...)

Just idle speculation.

[Adm.Lee]

Do we know for certain that the French IRBM's didn't pay the Soviets back for the hits on their ports

[Rainbow Six]

Do we know for certain that the French IRBM's didn't pay the Soviets back for the hits on their ports

Not aware of any published material that specifically says one way or the other. (At the risk of going off on a tangent, a French sourcebook might have been quite interesting...)

Those who do advocate a French attack on the USSR might be interested in this page on the etranger site which puts forward a scenario where that happened:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Historical/PGAA1.htm

[Adm.Lee]

Not aware of any published material that specifically says one way or the other. (At the risk of going off on a tangent, a French sourcebook might have been quite interesting...)

Those who do advocate a French attack on the USSR might be interested in this page on the etranger site which puts forward a scenario where that happened:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dh...ical/PGAA1.htm

That may have given me the idea; it seems logical and fitting to me.

[Raellus]

I realize this is wandering further afield from Canon, but bear with me...

Maybe France staying in is exactly why it got nuked. As was said upthread, a united NATO would squash the USSR in Central Europe - maybe that's exactly what the USSR feared and struck preemptively. France is sitting on its hinder, waiting for things to sort out, and then starts mobilizing troops when it looks like a NATO win is a fait accompli, and they offer to open up le Harve and other ports to full NATO usage, and French "observers" are seen moving in to position in Western Germany.

This encourages Italy to start doing similar moves.

The USSR then nukes France and she quickly withdraws, and Italy "gets the message" and becomes neutral/belligerent (I mean they sank a good portion of the USN in being during the last attempt to send a resupply convoy to Southern Europe so...)

Just idle speculation.

Seems quite logical to me. Wouldn't be the first time a sharp punch in the nose forced the French to back down and reexamine its own best interests.

[Olefin]

I would think that France standing down after a nuclear strike without hitting back would have definitely had a coup attempt that would have had to fail for the timeline to go forward as it did.

Something like what happened at the end of WWII - i.e. when the Emperor recorded the surrender address a bunch of hard line Japanese officers tried to overthrown the govt but failed and the surrender went ahead.

Something similar most likely happened here as I cant see conservative members of the French military and government just accepting getting nuked and applauding the decision to not hit back and hit back hard - or to not join the war whole heartedly after a lot of French citizens were killed.

Consider the following list from Wikipedia of French refineries and you can see how many nukes we are talking about just to hit them - and this is the list of those over 100,000 bbl/day which I have seen posted here before as what was considered the threshold for a nuclear strike.

Provence Refinery, (Total), 155,000 bbl/d (24,600 m3/d)

Normandy Refinery, (Total), 350,000 bbl/d (56,000 m3/d)

Flandres Refinery, (Total), 160,000 bbl/d (25,000 m3/d)

Donges Refinery, (Total), 231,000 bbl/d (36,700 m3/d)

Feyzin Refinery, (Total), 119,000 bbl/d (18,900 m3/d)

Grandpuits Refinery, (Total), 99,000 bbl/d (15,700 m3/d)

Port Jrme-Gravenchon Refinery, 270,000 bbl/d (43,000 m3/d)

Fos-sur-Mer Refinery, (ExxonMobil), 140,000 bbl/d (22,000 m3/d)

Petit Couronne Refinery, (Petroplus), 142,000 bbl/d (22,600 m3/d)

Lavera Marseilles Refinery, (Ineos), 220,000 bbl/d (35,000 m3/d)

Thats a lot of nuclear strikes in a country that is a nuclear power and it just sits there and takes it.

Assuming they didnt hit back you would have most likely had a significant amount of the French military going over the hill to join NATO. Probably on the order of as much as 25 percent of their total military perhaps even higher, with some naval ships and aircraft for sure added to that list. (doesnt take much on burner to go from patrolling the Dead Zone to landing at a Luftwaffe base or go from patrolling the English Channel to landing in the UK)

That could also explain the gaps in French units that was talked about quite a while ago here by me and others - i.e. that the RDF units are significantly understrength for a country not at war.

Well one reason could be Frenchmen who couldnt just sit back and let the Soviets hit their country and joined NATO to fight. Possibly even in their own units, similar to the Waffen SS French unit that was formed in WWII.

[Rainbow Six]

The USSR then nukes France and she quickly withdraws, and Italy "gets the message" and becomes neutral/belligerent (I mean they sank a good portion of the USN in being during the last attempt to send a resupply convoy to Southern Europe so...)

With regard to the Italians, they are already committed as a belligerent before the nuclear exchanges begin (at least in V2.X - following the signing of a mutual defence pact with Greece in February 97, Italy declares War on NATO on 02 July 97, whilst the first use of nuclear weapons takes place on 09 July 97. V1 dates may differ).

[Olefin]

Thats right - Italy was already at war long before the nukes started to fly - always thought the only way they would have joined the war would be with a takeover by Socialists. I cant see Christian Democrats ever joining a war on the US and Germany - not without being attacked first.

Especially since the only areas in Italy that have ties to Greece and thus would go to war over them being attacked are the southern areas, Sardinia and Sicily - and they are not traditionally ones that have much power in the modern Italian government.