One of the cores of Prussia - Brandenburg, was just within the GDR.
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And I want to know not the comparison of the Western bloc - East Block, but the force of armies GDR / FRG. In an interview the general
Kielmansegg in one place claimed that the army of the GDR was stronger, but later he spoke of the Army of the GDR only as a part of the Eastern Bloc.
As already indicated, within the WP, the NVA was often the best equipped of all non-Russian WP forces.
The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.
The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was an all volunteer force until an eighteen month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was considered one of the most professional and best prepared military forces in the world.
East Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The manpower of the NVA consisted of some 85,000 soldiers in 1962, climbed to 127,000 by 1967, and remained essentially steady through 1970. In 1987, at the peak of its power, the NVA numbered 175,300 troops. Approximately 50% of this number were career soldiers, while the others were short-term conscripts. Left behind were after German Unification were:
- 767 aircraft (helicopters, fixed wing aircraft), 24 of which were MiG-29s
- 208 ships
- 2,761 tanks
- 133,900 wheeled vehicles
- 2,199 artillery pieces
- 1,376,650 firearms
- 303,690 tons of ammunition
- 14,335 tons of fuel and cleaning materials
National People's Army - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aside from NVA you had :
Border troops, separated from the NVA in 1973 but remaining under the same ministry: an all-volunteer force that at its peak numbered approximately 47,000 men.
After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.
The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000-12,000 men.
The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories and neighbourhoods. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's Politburo. They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.
East Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bundeswehr was officially established on the 200th birthday of Scharnhorst on 12 November 1955. After an amendment of the Basic Law in 1955, West Germany became a member of NATO. In 1956, conscription for all men between the ages of 18 and 45 was reintroduced, later augmented by a civil alternative with longer duration. During the Cold War, the Bundeswehr was the backbone of NATO's conventional defence in Central Europe. It had a strength of 495,000 military and 170,000 civilian personnel.Although Germany had smaller armed forces than France and the United States, Cold War Historian John Lewis Gaddis assesses the Bundeswehr as "perhaps world's best army".The Army consisted of three corps with 12 divisions, most of them heavily armed with tanks and APCs.
Bundeswehr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The army saw itself explicitly not as a successor to the defeated
Wehrmacht, but as in the traditions of the
Prussian military reformers of 1807 to 1814 and the members of the
military resistance during National Socialism. On 1 April 1957, the first conscripts arrived for service in the army.In total of twelve armoured and infantry divisions were to be established by 1959, as planned in Army Structure I. To achieve this goal existing units were split approximately every six months. However the creation of all twelve divisions did not take place until 1965. At the end of 1958 the strength of the army was about 100,000 men.
The development of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons required the development of a new Army structure even before Army Structure I was fully achieved. To minimize the effects of attacks with tactical nuclear weapons on massed forces, the 28,000 strong
divisions of the
Heer were broken up into smaller and more mobile
brigades. These smaller units were also to be capable of self-sustainment on an atomic battlefield for several days, and to be capable of to move quickly from defense and to attack. The new armoured and mechanized brigades were capable of
combined arms combat. Each division was composed of three brigades. The armoured brigades consisted of an armoured infantry battalion, two armoured battalions, an armoured artillery battalion and a supply battalion. The mechanized brigades consisted of a motorized infantry battalion, two mechanized infantry battalions, an armored battalion, a field artillery battalion and a supply battalion. The motorized brigades consisted of three motorized infantry battalions, an anti-tank battalion, a field artillery battalion and a supply battalion. The alpine brigades consisted of three alpine battalions, a mountain artillery battalion and a supply battalion. By 1959 the Heer consisted of 11 divisions of 27 brigades, four Panzer (armoured), four Panzergrenadier (mechanized), two Jäger (motorized), and one Gebirgsjäger (alpine).
At the end of the Cold War the German Army fielded 12 divisions with 38 brigades: six Panzer (armoured), four Panzergrenadier (mechanized), one Fallschirmjäger (airborne), and one Gebirgsjäger (alpine) division. Nine divisions were grouped into three corps:
I German Corps as part of NATO's
Northern Army Group,
II German Corps and
III German Corps as part of
Central Army Group.The remaining three divisions were part of
Allied Forces Baltic Approaches (
6th Panzergrenadier Division) and NORTHAG's
I Netherlands Corps (
3rd Panzer Division), while 1st Fallschirmjäger Division was assigned in peacetime to II German Corps and doubled as general staff for the
ACE Mobile Force (Land).
German Army - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following gives the number of armoured formations and tank strength as of 1981/1982 for Warsaw Pact and NATO member countries. These include formations and vehicles deployed outside Europe, such as in North America or the Asiatic USSR.
German Army
Formations
- 6 Tank Divisions (Panzerdivisionen)
- 4 Armored Infantry Divisions (Panzergrenadierdivisionen)
- 1 Mountain Division (Gebirgsdivision)
- 6 Home Defense Tank Brigades (Heimatschutz – Panzerbrigaden)
- 6 Home Defense Armored Infantry Brigades (Heimatschutz – Panzergrenadierbrigaden (not complete)
- 1 Airborne Division (Luftlandedivision)
- 1,200 M48 A2C/A2GA2
2,437 Leopard 1 A2/A3/A4
150 Leopard 2
770 Kanonenjagdpanzer
350 Raketenjagdpanzer - - -
Total: 3,787 tanks
(Total: 4,907 including Jagdpanzer)
East Germany
As of 1981/82:
Formations
- 2 Tank Division
- 4 Mechanised Infantry Divisions
Number of tanks
- 1,500 MBT T-54 / T-55 / T-72 (further 1600 tanks stored)
- 120 Reconnaissance tanks PT-76
Total: 1,620+ tanks
Cold War tank formations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You can't uncouple the West Germany military from NATO, or the East German military from WP. If you do, based on orbat, the balance is quite clearly in favor of West Germany
Western European forces held most of the responsibility for defending the West German border - six of the eight corps sectors. They also hold most of the forces which were deployed or are planned to be deployed from the beginning of the war in the Central Region. Allied ground forces in the 1980s totaled roughly 600,000 men against 200,000 U.S. troops. Allied air forces had more than 1,000 aircraft compared to approximately 300 U.S. aircraft. Allied countries also maintain substantial additional active forces and reserves. Although many of these forces are not officially committed to the Central Region, they presumably would have been used in a NATO war. France, which withdrew from the military alliance in 1966 but still maintains forces which would presumably be used for the defense of CENTAG, is included in these counts.
Three land corridors cut across the Iron Curtain from Warsaw Pact countries into West Germany, which was AFCENT's forward line of defense. The most dangerous avenue, tailor-made for armored thrusts, traversed the North German Plain over first-rate highways and rolling farmlands that facilitated cross-country movement, whereas rough, wooded terrain farther south generally restricted vehicular traffic to the Fulda Gap, which points toward Frankfurt-am-Main, and to the Hof Corridor which heads for Munich.
Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) covered the crucial North German Plain with four corps, of which the Netherlands, West Germany, Britain, and Belgium provided one apiece. Central Army Group (CENTAG), in sharp contrast, was positioned on far more defensible terrain and possessed far greater combat power that included two U.S. corps, two more that belonged to the West German Bundeswehr, and a Canadian mechanized brigade in reserve. Defense of the Fulda Gap might best have rested with a single command, but German and U.S. Army formations shared responsibility for that high-speed approach, which straddled the boundary between them. Such maldeployments were militarily unsound, but no adjustments of much consequence took place before the Cold War ended, because exchanges would have weakened defenses while in progress, diplomatic objections
Cold War NATO Army Groups
See also
Northern Army Group (NORTHAG)
Central Army Group [CENTAG]
The Soviet Union used the Warsaw Pact framework to bring its allies into line with its view of strategy, operations, tactics, organizational structure, service regulations, field manuals, documents, staff procedures, and maintenance and supply activities.
By the 1980s, the Soviet Union had achieved a degree of technical interoperability among the allied armies that some observers would consider to be a significant military advantage over NATO. However, the Soviet allies had weapons and equipment that were both outdated and insufficient in number. As one Western analyst has pointed out, the NSWP armies remained fully one generation behind the Soviet Union in their inventories of modern equipment and weapons systems and well below Soviet norms in force structure quantities.
These deficiencies called into question NSWP capabilities for joining in Soviet offensive operations against NATO and indicated primarily a rear-area role for the NSWP armies in Soviet strategy.
Within the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union decides which of the allies receive the most up-to-date weapons. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union provided the strategically located Northern Tier countries, East Germany and Poland especially, with greater quantities of advanced armaments. By contrast, the less important Southern Tier, consisting of Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, received used equipment that was being replaced in Soviet or Northern Tier forces. In the mid- 1970s, overall NSWP force development slowed suddenly as the Soviet Union became more interested in selling arms to earn hard currency and gain greater influence in the Third World, particularly in the oil-rich Arab states of the Middle East. At the same time, growing economic problems in Eastern Europe made many Third World countries look like better customers for Soviet arms sales. Between 1974 and 1978, the Soviet Union sent the equivalent of US$18.5 million of a total US$27 million in arms transfers outside the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, massive Soviet efforts to replace heavy Arab equipment losses in the 1973 war against Israel and the 1982 Syrian-Israeli air war over Lebanon came largely at the expense of modernization for the East European allies. In the late 1980s, the NSWP countries clearly resented the fact that some Soviet Third World allies, including Algeria, Libya, and Syria, had taken delivery of the newest Soviet weapons systems, such as the MiG-25, not yet in their own inventories. The Soviet Union probably looked at a complete modernization program for the NSWP armies as unnecessary and prohibitively costly for either it or its allies to undertake.
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY AND THE WARSAW PACT
