Here is a nice piece of cold war history:

The original source is an article called: “Lessons from the Wehrmacht’s experience on the Soviet-German front 1943-1945” which was published in the Sept. 1987 issue of the journal of the Royal Institute for the Investigation of Defense Questions (RUSI).

Author of the article is the English Lt. Colonel R.G. Kersho Para who at that time was liaison officer at the (German) Bundeswehr Infantry School in Hammelburg.

A Russian translation of this article by the Soviet Col. I.T. Fateyev, who has also written the foreword ,was published in the Oct. 1988 issue of the Soviet Union Military History Journal under the heading “We through the eyes of others”.

My source now is the retranslation of the Russian translation into American English published in March 1989 in the
US Joint Publication Research Service and it carries the stamp “approved to public release”:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

Counter-counter intelligence so to speak.

The actual article (5 pages) starts at page 37/59 of the journal.

Adressing the tank-battle of Targul-Frumos/Romania in May 1944, when “the basic force of the attack by the XVI Tanks Corps of the Soviet Troops was taken by a German regiment (which in the present NATO organization corresponds to a Brigade) Tank Division Großdeutschland and the front being restored by a counter-stroke of the German XXIV Panzer Division by the end of the day, the operations being planned by the Wehrmacht Command assuming a balance of force of 1:5 in favour of the enemy, counting on success”, the author raises the question "whether this could be repeated with NATO, when pessimists predict that a conventional war would last only 8 days, but the Wehrmacht waged war for 2 years against such forces" and discusses it and draws some conclusions.

The foreword by the Soviet Colonel and the language used is also interesting, quote e.g.: "On military-political questions, this journal [the English one] reflects the views of the aggressive imperialist NATO circles,,,,. Like many bourgeois authors, R.G. Kersho Para ...….this is a slandering of the heroes…defending their motherland against the black death which threatened enslavement for the entire world..."

I can certainly sympathize with the Soviet Colonel there, given that Para's article barely took five steps before it introduced a distortion that can be viewed as "anti-Soviet". Note how it says a "Corps" attacked a "regiment", took heavy losses before penetrating, then was counterattacked and defeated by a "Division".
Of course, real unit strengths deviate widely from TOE by that stage of the war. Still, one should remember that a Soviet Tank Corps is really of about divisional strength. Meanwhile, the Gross Deutschland is a crack SS division (and IIRC thus is among the best equipped of all the German divisions)...
The word "Corps", written without further explanation, to people not having specific knowledge of the Soviet wartime Corps structure, conjures up an image of several Soviet divisions clumsily blundering into a single German regiment and being completely played with before penetrating. Then was defeated by a unit a level lower, a divsion.
Such an inaccurately negative connotation brings a rise out of ME, let alone a Russian...

I would go farther than that, a Soviet Tank corps is about the size of an average Soviet Rifle division, which is typically smaller than an infantry division in most other armies. So, when one says that the corps was attacked and defeated by a German panzer division, it was in fact under attack by a superior force.

The Battles of Târgu Frumos, and on the whole the first Balkans Offensive, was one of the last large-scale defeats of the Red Army because it could not (Or, did not) gather enough of a force to properly attack the well-defended positions in Eastern Romania. The Soviets have learned much from that, though; Just weeks later they launched the utterly devastating Operation Bagration into Belorussia, and when they returned to Romania in August they crushed the Germans in mere days.

@CaptainHaplo - Please excuse me for not repeating what I said, again.

I don't think NATO was ever structured to be an offensive force. So it would not be in any position to launch an invasion. NATO would lose any invasion scenerio w/ Russia, with or without US involvement.

Its that non-offensive structure which proved so troublesome in Bosnia, and now in Afghanistan.

Now - Nato would lose.
Then - Russia would have lost.

In any war, a defender has the advantage. Heck - in any land BATTLE the defender has the advantage. Thats because you HAVE to move him. You can do that through head to head combat, or by cutting off his ability to fight.

Simply put - Nato without the US lacks in one very critical piece to wage war on the battlefield against a "classic" (symmetric) opponent. That is that no nation in Nato - besides the US - operates a strategic bomber. The combat aircraft of European Nato forces are fighters, tactical support (ground attack) aircraft, or dual role. Thus, the infrastructure that allows an army to KEEP fighting is safe against an Nato without the US. The russians may suffer from a lack of resources, but they still have the systems that can reach out and destroy such targets. To keep that from happening - the aggressive nato forces would have to use the majority of their air assets to preserve their industrial ability, leaving the ground forces with very limited support.

Remember - Nato was designed as a defensive measure. Russia could trade space for time - as they have done throughout history, all the while threatening the ability of the EU nations to continue the war.

AN EU war against russia wouldn't just end badly - it would be a debacle of historical proportions.