Facing The Bear (The War That Never Was) USSR

Northern Norway may have been the most important theater in the world if the cold war ever went hot. The Soviet Red Army was a massive juggernaut that would have rolled over NATO forces in Western Europe due to sheer mass alone. NATO counted on the qualitative edge afforded by superior technology, and prompt resupply and reinforcement from the United States. The US reinforcements had to be shipped across the Atlantic in convoys of slow transports vulnerable to Soviet submarines and long-range naval aviation assets. The Soviet submarines and aircraft found their passage from Soviet bases in the Kola Peninsula to the north Atlantic blocked by NATO bases in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scotland. However, attacking these bases required mastery of the Norwegian Sea. The Norwegian Sea was dominated by a small country that clings to a small strip of land between mountains and sea: Norway. Therefore, the outcomes of the titanic battles in Germany were completely dependent upon a much smaller battle that would have unfolded in a sparsely-populated, harsh Nordic environment. This scenario, based upon the book The War That Never Was by Michael A. Palmer, tries to capture the first stage of that battle. This version is playable by USSR only.