A buddy of mine was arty in Germany in the early 80's...he said "we were a speedbump, till reforger kicked in" in other words we weren't there to defend Germany...we were there to slow the Russian down.
I was in a tank battalion there in the late 70s. The entire US order of battle was 4 full strength divisions plus two ACRs and one or two 'visiting' brigades, the personnel quality of which was to put it as kindly as possible 'uneven.' The British Army of the Rhine was basically a reinforced division. The Bundeswehr had a relatively small permanent component, the vast bulk of their personnel were one-shot draftees doing their mandatory 18 months, a third of which was their equivalent of Basic and AIT. Across the border, the Poles, Czechs, East Germans, and Hungarians all had large standing armies, and of course lots of Soviet 'Visitors,' which in Germany alone consisted of the GSFG (Group of Soviet Forces Germany) amounting as best I recall some sixteen tank and motorized rifle divisions, i.e. the GSFG alone was approximately the same size as the entire US Army worldwide. That didn't count the Soviet's eight airborne divisions in their strategic reserve, retained under STAVKA control back in the Motherland.
The whole theory of REFORGER was that there would be deteriorating relations over a long period of time, affording us time to mobilize guard and reserve divisions and move more US forces into the country. Gulf I demonstrated somewhat belatedly that RC readiness wasn't up to the timetable in 1990 (Let alone in the much more austere 70s military budgets), there wasn't really anywhere near the necessary the strategic lift to make the plan work in the first place, and shit could hit the fan a whole lot faster than we could really handle.
I always thought the whole Soviet master plan would have worked a lot better if they just one day issued a cold order to move west with the ammo on board. They would have gotten to the Rhine and overrun almost all of USAREUR and two thirds of West Germany...and the GSFG had enough bridging equipment, as one MI briefer put it, 'To pave the Rhine.'
The big deterrent to them was the question of whether we'd go full strategic nuke if they did attack. During Carter's Presidency, that was an open question. The Reds were perfectly willing to go with tactical nukes and chemical warfare, though the first thing they were going to target was most likely well to the rear of the ground forces, that being the airbases at Hahn, Sembach, Ramstein, and such.
Those of us smart enough to visualize the entire thing, which didn't necessarily include Jimmy Carter, knew the US forces were just a trigger, not a force actually able to stop the Pact...too big a part of the small Army we had for us to afford to lose, not enough to actually stop them, and that we'd have to go full retard if we were about to lose them. Once Reagan was elected, their window passed.
