[jojobas]

Mate, Soviets outnumbered USA+UK in Europe by a factor of 2 as of late 1945 (see Operation Unthinkable) and it only got worse from there. In 1949 there were about 3.5 million Soviet soldiers spread across East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechia etc. The entire US army went below 1 million by 1947, with a very small fraction deployed in Europe.

The West was consistently on defensive/deterrence against the USSR throughout the Cold War, there's no point denying that.

[aa-jv]

Sure. This is why nukes were sent to Turkey...

[jojobas]

The USSR ceded their claim to parts of Turkey some 8 years before the missiles were deployed there, yet it kept the 13 rifle, mountain and mechanized divisions in Armenia and Azerbaijan, under the so called Transcaucasian Military District. Similarly the so called Southern Group of Forces was stationed in Hungary just across the Ljubljana Gap from Italy.

It is a bulletproof fact that throughout the Cold War the USSR had an offensive stance in Europe, and conventional NATO forces there only stood some chance in defensive. Eventually the insane military production, sometimes amounting to 25% GDP, including ludicrous quantities of tanks, IFVs and SPGs to support the supposed rush to the English Channel, brought the colossus down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_territorial_claims_agai...