IIRC, the USSR invaded West Germany but the East German Army stayed home.
Oh boy you done done it now. Gentlemen, ready your :autistic: ratings.
Twilight 2000 came out in like 1985/86, and the average joe on the street was about as educated in long term geopolitics as was the fire hydrant he was standing next to and despite self aggrandizement and overestimation of IQ, that goes for tabletop gamers (and designers) as well. So the guys at GDW couldn't predict that in less than a decade, the USSR would be out of business and not much of a threat to anyone except hostage schoolchildren.
The writers of Twilight 2000 posited that China would continue to become more laze faire capitalistic through the 90s, and the USSR would stay open for business, and eventually the on-again/off-again tsundere relationship would come to a caustic boil. The Chinese in 1994 looked to Siberia and said "Gibs me dat" and the USSR said "fuck off", and suddenly brigade-level battles broke out, that morphed into divisional level combat, and that graduated into a full-scale war.
The USSR and China fought back and forth for most of a year, the Chinese had no tech but massive manpower reserves, the USSR had tech (comparatively) but (again, comparatively) no manpower reserves. So, in the name of International Socialism, the USSR started stripping WarPac nations of divisions to send into the meatgrinder that was the far east theater. The west was delighted: the two biggest communist countries in the world were on the verge of destroying one another. However, China had the raw manpower and the proximity to Pac Rim consumer goods manufacturing that the US and other allies started to do lend-lease to China to tip the balance.
The war ground on, with 100k troop casualties on both sides on a monthly basis, in battles over mere kms of terrain that made the Somme look like a Sunday tea outing. The USSR stripped out division after division, telling Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, etc. "Pay up, or else". The East Germans had no illusions about what was going to happen to their own kinder: in 1996 the E. German military petitioned the West German government to intervene. When the call-up went for East German troops, the krauts arrested all of the security battalions and held them in confinement in quarters, and the West Germans rolled in and sang "Reunited (and it feels so good)".
The Soviets now had a war on two fronts: the US, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the UK and Spain (and IIRC Portugal) went all in on kicking the USSR when it was down. Italy, France and Greece immediately left NATO because this was an offensive action and NATO's purpose was ostensibly to protect against Soviet aggression, not invade Eastern Europe. NATO pulled out of those nations and continued the war.
A "Free Polish In Exile" government sprang up, and Poland became a confused mess, some Polish forces fighting for NATO, some viewing German troops invading Poland as being a wee bit too soon since the last time, so they backed the Soviets. With understrength Soviet divisions backing now understrength Warsaw Pact divisions, from 1996 onward the Pact suffered huge losses in Europe.
Finally, to the outside world, it looked like the USSR was in total retreat on both fronts. The Chinese mounted a huge pursuit offensive in the spring of that year, chasing phantom Pact divisions onto highways, railways, and plains...but it was a trap. The Soviets spent a large part of their nuclear arsenal just absolutely fucking deleting entire Chinese army groups, cities, ports, infrastructure, manufacturing. Counterforce, countervalue, it didn't matter, they shot nukes at it. Cities, army bases, whatever, if it had more than two Chinese people on it, it got hit.
The "fleeing" Pact divisions were sent in a rapid but orderly fashion into Europe and started kicking NATO ass. These guys were battle-hardened, well-equipped, and created from Category-A units that had survived in the Eastern theater for two years against the best the Chinese could throw at them.
Still, NATO had the initiative and momentum and despite the Soviets using more of their nukes on NATO railheads and ports along the Baltic coast, NATO rolled onward until fall of 1997. When NATO had troops in Latvia, Ukraine, etc., the USSR had had enough and used most of its remaining strategic stockpile hitting counterforce and counter-value targets in the CONUS, the day after Thanksgiving. This caught a lot of people on the highways, in between cities, etc., right at the start of a cold winter. The US retaliated and, the USSR's infrastructure being essentially a (poorly maintained) 1960s affair, it broke their back.
But the war ground onward anyway.
For the next couple of years, remnants of the US Navy conducted surface operations and mopped up the last Soviet surface and submarine forces. Remember Italy and Greece? They declared for the Pact, and closed the Med. to US Navy operations, ganging up on a large amount of reinforcements headed to the Balkans.
Not, mind you, that things were hunky-dory for the US. The attacks there had caused a rift. The death of a lot of congress, the President, and much of the immediate line of succession led the JCS to claim there was no legitimate government left, and a census would have to be conducted for new congressional reps to be elected, then once that was in place, a new national election of a President. The Military Government (MilGov) continued to try and support the dwindling armies fighting the Pact remnants around the world. The Civilian Government (CivGov) did the same...with units of the military that stayed loyal to them. There's a de-facto cold war in the US between these groups that sometimes goes hot.
MilGov, needing POL, mounted an invasion into Mexico with US troops. Division Cuba, including a few brigades of Soviet "advisors", counterinvaded the US southwest along with Mexican troops, and holds a lot of Arizona and New Mexico as well as Southern California. Soviet expeditionary forces hit Alaska, and all the way into Western Canada, although they are underequipped and very poorly supported by the remnants of their OWN government. It's still enough to keep both CivGov and MilGov off-balance, fighting on effectively two domestic fronts as well as multiple world fronts.
In Europe, CivGov is trying to force its way in to the USSR via the Balkans, while MilGov is still fighting a big show in Central Europe. By mid 1999, things have broken down into local fighting. There's some strategic and tactical air, but in Europe there's hardly zero fuel to fly. Tanks and other ground vehicles can run on alcohol, so those are still going. But you're more likely to find a "Tank division" that has two working M113s and everybody else on foot or horseback than not. In the Summer of 1999, MilGov and the remnants of NATO mount one final offensive in to Poland for three (well, three, and one secret) reasons: One, drive out/destroy the last Soviet forces there. Two, secure the Baltic coast for its fisheries and agriculture, three, secure shale oil production facilities there to get German industries up and running again. The fourth is...well, I've gone on enough about this as to the fourth.
During the offensive things get off to a good start, the Pact troops don't expect a thing. But the Soviets have an ace-in-the-hole: a prewar strength Tank division they throw in on the 3rd day. While most of it is destroyed, so is the entirety of the main NATO thrust centered around the US V Division, which consists of US, UK, Canadian, Free Polish, German and Belgian troops. The result is that NATO offensive capability in Poland is crippled. Soviet forces overrun US divisional command, and as they breach the defensive perimeter, the last thing the characters hear on the radio net from HQ is "Good luck, you're on your own." That starts the "Escape from Kalisz" module where the whole campaign can kick off from.
