Washington D.C. May 13, 2005 - The Soviet-led Warsaw
Pact had a long-standing strategy to attack Western Europe that
included being the first to use nuclear weapons, according to
a new book of previously Secret Warsaw Pact documents published
tomorrow. Although the aim was apparently to preempt NATO "aggression,"
the Soviets clearly expected that nuclear war was likely and planned
specifically to fight and win such a conflict.
The documents show that Moscow's allies went along with these
plans but the alliance was weakened by resentment over Soviet
domination and the belief that nuclear planning was sometimes
highly unrealistic. Just the opposite of Western views at the
time, Pact members saw themselves increasingly at a disadvantage
compared to the West in the military balance, especially with
NATO's ability to incorporate high-technology weaponry and organize
more effectively, beginning in the late 1970s.
These and other findings appear in a new volume published tomorrow
on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Pact. Consisting
of 193 documents originating from all eight original member-states,
the volume, A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw
Pact, 1955-1991, provides significant new evidence of the
intentions and capabilities of one of the most feared military
machines in history.
Highlights of the 726-page volume include highly confidential
internal reports, military assessments, minutes of Warsaw Pact
leadership meetings, and Politburo discussions on topics such
as:
- The shift beginning in the 1960s from defensive operations
to plans to launch attacks deep into Western Europe. (Documents
Nos. 16, 20a-b, 21)
- Plans to initiate the use of nuclear weapons, ostensibly to
preempt Western first-use. (Documents Nos. 81, 83)
- Soviet expectations that conventional conflicts would go nuclear,
and plans to fight and win such conflicts. (Documents Nos. 81,
83)
- The deep resentment of alliance members, behind the façade
of solidarity, of Soviet dominance and the unequal share of
the military burden that was imposed on them. (Documents Nos.
4-6, 33-37, 47, 52)
- East European views on the futility of plans for nuclear war
and the realization that their countries, far more than the
Soviet Union, would suffer the most devastating consequences
of such a conflict. (Documents Nos. 22b, 38, 50, 52)
- The "nuclear romanticism," primarily of Soviet planners,
concerning the viability of unconventional warfare, including
a memorable retort by the Polish leader that "no one should
have the idea that in a nuclear war one could enjoy a cup of
coffee in Paris in five or six days." (Documents Nos. 31,
115)
- Ideologically warped notions of Warsaw Pact planners about
the West's presumed propensity to initiate hostilities and the
prospects for defeating it. (Documents Nos. 50, 73, 79, 81)
- The impact of Chernobyl as a reality check for Soviet officials
on the effects of nuclear weapons. (Document No. 115)
- The pervasiveness and efficacy of East bloc spying on NATO,
mainly by East Germans (Documents Nos. 11, 28, 80, 97, 109,
112)
- Warsaw Pact shortcomings in resisting hostile military action,
including difficulties in firing nuclear weapons. (Documents
Nos. 44, 143)
- Data on the often disputed East-West military balance, seen
from the Soviet bloc side as much more favorable to the West
than the West itself saw it, with the technological edge increasingly
in Western favor since the time of the Carter administration
(Documents Nos. 47, 79, 81, 82, 130, 131, 135, 136)
The motives accounting for the Warsaw Pact's offensive military
culture included not only the obsessive Soviet memory of having
been taken by surprise by the nearly fatal Nazi attack in June
1941 but primarily the ideological militancy of the Marxist-Leninist
doctrine that posited irreconcilable hostility of the capitalist
adversaries. The influence of the doctrine explains, for example,
the distorted interpretation of secret Western planning documents
that were unequivocally defensive documents to which Warsaw Pact
spies had extensive access. So integral was the offensive strategy
to the Soviet system that its replacement by a defensive strategy
under Gorbachev proved impossible to implement before the system
itself disintegrated.
The Soviet military, as the ideologically most devoted and disciplined
part of the Soviet establishment, were given extensive leeway
by the political leadership in designing the Warsaw Pact's plans
for war and preparing for their implementation. Although the leadership
reserved the authority to decide under what circumstances they
would be implemented and never actually tried to act on them,
the chances of a crisis spiraling out of control may have been
greater than imagined at the time. The plans had dynamics of their
own and the grip of the aging leadership continued to diminish
with the passage of time.
The new collection of documents published today is the first
of its kind in examining the Warsaw Pact from the inside, with
the benefit of materials once thought to be sealed from public
scrutiny in perpetuity. It was prepared by the Parallel History
Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP), an international scholarly
network formed to explore and disseminate documentation on the
military and security aspects of contemporary history. The book
appears as part of the "National Security Archive Cold War
Reader Series" through Central European University Press.
The PHP's founders and partners are the National Security Archive,
a non-governmental research organization based at The George Washington
University; the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich; the
Institute for Strategy and Security Policy at the Austrian Defense
Academy in Vienna; the Machiavelli Center for Cold War Studies
in Florence; and the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in
Oslo.
In addition to documents, the volume features a major original
essay by Vojtech Mastny, a leading historian of the Warsaw Pact,
and contextual headnotes for each document by co-editor Malcolm
Byrne. A detailed chronology, glossaries and bibliography are
also included.
The documents in the collection were obtained by numerous scholars
and archivists, many of them associated with PHP and its partners,
including the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C.
The vast majority of the documents were translated especially
for this volume and have never previously appeared in English.
Attached to this notice are ten representative
documents taken from the list above. They appear
as they do in the volume, i.e. with explanatory headnotes at the
top of each item.
The documents in their original languages can be found in their
entirety on the Center
for Security Studies website.
On Saturday, May 14, a book launch for A Cardboard Castle?
will take place in Warsaw at the Military Office of Historical
Research. The address is: 2, ul. Stefana Banacha, Room 218. It
will begin at 11:30 a.m. Speakers include:
- Gen. William E. Odom, former Director, U.S. National Security
Agency
- Gen. Tadeusz Pioro, senior Polish representative to the Warsaw
Pact
- Brig. Gen. Leslaw Dudek, Polish representative to the alliance
- Prof. dr. hab. Andrzej Paczkowski, Polish Academy of Sciences
- Dr hab. Krzysztof Komorowski, Military Office of Historical
Research
- Prof. dr hab. Wojciech Materski, Polish Academy of Sciences
Documents
Note: The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.
Below are ten representative documents from A Cardboard Castle?.
They are numbered as they are in the volume and include explanatory
headnotes at the top of each item. Links to the original documents
-- in their orginal languages -- appear at the end of each entry.
Document
No. 16:
Speech by Marshal Malinovskii Describing the Need for Warsaw Pact
Offensive Operations, May 1961 - original
language
Document
No. 21: Organizational Principles of the Czechoslovak Army,
November 22, 1962 - original
language
Document
No. 50: Memorandum of the Academic Staff of the Czechoslovak
Military Academies on Czechoslovakia's Defense Doctrine, June
4, 1968 - original language
Document
No. 64: Report by Ceaus,escu to the Romanian Politburo on
the PCC Meeting in Budapest, March 18, 1969 - original
language
Document
No. 81: Marshal Ogarkov Analysis of the ?Zapad? Exercise,
May 30-June 9, 1977
- original language
Document
No. 83: Soviet Statement at the Chiefs of General Staff Meeting
in Sofia,
June 12-14, 1978 - original
language
Document
No. 109: East German Intelligence Assessment of NATO?s Intelligence
on the Warsaw Pact, December 16, 1985 - original
language
Document
No. 115: Minutes of the Political Consultative Committee Party
Secretaries? Meeting in Budapest, June 11, 1986 - original language
(part 1 - part
2 - part 3)
Document
No. 136: Summary of Discussion among Defense Ministers at
the Political Consultative Committee Meeting in Warsaw, July 15,
1988 - original language (part
1 - part 2)
Document
No. 143: Czechoslovak Description of ?Vltava-89? Exercise,
May 23, 1989 - original
language