Cold War archives reveal Soviet perfidy

THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | January 7, 2006 | Andrew Borowiec

[lizol]

Cold War archives reveal Soviet perfidy

By Andrew Borowiec

THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 7, 2006

GENEVA -- Secret archives of the now-dissolved Warsaw Pact show that the former Soviet Union was prepared to sacrifice much of Poland in the event of a nuclear war with the West.

The Soviet plans for a nuclear war in Europe were among a raft of secret documents that Polish authorities threw open on Thursday to international researchers and to the general public in Warsaw.

A cursory study by Polish analysts shows that the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons would have prompted retaliatory strikes by NATO that would have wiped out Warsaw and 40 other Polish cities and towns. The fallout would have spread westward, affecting Brussels, Hamburg, Munich and surrounding areas in Germany.

According to Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's defense minister, public access to the 1,700 Warsaw Pact volumes represents "a symbolic end of the communist era."

Diplomats said Poland has been bracing for a strong reaction from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who earlier this week showed the extent of his power by reducing natural gas pressure in pipelines supplying Moscow's former satellites. Poland relies on Russia for almost all its natural gas.

In a statement quoted by the French daily Le Figaro, Mr. Sikorski said it was "crucial that the world learns that during the Cold War, Poland was an unwilling ally of the Soviet Union."

The strongly anti-communist Polish minister was for three years affiliated with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. He belongs to the new conservative team following last October's election of Lech Kaczynski as Poland's president.

An official Polish statement said that historians, journalists and members of the public could have access to the declassified documents following their transfer to the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland.

Specialists are currently studying 123 documents still covered by the secrecy clause imposed before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Officials said that in addition to a description of the disaster striking Europe in the event of a nuclear war, the documents give additional details of "Operation Danube," the code name of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The last Soviet "doomsday scenario" for Europe was apparently drafted as far back as 1979, when Karol Wojtyla, a Pole, was elected Pope John Paul II, an act the Kremlin feared would destabilize or destroy communism in its unwilling East European satellites.

According to Mr. Sikorski, the use of Polish territory in a nuclear exchange would have meant the country's participation in its own destruction.

The opening to the public of the secret archives comes at a time of growing East European criticism of the European Union's various political and economic overtures to Russia.

At the height of this week's natural gas crisis, the Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza claimed that "Russia uses its gas as a means of political pressure."

[sure_fine]

btt

[lizol]

Eastern European ping list

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FRmail me to be added or removed from this Eastern European ping list

[mcg2000]

it'll go unreported in the MSM ... how many lefties, on the street, could even tell you what the Warsaw Pact entailed (anyway)??

[Rockingham]

Poland's publication of these documents is a service to history and has irritated the Russians. That's a two-fer.

[x5452]

I'm rather interested to know what our plans are in a Nuclear war; whom we presume would be attacked first and what our planned reaction would be.

[conservative physics]

In such a nightmare scenario, I am only comforted by the idea that it's mostly liberals that a clustered in the heavily populated cities... hehe ;)

[Paul Ross]

Where are the usual communist apologists denying anything is amiss here...?

Putin is such a dedicated believer in democracy and openness....NOT!

Scheming bastard.

Here he is plotting strategy with one of the Chi-Comm NAZI's who wants to annhilate the U.S. population with bioweapons:

[x5452]

Russian cooperation with China/Southeast Asia is much more about not having China take Sibera, which they would do long before attacking the US.

I do not know what you mean by communist apologists, I've yet to see any folks on FR defend communism.

Further, if, for instance, Germany decided to reveal details of American concentration camps this year, and previously classified government materials that refleceted poorly on the then government I do not suspect we would be chipper about it, and would rather wonder why so many years latter they're harping on a dead point. Similarly imagine if some african nation dug up some crazy confederate plan to kill slaves to make a statement, the confederacy doesn't even exist anymore, don't you think we'd take rather unkindly to someone attacking the present government on the basis the remenants of the confederacy are still within our borders?

[nw_arizona_granny]

Interesting !!!
ping.

[Rockingham]

US plans varied with the era. As best as I recall, the Soviet assessment of US and NATO intentions made public is correct for the time period, that the US and NATO would strike deep in Poland with nuclear weapons aimed at Soviet assembly areas and lines of communications.

Expecting equivalent Soviet restraint, US planners preferred to keep a nuclear war in Europe limited to Europe and would have avoided nuclear strikes on Soviet home territory for fear of a retaliatory strike on the US homeland. Similarly, US planners did not want to nuke Soviet armies on the territory of West Germany, an ally, or even in East Germany, as a concession to the West Germans. By geographic elimination, that meant that the Poles would get nuked.

Notably, the US plans for such a use of nuclear weapons were as a defensive response to a Soviet first use of nuclear weapons on West Germany and invasion by Soviet armies. For the Poles and Germans, the provocative part is that the Soviet plans projected first use of nuclear weapons on West Germany in an offensive war, with a nuclear stricken Poland an acceptable price.

In the Soviet view, civilian casualties from nukes used by the US and NATO on Poland (a Soviet ally) and by the Soviets on West Germany (an enemy) were affordable so long as Soviet home territory was safe. With Soviet armies on the Rhine and in effective control of the continent, the Soviets would have seen themselves as the winners, notwithstanding millions of dead German and Polish civilians.

There is another wrinkle that seems not to have been mentioned so far. In order to limit collateral civilian casualties, the US developed smaller yield nuclear weapons and wanted to develop a neutron mini-nuke with small blast damage and virtually no fallout. Naturally, the Soviet Union denounced the project and the Left in the US and Europe opposed it fiercely, so the neutron bomb was not developed in the West. In the context of Soviet war plans, the civilians spared by the neutron bomb would mostly have been Poles.

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

That is largely the way I remember the strategic models of the time. And the history.

And the same Leftist stooges...in both parties nowadays...are still up to no good. They have kept us from developing and deploying the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator...or the so-called nuclear bunker busters. Now we all may pay the penalty as Iran and North Korea proliferate willy-nilly....

[Cheburashka]

I'm rather interested to know what our plans are in a Nuclear war; whom we presume would be attacked first and what our planned reaction would be.
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I know that to this day the United States has never renounced its right to the first use on nuclear weapons. Thank God we will never know what would have been result of such a war.

AS aside note, Radek Sikorsky lived in the U.S. during most of the eighties and nineties and wrote articles occasionally for National Review.

[VeniVidiVici]

Why don't you tell us about "American Concentration Camps"?

The demise of the Soviet Union is recent history. It should be studied in detail.

Good on the Poles for releasing the documents that detail their 50 years of imprisonment by the Soviet Union.

[Cheburashka]

In the context of Soviet war plans, the civilians spared by the neutron bomb would mostly have been Poles.
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Jimmy Carter killed the U.S. Neutron Bomb program. Fortunately we have never needed the weapon in an actual war, so no harm has been done.
Just another one of the bright ideas from the peanut farmer.

[x5452]

Foreign purchase of the Ukraine election is similarly recent history as is Ukraine's supression of minorities, and tking away peoples churches. All of that should be studied in detail, and I'd call upon the Poles, so interested in the historical importance of secrets to call on their freind Yushchenko to open all government secrets in Ukraine so the world can have a look.

[VeniVidiVici]

All of that should be studied in detail, and I'd call upon the Poles, so interested in the historical importance of secrets to call on their freind Yushchenko to open all government secrets in Ukraine so the world can have a look.

Should he open only those secrets before he was poisoned, or after he was poisoned?

[x5452]

Both I think it'd be enlightening to see just how many other folks, some in his own little orange revolution had motive and oppurtunity to poison Yushchenko. It'd wipe the smarmy off many a naive western MSM beleiving reactionary to know that there's precious little possibility the FSb had a thing to do with it.

[bmwcyle]

They have more heart then most other countries today. God bless Poland.