From Guardian Unlimited:
A
series of red mushroom clouds over western Europe show that Soviet
nuclear weapons strikes would have been launched at Germany, the
Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium if Nato had struck first. Red clouds
are drawn over the then German capital, Bonn, and other key German
cities such as the financial centre of Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart,
Munich and the strategically important northern port of Hamburg.
Brussels, the political headquarters of Nato, is also targeted. Blue
mushroom clouds, representing the expected Nato nuclear strikes, are
drawn over cities in the eastern bloc, including Warsaw and the then
Czechoslovakian capital, Prague. France would have escaped attack,
possibly because it is not a member of Nato's integrated structure.
Britain, which has always been at the heart of Nato, would also have
been spared, suggesting Moscow wanted to stop at the Rhine to avoid
overstretching its forces. The exercise, entitled Seven Days to the
River Rhine, indicated Warsaw Pact forces aimed to reach the
Franco-German border within a week of a Nato attack.
[...]
Mr Sikorski, who made a name for himself working for the rightwing American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, made clear he was prepared for a backlash from Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, has lamented the demise of the Soviet Union.
Announcing the release of 1,700 Warsaw Pact papers from Poland's military archive, he said: "This is crucial to educating the country on the way Poland was an unwilling ally of the USSR in the cold war. The map shows a classic Warsaw Pact exercise - it was a 'counter' attack to defend itself by going all the way to the Atlantic."
Mr Sikorski, who was appointed after the Law and Justice party won a surprise victory in the recent elections after pledging to cleanse the country of its communist past, believes the map shows how Moscow was prepared to sacrifice Poland to save the Soviet Union. (full article)
[...]
Mr Sikorski, who made a name for himself working for the rightwing American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, made clear he was prepared for a backlash from Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, has lamented the demise of the Soviet Union.
Announcing the release of 1,700 Warsaw Pact papers from Poland's military archive, he said: "This is crucial to educating the country on the way Poland was an unwilling ally of the USSR in the cold war. The map shows a classic Warsaw Pact exercise - it was a 'counter' attack to defend itself by going all the way to the Atlantic."
Mr Sikorski, who was appointed after the Law and Justice party won a surprise victory in the recent elections after pledging to cleanse the country of its communist past, believes the map shows how Moscow was prepared to sacrifice Poland to save the Soviet Union. (full article)
The release of the documents by Sikorski and the Polish government are somewhat of a bombshell in their own right, as they will likely create some strain in relations between Poland and Russia.
What is now coming to light, by and through the release of these Warsaw Pact documents, is the likelihood that Europe would have been the primary stage for a nuclear showdown between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.
But is all of this that much of a surprise?
To me, this story is oddly reminiscent of another Cold War tale from around the same time as the date on Sikorski’s Warsaw pact documents. In early 1980, Mrs. Imelda Verrept, a former secretary in the International Secretariat of NATO Headquarters in Brussels, defected to the DDR with secret NATO documents that outlined the NATO position vis-a-vis the risk of a nuclear counter-strike. She was interviewed by ADN on DDR television in April 1980 and at that time, she shared her knowledge of how Europe would fare as a result of a NATO-initiated nuclear conflagration:
ADN:
Another indication that crucial importance is attached to nuclear
weapons in NATO's military strategy and in its war preparations:
The suggested deployment of new missles alone...is evidence of their
planned function in the Pact's military strategy which is aimed at a
military attack on the socialist countries.
MRS VERREPT: (N)uclear capability would "put NATO in a better position to guarantee flexible response and forward defence, to engage in measured escalation and, if necessary, resort to a full-scale nuclear war".
For "forward defence", a piece of doubletalk belonging to NATO's disinformation system, one should in fact read "aggression". There is no chance of NATO being content with the 572 new nuclear missiles. The missile decision already contains new proposals for expanding its nuclear capability in Europe.
[...]
The Pact members are expected to share not only the costs but also the risks involved in the use of the new nuclear capability and the losses and destruction in the event of a nuclear war....
I am no military expert, but the perusal of...many other NATO documents caused my suspicion that the USA was wanting to incite Western Europe into a nuclear war against the socialist countries, without risking the destruction of American cities, to harden into a certainty. The missile decision makes possible a strategy advantageous to the USA.
ADN: One could call that unhitching the USA from the danger of a nuclear counter-strike which would be directed exclusively against Western Europe.
MRS VERREPT: Various prominent individuals have addressed themselves to this question, for instance Mr Schmückle in a newspaper interview, Mr de Vries, Chairman of the Defence Committee in the Dutch Parliament, and also Mr Kissinger recently in Brussels. He said there was little likelihood of an American President being prepared to react immediately with strategic nuclear weapons to a threat directed exclusively at Western Europe and hence risk the destruction of American cities. One has to read a bit between the lines here.
ADN: Is this danger recognized by people in Belgium?
MRS VERREPT: I hope that my remarks on the subject will help them to recognize it. In NATO there is a lot of harping on the themes of Atlantic solidarity and obligations to the alliance. No one needs any reminding, however, that the USA has always gone it alone when it suited its interests to do so.
(from “NATO gambles with nuclear war,” pages 10 and 11, published by Panorama DDR, c. 1980)
MRS VERREPT: (N)uclear capability would "put NATO in a better position to guarantee flexible response and forward defence, to engage in measured escalation and, if necessary, resort to a full-scale nuclear war".
For "forward defence", a piece of doubletalk belonging to NATO's disinformation system, one should in fact read "aggression". There is no chance of NATO being content with the 572 new nuclear missiles. The missile decision already contains new proposals for expanding its nuclear capability in Europe.
[...]
The Pact members are expected to share not only the costs but also the risks involved in the use of the new nuclear capability and the losses and destruction in the event of a nuclear war....
I am no military expert, but the perusal of...many other NATO documents caused my suspicion that the USA was wanting to incite Western Europe into a nuclear war against the socialist countries, without risking the destruction of American cities, to harden into a certainty. The missile decision makes possible a strategy advantageous to the USA.
ADN: One could call that unhitching the USA from the danger of a nuclear counter-strike which would be directed exclusively against Western Europe.
MRS VERREPT: Various prominent individuals have addressed themselves to this question, for instance Mr Schmückle in a newspaper interview, Mr de Vries, Chairman of the Defence Committee in the Dutch Parliament, and also Mr Kissinger recently in Brussels. He said there was little likelihood of an American President being prepared to react immediately with strategic nuclear weapons to a threat directed exclusively at Western Europe and hence risk the destruction of American cities. One has to read a bit between the lines here.
ADN: Is this danger recognized by people in Belgium?
MRS VERREPT: I hope that my remarks on the subject will help them to recognize it. In NATO there is a lot of harping on the themes of Atlantic solidarity and obligations to the alliance. No one needs any reminding, however, that the USA has always gone it alone when it suited its interests to do so.
(from “NATO gambles with nuclear war,” pages 10 and 11, published by Panorama DDR, c. 1980)
I attended elementary and middle school school during the Reagan era and I remember that the topic of nuclear war came up quite often in our social studies classes. One of the mantras that teachers used to cap their lessons on nuclear war was the thought-provoking phrase, “In a nuclear war, nobody wins.” Back then, I guess I didn’t realize that when they said "nobody wins," the words rang especially true for the people of Europe, who lived amidst the omnipresent threat of nuclear armageddon.
(Efharisto to Antonis for sharing the Guardian Unlimited article)
We
stayed up until about 2 AM last night watching “
