| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Poland's Archives Show Soviet Bloc Vision of Nuclear War |
| 2005-11-26 |
| In a historic break with the past, Poland's newly elected government threw open its top secret Warsaw Pact military archives - including a 1979 map revealing the Soviet bloc's vision of a seven-day atomic holocaust between Nato and Warsaw Pact forces. The defence minister, Radek Sikorsky, showed off the map at an emotional press conference. About two million Polish civilians would die in such a war, and the country would be all but wiped off the face of the Earth, he said. The map dates from a time when the balance of power was radically different from now. In Washington the vacillating Jimmy Carter was suffering a series of defeats - the Iranian revolution and the subsequent seizure of the United States embassy in Teheran. Britain was at a low ebb, racked by strikes, and just putting its faith in Margaret Thatcher. The Kremlin, however, was stretching its muscles - preparing for its ill-fated takeover of Afghanistan. Perhaps because the map shows a limited war game exercise, entitled Seven Days to the River Rhine, rather than full invasion plans, troops stop at the Rhine, and there are no attacks or bomb strikes on Britain, or on France. The decision to unveil the Warsaw Pact documents is one of the first moves of Poland's new conservative government. Mr Sikorsky described it as an attempt to draw a line under the country's Communist past, and "educate" the Polish public about the old regime. He did not deny that the opening of the archives will be seen as a provocation in Moscow. Russian-Polish relations have sharply deteriorated recently, amid rows over a planned oil pipeline, and Polish support for democratic revolutions in Russia's backyard, first in Ukraine, and now Belarus. The files being released would include documents about "Operation Danube", the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. They also included files on an army massacre of Polish workers in Szczecin in the 1970s, and from the martial law era of the 1980s. |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #3 very interesting! i find the cold war stuff amazing in its scale of destruction. I mean you get a car bomb these days and its amazing for the simple media and know nothing onlookers but an atomic war would simply be something else beyond most peoples imagination. I do fear cold war 2 is already warming up with china however - i mean how can we not be entering a cold war 2 with them (unless bird flu or something kills em all or someting) . |
| Posted by: Shep UK 2005-11-26 04:53 |
| #2 Good for them. Sweet revenge on Poland's communists. "It's important for citizens to know who was a hero, and who was a villain. It is important for the civic health of society to make these things public." Too bad Poland doesn't have the death penalty. ...and thank God for Reagan. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2005-11-26 04:23 |
| #1 So, in other words, the American cold war doctrine of being prepared to repulse a massive Soviet thrust of ground forces into Western Germany was completely spot on. Someone needs to give Sikorsky a medal for revealing just how precisely tuned US strategy was in its time. It must be some slight cold comfort to Poland to confirm that they were nothing more than a killing field for advancing Soviet troops. Lech Walensa may well have saved his nation's collective life in rebelling against its communist overlords. If |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-11-26 01:47 |