Posted on 11/28/2005 7:21:37 AM PST by Mikey_1962
The nightmare of nuclear war in Europe - a spectre that haunted the world for half a century - stood revealed yesterday in terrible detail.
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.
Click to enlarge The defence minister, Radek Sikorsky, showed off the map at an emotional press conference.
He described it as a "personally shattering experience", pointing to a long line of nuclear mushroom clouds neatly stamped along the Vistula, where Soviet bloc commanders assumed that Nato tactical nuclear weapons would rain down to block reinforcements arriving from Russia.
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.
On the map, western Europe lay beneath a chilling overlay of large red mushroom clouds: Warsaw Pact nuclear strikes, using giant warheads to compensate for their relative lack of precision.
Soviet bombs rain down on cities from northern Denmark down to Brussels, the political headquarters of Nato. Large red clouds blot out cities such as Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich and Baden Baden, Haarlem, Antwerp and Charleroi, above the Franco-Belgian border.
On the map, smaller blue mushroom clouds showed expected Nato targets - most of them relatively precise attacks - including strikes on Warsaw and Prague.
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.
Large blue Nato nuclear bombers are shown flying out of bases in East Anglia, and squadrons of Nato fighters are shown scrambling from Danish bases into combat over the Baltic.
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.
Mr Sikorsky, a former dissident who studied at Oxford University, said: "These are documents that are crucial for educating the public, and showing how Poland was kept as an unwilling ally of the Soviet Union. This government wants to end the post-Communist period.
"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."
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.
I love the "vacillating Jimmy Carter."
At least the Russians saw him for the spineless, America-hating coward our media refuses to recognize.
They knew a wimp when they saw one.
Wait a minute. Electing Reagan was supposed to CAUSE this. I know. My first college professors in 1979 TOLD me.
Why the scare quotes for "educate"? At least the new Polish government has the moral clarity to make the case that people need to be educated about the real evil of Communism, without the backdrop of political correctness. It's a lesson that America needs to re-learn.
I don't recall Carter vacillating much; he was just constantly, soggily ineffective.
I remember his vacillating got us 20 1/2 percent interest. We financed a $1.2 million piece of equipment at this rate, courtesy of this goofball.
Thanks for posting.
It appears the Soviet plan was doomed from the start. If they were anticipating this kind of nuclear saturation, it would be a phyrric victory at minimum if they thought they were going to take over Europe.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
(Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes).
The new Polish government is cleaning house of all that was left over from the Communist era (including police personnel.) Radek Sikorski lived for a long time in Washington and is married to an American.
"If they were anticipating this kind of nuclear saturation, it would be a phyrric victory at minimum"
That is correct. Because the Soviets planned on using 'City Buster' 20 Megaton warheads, this would have ruined almost all Europe, including France and England which they say they were not going to attack.
The book was called "The Third World War, August 1985" by General Sir John Hackett. I bought my copy from the Drug Fair by my house. If you get a chance read Team Yankee by Harold Coyle. It uses the same story and is a pretty fun read. That is if you find tanks, explosions and general carnage to be fun ;)
Man, you have got some phenominal recall - I'm surprised that I actually remembered something that I read in the late 70's........
The USSR only needed a 7 day plan.
After 7 days, they knew the democrats would be calling for the US withdraw anyway.
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