Posted on 09/21/2007 3:52:33 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Chilling Soviet plans to launch massive nuclear strikes in Europe followed by a ground offensive in Germany and southern France have been unearthed by a Nato historian.
According to scenarios drafted in 1964, Warsaw Pact forces planned to use 131 tactical nuclear missiles and bombs to sideline NATO armaments and destroy Western Europe’s political and communications centres, in the event of an “imperialist” strike.
In an alarming insight into the “Doctor Strangelove” mindset of Soviet strategists, the Czechoslovak People’s Army, CSLA, was then expected to immediately march over deadly radioactive landscape and invade Nuremburg, Stuttgart and Munich, then bastions of West Germany.
On the ninth day the troops would take Lyon, south eastern France.
Soviet reinforcements would then continue the offensive towards the Pyrenees in the west.
Historian Petr Lunak from NATO’s information office in Brussels, found the 17-page Warsaw Pact plan while sifting through declassified communist-era documents in Prague’s military archives.
“Russians outlined the general (war) plan, while the (leaders of) individual Warsaw Pact armies prepared precise military blueprints, with details on front lines, deployment of troops and arms,” said Mr Lunak.
The text, written in Russian and entitled CSLA Plan of Action for a War Period, was signed by the Czech defence minister of the time and carried president Antonin Novotny’s stamp of approval.
According to Mr Lunak, the plan was still an option until 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It was shelved by Vaclav Havel in 1990 when he was elected Czech president.
While most Western planners were convinced that any first strike would lead to total mutual destruction, the plan - written in matter-of-fact language - shows that Warsaw Pact nations presumed a massive ground war would follow nuclear attacks.
Mr Lunak described the military plans as “fairy tale” thinking based on World War II warfare: “They (the Soviets) really planned to send ground troops out in the field and have them fight for a few days until they died from radiation,” he said.
The final draft of the invasion plan was completed under Soviet Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev, shortly after the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, when the United States and the Soviet Union had teetered on the brink of war.
According to the Prague documents, Moscow’s commanders fully expected western “imperialists” to make the first nuclear strike.
Mr Lunak includes the plans, as well as interviews with Czech generals of the time in his book, Planning the Unthinkable: Czechoslovak War Plans, 1950-1990.
The first English translation of the text was published earlier this month by the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security, which analyses and publishes declassified NATO and Warsaw Pact archives.
Vojtech Mastny, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., who coordinates the project, said the 1964 document is the first such detailed war plan to come to light. “There’s no doubt that the plan would have been used if the green light was given from above - the political leadership of the communist bloc,” he said.
just in time to distract people from what’s really happening...
I imagine that after drafting these plans, and years later seeing how, in much better conditions, the Soviet army had a catastrophe in Afghanistan, the mindset was prepared for the eventual end of the Soviet Union.
My personal opinion is that the title should be amended to say 1964.
The Soviets now have way more to worry about from the Chinese and the various Turdistan factions than they do from us.
And then what? This doesn't make any sense.
These may or may not be the first “detailed plans” to be “published” but I know I read the story on this war plan quite a few years ago.
This is really not surprising at all. The only thing that does surprise me is sending their troops across radioactive ground till they die. But the commies have little value for life.
Tom Clancy had it right. What a guy!
After the Warsaw “Allies” had softened the ground the Soviet wheel to wheel artillery and tanks would easily steamroll their way through any resistance.
The U.S. hoped that eventual air supremacy would allow us to pry the Soviets out of Europe.
We would be keeping our strategic assets in reserve to forestall an attack on CONUS.
If the Soviets attacked with "theater" nuclear weapons, Pershing missiles would take out POL, transportation and command centers in eastern Europe. Pershing II held Moscow at risk and complicated Soviet calculations.
An interesting sidelight is that - prior to the introduction of Pershing II - the Soviets assumed that every country in Europe without nuclear weapons (except, maybe Switzerland, Finland and Sweden - they would be dealt with later) , on both sides, would be the recepient of nuclear attack, all the countries with them (France, UK, USSR) would be spared them.
You are right and just who would they be fighting in the radiation areas? By the time they got to safe areas where someone would fight them they would so sick it would be impossible.
This sounds like some made-up BS.
Time for Tom Clancy (Author of Red October) to write another blockbuster novel. How about a title being "RED SCOURGE"
You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs...
Not the war plans we knew about. The plan was to hold em in Germany, with tactical nukes if need be. None of our Nato allies on the continent would have put up with a “retreat and reconquer” strategy.
You all are greatly exaggerating the radiation from a nuke blast and it’s effects on people. Their soldiers would hardly be affected (and most would have no symptoms for years.)
One might think of it as the commie way of upholding tradition, sending hundreds of thousands of troops to their doom just for the hell of it and for no better reason.
There are always more where those came from, and the ones from the combloc countries in eastern europe would be considered even more expendable than soviet conscripts. So they get to go first.
Actually this Henry Samuel dude who wrote this article is the one doing the exaggerating. I’m just speculating and playing armchair general, myself. :)
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