Warsaw Pact

Not to be confused with Warsaw Convention (airlines), Treaty of Warsaw (1970), or Grand Duchy of Warsaw.

Further information: Cold War, Eastern Bloc, and Western Bloc

Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance
1955–1991
Emblem
Motto: [Союз мира и социализма] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)  (Russian) "Union of peace and socialism"
Member states of the Warsaw Pact: Bulgaria Czechoslovakia East Germany² Hungary Poland Romania Soviet Union Albania
Status	Military alliance
Common languages	Russian, Polish, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Albanian
Supreme Commander
• 1955–60 (first)	Ivan Kornev
• 1989–91 (last)	Petr Lushev
Head of Unified Staff
• 1955–62 (first)	Aleksei Antonov
• 1989–90 (last)	Vladimir Lobov
Historical era	Cold War
• Established	14 May 1955
• Hungarian crisis	4 November 1956
• Czechoslovakian crisis	21 August 1968
• End of Communism in Poland (1989)	13 September 1989/22 December 1990
• German reunification²	3 October 1990
• Disestablished	1 July 1991
Succeeded by Collective Security Treaty Organisation
¹ Command and Control HQ in Warsaw, Poland. Military HQ in Moscow, USSR. ² A 24 September 1990 treaty withdrew the German Democratic Republic from the Warsaw Treaty; at reunification, it became integral to the NATO Pact.

Soviet philatelic commemoration: At its 20th anniversary in 1975, the Warsaw Pact remains On Guard for Peace and Socialism.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1955–1991), more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The founding treaty was established under the initiative of the Soviet Union and signed on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was in part a Soviet military reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955, per the Paris Pacts of 1954.

Nomenclature

The Cold War (1945–90): NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact, the status of forces in 1973

In the Western Bloc, the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance is often called the Warsaw Pact military alliance; abbreviated WAPA, Warpac, and WP. Elsewhere, in the former member states, the Warsaw Treaty is known as:

• Albanian: Pakti i miqësisë, bashkëpunimit dhe i ndihmës së përbashkët
• Bulgarian: Договор за дружба, сътрудничество и взаимопомощ
  • Romanized Bulgarian: Dogovor za druzhba, satrudnichestvo i vzaimopomosht
• Czech: Smlouva o přátelství, spolupráci a vzájemné pomoci
• Slovak: Zmluva o priateľstve, spolupráci a vzájomnej pomoci
• German: Vertrag über Freundschaft, Zusammenarbeit und gegenseitigen Beistand
• Hungarian: Barátsági, együttműködési és kölcsönös segítségnyújtási szerződés
• Polish: Układ o Przyjaźni, Współpracy i Pomocy Wzajemnej
• Romanian: Tratatul de prietenie, cooperare şi asistenţă mutuală
• Russian: Договор о дружбе, сотрудничестве и взаимной помощи
  • Romanized Russian: Dogovor o druzhbe, sotrudnichestve i vzaimnoy pomoshchi

Structure

The Warsaw Treaty’s organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the head of the Warsaw Treaty Combined Staff also was a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces.

Strategy

The strategy of the Warsaw Pact was dominated by the desire of the Soviet Union to prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of another large scale invasion of its territory by perceived hostile Western Bloc powers, akin to those carried out by the Swedish Empire in 1708, Napoleonic France in 1812, the Central Powers during the First World War and most recently by Nazi Germany in 1941. While each of these conflicts resulted in extreme devastation and large human losses the invasion launched by Hitler had been exceptionally brutal. The USSR emerged from the Second World War in 1945 with the greatest total casualties of any participant in the war, suffering an estimated 27 million killed along with the destruction of much of the nation's industrial capacity. Eager to avoid a similar calamity in the future, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact as means of establishing a series of buffer states, closely aligned with Moscow and serving to act as a political and military barrier between Russia's vulnerable borders in Central and Eastern Europe and its potential enemies in the Western Bloc.

History

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-30483-002, Warschau, Konferenz Europäischer Länder....jpg

Communist Bloc Conclave: The Warsaw Pact conference, 11 May 1955, Warsaw, Poland.

In 1954 the USSR, fearing "the restoration of German Militarism" in West Germany, requested to join NATO. By then laws were already passed in West Germany ending denazification and The Gehlen Org, predecessor of the West German Federal Intelligence Service, was fully operative employing hundreds of ex-Nazis.

The soviet request was rejected by UK, USA and french governments shortly after.

Thus, on 14 May 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in October 1954 – only nine years after Allies (UK, USA and USSR) defeated Nazi Germany ending World War II in Europe.

The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. However, almost all governments of those members states were directly controlled by the Soviet Union.

The founding signatories to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance consisted of the following communist governments:

• People's Republic of Albania (withheld support in 1961 because of the Sino–Soviet split, formally withdrew in 1968)
• People's Republic of Bulgaria
• Czechoslovak Republic (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic since 1960)
• German Democratic Republic (withdrew in September 1990, before German reunification)
• People's Republic of Hungary
• People's Republic of Poland (withdrew on January 1, 1990)
• People's Republic of Romania
• Soviet Union

For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage.

In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government.

The multi-national Communist armed forces’ sole joint action was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania participated in the invasion.

Beginning at the Cold War’s conclusion, in late 1989, popular civil and political public discontent forced the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries from power – independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika- and glasnost-induced institutional collapse of Communist government in the USSR. In the event the populaces of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria deposed their Communist governments in the period from 1989–91.

On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from Pact countries meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. The treaty was de facto disbanded in December 1989 during the violent revolution in Romania that toppled the communist government there. Two years later, the USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.

Central and Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty

NATO/CSTO

On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia joined in March 2004; Croatia and Albania joined on 1 April 2009.

Russia and some other post-USSR states joined in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

In November 2005, the Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of National Remembrance who published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006. Yet the Polish government reserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. Eventually, 30 of the reserved 100 documents were published; 70 remained secret, and unpublished. Among the documents published is the Warsaw Treaty's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine – a short, swift attack capturing Austria, Denmark, Germany and Netherlands east of River Rhine, using nuclear weapons, in self-defense, after a NATO first strike. The plan originated as a 1979 field training exercise war game, and metamorphosed into official Warsaw Treaty battle doctrine, until the late 1980s – thus why the People’s Republic of Poland was a nuclear weapons base, first, to 178, then, to 250 tactical-range rockets. Doctrinally, as a Soviet-style (offensive) battle plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine gave commanders few defensive-war strategies for fighting NATO in Warsaw Treaty territory.

Signs differences

• 
  Badge Warsaw Pact. Union of peace and socialism
• 
  Badge Warsaw Pact. Brothers in arms (1970)
• 
  Badge A participant in joint exercises of Warsaw Pact "STIT" (1972)
• 
  Badge 25 years Warsaw Pact (1980)
• 
  AIR FORCE air forces Warsaw Pact
• 
  Badge Warsaw Pact. The participants of the joint exercises in Bulgaria (1982)
• 
  Jubilee badge 30 years of the Warsaw Pact (1985)

References

• Modern History Sourcebook: The Warsaw Pact, 1955 (full text of the treaty)
• Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security
• Library of Congress / Federal Research Division / Country Studies / Area Handbook Series / Soviet Union / Appendix C: The Warsaw Pact (1989)
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Further reading

• Havel, Václav (2007). To the Castle and Back. Trans. Paul Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26641-5.
• Heuser, Beatrice (1998). "Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies". Contemporary European History. 7 (3): 311–327. doi:10.1017/S0960777300004264.
• Lewis, William Julian (1982). The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine, and Strategy. Cambridge, Mass.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. ISBN 978-0-07-031746-8.
• Mastny, Vojtech (2005). A Cardboard Castle ?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-7326-07-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Umbach, Frank (2005). Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Paktes 1955 bis 1991 (in German). Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86153-362-7.

External links

• The Woodrow Wilson Center Cold War International History Project's Warsaw Pact Document Collection