Everything about Warsaw Pact totally explained
Officially named the
Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
(
Translit.:
Dogovor o druzhbe, sotrudnichestve i vzaimnoy pomoshchi), the
Warsaw Pact was an organization of
communist states in
Central and
Eastern Europe. It was established on
May 14,
1955 in
Warsaw,
Poland. The treaty was signed in Warsaw on
May 14,
1955 and official copies were made in
Russian,
Polish,
Czech and
German. It was an initiative of the Soviet Union, which actually had all the power among the members. This treaty was in response to the NATO treaty, in that there was a political Consultative Committee, followed by a civilian secretary general, while down the chain of command there was a military commander in chief and a combined staff, although the similarities between the two international organizations ended there.
Members
Founding members:
Members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if one or more of the members were attacked. The treaty also stated that relations among the signatories were based on mutual non-interference in internal affairs and respect for national sovereignty and independence.
In 1991, the Warsaw Pact broke up when most of the Communist governments fell, changing to a democratically elected form as the Soviet Union dissolved.
Structure
The Warsaw Pact was divided into two branches: the
Political Consultative Committee, which coordinated all non-military activities, and the
Unified Command of Pact Armed Forces, which had authority over the troops assigned to it by member states and was headed by the Supreme Commander, who at the same time was the First Deputy
Minister of Defence of the USSR. The head of the
Warsaw Pact Unified Staff was the First Deputy Head of
General Staff of the Ministry of Defence of the USSR. The Warsaw Pact's headquarters were in Warsaw. Despite the fact there were two branches in charge of the armed forces they still reported to the party.
History
Authors and people alike didn't believe that the Iron Curtain would ever be lifted. Here Malcolm Mackintosh is quoted as saying: “The Eastern European governments will never fall, the Warsaw Pact is to stay.”
The pact was created to counter NATO and West Germany. Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union were the founding members.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries never engaged each other in armed conflict, but fought the
Cold War for more than 35 years often through '
proxy wars'. In 1989, many Eastern European citizens were tired of communist rule, and they overthrew their governments. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria all overthrew their governments. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and East Germany all ceased to exist.
There are many examples of soldiers of the Warsaw Pact serving alongside NATO soldiers on operational deployments under the auspices of the
United Nations, for example Canadian and Polish soldiers both served on the UNEFME (United Nations Emergency Force, Middle East - also known as UNEF II) mission, and Polish and Canadian troops also served together in Vietnam on the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS).
The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in
Prague on
1 July 1991.
Vaclav Havel (the former President of Czechoslovakia), counts the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact as his greatest accomplishment, according to his recent memoir
To The Castle and Back.
Post-Warsaw Pact
On
12 March 1999, the former Warsaw Pact members and successor states Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004.
In November 2005 Poland decided to make its military archives regarding the Warsaw Pact publicly available through the
Institute of National Remembrance. About 1,300 documents were declassified in January 2006 with the remaining approximately 100 documents being evaluated for future declassification by a historical commission. Finally, 30 were released, with 70 remaining classified as they involved issues with the current strategic situation of the Polish military. It was revealed in declassified documents that, until the 1980s, the Warsaw Pact's military plans in the case of war with the West (eg
Seven Days to the River Rhine), consisted of a swift land offensive whose objective would have been to secure Western Europe quickly (using nuclear weapons if necessary). Poland itself was home to 178 nuclear missiles, growing to 250 in the late eighties. Warsaw Pact commanders made very few plans for the possibility of fighting a defensive war on their own territory.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Warsaw Pact'.
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