Warsaw Pact

Conventional long name	Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
Common name	Warsaw Pact
noautocat	yes
Continent	Asia and Europe
Status	Military alliance
Era	Cold War
S1	Collective Security Treaty Organization
Image s1
Year start	1955
Date start	17 May
Year end	1991
Date end	1 July
Event1	Hungarian crisis
Date event1	4 November 1956
Event2	Czechoslovakian crisis
Date event2	21 August 1968
Event3	German reunification²
Date event3	3 October 1990
Image map caption	Member states: Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany², Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania.
Military command hq	Moscow, USSR
Common languages	Russian, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian
Title leader	Supreme Commander
Leader1	Ivan Konev
Year leader1	1955–60 (first)
Leader2	Petr Lushev
Year leader2	1989-91 (last)
Title deputy	Head of Unified Staff
Deputy1	Aleksei Antonov
Year deputy1	1955–62 (first)
Deputy2	Vladimir Lobov
Year deputy2	1989–90 (last)
Footnotes	¹ HQ in Moscow, USSR. ² A 24 November 1990 treaty withdrew the German Democratic Republic from the Warsaw Treaty; at reunification, it became integral to NATO Pact.

The Warsaw Treaty (1955–91) is the informal name for the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact, creating the Warsaw Treaty Organization. The treaty was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe. It was established at the USSR’s initiative and realized on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw, Poland.

In the Communist Bloc, the treaty was the military analogue of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the Communist (East) European economic community. The Warsaw Treaty was the Soviet Bloc’s military response to West Germany’s May 1955 integration to NATO Pact, per the Paris Pacts of 1954.

Nomenclature

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

*

* Romanized Bulgarian: Dogovor za druzhba, satrudnichestvo i vzaimopomosht

* 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 Warsaw Treaty forces also was 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 Treaty Organisation was dominated by the desire to prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of an invasion of Russian soil as had occurred under Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941-44, leading to extreme devastation and human losses in both cases, but especially in the second; the USSR emerged from the Second World War with the greatest total losses in life of any participant in the war. It was also dominated by the Marxist-Leninist teaching that one way or the other, Socialism ultimately had to prevail, which was taken to mean even in a nuclear war.

History

On May 14 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Treaty in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in October 1954 — only nine years after the defeat of Nazi Germany (1933–45) that ended only with the Soviet and Allied invasion of Germany in 1944/45 during World War II in Europe. The reality, however, was that a "Warsaw"-type pact had been in existence since 1945, when Soviet forces were initially in occupation of Eastern Europe, and maintained there after the war. The Warsaw Treaty merely formalized the arrangement.

The eight member countries of the Warsaw Treaty pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non interference in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence.

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 People's Republic of Romania (Socialist Republic of Romania since 1965) Soviet Union

Nevertheless, for 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty never directly waged war against each other in Europe; but the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aiming 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 People's Republic of Romania (later Socialist Republic of Romania), 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 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. Five months later, the USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.

Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty

/CSTO]] On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO Pact; later, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia joined during March 2004; and Albania joined on 1 April 2009.

Russia and some other post-URSS 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 Western Europe, 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.

See also

Collective Security Treaty Organisation (treaty among 6 post-Soviet states)

Comecon

Eastern Bloc

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)

Notes

Further reading

Vojtech Mastny, Malcolm Byrne, Magdalena Klotzbach: A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2005, ISBN 9637326081, ISBN 978-9637326080

William J. Lewis: The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine and Strategy, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. 1982. ISBN 0-07-031746-1. Surveys the armed forces, strategy, a campaign against NATO, matériel, uniforms, and nation- and rank-insignia.

Václav Havel: To the Castle and Back New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2007.

Frank Umbach: Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Pakts, 1955–1991. Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2005.

Beatrice Heuser, ‘Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies’, Contemporary European History Vol. 7 Part 3 (November 1998), pp. 311-328.

External links

Documents of the Warsaw Pact archives, Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (PHP)

The CWIHP Warsaw Pact Document Collection

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