John O'Sullivan: Europe Must Face Ugly Truths of Communist Past
Last Friday in Warsaw the world saw for the first time exactly how the Soviet Union intended to fight a nuclear war in Europe. A top secret map for a 1979 Warsaw Pact war game -- entitled "Seven Days to the River Rhine" -- was published at a press conference that marked the opening up of the Poland's hitherto secret military intelligence files from the communist era.
It was a chilling experience. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line going from the Danish border down through Germany and Belgium to the French border. They blotted out such cities as Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Antwerp and Brussels.
The map shows smaller blue mushroom clouds representing the Soviet guess of where NATO would aim its nuclear missiles. Warsaw and Prague are among the cities that would have perished. According to Radek Sikoski, the defense minister in the new conservative Polish government who opened up the archives, the dead would have included 2 million Polish civilians.
If Poles had died in a real version of "Seven Days to the River Rhine," however, almost all but a handful of Polish communists would have died as unwilling allies of a Soviet Union brutally occupying their country. That sensitive point is one reason why the Warsaw Pact plan was presented at the time as "a counter-attack" responding to a NATO invasion. The armed forces of communist Poland had to be given at least the fig leaf of an argument they were defending their country against a militaristic West. But the military-cum-political realities of the day were that a pessimistic West was retreating.
Massive SS-20 missiles were being planted in Eastern Europe aimed at western cities. "Peace rallies" throughout Western Europe, partly funded by the KGB, were frightening governments into rejecting the installation of America's deterrent missiles. The Kremlin, about to invade Afghanistan, was boasting that the international "correlation of forces" was tipping in its favor. And President Carter was bemoaning our "inordinate fear of communism."
In these circumstances a NATO invasion of Eastern Europe was not really thinkable. The Warsaw Pact's "counter-attack" looks very much like a plan for a first-strike invasion of Western Europe.
Sikorski's revelations have naturally annoyed the Russians. They have also been interpreted by some media cynics as a response to Russia's recent playing of anti-Polish power politics over energy and gas pipelines. That might well have been a subsidiary motive -- and reasonably so. Russia needs to know that if it tries to bully its neighbors such as Poland or Ukraine, they have at least the power to embarrass their old masters and to warn the West of what the Kremlin planned and did until the day before yesterday.
But the main motive behind these revelations, in Sikorski's own words, is "to bring to an end the era of post-communism."
It was a chilling experience. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line going from the Danish border down through Germany and Belgium to the French border. They blotted out such cities as Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Antwerp and Brussels.
The map shows smaller blue mushroom clouds representing the Soviet guess of where NATO would aim its nuclear missiles. Warsaw and Prague are among the cities that would have perished. According to Radek Sikoski, the defense minister in the new conservative Polish government who opened up the archives, the dead would have included 2 million Polish civilians.
If Poles had died in a real version of "Seven Days to the River Rhine," however, almost all but a handful of Polish communists would have died as unwilling allies of a Soviet Union brutally occupying their country. That sensitive point is one reason why the Warsaw Pact plan was presented at the time as "a counter-attack" responding to a NATO invasion. The armed forces of communist Poland had to be given at least the fig leaf of an argument they were defending their country against a militaristic West. But the military-cum-political realities of the day were that a pessimistic West was retreating.
Massive SS-20 missiles were being planted in Eastern Europe aimed at western cities. "Peace rallies" throughout Western Europe, partly funded by the KGB, were frightening governments into rejecting the installation of America's deterrent missiles. The Kremlin, about to invade Afghanistan, was boasting that the international "correlation of forces" was tipping in its favor. And President Carter was bemoaning our "inordinate fear of communism."
In these circumstances a NATO invasion of Eastern Europe was not really thinkable. The Warsaw Pact's "counter-attack" looks very much like a plan for a first-strike invasion of Western Europe.
Sikorski's revelations have naturally annoyed the Russians. They have also been interpreted by some media cynics as a response to Russia's recent playing of anti-Polish power politics over energy and gas pipelines. That might well have been a subsidiary motive -- and reasonably so. Russia needs to know that if it tries to bully its neighbors such as Poland or Ukraine, they have at least the power to embarrass their old masters and to warn the West of what the Kremlin planned and did until the day before yesterday.
But the main motive behind these revelations, in Sikorski's own words, is "to bring to an end the era of post-communism."