Comment on the 1965 Warsaw Pact War Game Exercise
by Erwin A. Schmidl

At 07:00 hours Vienna is completely destroyed by two nuclear warheads launched by strategic missiles. Two minutes later, Munich and Verona follow: all three cities are “completly destroyed”, as are Budapest, Debrecen and several others.

This scenario is truly frightening. It forms the background for the staff exercise which took place at the Warsaw Pact’s Southern Army Group Headquarters at Mátyásföld in June 1965. The object was to practise the start of an offensive operation from Hungary to the West and Southwest, as part of a general offensive into Western Europe. This document is, however, not a war plan as such, but describes the circumstances which were expected in the case of a war. Apparently it was one of several like exercises mentioned by former Hungarian defense minister Róbert Széles in his paper about the Warsaw Pact strategic plans for the Central European theater.[1]

The basic assumptions of this “war game” are clear: under the cover of exercises, the “Westerners” reinforce their forces in Europe and start the offensive against the “Easterners”. Austria sides with the Westerners, and is apparently from the beginning seen as part of the “West”. The Western offensive starts with a nuclear strike against Budapest and other Hungarian cities as well as military targets. Nonetheless, the Eastern forces immediately recover from their losses and start the offensive towards the West - in the case of the Soviet and Hungarian forces in Hungary, to the West along the Danube valley in the direction of Munich, and to the Southwest via Graz into Northern Italy.[2] Moving at a speed of 50 kilometers per day, these forces move west, destroy the Austrian, Italian and German forces in Austria within five to six days, reaching Passau in the West and Villach in the Southwest. By that time, Austria is “excluded” from the war (i.e. forced to surrender), and the Eastern forces move on, occupying Southern Germany as far as Stuttgart, and Northeastern Italy up to Bologna in the process. The exercise ends after 13 days, with the Eastern forces having advanced some 600 kilometers into enemy territory.

Two elements in this scenario are worthy of note. First, according to the data in the exercise papers, the Easterners’ forces are significantly weaker than the Westerners’, with a total of ten divisions against the West’s thirteen (including the Austrians), and 214 warplanes (not counting the Hungarians here) against 483. Only in tanks the Easterners have a slight advantage (2445 vs. 2208). To assume an offensive operation from this basis, against an enemy who has already started to move east (Italian and German forces were supposed to have teamed up with the Austrians already), would be quite an achievement.

Secondly, these operations take place after nuclear strikes - with 130 nuclear warheads or bombs allocated to the Western, and 125 to the Eastern side, each side thus having more than 6,000 kilotons of nuclear explosive force at its disposal. The war starts with a Western strike using 30 nuclear warheads or bombs, destroying five big cities (including Budapest) and the Danube bridges completely, and resulting in personnel losses of the Easterners’ forces of 3,000 troops and 234 tanks. Also at 07:00 hours, the Easterners strike with 30 nuclear devices - as in all these scenarios, it is not really clear where retaliatory moves end and pre-emptive ones begin, with both sides’ first nuclear strikes being timed at 07:00 hours on 23 June. By 07:30, Budapest, Miskolc, Debrecen, Csap and Komarom are destroyed, as are Vienna, Munich, Graz, Verona, Vicenza and Piacenza. It is difficult to imagine how any successful ground operations could be envisaged under these conditions at all.

Evidently, the consequences of nuclear radiation were under-estimated in the mid-sixties, and armored vehicles considered safe to operate. This is the basic assumption underlying the Warsaw Pact war plan of 1964 (the Czechoslovak part of which has been published by PHP already), and it is also the basis for the Hungarian exercise plan of 1965.

From an Austrian point of view, it is clear that Austria was counted among the potential enemies, notwithstanding the policy of “neutrality”, and was therefore included in these plans and exercises. Either Austria was seen as a Western country anyway (in this exercise, among the evidence cited for the impending Western attack is the increase of anti-communist propaganda in the Austrian Armed Forces), or her neutrality was to be broken by a German or Italian advance on Austrian territory. Either way, Austria was from the beginning included in the theater of operations, and the Hungarian People’s Army was expected to fight in the two directions indicated in this exercise: the Danube valley and the Graz region.[3] Retrospectively, these advances were interpreted as nearly suicidal by the Hungarians, because the terrain would have greatly assisted the defense efforts of the Austrian Armed Forces.[4] We all have to be glad that these plans remained plans, and were never executed. 

Erwin A. SCHMIDL is a historian in the Austrian Ministry of defence and currently head of the contemporary history section at the National Defence College in Vienna. He has worked on various topics, including the evolution of peace operations and Austria in the Cold War. He received his PhD from University or Vienna, and teaches at the University of Innsbruck.

 

 

Notes

[1] Róbert Széles, Die strategischen Überlegungen des Warschauer Paktes für Mitteleuropa in den siebziger Jahren und die Rolle der Neutralen, in: Manfried Rauchensteiner - Josef Rausch - Wolfgang Etschmann (eds), Tausend Nadelstiche: Das österreichische Bundesheer in der Reformzeit 1970-1978 (Forschungen zur Militärgeschichte 3, Graz/Wien/Köln: Styria 1994). Re-published in Erich Reiter - Walter Blasi (eds), Österreichs Neutralität und die Operationsplanungen des Warschauer Paktes (Informationen zur Sicherheitspolitik 20, Wien: BMLV/MWB 1999), 35-52.

[2] Further North, the Central Army Group moves west into Germany, as detailed in the 1964 war plan published by the PHP in 2000.

[3] István Balló, Die Ungarische Volksarmee im Warschauer Pakt: Möglichkeiten und geplante Aufgaben Richtung Österreich vor 1989, in: Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift 36/2 (1998), 161ff.

[4] Cf. the remarks by former Hungarian Deputy Chief of Staff General Laszlo Damo, in: Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift 29/2 (1991), 174f.