Preface

Unlike the 1964 Czechoslovak war plan published elsewhere on this website, the 1965 Hungarian document is identified as an exercise rather than a war plan of the Warsaw Pact. Since, however, the 1964 Czechoslovak exercise “Sputnik” (“Astra”) - the documentation of which has likewise been obtained by the PHP-conforms substantially to the war plan, it may be assumed that the Hungarian exercise, too, conveys accurately the actual war planning of the Soviet alliance in 1965. The similarly restricted number of copies of the document-two-supports this conclusion. The document states bluntly that Vienna, Munich, Verona, and other cities would be “completely destroyed” by Soviet nuclear-armed missiles, It only implies, however, that its Budapest and other Hungarian cities would presumably be to be obliterated by NATO’s nuclear strikes as well and is notably reticent about seriously considering the consequences of the devastation, thus exposing the fallacy of effectively waging a nuclear war between the two superpowers. The authors of the exercise are notably ambiguous on the crucial question of whether the launching of nuclear weapons should precede or follow a surprise nuclear attack by the enemy:

Once the commencement of the “Westerners’” nuclear strikes has been ascertained, the commanders [...] take measures to prevent enemy strikes . [...] At the same time, they organize elimination of the consequences of the enemy’s nuclear strikes [...].

The same question vexed NATO planners as well and resulted in no satisfactory answer, thus showing the fallacy of the concept of nuclear deterrence on which strategic stability was supposedly resting during the Cold War. The exercise describes in striking detail the expected military moves of the NATO allies. Considering the extensive penetration of the NATO headquarters by Warsaw Pact intelligence agents, the description of the enemy operations in the Hungarian document may therefore be regarded as thus far the closest account of the Western alliance’s war plans, none of which has yet been made public. Complementing the Hungarian documents is the information on the Soviet intermediate-range missiles SS-20 and the “Kiev” aircraft carrier provided in strict confidence by Soviet Minister of Defense Marshal Dmitrii Ustinov to high-ranking Warsaw Pact officers in connection with the “Zapad-81” military exercise. The exercise, held in September 1981 in the Baltic and Belorussian military districts, was the first to practice the “operational group maneuver” concept of deep conventional thrust into NATO territory, intended to destroy enemy airfields and communication centers before the Western alliance could use nuclear weapons. Ustinov’s remarks are notable for the continuity of Soviet strategic planning from the mid-1960s until 1981, and beyond, despite the ups and downs of the East-West détente during that period. In fact, according to the marshal, the beginning in 1970 of the installation of the SS-20 missiles, which he characterized as offensive, coincided with the onset of détente. The information provided by Ustinov confirms explicitly the widely held Western assumption that the SS-20 missiles targeted all European NATO states. The reference to the destruction of  “objects of military and military-strategic importance” may be understood as including population centers as well. At that time, NATO had no equivalent to these missiles, and its decision to deploy them in 1983 served as a major catalyst of the strategic revolution which, by showing the futility of the nuclear arms race, prepared the ground for the end of the Cold War.

 

Vojtech Mastny