Warsaw Treaty Organization ofFriendship, Cooperation, and

Mutual Assistance

Military alliance

1955–1991 →

Emblem

MottoСоюз мира и социализма (Russian)

"Union of peace and socialism"

Member states of the Warsaw Pact:

Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia

East Germany²

Hungary

Poland

Romania

Soviet Union

Albania

Capital Not specified

Languages Russian, German,Bulgarian, Czech,Slovak, Hungarian,Romanian, Albanian,Polish

Warsaw PactFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Further information: Cold War, Eastern Bloc, and Western Bloc

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship,Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1955–1991), morecommonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutualdefense treaty between eight communist states of Central andEastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The foundingtreaty was established under the initiative of the Soviet Unionand signed on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw. The Warsaw Pactwas the military complement to the Council for MutualEconomic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economicorganization for the communist states of Central and EasternEurope. The Warsaw Pact was a Soviet military reaction to the

integration of West Germany[1] into NATO in 1955, per the

Paris Pacts of 1954.[2][3][4]

Contents

1 Nomenclature

2 Structure

3 Strategy

4 History

5 Central and Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty

6 Signs differences7 Notes8 References

9 Further reading10 External links

Nomenclature

In the Western Bloc, the Warsaw Treaty Organization ofFriendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance is often calledthe Warsaw Pact military alliance; abbreviated WAPA,Warpac, and WP. Elsewhere, in the former member states, theWarsaw Treaty is known as:

Albanian: Pakti i miqësisë, bashkëpunimit dhe i

ndihmës së përbashkët

Political structure Military alliance

Supreme

Commander

- 1955–60 (first) Ivan Kornev

- 1989–91 (last) Petr Lushev

Head of Unified

Staff

- 1955–62 (first) Aleksei Antonov

- 1989–90 (last) Vladimir Lobov

Historical era Cold War

- Established 14 May 1955

- Hungarian crisis 4 November 1956

- Czechoslovakiancrisis

21 August 1968

- End ofCommunism inPoland (1989)

13 September 1989/22December 1990

- Germanreunification²

3 October 1990

- Disestablished 1 July 1991

¹ Command and Control HQ in Warsaw, Poland.

Military HQ in Moscow, USSR.

² A 24 September 1990 treaty withdrew the German

Democratic Republic from the Warsaw Treaty; at

reunification, it became integral to the NATO Pact.

Soviet philatelic

commemoration: At

its 20th anniversary in

1975, the Warsaw Pact

remains On Guard for

Peace and Socialism.

Bulgarian: Договор за дружба, сътрудничество и

взаимопомощ

Romanized Bulgarian: Dogovor za druzhba,

satrudnichestvo i vzaimopomosht

Czech: Smlouva o přátelství, spolupráci a vzájemné

pomociSlovak: Zmluva o priateľstve, spolupráci a vzájomnej

pomoci

German: Vertrag über Freundschaft, Zusammenarbeit

und gegenseitigen Beistand

Hungarian: Barátsági, együttműködési és kölcsönös

segítségnyújtási szerződés

Polish: Układ o Przyjaźni, Współpracy i Pomocy

Wzajemnej

Romanian: Tratatul de prietenie, cooperare şi asistenţă

mutuală

Russian: Договор о дружбе, сотрудничестве ивзаимной помощи

Romanized Russian: Dogovor o druzhbe,sotrudnichestve i vzaimnoy pomoshchi

Structure

The Warsaw Treaty’s organization was two-fold: the PoliticalConsultative Committee handled political matters, and theCombined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-nationalforces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commanderof the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a FirstDeputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the head of the Warsaw TreatyCombined Staff also was a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the ArmedForces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security

alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces.[5]

Strategy

The strategy of the Warsaw Pact was dominated by the desire of the Soviet Union toprevent, at all costs, the recurrence of another large scale invasion of its territory byperceived hostile Western Bloc powers, akin to those carried out by the SwedishEmpire in 1708, Napoleonic France in 1812, the Central Powers during the FirstWorld War and most recently by Nazi Germany in 1941. While each of theseconflicts resulted in extreme devastation and large human losses the invasion launchedby Hitler had been exceptionally brutal. The USSR emerged from the Second WorldWar in 1945 with the greatest total casualties of any participant in the war, suffering anestimated 27 million killed along with the destruction of much of the nation's industrialcapacity. Eager to avoid a similar calamity in the future, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact as means ofestablishing a series of buffer states, closely aligned with Moscow and serving to act as a political and military

The Cold War (1945–90): NATO

vs. the Warsaw Pact, the status of

forces in 1973

Communist Bloc Conclave: The

Warsaw Pact conference, 11 May

1955, Warsaw, Poland.

barrier between Russia's vulnerable borders in Central and Eastern Europe and its potential enemies in the WesternBloc.

History

On 14 May 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact in responseto the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO inOctober 1954 – only nine years after the defeat of Nazi Germany(1933–45) that ended with the Soviet and Allied invasion of Germany in1944/45 during World War II in Europe. The reality was that a

"Warsaw"-type pact had been in existence since 1939[citation needed],when Soviet forces (in alliance with Nazi Germany) initially occupiedCentral and Eastern Europe, and maintained there after the war. TheWarsaw Pact merely formalized the arrangement.

The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutualdefense of any member who would be attacked; relations among thetreaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internalaffairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, andpolitical independence. However, almost all governments of thosemembers states were directly controlled by the Soviet Union.

The founding signatories to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperationand Mutual Assistance consisted of the following communistgovernments:

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 (withdrew on January 1, 1990)

People's Republic of Romania Soviet Union

For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment ofeach 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 inAugust 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People'sRepublic of Albania participated in the invasion.

Beginning at the Cold War’s conclusion, in late 1989, popular civil and political public discontent forced theCommunist 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.[6] In theevent the populaces of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria deposedtheir Communist governments in the period from 1989–91.

On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers

from Pact countries meeting in Hungary.[7] On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havelformally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance and sodisestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. The treaty was de factodisbanded in December 1989 during the violent revolution in Romania that toppled the communist governmentthere. Two years later, the USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.

Central and Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty

NATO/CSTO

On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Romania, and Slovakia joined in March 2004; Croatia and Albania joined on 1 April 2009.

Russia and some other post-USSR states joined in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

In November 2005, the Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of NationalRemembrance who published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006. Yet the Polish governmentreserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. Eventually, 30 of the reserved 100documents were published; 70 remained secret, and unpublished. Among the documents published is the WarsawTreaty's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine – a short, swift attack capturing Austria, Denmark,Germany and Netherlands east of River Rhine, 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 Treatybattle 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 theRiver Rhine gave commanders few defensive-war strategies for fighting NATO in Warsaw Treaty

territory.[citation needed]

Signs differences

Badge Warsaw Pact.Union of peace andsocialism

Badge Warsaw Pact.Brothers in weapons(1970)

Badge A participant injoint exercises ofWarsaw Pact "STIT"(1972)

Badge 25 years WarsawPact (1980)

AIR FORCE air forcesWarsaw Pact

Badge Warsaw Pact.The participants of thejoint exercises inBulgaria (1982)

Jubilee badge 30 yearsof the Warsaw Pact(1985)

Notes

1. ^ Yost, David S. (1998). NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Roles in International Security. Washington,DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. p. 31. ISBN 1-878379-81-X.

2. ^ Broadhurst, Arlene Idol (1982). The Future of European Alliance Systems. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.p. 137. ISBN 0-86531-413-6.

3. ^ Christopher Cook, Dictionary of Historical Terms (1983)

4. ^ The Columbia Enclopedia, fifth edition (1993) p. 2926

5. ^ Fes'kov, V. I.; Kalashnikov, K. A.; Golikov, V. I. (2004). Sovetskai͡a Armii͡a v gody "kholodnoĭ voĭny," 1945–1991 [The Soviet Army in the Cold War Years (1945–1991)]. Tomsk: Tomsk University Publisher. p. 6. ISBN 5-7511-1819-7.

6. ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, third edition, 1999, pp. 637–8

7. ^ "Warsaw Pact and Comecon To Dissolve This Week" (http://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0226/odate.html).Csmonitor.com. 1991-02-26. Retrieved 2012-06-04.

References

Modern History Sourcebook: The Warsaw Pact, 1955

(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1955warsawpact.html) (full text of the treaty)Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/)Library of Congress / Federal Research Division / Country Studies / Area Handbook Series / Soviet Union /Appendix C: The Warsaw Pact (http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/soviet_union/su_appnc.html) (1989)

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress CountryStudies.

Further reading

Havel, Václav (2007). To the Castle and Back (http://books.google.com/books?

id=GaWwabF35Y0C&lpg=PP1&dq=editions%3AkJCaIwFlq-QC&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false).

Trans. Paul Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26641-5.Heuser, Beatrice (1998). "Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and

Strategies". Contemporary European History 7 (3): 311–327. doi:10.1017/S0960777300004264

(http://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS0960777300004264).

Lewis, William Julian (1982). The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine, and Strategy. Cambridge, Mass.:Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. ISBN 978-0-07-031746-8.

Mastny, Vojtech; Byrne, Malcolm (2005). A Cardboard Castle ?: An Inside History of the Warsaw

Pact, 1955–1991 (http://books.google.com/books?

id=Jm4L_b8CHycC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false). Budapest: Central European UniversityPress. ISBN 978-963-7326-07-3.

Umbach, Frank (2005). Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Paktes 1955 bis

1991 (in German). Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86153-362-7.

External links

The Woodrow Wilson Center Cold War International History Project's Warsaw Pact Document Collection

(http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/va2/index.cfm?

topic_id=1409&fuseaction=home.browse&sort=collection&item=Warsaw%20Pact)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warsaw_Pact&oldid=550911552"

Categories: Warsaw Pact Eastern Bloc 1991 in politics 20th-century military alliances

Bulgaria–Soviet Union relations Cold War treaties Communism Foreign relations of the Soviet Union

Former international organizations Germany–Soviet Union relations History of Poland (1989–present)

History of Warsaw International military organizations International political organizations

Military alliances involving Bulgaria Military alliances involving Czechoslovakia

Military alliances involving Hungary Military alliances involving Poland Military alliances involving Romania

Military alliances involving the Soviet Union Modern Europe Organizations established in 1955

Organizations disestablished in 1991 Poland–Soviet Union relations Treaties concluded in 1955

Treaties entered into force in 1955 Treaties of East Germany Treaties of the People's Republic of Bulgaria

Treaties of the People's Republic of Hungary Treaties of the People's Republic of Poland

Treaties of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania Treaties of the Socialist Republic of Romania

Czechoslovakia–Soviet Union relations Hungary–Soviet Union relations

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