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The Warsaw Pact formation of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the Cold War, 1955. The threat of West Germany's entry into NATO in 1955 caused the USSR to retaliate by forming a Warsaw Pact, or Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance.
Like NATO, a collective military was formed, but signed among the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe and was dominated by the USSR. If one country within the pact was attacked, the others would come to its aid. This created a counterbalance to NATO.
The Warsaw Pact, as the name implies, was signed in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955, by the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. The remilitarization of West Germany and its inclusion into NATO in 1955 was seen as a direct threat to the Soviet Union. The collective security of all these nations together would give the Soviet Union and its satellite states a greater defense against NATO and negotiating power over it.
Apart from this motivation, the Warsaw Pact also worked as a way of strengthening the Soviet Union's control over the Communist satellite states that made up the Eastern Bloc. Civil unrest in the Eastern Bloc, such as the uprising of 1953 in East Germany, was a cause of concern for the Soviet Union. The military forces of the Warsaw Pact members were placed under the command of a Soviet commander-in-chief. Soviet troops were also kept in these countries to deter any of them from leaving the Soviet sphere of control.
The Warsaw Pact would cause problems for the Soviet Union just a year later, in 1956, as Hungary and Poland both staged uprisings. For example, in Hungary, the new government wanted to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and see the removal of Soviet troops in its territory. Warsaw Pact troops would be used to crush uprisings within the satellite states throughout the Cold War, such as the Prague Spring in nineteen sixty-eight.
The Warsaw Pact troops, numbering over half a million, were made up of Soviet Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, and Hungarians. Romania, Albania, and East Germany refused to participate, and soon after, Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact as a result of the invasion.
The Warsaw Pact officially came to an end in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But by the late 1980s, it was already ineffective due to sweeping political changes within the satellite states.
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