Transcription
As I'm sure many of you are gathering as we progress forward with this channel, the Cold War was not exactly a fighting war between the two major protagonists, but rather a global political struggle between the two sides, with fighting happening through proxies, of course. This political struggle was backed up by significant military force, in moves reminiscent of the great power politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Allies and alliances became a pretty big deal. As we've already talked about in an earlier video, the United States and her allies had formed a major military alliance in 1949. Interestingly, however, a Soviet-led response didn't materialize for several years. I'm your host David, and today we're going to look at that response: the mighty Warsaw Pact.
This is the Cold War. Okay, to start with, let's give a quick review of that American-led military alliance and the situation in Western Europe for those of you who haven't watched our earlier video. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization had been formed in 1949 and was made up of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, and Iceland. Key to today's video, however, is Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulated that an attack on one of the NATO members would be responded to by collective defensive action by all NATO members. Then, vitally, the London and Paris conferences agreed to remove all restrictions towards the rearming of Western Germany. The Soviet Union viewed this as a violation of the post-war agreement where Germany was to remain disarmed. The acceptance in 1955 of West Germany into NATO was seen as nothing short of a direct threat by and to the Soviet Union.
Okay, so that's Western Europe. Now, what did the situation look like on the other side of the Iron Curtain? The countries that had been liberated from the Nazis by the Soviet Union had all become so-called people's democracies. In practice, these states were satellites of the Soviet Union, internally restrictive and governed with varying degrees of directness from Moscow. Bilateral treaties between the USSR and each of these countries existed, and each treaty included aspects of military cooperation. In some cases, such as in Poland, this cooperation went even so far as the appointment of a Soviet national as defense minister.
1953, of course, saw a shift in Soviet foreign policy with the death of Joseph Stalin. Its attitude towards the West became more conciliatory in nature. Of course, we need to point out that even before Stalin died, the Soviet Union had proposed a reunified Germany based on the precondition that it would be disarmed and neutral. Now, the efforts towards reconciliation didn't stop there. In 1954, Moscow even offered to join NATO. Let's talk about that a little bit, actually, because it's really a fascinating story. At Khrushchev's direction, Moscow sent three identical letters to Washington D.C., London, and Paris, offering for the Soviet Union to join NATO, which, although it recognized it as an aggressive pact, hoped to change the stance through its own membership. Their precondition for joining, however, was a neutral Germany. We keep coming back to that, don't we? Almost as though there was bad blood between the Soviet Union and a strong Germany.
Anyway, the NATO members discussed the Soviet application, and it was, of course, rejected, being seen as not only a propaganda move but as an attempt to co-opt and neutralize the alliance, similar to the way the Soviet Union could use its veto in the United Nations Security Council to block motions it opposed there. The Soviets, having been shot down like a lonely YouTube host at a bar, then proposed a pan-European organization where membership would not be based on ideology but rather on the idea of European collective security. This would leave the Americans on the outside and put the nations of Western Europe on a one-to-one basis with the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, this was rejected by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, who continued to hold fast to the idea that their primary European threat came from the Soviet Union.
And then, almost to the day of the 10th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, West Germany was admitted as a full member to NATO. The Soviet response was swift. Five days later, on the 14th of May, the Soviet Union, along with Albania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany, signed the Warsaw Pact, stating that the establishment of a Western European military union, which included a remilitarized Western Germany, was a threat to the peaceful nations of Europe. It called on the unity of those peaceful states to safeguard security and peace in Europe. It also noted that the Contracting States reaffirmed their desire for the establishment of a system of European collective security based on the participation of all European states, irrespective of their social and political systems. Or, to interpret it, it expressed that the Contracting States of the Warsaw Pact were ready to dismantle the Pact if NATO would do the same, provided both were replaced by a united collective security organization. The Pact itself stated that it was guided by the principles of the United Nations Charter, refraining from the use of force, non-interference in internal affairs, and the respect of sovereignty. The Pact's Fourth Article, similar to NATO's Fifth, envisaged collective defense of Pact members against any threat to any member nation. The parties to the Pact also agreed to a joint military command in order to coordinate the development of their militaries and any future actions.
So there we have it. The military stages set: NATO on one side versus the Warsaw Pact on the other. Two military alliances, toe to toe, gun barrel to gun barrel, ready to fight if anyone even sneezed the wrong way. But come on, you knew there was going to be a but. How effective an alliance was the Warsaw Pact, really? A lot of scholars have called into question the significance of the alliance, so let's take a closer look. While NATO was clearly dominated by the United States and the Pact was dominated by the Soviet Union, it's important to realize that NATO member countries remained quite independent of the United States, often disagreeing with it. France, we are definitely looking at you. From a military perspective, NATO members only allowed for a portion of their armed forces to be used for NATO purposes. By contrast, Warsaw Pact nations were very much client states of the Soviet Union and were dependent on it. As a result, their entire armed forces were under a central command dominated by Moscow. Often overlooked, the Soviet Union already had bilateral military agreements in place with each of these member countries and already had armies stationed in each of these countries. The signing of the Warsaw Pact didn't bring any significant change to the military relationship between the client state and the USSR. Cooperation between satellite states wasn't really a thing either, with the relationship always running back to Moscow. And finally, we should consider the fighting forces of each member nation of the Warsaw Pact themselves. Only the armed forces of Poland and East Germany were considered in the West to be effective or formidable, with the others being considered weak or unreliable. This made them almost non-factors. So, all in all, many consider the Warsaw Pact to be a bit of a paper tiger, a paper pact, if you will. Its formation was more about propaganda in the face of a Western military alliance rather than the creation of a true geopolitical force in the Cold War.
So why don't we talk a little bit about the structure and history of the Pact after its formation, just to help illustrate its effectiveness and how it was used? The first commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact was Eastern Europe's old friend, Marshal Ivan Konev. I'll point out here that all subsequent commanders-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact organization were Soviet military leaders and also served as Deputy Ministers to the Soviet Minister of Defense. You know, in case you were wondering about the Soviet domination of the organization. Now, along with the joint command of the armed forces was a Political Consultative Committee, in charge of the political decision-making of the organization. This, of course, was headquartered in, well, you guessed it, Moscow. The Political Committee, over its lifetime, made several notable declarations, including one in 1958 when it proposed a declaration of non-aggression to NATO, provided NATO would do the same as well, as a 1960 declaration proposing that Warsaw Pact nations would stop nuclear weapons tests on the condition NATO member states would do likewise. You can judge for yourself the seriousness of these proposals.
1956 proved itself to be a key year for the Warsaw Pact. The Hungarian Revolution saw Hungary declare itself no longer a part of the Pact. The Soviet response, which was to brutally crush the revolution, was done by the Soviet Union and not by the Warsaw Pact. The leadership of the Hungarian Communists called on Moscow and not their fellow European socialists to suppress the rebellion. In fact, at no point did the Soviet Union consider calling on its allies to help.
The next notable challenge to the Warsaw Pact came during the so-called Prague Spring in 1968, when Alexander Dubček took charge in Czechoslovakia and demanded change to the socialist system there. Moscow took note, fearing these calls for reform would spread to other satellite states, loosening or even throwing off their control. Moscow's response, predictably, was to invade Czechoslovakia with an army of up to 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops. Now, most of these troops were from the Soviet military, but up to 80,000 troops from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland took part as well. The initial plan also included the participation of troops from East Germany, but at the pleading of the Czechoslovak party leadership, the participation of these troops was canceled. It was feared that the participation of German troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia would just add fuel to an already burning fire, because, you know, history and all.
Now, interestingly, the Warsaw Pact's participation in the crushing of the Prague Spring was the only joint operation ever conducted by the Warsaw Pact. I can't help but point out that this sole operation was conducted against a member state and not an outside enemy. The Prague Spring also marked a turning point in terms of dissent. Romania refused to take part in the invasion, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, already unhappy with the Soviet Union's expansionist policies, took the opportunity to level public criticisms against the Soviet Union and its invasion. Albania, tiny, bunker-infested Albania, used the Prague Spring to finalize its split from the Soviet Union. Already unhappy with the liberal policies Moscow was pursuing since the death of Stalin, Albania took advantage of not having a shared border with any Warsaw Pact nation and withdrew from the Pact. It began to foster much closer ties with Beijing, but more on that in a later video.
So, where does that leave our assessment of the Warsaw Pact? Was it the military monolith I grew up believing it to be? Was it the armed representative of global communism, hell-bent on joint action to crush the West? Well, in retrospect, probably not. It was more of a propaganda tool, dominated by Moscow, a veneer, if you want. If the Pact had never been formed, all the fundamental tools would still have been in place. The military alliances between the client states and Moscow already existed. The dominance of the Soviet Union already existed. A paper pact, indeed.
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