Ted H. Kim's Weblog

Friday July 22, 2005

A Cardboard Castle

First let me say, this is not a real book review. I haven't read A Cardboard Castle?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1995-1991, though I want to. A while ago, I read an interesting review of this book in Newsweek. I haven't seen physical copies of the book yet, but online vendors do have it. Call me cheap, but for now, the book seems a bit expensive for me. But what I did discover is a related website for the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP - not to be confused with the web scripting language).

On the PHP website is a set of excerpts from A Cardboard Castle and many related documents. What emerges from looking at the website is a tantalizing peek at the Cold War through the documents of both alliances. I say tantalizing, because only a small portion of NATO and Warsaw Pact documents have been made public. A PHP paper, The New History of Cold War Alliances, talks about the general state of what has been revealed and the prospects for more. But among the piles of documents that have been revealed are some extremely interesting items.

Chief among them are the Warsaw Pact's 1964 War Plan for the Czechoslovok Army. Briefly, the document plans for a high-tempo offensive operation (including airborne units) as part of a general NATO/Waraw Pact war which leads to occupying Lyon (in France) in 9 days. All of this, in spite of possible nuclear war all around these operations. The first question is whether these plans show intent (or wishful thinking) or merely dutiful contingency planning. If the order had been given, the PHP researchers assert the plan would have been taken seriously. Nevertheless, the plans seem to be dangerously disconnected from reality. There are many other questions one could ask. The Czech Front is at the extreme south edge of the Central front area. A small part of the neighboring 1st Western Front operations are shown in the plan near Wurzburg. But I can't help wondering what the complete Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG) plans might have looked like.

Some other revelations include a rather successful penetration of NATO secrets by East German intelligence and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies (preparation for resistance during occupation). All of these items lead me to want to read A Cardboard Castle when I have the opportunity. Further, I would like to also look at how the documents compare with wargames on this hypothetical conflict, like NATO (SPI 1973), NATO (Victory 1983) and Group of Soviet Forces Germany (Decision 2003).

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(2005-07-22 10:00:44.0) Permalink