50 Fun Facts About Warsaw Pact

Which country's entry into NATO in May 1955 prompted the Soviet bloc to sign the Warsaw Pact days later?

West Germany joined NATO in early May 1955, and the Warsaw Pact was signed within days. Soviet leaders feared a rearmed German army only a decade after the Second World War.

Which period of liberal reform in Czechoslovakia ended when half a million Warsaw Pact troops invaded in August 1968?

The Prague Spring lasted from January to August 1968, when Warsaw Pact tanks rolled in to end it. The only formal change to survive was a federal state made up of Czech and Slovak republics.

The 1989 Soviet policy of letting Warsaw Pact states choose their own path was jokingly named after which singer?

Frank Sinatra's hit My Way inspired the label, coined by a Soviet spokesman in October 1989. He told reporters that every country could now decide for itself which road to take.

Against whom did the Warsaw Pact carry out its only direct military actions during the whole Cold War?

Its own member states were the only targets: Soviet troops crushed Hungary's uprising in 1956, and Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. The rival blocs never fought each other directly in Europe.

A British general compared the Soviet Union's 1954 bid for NATO membership to which unlikely scenario?

A burglar joining the police was how Hastings Ismay, NATO's first secretary general, put it. Moscow's offer was turned down, and the Warsaw Pact was founded the following year.

Which conflict saw Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia join a coalition led by the United States?

The Gulf War of 1991 saw three Warsaw Pact states side with Washington to liberate Kuwait. The alliance they still belonged to was declared disbanded that same February.

Which founding member formally quit the Warsaw Pact in September 1968 in protest at the invasion of Czechoslovakia?

Albania had been frozen out since 1961, when it sided with China against Moscow. It was the only member to formally leave before the alliance began to break up in 1990.

Which mocking nickname did NATO officials give the newly signed Warsaw Pact because it was put together in a rush?

A cardboard castle was NATO's verdict on an alliance that looked superfluous in 1955. Soviet troops and Moscow-backed governments already controlled every country that signed.

Which Soviet leader sent the army into Hungary in 1956, months after denouncing Stalin in a secret speech?

Nikita Khrushchev first agreed to pull Soviet troops out, then reversed course within a day and sent the Red Army back in on 4 November. His own speech had helped stir the unrest.

Which occupied country regained full independence under a four-power treaty signed just one day after the Warsaw Pact?

Austria was granted full independence on 15 May 1955, and the last occupation troops left that October. The Warsaw Pact had been signed in the Polish capital the day before.

Which Soviet policy, set out after Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968, claimed a right to intervene in socialist states?

The Brezhnev Doctrine treated a threat to socialist rule in one bloc country as a threat to them all. It was announced only after the tanks had rolled, to justify the invasion in hindsight.

Which Czechoslovak communist leader's liberalising reforms provoked the Warsaw Pact invasion of his country in 1968?

Alexander Dubček was forced out as party leader in April 1969 and ended up in a clerical job at a forestry agency. He returned to public life when communist rule collapsed twenty years later.

What was the code name of the overnight Warsaw Pact assault that sent thousands of tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968?

Operation Danube began with about 250,000 troops, a force that later doubled. East German units were held back at the last minute for fear of reviving memories of the wartime occupation.

Which Warsaw Pact member refused to join the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and later defied the 1984 Olympic boycott?

Romania went its own way inside the alliance for decades. Soviet troops left the country in 1958, and after 1964 the Soviet Army was barred from returning even for joint exercises.

Which Hungarian prime minister announced his country's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact in 1956 and was later executed?

Imre Nagy was hanged in 1958 after a secret trial. His reburial with full honours in June 1989 helped bring down Hungary's communist government.

What status did Hungary's government declare in 1956 when it pulled out of the Warsaw Pact and appealed to the UN?

Neutrality was declared on 1 November 1956, as Soviet troops were already pouring back into the country. The full assault came three days later, so Hungary's exit from the alliance lasted from 1 to 4 November.

Which Soviet marshal, Zhukov's rival in the race for Berlin, later became commander-in-chief of Warsaw Pact forces?

Ivan Konev held the alliance's top command until 1960. He led the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, and every one of his successors was also a Soviet officer.

The Warsaw Pact's formal name was the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and which third pledge?

Mutual Assistance rounded off a title that never mentioned Warsaw. The nickname came from the city where the Soviet Union and seven allies signed the treaty in May 1955.

Which Eastern Bloc economic organisation, founded in 1949, did the Warsaw Pact complement as the military arm?

Comecon ran trade and economic planning for the bloc while the Pact handled defence. Their members agreed to dissolve both within days of each other in the summer of 1991.

Which Polish trade union's election victory in June 1989 began the unravelling of the Warsaw Pact?

Solidarity won 99 of 100 Senate seats and every lower-house seat it was allowed to contest. Its new government at first assured Moscow that Poland would stay in the alliance.

Which Asian country asked to join the Warsaw Pact in 1963 but was left with only observer status?

Mongolia's bid was blocked by one member government, the first time a Soviet initiative was stopped from inside the alliance. Moscow agreed to station troops there anyway in 1966.

Which communist-ruled European country stayed out of the Warsaw Pact and helped found the Non-Aligned Movement instead?

Yugoslavia had broken with Stalin in 1948, seven years before the alliance existed. Its leader Tito then helped launch a movement of countries that sided with neither bloc.

A declassified Polish file revealed a Warsaw Pact plan to reach which river within seven days of a nuclear exchange?

The Rhine was the finish line of a 1979 exercise that imagined NATO striking first and the Pact answering with nuclear weapons. Poland released the plan after its 2005 elections.

Which Polish army colonel passed 35,000 pages of mostly Soviet military secrets to the CIA between 1972 and 1981?

Ryszard Kukliński helped prepare the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and was so disturbed by it that he later offered his services to the Americans. The CIA knew him by the code name Jack Strong.

Which lowland corridor near Frankfurt did NATO planners expect Warsaw Pact tanks to pour through in a surprise attack?

The Fulda Gap follows the route Napoleon used to retreat after his defeat at Leipzig in 1813. A huge tank battle there became a centrepiece of Western war planning.

Which 1983 NATO exercise did some Soviet leaders fear was cover for a genuine nuclear first strike?

Able Archer rehearsed a nuclear escalation so realistically that Moscow readied its own nuclear forces. Air units in East Germany and Poland were put on alert.

Which 1990 agreement capped the tanks, artillery and aircraft NATO and the Warsaw Pact could each keep in Europe?

CFE, short for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, was signed in Paris in November 1990 with the two alliances as its two sides. Within months one of those sides had ceased to exist.

In which capital did the six remaining members agree in February 1991 to end the Warsaw Pact's military cooperation?

Budapest was a fitting stage: Soviet tanks had crushed an attempt to leave the alliance there 35 years earlier. The Pact's political shell lasted only until that July.

Which playwright-turned-president formally ended the Warsaw Pact at a ceremony in his own capital in July 1991?

Václav Havel had been jailed several times as a dissident, once for nearly four years. As president of Czechoslovakia he closed down the alliance whose armies had invaded his country in 1968.

Which August 1989 gathering on Hungary's western border let hundreds of East Germans flee and shook the Warsaw Pact?

The Pan-European Picnic was a peace demonstration where a border gate was opened and more than six hundred holidaymakers rushed through. Its organisers wanted to test how Moscow would react.

Which phrase, popularised by Winston Churchill in 1946, named the line dividing NATO countries from the Warsaw Pact?

The Iron Curtain was Churchill's image in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, nine years before the Warsaw Pact existed. He had first used the phrase in a telegram in May 1945.

Which Soviet leader refused to use force to save the Warsaw Pact's communist governments as they fell in 1989?

Mikhail Gorbachev dropped the old rule that Moscow would step in to rescue a socialist ally. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1990.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact never met in battle, so their rivalry was fought out through which kind of conflict?

Proxy wars in places such as Vietnam let each side back an ally without firing on the other. In Europe itself the two alliances never waged war on each other in 36 years.

East Germany left the Warsaw Pact in September 1990, just days before which event ended its existence as a state?

German reunification followed on 3 October 1990, little more than a week after the withdrawal. The united country stayed in NATO, so the Pact's front-line state ended up inside the rival alliance.

Which country outside the Warsaw Pact did Soviet forces invade in 1979 to prop up a communist government?

Afghanistan was not in the alliance, so Soviet troops went in alone. The war dragged on for nearly a decade and sapped Moscow's will to hold on to its European allies.

Which shipyard electrician became Poland's first popularly elected president in 1990 as the Warsaw Pact fell apart?

Lech Wałęsa had been fired in 1976 and arrested several times for trade-union activity at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk. He served as president until 1995.

Which US president in 1955, when the Warsaw Pact was signed, had earlier served as NATO's first supreme commander?

Dwight Eisenhower led NATO's forces in 1951 and 1952, then served as president from 1953 to 1961. The general who built the Western command spent his presidency facing its Eastern mirror image.

Which Soviet assault rifle, accepted for service in 1949, went on to arm most Warsaw Pact armies?

The AK-47 takes its K from designer Kalashnikov, who said the idea came to him in a hospital bed. A fellow soldier had asked why Soviet troops lacked automatic weapons.

Which clause of NATO's founding treaty, echoed in the Warsaw Pact, treats an attack on one member as an attack on all?

Article 5 was first invoked after the attacks of 11 September 2001, a decade after the Warsaw Pact had vanished. The Pact's own treaty carried a matching pledge of mutual defence.

Which Polish general imposed martial law in December 1981, saying it spared Poland a Warsaw Pact invasion?

Wojciech Jaruzelski always maintained that Soviet tanks were the alternative. Other accounts say Moscow had already turned down his own request for a joint intervention.

Which Czech student set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Warsaw Pact occupation?

Jan Palach was a 20-year-old history student who suffered burns to 85% of his body and died three days later. Protesters in other bloc countries went on to follow his example.

Which Soviet foreign minister proposed an all-European security treaty a year before the Warsaw Pact was signed?

Vyacheslav Molotov wanted a pact open to every European state, whatever its social system. The Western powers turned it down, and Moscow built an alliance of its own the next year.

Which East German armed force was founded in March 1956 and took its place in the Warsaw Pact's front line?

The National People's Army was the only force in the alliance to offer conscientious objectors a non-combat role, as so-called construction soldiers. It never fought a full-scale war.

A 1964 Czechoslovak war plan had Warsaw Pact forces seizing which French city by the ninth day of an advance?

Lyon was the ninth-day objective in a plan that assumed large-scale use of nuclear weapons. Historians made the document public in 2000, almost a decade after the alliance dissolved.

Which Polish foreign minister proposed a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe at the United Nations in 1957?

Adam Rapacki offered to keep nuclear arms out of Poland if both German states did the same. NATO turned the plan down, fearing it would leave the West exposed to larger conventional armies.

Which future Soviet leader was Moscow's ambassador to Hungary when the 1956 uprising was crushed?

Yuri Andropov watched from his embassy windows as security officers were lynched in the street. One historian wrote that the memory left him with a lasting Hungarian complex about unrest in the bloc.

Which hardline East German leader was forced out in October 1989 as protests swept the Warsaw Pact states?

Erich Honecker was dismissed by his own Politburo in a bid to save the regime, which collapsed the following month. Days earlier he had hosted the state's 40th anniversary celebrations.

Which Russian-led defence alliance grew out of a 1992 treaty that six post-Soviet states signed in Tashkent?

The CSTO took shape after the Soviet Union itself dissolved in December 1991. Every Warsaw Pact country outside the Soviet Union chose the other camp and joined NATO.

Which 1975 agreement did NATO and Warsaw Pact governments both sign, accepting Europe's post-war borders?

The Helsinki Accords gave Moscow the border settlement it craved, but their human rights pledges became a manifesto for dissidents. Czechoslovakia's Charter 77 group was one that appealed to them.

By one historian's estimate, Moscow drained from Eastern Europe a sum roughly equal to which American aid programme?

The Marshall Plan pumped about as much into Western Europe as flowed out of the East to the Soviet Union in the decade after 1945. The estimate is $15 to $20 billion.