Der Warschauer Pakt: Von der Gründung bis zum Zusammenbruch 1955 bis 1991 (review)

The essays in this publication focus on relations within the Warsaw Pact. After an introductory outline of the Pact’s history by Winfried Heinemann, Christian Nünlist discusses why Nikita Khrushchev decided to add a multilateral alliance to bilateral arrangements on mutual assistance. Nünlist shares the view that Khrushchev’s motive was political. Until the early 1960s, the Pact was militarily unimportant but demonstrated the Soviet Union’s determination to counter West German accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Pact was also designed to make Western publics believe that the USSR was willing to sacrifice alliance with the other socialist countries in exchange for a system of European security that allegedly would overcome East-West conflict. The calculus behind this proposal was that it would eliminate NATO, terminate the U.S. presence in Europe, and establish Soviet hegemony on the continent.

In Moscow’s view, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was the crucial ally. Rüdiger Wenzke argues that the USSR needed the GDR not only as a glacis against Western Europe but also, for many decades, as an indispensable source of uranium for nuclear armament. The National People’s Army was under tight Soviet control. The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany had a privileged status and was even exempt from the country’s legal order. Torsten Diedrich addresses the problems that resulted from the contrasting facts that the East German regime was most strongly committed to the alliance with the USSR but at the same time could not rid itself of ties to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The population’s attention was directed at the FRG as the nation’s other, infinitely more attractive, state. The Communist regime also failed to overcome economic weakness. Despite a major effort to “eliminate disturbance,” the Communist leaders remained economically dependent on deliveries and, from the early 1970s onward, even on material aid from West Germany. As a result, alliance relations with the Soviet Union were continually if slowly undermined.

Andrzej Paczkowski describes Iosif Stalin’s extreme distrust of Poland as a country that strongly opposed Soviet rule. As part of the Sovietization of the country, Poland’s military forces were put under the direct command of Soviet marshals and generals to an unheard-of extent. Even after the Soviet officers were no longer a majority, they continued to hold both the key positions at the military center and the higher troop commands. When, during the “Polish October” of 1956, Defense Minister Konstantin Rokossovskii, a Soviet marshal, was finally ousted, the whole of Poland, including the most devoted Communists, rejoiced. What remained, though, was a group of Soviet military advisers who participated in major decisions. Also, Moscow’s strategic guidelines and military instructions continued to be obligatory. Soviet control of the Polish army was loosened but not terminated. At the political level, however, the USSR was less able to enforce agreement. As Wanda Jarząbek states in her essay, the FRG’s active pursuit of Ostpolitik from 1966 onward caused much conflict between Warsaw and Moscow.

Csaba Békés’s chapter on high-level political debates in Hungary regarding the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe makes clear that East-West détente policy was a topic of heated controversy in the Warsaw Pact in the early 1970s. The USSR had difficulty making its views prevail, and Hungary had a mediating role. On the basis of much new Soviet source material, Mark Kramer provides an informative, detailed study on Soviet decision-making with regard to intra-alliance crises. Although the Soviet Politburo was quick in sending troops to crush the Hungarian revolt in 1956, it hesitated when orthodox Communist rule was challenged by Czecho-slovak reformism in 1968 and by Poland’s Solidarność movement in 1980–1981. The leaders of the GDR and other socialist countries had wanted military intervention from the start. Another interesting...