The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant defensive alliance, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). The Warsaw Pact was the military and economic complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe.
World War III, World War 3, WWIII, WW3, or the Third World War are the names given to a hypothetical global conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since as early as 1941. Some apply it loosely to limited or more minor conflicts such as the Cold War or the war on terror. In contrast, others assume that such a conflict would surpass prior world wars in both scope and destructive impact.
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that started in 1947 after the end of World War II and lasted to 1991.
The National People's Army were the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1956 to 1990.
The Fulda Gap, an area between the Hesse-Thuringian border and Frankfurt am Main, contains two corridors of lowlands through which tanks might have driven in a surprise attack by the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies to gain crossing(s) of the Rhine River. Named for the town of Fulda, the Fulda Gap became seen as strategically important during the Cold War of 1947–1991. The Fulda Gap roughly corresponds to the route along which Napoleon chose to withdraw his armies after defeat at the Battle of Leipzig. Napoleon succeeded in defeating a Bavarian-Austrian army under Wrede in the Battle of Hanau not far from Frankfurt; from there he escaped back to France.
The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany , or the Two Plus Four Agreement , is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. It was negotiated in 1990 between the 'two', the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in addition to the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The treaty supplanted the 1945 Potsdam Agreement: in it, the Four Powers renounced all rights they had held with regard to Germany, allowing for its reunification as a fully sovereign state the following year. Additionally, the two German states agreed to reconfirm the existing border with Poland, accepting that German territory post-reunification would consist only of what was presently administered by West and East Germany—renouncing explicitly any possible claims to the former eastern territories of Germany including East Prussia, most of Silesia, as well as the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania.
AirLand Battle was the overall conceptual framework that formed the basis of the US Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late 1990s. AirLand Battle emphasized close coordination between land forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front line enemy forces. AirLand Battle replaced 1976's "Active Defense" doctrine, and was itself replaced by "Full Spectrum Operations" in 2001.
The military history of the Soviet Union began in the days following the 1917 October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power. In 1918 the new government formed the Red Army, which then defeated its various internal enemies in the Russian Civil War of 1917–22. The years 1918–21 saw defeats for the Red Army in the Polish–Soviet War (1919–21) and in independence wars for Estonia (1918–20), Latvia (1918–20) and Lithuania (1918–19). The Red Army invaded Finland ; fought the Battles of Khalkhin Gol of May–September 1939 against Japan and its client state Manchukuo; it was deployed when the Soviet Union, in agreement with Nazi Germany, took part in the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and occupied the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. In World War II the Red Army became a major military force in the defeat of Nazi Germany and conquered Manchuria. After the war, it occupied East Germany and many nations in central and eastern Europe, which became satellite states in the Soviet bloc.
The OTR-23 Oka was a mobile theatre ballistic missile deployed by the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War to replace the obsolete SS-1C 'Scud B'. It carried the GRAU index 9K714 and was assigned the NATO reporting name SS-23 Spider. The introduction of the Oka significantly strengthened Soviet theatre nuclear capabilities as its range and accuracy allowed it not only to strike hardened NATO targets such as airfields, nuclear delivery systems, and command centers, but moving targets as well. It also had a fast reaction time, being able to fire in approximately five minutes, and was nearly impossible to intercept, thereby allowing it to penetrate defenses.
Seven Days to the River Rhine was a top-secret military simulation exercise developed at least since 1964 by the Warsaw Pact. It depicted the Soviet Bloc's vision of a seven-day nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces.
The Rapacki Plan was a proposal presented in a speech by Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki to the United Nations General Assembly on 2 October 1957 as a limited plan for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization in Central Europe by establishing a nuclear-free zone. The plan declared that the People's Republic of Poland would not station or produce any nuclear armaments within their territory, if the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic agreed to do the same. Czechoslovakia would later include itself in support of the nuclear-free zone. The plan followed attempts by both Western Powers and the Soviet Union to de-escalate Cold War tensions and push for greater disarmament during the mid 1950s.
The time period of around 1985–1991 marked the final period of the Cold War. It was characterized by systemic reform within the Soviet Union, the easing of geopolitical tensions between the Soviet-led bloc and the United States-led bloc, the collapse of the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Third World War and The Third World War: The Untold Story are war novels by General Sir John Hackett, published in 1978 and 1982, by Macmillan in New York and Sidgwick & Jackson in London, respectively. The novels detail a hypothetical World War III waged between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1985, written in the style of a non-fiction historical retrospective interspersed with accounts of the conflict from the perspectives of various people.
Observation Post Alpha, OP Alpha, or Point Alpha was a Cold War observation post between Rasdorf, Hesse, West Germany and Geisa, Thuringia, East Germany. The post overlooked part of the "Fulda Gap", which would have been a prime invasion route for Warsaw Pact forces had the Cold War erupted into actual warfare. It was abandoned by the military in 1991. Today, the "Point Alpha" memorial commemorates the observation point's four decades of existence. The memorial is dedicated to keeping it and a nearby section of the inner German border as reminders of the division of Germany and the confrontation between NATO and Warsaw Pact in the Cold War.
Mödlareuth is a German village situated partly in Bavaria and partly in Thuringia. Between 1949 and 1990, the northern part was in East Germany and the southern part in West Germany.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Cold War:
The Warsaw Pact Early Warning Indicator Project was a highly classified US and Allied program designed to gather intelligence that would provide indicators of impending Soviet nuclear attacks before they occurred. It was the American analogue to Operation RYAN. The project aimed to observe and find ways to prevent conflicts with the Soviet Union and its allies from the Warsaw Pact. It consisted of intense clandestine reporting, and Indicator and Warning Methodology.
The Treaty on Relations Between the USSR and GDR was a treaty between the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany, signed on 20 September 1955. The treaty became the legal basis for the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and its successor, the Western Group of Forces to maintain its presence in Germany following the end of the Soviet occupation.
The history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begins in the immediate aftermath of World War II when British diplomacy set the stage to contain the Soviet Union and to stop the expansion of Soviet power in Europe. The United Kingdom and France signed, in 1947, the Treaty of Dunkirk, a defensive pact, which was expanded in 1948 with the Treaty of Brussels to add the three Benelux countries and committed them to collective defense against an armed attack for fifty years. The British worked with Washington to expand the alliance into NATO in 1949, adding the United States and Canada as well as Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, West Germany joined in 1955, Spain joined in 1982, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004, Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, Montenegro joined in 2017, North Macedonia joined in 2020, Finland joined in 2023, and Sweden joined in 2024.
The Washington Summit of 1990, also known as the "Two Plus Four" talks, was an international summit in the history of the Cold War in which the United States and Germany gained the Soviet Union's support for the reunification of Germany by agreeing that NATO needed to be reformed. As part of this effort, US President George H. W. Bush called for a NATO summit to reform the organization and demonstrate NATO's willingness to present a different approach to the Soviet Union. As part of his efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, Bush proposed a bilateral summit in Washington to Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, in addition to the NATO summit. Gorbachev agreed to the proposal, which resulted in the Washington Summit of 1990.
