The Elusive Master Plan: Keepers of the Secrets

Gen. Jasiński: I am obligated, my friends, by the secret paper that I signed when the alliances were dissolved, so do not ask about those things. I will not give you the operational plan.

Q: No, I am asking about maneuvers.

Gen. Jasiński: But during the exercises, my dear sirs, there was the widest variety of things. Both from the South to the North, and from the North to the South, both Denmark and Hamburg. There are fantasies: both the Spanish borders and others – of course there were not such things. But there was a concrete operational plan, which is treated as a secret. It is a well-known fact that the Danes have stated that we were supposed to invade Denmark and occupy Denmark. All of this can be said. But these things officially – they cannot.

Q: We would simply like to know, without getting into operational details, up to what level were you initiated into the secret?

Gen. Jasiński: Nobody knew the plans for the Theater. Nevertheless, I participated in several maneuvers, in which operations were carried out at the Theater. I was able to find out a good deal about the entire operation at the Theater.

Q: And you knew the actual plan for only our Front?

Gen. Jasiński: No, I knew the actual plan for all the exercises because we were sitting in the central hall, where they were examined.

Q: But I am talking about the actual one.

Gen. Jasiński: At the exercises, my dears. However, if it has to do with the operational plans, that is a completely other question. [Jasiński, 7, 16]

Gen. Siwicki: I am and I was a patriot, I am also a soldier and I am obligated to maintain the secrecy that was not removed from the operational plans.[1] I can talk about exercises. Nevertheless, I suggest that in order for it to be based on documents, they should declassify them. Let the great leaders of the world get together and lay out the documents of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and we’ll see who practiced what and how they practiced.

Q: Over thirty years have passed, we are talking about the years before the seventies; even “secret of special significance” with three zeros is no longer secret after thirty years.

Gen. Siwicki: Yes, but when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, a document was signed that it is secret and without the removal of that clause and the permission of all interested parties it cannot be published.

Q: The worst thing of all is that there is nobody to give permission. The Soviet Union no longer exists, Czechoslovakia no longer exists.

Gen. Siwicki: I think in this case that it is our government that could take responsibility for it and declassify the documents. [Siwicki, pp. 11-12]

Real Plans or Camouflage?

Q: How would you assess the changes between the original operational plan that you worked out in the seventies and the one that you had in the eighties as the Commander of the Front. How wide-ranging were the changes?

Gen. Barański: I do no know how to answer that. Well, every exercise had different initial assumptions, which the people working out the exercises adopted; they acted in accordance with such premises. Well, this influenced the change in the operational plan for the maneuvers.

Q: And the actual one?

Gen. Barański: The actual one was not taken into consideration. Because it was top secret, only for the darkest hour.

Q: Well, yes, but after all, if the art of operation, strategy, means of fighting, and composition of the front changed, well, it should have been corrected?

Gen. Barański: That plan was worked out in Moscow; the real one, the authentic one was prepared for wartime. It was sacred. Nobody set about doing that. Of course there was an exercise once based on very similar premises, on those actual operational plans, but those were only operational groups, a very limited number of participants in that exercises. The plans for maneuvers – they did not have anything in common with it.

Q: Yes, that’s what it is really about. But didn’t you ever have doubts that the plan you were working on was the actual operational plan?

Gen. Barański: Yes, yes, the actual one.

Q: Are you convinced, taking into account your knowledge, that if it came to that, then the plan that was there would have been carried out?

Gen. Barański: It would have been.

Q: Well, you know, we have also come across the opinion that, as a matter of fact, it may not have been the real plan.

Gen. Barański: Such disinformation was never carried out ever in the history of war and military affairs, and I do not assume that anybody would have wanted to. To introduce it to the General Staffs of an allied state only in order to work out a fake operational plan.

Q: What did the Polish General Staff have from that plan?

Gen. Barański: We had the plan for the Front in its entirety.

Q: But only for the Front?

Gen. Barański: The Front.

Q: How many people knew this plan?

Gen. Barański: From the entire General Staff – twenty, no more. [Barański, p. 11]

Gen. Skalski: There were operational plans worked out in the General Staff in Moscow. They were delivered in a certain form for that group of our colleagues in the Unified Command who acted in this matter, but they did not know anything. That is, very little. However, if it has to do with the question of the General Staff, the Soviet General Staff rarely contacted us. There was Kulikov, however, there was Gribkov. And there were conversations of the type that all the plans that they were sending us were a camouflage. Never – I can state this without hesitation –never would they have opened their plans and shown us our role and place. We just suspected that it did not have to do with the Polish Front – that it was camouflage. And that front – no revelation here – was in the Northern-Maritime Direction: Denmark, the islands, the provisioning of the marines for invading those straits. But all of this was in such a roundabout way: Hey, listen, how do you imagine the war and the landing on those islands, seeing that we have five transport airplanes? In the best case, we can drop in a company of commandos, in the best case. Well, they said to me then yes, yes, but we will take care of it ourselves. Bornholm and still other stories, and then we give you the airplanes so that you can drop in your own forces. Well, I posed such a question: Well, good, but if only 10% of those airplanes remain? There is, just like we have, a division of air commandos, a division of blue berets, and the Olsztyn division? How can they be dropped there? So it was camouflage.

Q: The first time, General, you responded that in principle you, gentlemen, did not know the assignments of our neighbors from the East, or of the General Staff of the Soviet Army.

Gen. Skalski: No. [Skalski, pp. 6, 13]

Descent on Copenhagen

Q: Today, I looked over just the opening exercises from May 4, 1950, led by Rokossovskii. The 35th and 37th Armies were there and two corps—one tank, one mechanized— and the air force, commanded by Romeiko. In the twenty-first day of the offensive operation, from the departure in the region of Schwerin and somewhere else there, in the twenty-first day of the operation, Copenhagen was taken. Could you tell me, General, by what deadline Copenhagen was to be occupied according to the operational plan from the seventies?

Gen. Skalski: But I don’t know that, I don’t remember

Q: I think it would be more quickly.

Gen. Skalski: Certainly more quickly. I said that airplanes would have been necessary. Unfortunately. There were no airplanes.

Q: There also were no battleships.

Gen. Skalski: No, there were landing craft. A battalion could have been sent in.

Q: There was no such battalion. There was a platoon with companies.

Gen. Skalski: A platoon with companies. Yes. [Skalski, pp. 19-20]

Q: In the exercises that you organized, were there some sort of questions foreseen for implementation or plans which had to do with testing whether the operational plan was realistic?

Gen. Skalski: There were. But they were camouflaged. We took it into consideration. Well, I can tell, for example, with that landing at Zealand. With those transport planes. I took the paper with me, took it to the responsible person, and I say: Listen, how can that be? After all, it cannot be that way! Do you want to take responsibility for those people, who will not be getting ashore there? Well, then, what do I do, that’s the way the assignments are from over there [Moscow]. I say: Fine. Then please send me there. I drive there with that plan, I say what I think about all that and bid a fond farewell to my office and to the army. Well, the response: You do not have to present the matter so drastically, leave it to me. So I left it to him. [Skalski, p. 22]

Plan Described

Q: General, I am speaking for the first time with the commander of the Polish Front. How did you imagine the accomplishment of the assignments of that front in the context of the operations of the Western Theater?

Gen. Tuczapski: The Front received concrete assignments. I will not speak about the specifics of what those assignments were because I am not qualified to do that; the General Staff has to provide you that. Generally, I can say that the Front received assignments in the northern maritime direction.

Q: Denmark.

Gen. Tuczapski: That is no secret. Based on the assignments formulated at the time and place, we were making a thorough study of these questions. It should be realized that not all the forces and equipment were at our disposal to be able to carry it out to the end. So, on the basis of what we needed and what we did not possess, we submitted a corresponding request to Moscow, to the General Staff, and the General Staff of the Soviet Army allocated things of that sort to us. That we would receive at this or that time what we stipulated. The composition of the front. Three armies. Three armies composed of the Pomeranian, Silesian, and Warsaw Military Districts; the Air Force, and air cover from the Forces for Territorial Air Defense in the Pact’s general system.

Q: And this cover ended with the area of operations? Where were you supposed to operate there?

Gen. Tuczapski: After all, there was the Air Army, in addition to that there was the [East] German corps and there was the Air Army and the air defense groups of the Soviet armies; all of this was linked.

Q: What sort of forces were foreseen as reinforcements for our Front?

Gen. Tuczapski: Reinforcement of the Front by the Soviet Army? There was no such need. We had our front as a higher unit. We needed airplanes to drop in our Airborne Commando Division.

Q: And with the composition of the Air Army, General, were you satisfied as the commander?

Gen. Tuczapski: I always proceeded from the assumption: One must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. Then, more could not be requested. We always counted on assistance from Soviet strategic air force – very strong. Besides the air force at the front, which every front possessed – just like ours as well with the support of the Baltic and Minsk Districts – there was powerful strategic air force, which carried out assignments for our benefit, and with which we were not acquainted. Please remember that we were continually talking about nuclear war. How the nuclear attack looked from the side of the Soviet air force, we did not know, we were not acquainted with that plan. However, we did know that such a thing existed. There were missile brigades. If it came to war, then they certainly would have told us about those attacks, where and what type they would be.

Q: Did you receive some sort of initial assumptions to the operational plan? From our superiors, from the commander of the theater, or from the General Staff of the Soviet Army? Some sort of directives that we would be operating in the northern operational direction?

Gen. Tuczapski: Of course. The normal operational directive of the supreme command, which was then personified by the General Staff of the Soviet Army. There were written tasks – near-term tasks, longer-term tasks —of the Front, and based on the tasks, it was said, that were to be executed at a given time and in a given direction. And based on this, we were executing the tasks.

Q: Did this directive go through the Minister of National Defense?

Gen. Tuczapski: The Minister of National Defense knew about it since when we were reporting, we were working out the plan in the General Staff of the Soviet Army. I was working it out, and General Bordziłowski[2] was working it out. There were three or four other Generals. General Barański, then there was the commander of the air force, Kamiński, and Studziński – commander of the Marines. We sat there, and we were creating all those stories.

Q: But who signed the directive?

Gen. Tuczapski: Marshal Malinovskii signed it because he was the Minister of National Defense of the USSR at the time. He signed the directive, and later we presented the plan to him after it was worked out.

Q: Did you in this top leadership have the possibility of discussion over the operational direction?

Gen. Tuczapski: There was no discussion over the operational level. Still, there was discussion with the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army about how to accomplish it. What was sufficient for us, what was insufficient for us. Help, give, and so forth.

Q: Do you agree, General, that exactly in this regard, in a potential discussion, lies the most important question, because it is the direction of operation for those three armies and the Air Army? And that is the most important question. That is the terrain, those are the people, against whom concrete forces are being directed. Who in fact decided on such, and not another, direction of activity for our front?

Gen. Tuczapski: The Soviets.

Q: Did somebody from our side participate?

Gen. Tuczapski: No, straight off I say – no! [Tuczapski, pp. 8-9]

Gen. Tuczapski: We were invited at the beginning of the sixties (1962 or 1963 – I do not remember) to Moscow. I was then Chief of the Operational Administration. We were invited to Moscow, the commander of the Navy and the Air Force commander were also requested to come. I took with me General Szyszka and Colonel Barański. There were also a couple of officers from the Navy, including the chief of the operational division of the Navy, and General Kamiński came. We sat before the maps. A General came, who was chief of the Main Operational Administration, it was not yet Gribkov, but it was some very intelligent one (I do not remember his name).

We then sat down with General Szyszko because Bordziłewski said, "You take care of it.” We read something, took the map, and we started to draw. With Colonel Barański, because he drew well. Later, we made the plan of operation for the front on the map, in its legend, in which we included everything that should be in the legend, and what could not be was thrown into the map. We said that we were ready. They then called up Marshal Malinovskii, and he set the hour for a meeting. We arrived with General Bordziłewski, laid out the map, and reported how we would carry out the assignment, and that was it. He asked, "Have you coordinated all your needs with the General Staff?” And with that, it ended.

Q: The maps remained in Moscow?

Gen. Tuczapski: One map remained with them, the second map we brought back here. Later, on the basis of the map (there was in the Ministry of Defense a special area to which no one had access), the commanders of the Army came and worked out all those scenarios – concretely, specifically for every division. And that’s how the concrete operational plan arose. Later, we made in addition to all this all the plans for the material and technical supply of the front.

Q: But after you worked out that plan, you took it afterwards to Moscow? Were they not at all interested in it in general? They just left it up to you?

Gen. Tuczapski: They left it up to us. It was our business, we were carrying it out. Still, they of course were up to date since they knew what sort of plan it was, they knew later what our orders were – especially for armaments—for armaments, and they compared certain things: "That is fine; if it suffices, if it doesn’t suffice, do this too, take this too, etc.”

Q: Was this operational plan presented to the First Secretary [of the Polish communist party], and did he voice his opinions, or someone from the government, the Premier?

Gen. Tuczapski: I did not report on it either to the Premier or to the First Secretary. Certainly, the Minister of National Defense composed some memorandum. Still, I do not know. In addition, gentlemen, let this remain between us, the interest in the army in this previous period – in spite of which the army cannot complain – was more or less the same as it is today. That means none: "Leave us in peace, you have money, do your thing.” Then they at least gave out the money, but today they do not even give the money.

Q: That is a very interesting assignment, the creation of the operational plan for our front. To what extent did you have an orientation with regard to operations in the whole military theater?

Gen. Tuczapski: If it has to do with operational planning strictly speaking – what is designated the operational plan – I did not have that sort of thing. Nevertheless, I did orient myself because exercises were constantly being conducted in the theater of military operations. When my neighbor was the Minsk [forces of the Belorussian Military District], I knew, what the Minsk was doing, since after all, there was the normal cooperation with them.

At the same time, in general, generally speaking, how the operational and strategic plans were supposed to look, and the development of operations in the western theater of military operations – one could only deduce it on the basis of the exercises that were being conducted. If an exercise was being conducted on the western theater and the southern theater of military operations, and all the individual national commands were being assembled, then it could be that it wasn’t exactly the same – instead of the neighbor to the left, instead of Minsk, it could be the Baltic Front, or some other one. But the assignments were similar because, in the end, Western Europe looks the way it is: Denmark, Belgium, France, West Germany, and so forth. And in that regard, nothing different can be devised.

But one could devise in what way to use those dozen or so parachute divisions that the Soviets had. How the initial Soviet attack would go, if there would be one, or a retaliatory Soviet attack – that was not being worked out, although one time there was a story of that sort. Please remember that the plan for atomic or nuclear attack depended on the time. In ’60 it looked one way, and in ’80, another. The arrangement of armies changed, the factories changed, the importance of those factories, the airfields, and so forth. But that also was not the most important. The most important thing was how the Fronts were supposed to operate, one alongside the other. It was understood that there was the Polish, three Soviet, and later, the Czech, the Bulgarian, and so forth. And the activity in the Western theater evolved, and you would not imagine anything else.

Q: General, how did you assess our direction of operational-strategic interests? I know that it is not possible to reveal certain elements today. Was that an easy direction for the Armed Forces of the Polish [People’s] Republic, or for the Polish Front? Was it a difficult direction?

Gen. Tuczapski: It is difficult to respond in some concrete fashion. All of this is depended on knowledge of whom we would have had before us. If it was in the northern direction, then most likely we would have come upon the Danes, part of some West German army, and the Belgians. How would that have looked? That is a problem that is difficult to separate from the manner of the attack—if not nuclear, then the attack of the Soviet air force. Against whom, where, when?

Of course we were interested in who was the commander of the German brigade or corps so that we could get to know the people. We were engaged in this because it would have been an absurdity if one did not know that. And we did that – that’s understandable. We went, we viewed the region of the theater of military operations, we conducted reconnaissance, we sent a group of officers from the Navy. We had to assume a serious attitude regarding that, it was a task.

You know, the matter could have been put this way: You put yourselves there, and we will play the madman. That was unthinkable. After all, we had behind us the powerful Soviet Army; they would have blown us in half, if you’ll pardon the expression, and that would have been it. So we could not permit ourselves to do this. That is why I am talking about what I call raison d’état. Unfortunately, we were in the Pact, since it could not have been otherwise, and we had to put a good face on it, no matter whether someone thought that it was good or bad. Quite simply, we had to carry out the assignments.

Q: But of those several directions, General – those three fronts, or maybe four that were supposed to run between the Sudeten Mountains and the Baltic – which did you consider easy?

Gen. Tuczapski: I think that ours was the easiest – speaking here between us. Ours was the easiest from the point of view of the opponent. After all, the Danish Army, the Belgian Army – let’s not exaggerate. At the same time, the difficulty was that it had to be linked to a certain sea operation, a commando operation.

Q: General, with regard to that. Because on the flank you had the very weak Polish Navy, and you had to have help from the Soviet Navy.

Gen. Tuczapski: The [Soviet] Baltic Navy. The first thing – it would have come immediately. There can be no discussion. If it could not have reached here through Belt, it would have gone in a circle.

Q: Here is one interesting thing – why exactly was that direction assigned to us, since after all if it had been something from those middle or central [fronts], then the problem of coordination with the associated Baltic Fleet would have no longer been a consideration. There is always a certain complication here. Our Commando Division, which had to have the entire materiel of the Baltic Fleet to carry out its landing operation.

Gen. Tuczapski: There were not such problems because we were having constant exercises with the Baltic Fleet. The cooperation with the Baltic Fleet was of a very high standard, very good. There were not any problems. It was exactly the same here with regard to coordination along the line with the air defense. There were not any difficulties. One could argue whether we had the best reconnaissance equipment or communications. But the coordination was tight, there was a common language, and all the exercises depended upon it, which made sense.

Q: General, you are an interesting case. Up to now, we have had to do with generals who, if it came to a question regarding the operational plan, they never wanted to talk. [Tuczapski, pp. 10-12]

Did the West Have an Edge?

Q: In the eighties, when information came to you regarding the various new weapons systems in the West, especially in the United States, when successive wars turned out badly for those who used Soviet arms, after all. In your case, did doubts begin to grow regarding whether the West had begun to achieve an advantage, that it could end badly?

Gen. Barański: Well, of course. That was something for my own use. A person could arrive at such speculative results. I analyzed many things for my own use that neither entered into the sphere of my duties nor were dictated by official needs. There were such considerations about several means of attack – Western and ours here. This compensated for the quantitative ratios. Well, because the East had a tremendous advantage in tanks.

Q: Didn’t you think that it might fall to pieces?

Gen. Barański: Well, did I know that up to that extent that it might fall to pieces? No. But such doubts grew sometime.

Q: And the leadership of the Ministry of National Defense? Did you discuss these topics among yourselves? Especially regarding those doubts?

Gen. Barański: With Jaruzelski, when he came to the General Staff, there were often such discussions.

Q: As Commander of the Front, which systems and which operations from the NATO side did you most dread? What did you fear that might thwart your plans?

Gen. Barański: The air superiority. [Barański, p. 16]

Gen. Tuczapski: We were not exactly conscious of an advantage. I had certain data regarding what new things the Americans had after my stay in Vietnam (I was sent there in order to collect certain data regarding the new things that the Americans were bringing in). In practice, they brought in dive bombs, helicopters, and nothing more. Really, the evolution of American technology followed in practice, generally speaking, after the years ‘75-80. Today, there is a tremendous acceleration, thanks to electronics. At first, electronics also did not come in. I left the army in ’87. They then invented vacuum bombs, and actually at that time there was nothing new. Nothing, except nuclear weapons, except missiles, that we did not know about. The development of smart weapons, that's been in recent years. [Tuczapski, pp. 25-6]

 

Notes

[1] In March 2002, records of the Operations Department of the Polish General Staff were transferred to the Archives of the Central Organizations of the Ministry of Defense at Modlin, but retained their communist-era designation as "top secret." In both the Czech Republic and Hungary, the same type of records had been declassified earlier.

[2] Jerzy Bordziłowski, a Soviet officer who became Polish Deputy Minister of National Defense and Chief of General Staff.