Nuclear Delusions: Soviet Weapons in Poland

Q: You remembered that in the exercises it was routinely anticipated that we would be reinforced with nuclear weapons. I have reasons to believe that they were on Polish soil, that they were stored here.

Gen. Drzewiecki: I cannot answer after ‘60. Because up to ‘60, I know that they were not. Well, and then, in the framework of use, the operational plan was naturally constantly updated for the use of new means. And during a certain period, it was already clear that there would be the use of these means in response to their use by the other side. It was simply normal, even in the first stage of operations. [Drzewiecki, pp. 13-14]

Q: Did you know, General, that nuclear weapons were located on Polish territory?

Gen. Siwicki: Of course I knew. There was a bilateral agreement, that Marshal Spychalski signed as Minister of Defense, that two structures would be built on Polish soil at the expense of the Soviet Union and would be administered by them as depots for special weapons, atomic weapons. One in the middle-western region of Poland, and the second in northwestern Poland. There was the codename Wisła [Vistula]. Every chief of the General Staff, who held the position, got acquainted with this document and verified it with his signature. Of course, the minister knew about this matter, and the narrow group of operators who carried out the operational plans.

Q: Do you know the type of weapons that were being deployed?

Gen. Siwicki: No, I did not know. Still, it could be figured out because we had the means for delivering nuclear weapons — tactical missiles and operational-tactical missiles and a small quantity of airplanes (Su-7b, after that the Su-22, these were means of delivering nuclear weapons) and in all of our operational agreements our means of delivery were armed with Soviet stores of nuclear warheads. But we later organized technical supply battalions, which would take at specified points warheads to those means of delivery, and these battalions fit in as well. That’s how it was; we rehearsed from time to time on models the delivery of these warheads, and also those fittings with training warheads. [Siwicki, pp. 15-16]

Q: Did you know, general, that atomic weapons were stored in our country?

Gen. Jaruzelski: But of course I did. We built those shelters. We, our construction engineering units. They were here and we knew where we could find them for our launchers if such a decision came down. There were agreed-upon points where that ammunition was collected. There were two shelters, in the north and in the south. We build them ourselves. They later refunded it to us in the framework of those percentage contributions.

Q: Well, this is a revealing matter.

Gen. Jaruzelski: The plenipotentiary for matters relating to the stationing of the Soviet Army naturally saw these shelters. And they were built already in the sixties.

Q: In other words, from there our various brigades for operational-tactical missiles had to gather warheads?

Gen. Jaruzelski: There were the points for bombs, for the air force. I cannot say at this time where those points were where they were gathered. But the fact that these warehouses were on Polish soil, that we knew quite well.

Q: And as a result of this, then immediately after the outbreak of war, we would have received these bombs? Isn’t that a violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty?

Gen. Jaruzelski: Nonproliferation is in the sense of dissemination, and not in the sense of territorial distribution. Here it has to do with who disposes of nuclear weapons. [Jaruzelski, p. 40]

Fighting a Nuclear War?

Q: A decisive portion of nuclear weapons were supposed to fall on the frontline states. Did you carry out discussions regarding how Poland would look afterwards?

Gen. Jaruzelski: First of all, I would like to state that even that statute, which was a child of its times, with its infirmities, speaks of specific activities, in coordination with the allied states, with the understanding of the national commands. So there is nothing there about someone deciding. It was recorded that there must be a certain coordination with the coalition for those operations relating to the common defense. And that is the first thing that we guaranteed ourselves.

Now, finally, the issue of the relationship to the outbreak of war is simply banal. Can one imagine that suddenly out of nowhere someone there pushes the button in order to be himself wiped off the face of the earth. So, those are such truly abstract considerations, and at the same time, we had to guarantee the condition of not being the first to use nuclear weapons.

Q: But you still spoke earlier, General, about how Brezhnev did not know very well what he was saying and what he was doing.

Gen. Jaruzelski: Well, yes, but can you imagine any kind of war when everything was going normally, was developing; there is Helsinki, there are meetings, there are consultations, there are conferences, there are joint exercises, there are observers — and suddenly out of nowhere, boom! You know that it is absolutely impossible. There had to be some sort of trend, tensions, conflict. Of course, every exercise was constructed in this way, and all plans, the different variants. Of course they [NATO] would have started it. [Jaruzelski, pp. 39-40]

Gen. Skalski: In 1973, there was the exercise Kraj [Fatherland] 73. It was an excellent exercise that underlined at the same time our sovereignty. Recommendations from Moscow did not help any because they were determined from above: you have operational armies, we will send part of the armies in this direction, and here is the defense of the country’s territory, which you will also use as soon as you have been moving your armies, had injured, killed, and that sort of story. It was a single exercise. It was to be repeated in any case after five years.

Q: What were the results, General, from the exercise Kraj 73?

Gen. Skalski: The first issue or assignment was the protection of the population. Second — the protection of armies crossing through Polish territory. And third was the material-tactical support of the armies fighting. Well, the front had to be provisioned if it came to that, or hospitals had to be deployed, those other things, so people could have been saved.

Q: The planning for the terrible nuclear attack against our country. Do you believe that our country really could have survived this attack, as it was assumed? And why was this exercise never repeated again? Because Kraj was the only one, right?

Gen. Skalski: Yes.

Q: Why?

Gen. Skalski: Ask someone else. [Skalski, pp. 11-12]

Q: But in this situation about which you are speaking, one singular, very pessimistic conclusion arises. Over a half million people would be leaving the country’s soil. And those were to a large extent doomed people.

Gen. Skalski: Absolutely.

Q: Were you all conscious of the fact that these people, those 500 thousand selected Polish soldiers, were destined to annihilation in the event of war?

Gen. Skalski: We were. We had to take it into consideration. There is just one thing – that we generally viewed all of this with a wink of the eye.

Q: Did you think that war was unrealistic in general?

Gen. Skalski: On such a scale and with such planning – absolutely.

Q: One moment, General, because this is probably somewhat important. Did you and maybe several colleagues think in such a way: The Soviets must engage themselves in something, since the army has to practice something? And practice a certain fiction. And you participated in this fiction because you had to participate, because we were a part of the Pact. At the same time – either there would be a war that would look completely different, or there would be no war? Two such possibilities.

Gen. Skalski: Of course, there are always those two possibilities, either there would be, or there would not be.

Q: I am of a different opinion. I think that it could have come to war at any time. The adventure they created at the end of the seventies in Afghanistan, where a bunch of sulky idiots created an adventure, testifies to this. And if we were to transpose that idiotic, sulky, geriatric leadership to Europe – that’s no joke. Did you have some sort of alternate plans to this type of plan? You were thinking individuals, every one of you is an intelligent person. You said that you did not believe that it could come to this – you say how silly your common defense of strategic plans looked, as soon as they were created they were fictional, you did not believe in the absurdity that they would come into effect. And today, when every one of you is asked about one fundamental matter – the strategic plan – well, then, every one of you hushes up about it and talks about unreal matters. These matters are too important not to speak seriously about them.

Gen. Skalski: You are a historian, and I am already retired – fortunately – for many, many years, and, to tell the truth, I do not have to be concerned with all of this. And in this alliance it was difficult in general to do anything. Well, these documents – I knew them at the stage in which they were being worked out. After that, they were sealed with ten seals, taken to the archive – I do not know whether the President has to give his approval to open it – but let’s say neither Siwicki, nor Jaruzelski, nor Skalski – none of us can do it.

Q: That is absurd. [Skalski, pp. 14-17]

Q: One of your colleagues, one of the generals, said that it was a game. How was it really?

Gen. Tuczapski: Absolutely a game. There was such an exercise – Carte Blanche in France.[1] They divided France in half, and for three days they conducted nuclear attacks. After three days they came to the conclusion that there was no reason to conduct the war any further, because there was nothing to fight over. Everything was destroyed.

But in our case – you know such an American plan, Wisła [Vistula]—which assumed an attack in the event of nuclear war on the eastern border, on the Vistula border and the Oder border.[2] Hence, after getting to know this plan, because it came to us, we were, among other things, on the basis of this analysis, reconstructing fords on the Vistula, the fords on the Oder. We were building, and trans-shipment regions were prepared on the eastern border. It did not look like we thought, that we would go and we would defeat the Danes and Belgians. And we prepared ourselves for the possibility of getting thrashed.

One time at a training briefing in the General Staff, I was angry and could not hold back since there was money there that was returned to the government. I stood up and told Jaruzelski, “General, more should be given to Civil Defense so that a good, solid bunker could be built, lock up in that bunker a hundred Polish men, some sort of real good fuckers and two hundred women so that we can rebuild the Polish nation. Give some money for that.” Of course, Jaruzelski was insulted and said, “What are you talking about?”

We viewed things realistically. We knew what was happening, what was threatening. We realized what nuclear war meant for Poland. Well, we would not have existed after all. Neither the Americans, nor the Russians would have regretted it. We could have, I don’t know, prepared something. And really one good bunker should have been prepared so that we could have sometime rebuilt the Polish nation.

Q: You responded that in case of a threat the Russians would have had no qualms.

Gen. Tuczapski: But of course. [Tuczapski, pp. 14-15]

Q: General, against this backdrop, couldn’t some alternative thinking have resulted in some other conception for the use of the Polish Army?

Gen. Tuczapski: What does use of the Polish Army mean? We were in the Pact. We gave the power of command to the Soviet Union, because they were the ones who created the Pact. And what – could we have come and said that it no longer pleased us? Change the people because you have people here who are completely consumed by sclerosis? After all, we could not have said that. Even if a person saw that Brezhnev there – they took him to a reception, I saw that he was quite simply a corpse – then I could only bow my head and not say anything, because if I did it would have offended him. [Tuczapski, p. 23]

Territorial Defense

Gen. Siwicki: In the seventies, a document was worked out, which is now in the archives under the name "Defensive Principles of the People’s Republic of Poland,” and that document is a defensive doctrine. We were the originator in the Warsaw Pact for the adoption of both political-strategic thought and attainable goals with regard to the problem of national territorial defense. We understood that in the event of war, there should have been enough significant forces beyond those assigned to the ranks of the Unified Armed forces. In the 60’s we practically began to bring these principles to life. They were significant enough forces, and they resulted in our having an influence upon our neighbors, upon the other members of the Warsaw Pact. The air defense forces had the top place in our plans. The forces for national territorial defense participated – in time of peace, and in time of war – in the unified system, but they did not enter into the composition of the Unified Armed Forces. And we did not subordinate ourselves then and did not obtain the USSR’s approval. We mutually supported each other, the commander at the theater could not decide regarding the transfer of the air defense forces. The air force, that was something else – it went together with the Front, there where the Front and army were at. [Siwicki, p. 18]

Gen. Tuczapski: After all, the fact that we considered any war up to 1981 to be a nuclear war imposed upon us here in Poland a concrete way of thinking, which they [the Soviets] had to accept. We already accepted the transit character of our state, through which – whether we wanted it to or not – the Fronts had to cross through us. Because the main field of battle was the GDR, at our western border, if it came down to that. And we drew from that the conclusion that we had to prepare in conjunction with that the entire social and economic structure, art, culture, and so forth. To prepare in some way for that.

We were constantly having problems with the Soviets, especially in Vienna, where there was the Disarmament Conference.[3] Because the results from that, that there could be nuclear war, that our country could be attacked – we came to the conclusion that we should quickly develop our territorial defense. In the sixties, we made use of that juncture when still under Spychalski the so-called Work Battalions were created, which were supposed to absorb the surplus workforce. Well, we in the General Staff slowly began to think that we could simply create on the basis of that Units for Territorial Defense. And later, it resulted in our creating the Regiments for Territorial Defense; and later we arrived at the idea that we should create a Staff responsible for territorial defense on the basis of the Voivodship Staffs, which existed in the individual voivodships.

We arrived at the conclusion that the Committee for Territorial Defense – which was the Secretariat of the Committee for Territorial Defense – should be prepared to be the institution that from the point of view of the state would be engaged in planning for defense, alongside what the General Staff was engaged in – that is, planning for the military forces. From there, all the training came, which we conducted very intensively in the military districts, with those plans for territorial defense, with the ministries, with the voivodships, with the localities. There were a lot of exercises.

We had to create the Committee for Territorial Defense, but we also had to create the Committees for the Defense of the Voivodships. And most important of all, that the governor of the voivodship (whether it pleased somebody or not) knew what to do. In fact, the secretary of the party organization stood at the head; it was not possible to develop it in the way that we had imagined it. But there were the beginnings of all this. We concentrated on preparation on the organizational side of the Staffs, on the planning of all this and the preparation of cadres, because we did not have money for other things. If, in the Western states, 2.5 to 3% of the overall military budget, widely understood, was being given to Civil Defense, in our case 0.5-0.6% went to it – a portion that could just maintain what there already was. [Tuczapski, pp. 2-3]

Q: One might assume that the only real chance for survival on Polish territory was the expansion of Territorial Defense and Civil Defense.

Gen. Tuczapski: That is why I fought so much with the General Staff, because I should say that during a certain period there was no understanding there. We also wanted to further develop the Territorial Defense. We thought that if the Soviet armies came here, they would do whatever they wanted. And that we should have in our hand some force that could have been able in a certain sense to oppose that. So that they would realize that they could not carouse about as they wanted. Because of that, we created Military Staff in every voivodship. We created platoons of this type, or battalions for our disposal. We strived to keep two or three brigades in the center, we created special communications battalions in order to secure communications for the state leadership.

In Warsaw, twelve or fifteen concrete shelters – I don’t remember anymore exactly—were constructed in particular buildings so that government offices could go there in time of war. In the region around Warsaw, relocation points were selected for the remaining portions of the ministries, and communications were expanded so that they could operate. We achieved very much along these lines. But of course, we always lacked money. [Tuczapski, pp. 15-16]

 

Note

[1] The Carte Blanche exercise was held in West Germany on 23-28 June 1955.

[2] Gen. William E. Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, commented on Gen. Tuczapski’s statement as follows: "I know of no such planned nuclear strikes code-named 'Vistula.' Of course, I was not in the position to be aware of every plan from the 1950s on, so don't take my word as definitive.
A general line of reasoning that throws doubt on such a strike plan can be based on the Strategic Air Command's 'Single Integrated Operations Plan' (SIOP). It dates from the early 1960s. It was the nuclear strike plan for retaliation against the Soviet Union. It always included strikes on Warsaw Pact countries as well as the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. It did have several variants. East European countries could be excluded; China and North Korea could be excluded. Still, it was not designed for smaller discriminating attacks. The SIOP remained in force, as far as I know, right down to the end of the Cold War and perhaps in some greatly reduced form afterwards. PD-59, signed by President Carter in 1980, retained the SIOP, but also called for smaller discriminating attacks to be designed after combat had begun and used for the purpose of destroying large second echelon ground forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, preventing them from ever reaching the Central Front. Since none of these attacks were preplanned, they obviously would not have had names. Therefore, I do not believe something like 'Vistula' could have existed under the guidance of PD-59. In most of the Soviet exercises in Europe, the scenarios involved the US striking first or preparing to strike first and being preempted by Soviet strikes. Perhaps Tuczapski is confusing some notional attack on Poland designed by the Soviet General's staff in one of its exercise scenarios." (Message to PHP Coordinator, 6 September 2002)

[3] Conference on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR).