The Operational Plan of the Czechoslovak People's Army for the War Phase of 1964 - Was it a Real Operational Plan?
by Peter Veleff and Hans Werner Deim

The Czechoslovak document referred to in this discussion was published in spring 2000 by the 'Parallel History Project on Nato and the Warsaw Pact' (PHP) on the Internet. [1] It has attracted considerable attention in the western media, given that it was presented as the first genuine record of 'hard' planning in the Warsaw Pact. [2] According to the head of the PHP, Prof. Vojtech Mastny, the document was discovered by Dr. Petr Luňák [3] in the Central Military Archive in Prague. Other historians have discussed the paper [4] , and a number of former senior high-ranking officers have contributed to the discussion with their personal experience and opinions. [5] They all tacitly assume that the document published was the real operational plan of the Czechoslovak People's Army (CLA) for the year 1964.

This assumption is, however, open to doubt. The paper does not contain all the elements required in a 'hard' operational plan for a real war, which would have to provide the basis for further plans, decision-making and orders given by commanding officers and troop headquarters at lower levels. Further doubts as to whether this was a plan document in the true sense, as opposed to a document on a military exercise or merely a study, with a number of possible uses, emerge from the following considerations:

1. According to Petr Luňák, he found the document in the Central Archive of the former CLA. Clearly, no other similar 'hard' planning documents are held in the archive, or have been discovered so far. We have no information on the wider context of the document or the general dossier under which it was categorised. Given that, on the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1990, the National People's Army of the GDR (NVA) was required to return all 'hard' operational plans, which had always been kept separately in special safe storage locations, to the USSR General Staff, and given that the same situation applied to the Polish Army, it is difficult to see why a different procedure would have been followed in the CLA, leading to a single operational plan for the year of 1964 being left in a Czech general archive. This seems unlikely, in view of the strict controls imposed by the Soviet General Staff for all Warsaw Pact hard planning documents.

2. The military operations envisaged in the document were unrealistic, at least for the year 1964:

a) At that time, the CLA did not have - even in conjunction with Soviet units at the same front - the strike power or level of troop motorization that would have been required to cross the Rhine to be in position on a line from Langres to Besançon on the planned Nuremberg-Stuttgart-Strasbourg-Epinal-Dijon axis in just eight days, ready to advance on Lyon, given the assumptions contained in the plan as to the devastating impact of energy attacks and the NATO response [6] . This is particularly the case in view of the frequent use of atomic weapons by both sides envisaged in the plan [7] .

b) According to Lieutenant General Alfred Krause [8] , the expectations (at least at the fronts in the North German strategic direction) were as follows:

• that, in a first phase of the war, it would be possible to halt a NATO attack within 3-8 days, after which, in a second phase, with the help of the second strategic echelon (which would first have to be brought to the scene), the actual counteroffensive could begin; and
• that a first phase of the counteroffensive would aim to reach the Rhine, which would be crossed only in a possible second phase. [9]

So how could the forces of the 'Czechoslovak front' be so far ahead, at the gates of Lyon after nine days, when the northern (main) fronts had only just won the hard defensive struggle against NATO forces? Quite apart from the fact that, according to Lieutenant General Krause, losses of not less than 50 percent were expected in the first strategic echelon in the first phase of a defensive campaign to fight off a NATO attack, which at the very least would have significantly slowed the speed of their advance. Admittedly, Krause is talking here of planning assumptions later than 1964; however, his comments do indicate that the Soviet General Staff was operating on much more realistic premises than those seen in this particular plan.

c) The rate of advance envisaged in the plan was also out of step with NATO calculations. At that time, NATO planning for these sectors envisaged a campaign with delaying tactics for a period of days and weeks, until NATO would be able to withdraw behind the Rhine. In 1964, it was even assumed that NATO would be able to mount a sustained defence at the FRG/GDR border or FRG/Czechoslovakia border. [10] So for this reason, too, an advance by Warsaw Pact troops (through an area severely contaminated by radioactivity!) to be inside France in only nine days was not realistic. Indeed, US General Odom describes this plan as 'a fantasy'.
'It may have been a fantasy, far beyond what the Czechoslovak military could execute.'[11]

d) On the matter of how serious the document was, Professor Mastny has also commented as follows:
'How serious was the plan?
There is no reason to doubt that the plan was meant to be implemented in case of war - as were similar US and NATO plans for massive use of nuclear weapons of whose existence we know. The weapons were on hand and the command structure necessary to make them fly, in this instance the Soviet general staff and its subsidiaries, was also in place, ready to push the buttons if the political leadership gave the appropriate signal. Throughout the Cold War, both sides consistently assumed that the action that would trigger the signal would be aggression by the other.
[...]
The Soviet generals, however, were no fools. They knew well enough that NATO was preparing for a defense against them. But they were so mesmerized by their still vivid memories of the very nearly successful German surprise attack on their country in 1941 that they could not imagine any other reliable strategy than of striking at the enemy before he could strike at them. In fairness to them, it should be noted, that this was the same strategy NATO was trying to develop to fend off the dreaded Soviet surprise attack, although it never figured out how this could be done without launching a pre-emptive strike, which the alliance was structurally unable to do even it wanted to. The difference between the two strategies was on the ground - the Soviet unabashedly offensive, the Western unavoidably defensive.'
[...]
Contrary to our own view, Professor Mastny is convinced that the document is a real operational plan for 1964. Even he, however, has doubts as to whether such a plan could have been implemented:
'The design presupposed that the detonation of an undetermined number of nuclear warheads by both belligerents would not prevent Warsaw Pact troops from marching unscathed through the wasteland while on the home front the surviving civilians, if there were any, continued going about their daily business fit enough to help bring the war to a victorious conclusion. Believing in fighting a war according to such a blueprint was believing in fairy tales. Yet people do believe in fairy tales and sometimes even act upon them until it might be too late.'
Unlike Professor Mastny, we do not see the Soviet General Staff as believers in fairytales. These were sophisticated thinkers on strategic, tactical and operational issues, who addressed real situations, calculated realistically and were coolly and objectively able to assess the situations they faced. Hence, it is very doubtful that the Soviet General Staff could ever have given the stamp of approval to such an operational plan and incorporated it into its actual planning processes. Even if it had, such a document, rather than being stored in a central archive, would have been given the maximum classification, placed under strict controls and taken to a special safe storage facility for 'hard' operational plans. The document must have been prepared for other purposes.

e) According to contemporary witnesses of the NVA, 'hard' operational planning in the Warsaw Pact went no further than up to the French border. [12] An operational plan extending as far as Lyon would conflict with that information. The information provided by these NVA contemporary witnesses was also confirmed in an interview with former Czech Colonel Stepanek. The possibility of optimistic notions of such advances into France still prevailing as late as 1964 cannot be excluded altogether, however. We return to this question below.

 

II.

If, for all the above reasons, the document discovered in Prague was not a genuine 'hard' Warsaw Pact war plan, what was it?

A. Authenticity of the document as such:

According to Petr Luňák, the paper was a genuine document, bearing the signatures of senior Czechoslovak politicians and military officials.

Enquiries conducted via a former highly placed officer in the GDR Directorate-General of Intelligence (HVA) with former Czechoslovak colleagues from the intelligence sector[13] appear to confirm this: 'The document is genuine. The people referred to held those positions at that time. Why the document was drafted is not entirely clear, but it is certainly not a forgery.'[14]

 

B. Content of the document:

A careful study of the document by Petr Luňák[15] shows that after the death of Stalin (1953) there was a change in Soviet military thinking, from an initially defensive posture to a clearly offensive one. Stalin's death also allowed Soviet generals, for the first time, to discuss the use of nuclear weapons in operational plans. Accordingly, the military planners of the CLA also began to consider the use of nuclear weapons as a possible scenario in the missions assigned to Czechoslovak forces. At that time, nuclear weapons were initially seen less as a deterrent than as 'weapons like any others only with greater destructive effects'. [16] Thus, the use of nuclear weapons in the context of counteroffensives, with all available military means in response to a NATO attack, became part of the operational planning approach in the Czechoslovak General Staff. This was linked to the perceived possibility of rapid incursions deep into the territory of the aggressor to reach and destroy centres of the enemy's power.
The idea formulated in the Czechoslovak document of 1964 of rapid advances by armoured motorized troops supported by the use of atomic weapons, penetrating into French territory within a matter of a few days, was therefore fully consistent with the operational thinking of Czechoslovak officers at the time, combined with a marked underestimation of the impacts of the use of such weapons (shared by both military alliances!) on their own mobility. As Luňák demonstrates, scenarios of this type were also reflected in operational exercises or planning games of the CLA, by cutting back the times allowed to reach particular territorial lines. Thus, the scenario whereby the Czechoslovak front would be able to reach a Dijon-Lyon within only 6-7 days was also regarded as possible in a CLA operational exercise of March 1961. [17]
Thus, the content of the document would appear to establish its authenticity as proof of CLA operational thinking at the time. However, this does not mean that it presents a true picture of 'hard' strategic operational planning within the Soviet General Staff. To have that status, it would have required prior approval from the Soviet Head of General Staff. It would then be marked accordingly in the document header, but this is not the case. Furthermore, a real, 'hard' planning document would be prepared not in one copy only (as indicated in the header of the hand-written document), but rather in duplicate or, if necessary, in triplicate.
Given that this paper has consistently been viewed in PHP research studies as the only real planning document ever to have been available to historical researchers - both in the east and in the west - [18] we provided a reliable contemporary witness and expert in eastern European military planning [19] with a copy of the original, which is a hand-written document in Russian, and discussed the contents with him. His assessment is as follows:

 

C. Assessment formulated by Major General (ret.)Hans Werner Deim (Head of Operations, NVA)

Having studied the document, I am able to make some quite definite statements in reply to your questions regarding the 'Operational Plan of the Czechoslovak People's Army'.

First: In the entire history of planning relationships with the Soviet General Staff, there was never any such thing as 'plany ispolzovaniia' (utilisation plans) - they were always called 'plany primeneniia' (application plans, deployment plans), in a word 'operational plans'.

Second: The fact that this document is literally designated a 'Plan for the utilisation of the CLA in a war' could be indicative of the actual purpose of the document, i.e. to make the President aware of some operational-strategic issues that were of concern to the General Staff, either permanently or specifically at that moment in connection with joint war games with the Soviet Army being conducted at the time or in the near future. The practice of conducting combined war games was introduced by the Soviet Minister of Defence, Marshall Malinovskii, in 1963. One cannot exclude the possibility that President Novotny may have used this as a form of periodic briefing, outlining plans on how the potential of the armed forces (army, police and security services) would be used. Finally, another possibility to be considered is that the Czechoslovak army leadership in the Soviet General Staff may have received guidelines on the role of the CLA in the event of a strategic operation in the western war theatre which was then forwarded to the President for his information, in detailed form from the CLA perspective. In the context of any of these purposes for the document, confirmation by the President would simply be an indication of approval or agreement.

Third: The methodology of operational planning at the level of national general staffs (i.e. formulation in detail of tasks accepted from the Soviet General Staff) involved preparing operational plans at least in duplicate (1: for storage in a special top secret safe deposit location; 2: for forwarding to the Soviet General Staff); a third original was also permitted if prepared for the national commander chief; that copy would be in the national language.
The emphasised comment 'sole original' placed on the first page of this document and on an unnumbered page (in fact page 18) by its author, Major General Vostera, shows quite conclusively that this document is not part of an operational plan, but rather a briefing for the President.

Fourth: The contents of this document are less than a plan; among other deficiencies, there is no outline of how the task is to be performed, in the form of a description of the fundamental principles of cooperation for the attainment of the priority operational objectives, if indeed, at the time the document was drawn up, any clear understanding had been reached on this matter. The contents are both more and at the same time less than a decision, since fundamental elements of a decision (the idea behind the actions proposed, definition of tasks for operational entities of the CLA, basic guarantee arrangements) contain on the one hand details up to planning level, but on the other the details of cooperation even to the level required for a decision are missing, and the command structure is outlined in formal terms only. In October 1964, the operational-strategic problem addressed in this plan document had yet to undergo the process of formulating a detailed and definitive solution. Accordingly, this cannot be the real operational plan of the CLA for the year 1964.

Fifth:The fact that the document is hand-written, and also the general form of the document, is consistent with the principles of operational planning. The national leaders who signed off the document were in those positions in 1964. I was personally acquainted with General Vitanovsky and General Vostera as successive heads of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the CLA. 1964 was also the year in which the operational planning process in the Pact armed forces was reviewed. There were further such reviews subsequently. It was an 'iron rule' that operational planning documents superseded by new documents were to be completely destroyed, with confirmation to the Soviet General Staff that this had been done. This 'CLA utilisation plan', which is more like a decision with attempts at planning, along the lines of a directive, i.e. a document formulated for the President as a combination of three related command phases and three different types of command document, was archived in accordance with normal practice for documents that were not part of the operational plan, including in particular documents on exercises. In the long-term storage archive volume, it appeared on page numbers 619-36, to go by the numbering of the unnumbered 18th page (page 636) of the plan. It was treated as a document among many others, and not as a document potentially disclosing state secrets of the highest level. It appears that the 'utilisation plan' was not even receipted, let alone stamped, as would have been required by its content even as a document on military exercises or a personal briefing to the President.
In my analysis, I have proceeded on the basis that 'distorted' operational-strategic stipulations and numbers do not constitute evidence either for or against the genuine status of this plan.
In the years 1963-64, Khrushchev managed to impose the viewpoint - also convincing many military officers - that nuclear weapons were the answer to all defence problems. This included the premise, later proven to involve a high level of risk, that fighting off an attack would be a brief process, and during the following attack troops would be quite capable of achieving an average daily offensive advance of 80-100 km.
The decision in which, of the four defence variants analysed with you (attack, combat strikes, combination of attack and defence, defence only), 'defence only' became the approach considered to have the greatest perspective, was first made in the 1980s. Prior to this, there was experimentation between the other defence approaches, depending on the 'temperament' of the leading military.

 

D. Comments of Army General (ret.) Vladimir Mikhailovich Shuralyov (Soviet Army)

In Moscow, Major-General Deim took a copy of the original document in Russian and discussed it with Army General (ret.) Shuralyov, at the time 1st Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Forces Group in Germany, later Commander of the Belorussia Military District [20] , seeking his comments on the text [21] :
'Army General Shuralyov regards this CLA planning document as a forgery, or at best a document formulated without input from the Soviet General Staff, so that it has absolutely nothing to do with "hard operational planning".
'He said that at the time the document was supposedly drafted, the CLA did not have the capacity to fulfil the operational-strategic objectives with Bavaria as the direction of operations (even with the support and reinforcements described). In view of the nature of the terrain, the numbers used (particularly the pace of the offensive) appear to be exaggerated beyond all measure.
'Commanders-in-Chief, Commanders and Ministers of Defence never signed planning documents, only decision documents. This CLA plan would give the appearance of authenticity only if at right, alongside the confirming endorsement of the Czechoslovakian Commander-in-Chief (the President), the approval endorsements of the Ministers of Defence of the USSR (for the Overall Operation Planning Centre), Czechoslovakia (for the forces directly implementing the plan) and the GDR (as the direct neighbour) were apparent.
'The storage of the plan document in an archive with open access for a such a sensitive "authentic" document would be synonymous with its loss, which would have been a very serious event and dereliction by the state, incurring the most severe penalties.'

Summary and conclusions:

l. The hand-written document, written in Russian with one original only, discovered by Petr Luňák in 2000 in the Central Archive in Prague, entitled 'Operational Plan of the Czechoslovak People's Army', [22] is probably genuine, but only as a document formulated without input from the Soviet General Staff.

2. Its content is consistent with the strategic-operational offensive thinking of the supporters within the Czechoslovak General Staff at that time of how a war could be conducted, but is not consistent with the capacity of the Czechoslovak People's Army (CLA) at the time.

3. The document does not form part of the real strategic-operational plan of the Soviet General Staff, which is still secret.

4. The purpose of drafting the document for the then President of Czechoslovakia is not clear. Some possible explanations are provided in the comments by Major General Deim.

 

Herrliberg/Strausberg, 14 February 2003
Peter Veleff and Hans Werner Deim

 

Notes

[1] Warsaw Pact War Plan of 1964

[2] For example, the plan was described in detail in an article in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) on 27 May 2000.

[3] Petr Luňák, a specialist in European security issues and a Czech Foreign Service officer, currently works at the headquarters of the NATO Information and Press Office in Brussels. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, and has lectured in security studies at the Charles University in Prague.

[4] Vojtech Mastny, 'Planning for the Unplannable' and Petr Luňák, 'The Warsaw Pact War Plan of 1964'

[5] Colonel (ret.) Karel Stepanek (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_1/texts/interview.htm) and former US General William E. Odom, Director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute, Washington D.C.

[6] Page 2 of the plan.

[7] According to the plan, a total of 131 nuclear missiles and bombs would be used on the Czechoslovak front, by the Warsaw Pact side alone! Regarding the actual nuclear strike force capability of the Soviet army (whose Pact allies never had their own nuclear weapons at any stage), cf. Harald Nielsen, Die DDR und die Kernwaffen - Die nukleare Rolle der Nationalen Volksarmee im Warschauer Pakt, Baden-Baden: Nomos 1998, p.65, based on information from Soviet Defence Minister Malinovskii and other sources cited.

[8] Interview conducted by the author and PD Dr. H.R. Fuhrer (Professor of Military History at the Swiss Military Academy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and lecturer at Zurich University) with Lieutenant General Alfred Krause on 23 February 1998 in Berlin. Lieutenant General Krause, who died in late 2001, was from 1974-77 Commander of the 11th Motorized Armoured Division of the NVA, and from 1982-89 Head of the Intelligence Administration of the NVA.

[9] The accuracy of Krause's information has been confirmed by recent PHP research results. According to Polish generals, for example, it was assumed that it would take 14 days from the start of the Warsaw Pact counteroffensive to reach the Netherlands and Belgium: PHP Annual Report 2002, Annex p.18.

[10] US General Odom in comments on his service as Front Officer of the 11th Airborne Divison:

'The armored Airborne Division operated behind the reconaissance screen of the armored cavalry and planned to fight delaying action, slowing down and frustrating advancing Warsaw Pact forces. Having spent months on the border, seeking any sign of an impending invasion by Soviet and Czech forces, and having practiced delaying operations beginning on a line slightly northeast of Amberg-Regensburg-Landshut-Deggendorf, falling back over days and weeksto successive north-south lines of Augsburg-Weissenburg, Ulm-Crailsheim, Heilbronn-Stuttgart, and finally to the Rhine River, this recently published Czech war plan has a very personal impact.'(Gen. Odom, loc. sit. p. 1).

[11] Odom, loc. cit. p. 2 and arguments presented on p. 3. The other comments made by General Odom, referring to his personal experience in training and as a unit commander, are also highly instructive in another context. His comments indicate:

- that in the event of a war breaking out, the NATO leadership was prepared to respond immediately with the use of small-scale atomic weapons;

- moreover, on the NATO side at that time, there were incomplete and false impressions of the impacts of such weapons, in that like the eastern military bloc, they too clearly believed that it would be possible to move through irradiated areas without difficulty in armoured vehicles.

[12] Interviews conducted on 23 February 1998 with Admiral Hoffmann and Liuetenant General Krause in Berlin.

[13] Who preferred not be named.

[14] Letter of 6 October 2002 to the author.

[15] Luňák, 'The Warsaw Pact War Plan of 1964'.

[16] This was at least the thinking of then Czechslovak Minister of Defence Alexej Čepička, Luňák, op. cit., p.2.

[17] Luňák, op. cit., page 3. - That exercise would merit a study on its own! (author's comment).

[18] cf. Prof. Vojtech Mastny 'Survey Article: The New History of Cold War Alliances' (PHP document of 6 May 2002).

[19] Major General (NVA) Hans Werner Deim, Dipl.Mil. 1973-76 Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the 11th Motorized Armoured Division; 1976-78 Deputy of Deputy Chief of General Staff Operations and Head of Operations Directorate; 1979-82 Deputy Chief of Staff Operations; 1982-90 Head of Combat Readiness and Operational Training Directorate / Head of Planning Staff (co-author).

[20] Army General (ret.) Vladimir Mikhailovich Shuralyov, born 1935, Tank Force Academy (1965), Academy of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces (1975). 1958-62 Platoon Leader and Company Commander in the Tank Force; 1965-73 Commander of an Armoured Batallion, Chief of Staff and Commander of an Armoured Regiment, Chief of Staff of a Motorized Armoured Division; 1975 Commander of a Tank Division, Deputy Commander and Commander of an Armoured Army, First Deputy of the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Combat Forces Group in Germany; from 1985 Commander of Forces in the Belorussia Military District, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Combat Forces of the National People's Army (NVA), Senior Inspector in the Ministry of Defence and Deputy Minister of Defence.

[21] Report by Major General Deim on his meeting with Army General Shuralyov (letter to the author of 8 February 2002).

[22] German translation by Professor Dieter Jenke.