The cold war could have been born very hot. At the beginning of 1945, the imminent defeat of Nazi Germany did not calm Winston Churchill’s spirits. In the final months of World War II in Europe, the British Prime Minister was so convinced of a future conflict with Stalin that he ordered his army to plan an attack against the Soviet Union as soon as the fall of the Third Reich was certified. .
Why did Churchill see a war with his, until then, Soviet allies as inevitable? With the defeat of the Nazis at hand, the premier’s concern was to design the map of post-war Europe. Waiting to see what the role of the US would be in the Old Continent after the collapse of the Reich, London and Moscow were fighting for influence in countries like Greece, Austria or Poland.
Churchill had reason to distrust his allies. At the Yalta Conference, between February 4 and 11, 1945, Stalin made the false promise of holding free elections in Poland once the war was over, but the iron grip that the Red Army established over that country showed that it would happen, completely, to the communist sphere.
While this pulse was drawn between London and Moscow, the US followed its own agenda focused on the defeat of Japan, and to achieve this it was essential that the Soviet Union join the war in the Pacific. So President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s ambitions for Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. But Churchill did not agree with the White House concessions.
With an election looming, scheduled for July 5, 1945, Churchill believed that his voters (and the citizens of other Western Allied countries) would not understand that Poland, the country he had come to defend when Germany attacked it in September In 1939, it was handed over to Stalin.
In addition, Churchill had made a commitment to the Polish government in exile of Prime Minister Stanis?aw Miko?ajczyk to provide the country with a democratic regime at the end of the war.
As the Red Army approached Germany’s borders, Churchill became obsessed with not ceding any more territory to Soviet expansionism and trying to prevent Poland from becoming a communist satellite. With the death of President Roosevelt, the arrival of Harry Truman gave hope in Downing Street for a change in American attitudes.
But the new tenant of the oval office was not willing to satisfy his wishes. In addition to wanting Soviet aid against Japan, Washington was also suspicious of British maneuvers to design the postwar international order, which he interpreted as an attempt to preserve the old imperial influence in Europe and elsewhere on the planet.
In mid-April 1945, with the Red Army preparing the final advance on Berlin, Churchill became convinced that armed conflict with the Soviets would break out once the death of the Third Reich was certified. So he ordered his chiefs of staff to prepare an attack against Stalin’s forces.
Confident that they would change Washington’s mind, Churchill and his generals included American troops in the supposed preemptive attack. It would not be the only conjecture with which the British would work to prepare for the war that would have to redraw the map of Europe.
To keep the preparations secret, only the main British military leaders were informed of the initiative, such as Lord Alan Brooke, Chief of the General Staff of the Empire, or Sir Andrew Cunningham, First Sea Lord (Supreme Commander of the Royal Navy). Beyond them, only his most direct assistants were aware of the project.
The military plan received the code name Operation Unthinkable, proposed by the premier to emphasize that they were working in a hypothetical scenario, and not in an offensive that would be carried out safely, despite the concerns that gripped it.
When analyzing its content today, the perception that the high command had about Germany’s endurance capacity is striking. According to Operation Unthinkable, it was contemplated that the Third Reich would resist until the end of June (Germany accepted unconditional surrender on May 8), so the start of the attack against the Soviet Union was set for July 1, 1945.
The objectives of the offensive would be to “impose on Russia [as mentioned in the document, according to the usual nomenclature in the Cold War, instead of the USSR or the Soviet Union] the will of the United States and the British Empire.” That is, make Moscow accept a fair deal for Poland and contain Stalin’s expansionist desires.
To achieve this objective, British strategists considered it necessary to achieve a quick victory. When it came to surprising the Soviets, they could not propose a war throughout Europe – military preparations would have been very easy to detect – so they preferred to focus on a specific point.
As the main axis, the British generals chose northern Germany, and from there they entered Poland. Anglo-Saxon troops should reach the Danzig-Wroclaw axis (a 385-kilometer front) by the autumn of 1945. Surprised by the advance, Stalin, they judged, would agree to negotiate. If military operations were prolonged, the Soviets would recover from the initial confusion and a scenario of prolonged war would be entered, unfavorable to British and American interests.
Should the conflict continue, Operation Unthinkable planners warned of the risk of the Red Army asserting its numerical advantage. For example, they pointed out as probable an alliance between the Soviet Union and Japan.
The balance of forces in 1945 confirmed the fears that Operation Unthinkable reflected in the face of a prolonged conflagration. At that time, the Red Army was a truly fearsome force and expert in maneuver warfare. According to British calculations, it had about six million soldiers in Europe, plus six hundred thousand NKVD paramilitaries, figures that gave it a four-to-one advantage in infantry. In armored units, the Soviets had a two-to-one superiority.
In addition to American and Empire troops (British, Canadian, New Zealand…), Churchill’s generals could call on Polish and German forces, but the use of that last contingent would have been controversial, since many of their highest-ranking officers were faithful Nazis.
Although, as reported by Marshal Bernard Montgomery, many captive soldiers of the Third Reich openly expressed their desire to join the Anglo-Saxon forces in a future war against the Soviets. As you can see, the idea of ??this hypothetical conflict was not only in Churchill’s mind.
Only on the sea and in the air could the Allies glimpse a somewhat better picture. The British and American navies had an indisputable superiority that would give them control of the Baltic to support the advance of the troops.
As for aviation, and continuing with estimates at the time, Stalin’s forces had a two-to-one advantage. However, the planners of Operation Unthinkable counted on the superior training of Western pilots, as well as the Soviet dependence on American fuel for their planes. Nuclear weapons were ruled out, since the only atomic bombs available at that time were those that were going to be dropped on Japan in August 1945.
However, the Americans showed no signs of wanting to change their agenda once the German defeat was finalized. In fact, they began to withdraw troops from Europe to take them to the Pacific. The march of US troops for the final assault against Japan made Churchill fear that Stalin would go on the attack in Europe. In American intelligence circles, however, a Soviet attack was seen as unlikely and London’s fear was considered unfounded.
Doubts also arose about the support of the British and American population for this new war. By mid-1945, the fear of communism had not permeated the West, and a large part of the population viewed the Soviets as reliable allies. In fact, the people would not have accepted military action to save Eastern Europe from the Stalinist yoke, since many of those countries – such as Romania or Hungary – had been allies of the Axis.
With all these pros and cons recorded, on June 8, 1945, the report on Operation Unthinkable was delivered to Winston Churchill. After assessing the balance of forces, Lord Brooke concluded: “Once hostilities began, rapid, if limited, success would be beyond us, and we would be locked in a protracted war with a very poor prognosis.”
Reading the report convinced Churchill to change his position, although it did not erase the idea of ??a war with the Soviets from his mind. The day after Operation Unthinkable was presented to him, he asked his generals, keeping that code name to emphasize that it was a hypothetical scenario, to reformulate the plan thinking about a defensive strategy, in order to contain a possible advance. Soviet to the British Isles.
That new version was prepared in the middle of the following month. British generals were somewhat more optimistic, indicating that the Royal Navy and RAF could defend Britain for years, waiting for the US to intervene. However, Churchill did not pay as much attention to the new version of Operation Unthinkable, since he lost the July 5 election. The new prime minister, Labor’s Clement Attlee, did not continue with the program.
Was Stalin aware of the preparations for Operation Unthinkable? It seems that his spies did not know the details, but they did know that the British were accumulating German military material (in case, in the end, the former Reich soldiers were available). The Soviet leader also did not trust London’s intentions, and the differences with the Americans did not escape him. However, Operation Unthinkable remained secret until 1998, when the British Ministry of Defense declassified several documents related to the Soviet Union.
Beginning in the fall of 1945, with Japan already surrendered, the United States focused on the postwar world order, assuming that its great rival on the international scene would be the Soviet Union. In November of that same year, the US military for the first time considered using nuclear weapons to prevent Stalin’s forces from occupying Europe and the Middle East. The cold war had begun.