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Seven Days to the River Rhine (Russian: «Семь дней до реки Рейн», romanized: "Sem' dney do reki Reyn") 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. [1] [2] [3]
Before the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a rearmed Germany, sought to create a security pact with East Germany and Poland. [9] These states protested strongly against the re-militarization of West Germany. [16] The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO.
In May 1955, West Germany joined NATO, which was one of the conditions agreed to as part of the end of the country's occupation by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own collective security alliance (commonly called the Warsaw Pact) later that month.
Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member states. Three more members joined between 1952 and 1955, and a fourth joined in 1982. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has added 16 more members from 1999 to 2024. [1]
West Germany joined NATO in 1955, which led to the formation of the rival Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. The North Atlantic Treaty was largely dormant until the Korean War initiated the establishment of NATO to implement it with an integrated military structure.
During the Cold War, most of Europe was divided between two alliances. Members of NATO are shown in blue, with members of the Warsaw Pact in red and unaffiliated countries are in grey. Yugoslavia, although communist, had left the Soviet sphere in 1948, and Albania was a Warsaw Pact member-only until 1968.
The Warsaw Pact's response to NATO's position was that each side should reduce its forces proportionally rather than absolutely and that equipment and troop numbers should be reduced. Each side should cut their forces by 20,000; A subsequent 15 per cent manpower and equipment reduction in manpower by every country in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. [3]
Protest in Bonn against the nuclear arms race between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact, 1981. The NATO Double-Track Decision was the decision by NATO from December 12, 1979, to offer the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact a mutual limitation of medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles amidst the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [1]