Operation Unthinkable

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Operation Unthinkable ( Operation Unthinkable ) was the name of a war plan commissioned by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 , the aim of which was the military overthrow of the former Soviet Union and then the restoration of an independent Poland by Great Britain and the USA .

The plan was deemed militarily unfeasible by the UK Chiefs of Staff Committee and therefore dropped. The British Chief of Staff Alan Brooke called him in his diary entries “pure fantasy” without any “prospect of success”, while the US President Truman rejected any idea of ​​a military confrontation with the Red Army in general. Politically it was not even likely that the soldiers of the British armed forces - who linked the hope of being relocated home with the victory over Hitler that had just been achieved - would mentally have taken part in such a rapid change in the enemy image and followed orders to attack without restriction.

The drafted plan was presented to Churchill on May 22, 1945, two weeks after the German surrender , by the Chief of Staff, Lt. Gene. Sir Hastings Lionel Ismay , and added on June 8, 1945 and July 11, 1945. July 1, 1945 was taken as the basis for the attack on the Soviet Union. The use of British and US troops was planned. Around 47 divisions of the Western Allies (around 50% of the troops stationed in the German Reich ) were to advance against the Red Army in the Dresden area . Because of the high numerical superiority of the Red Army, the intention was also to rearm approximately 100,000 soldiers of the defeated German Wehrmacht . At the time of the summer of 1945, the Soviets had an advantage of 4: 1 in soldiers and 2: 1 in tanks.

After the sobering assessment of the situation, Churchill instructed the British military leadership to begin with defensive planning in the event of a possible advance of the USSR and the subsequent threat to the British Isles.

The plan, classified as top secret , was only made available to the public in 1998.

The Soviet secret service, the NKVD , had heard of Churchill's and the General Staff's deliberations through an agent during the investigation phase, without being particularly surprised by them, as the Western Allies were mistrusted anyway. In fact, as early as 1944, the Soviet side had given serious thought to marching on with their superior army as far as France and Italy after a victory over Hitler's Germany, and at the same time conquering Norway and Denmark in order to secure the Baltic Sea . When it became known that the Americans had nuclear weapons , this idea lost its foundation.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War . 1st edition. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-10065-3 , pp. 866 f .
  2. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War . 1st edition. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-10065-3 .
  3. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War . Bertelsmann, Munich, p. 867 .
  4. ^ A b David Reynolds: From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928411-5 , p. 250.
  5. ↑ Churchill's Plans For WWIII. Executive Intelligence Review, October 1998.
  6. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War . Bertelsmann, Munich, p. 868 .
  7. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War . 1st edition. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-10065-3 , pp. 868, 870 ff .