Seven Days to the River Rhine

Seven Days to the River Rhine was a top secret limited military simulation exercise developed in 1979 by the Warsaw Pact. It depicted the Soviet bloc's vision of a seven-day atomic war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces.

Declassification
This possible World War III scenario was released by the conservative Polish government following their election in 2005, in order to "draw a line under the country's Communist past", and "educate the Polish public about the old regime."

Radosław Sikorski, the Polish defense minister as of 2005, stated that documents associated with the former regime would be declassified and published through the Institute of National Remembrance, in the coming year.

The files being released would include documents about "Operation Danube", the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. They also included files on an army massacre of Polish workers in Szczecin in the 1970s, and from the martial law era of the 1980s. .

The Czechs and Hungarians declassified related documents in the 1990's adding to this Cold War revelation.

Battle outline
The plans predicted that NATO would launch a nuclear attack on the Vistula river valley in a first strike scenario, which would prevent Soviet bloc commanders from sending reinforcements to East Germany to prevent a NATO invasion of that country. The plan expected as many as two million Polish civilians would die in such a war and Poland would be completely destroyed.

With options limited, a Soviet counter-strike against West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark would take place in an effort to slow an invasion.

Nuclear response
Maps associated with the released plan show nuclear strikes in many NATO states, but France and the United Kingdom are entirely untouched by nuclear attack. There are several possibilities for the lack of strikes, one of the most significant being that both France and the United Kingdom are Nuclear Weapons States (NWS), and as such retain nuclear arsenals that could be employed in retaliation for nuclear strikes against their nations.

The French forces employed a nuclear strategy known as dissuasion du faible au fort (Weak-to-strong deterrence), which is considered a "counter-value" strategy, which implies that a nuclear attack on France would be responded to by a strike on Russian cities. See Force de Frappe for more information on the French conceptualization of nuclear warfare.

The Guardian, however, speculates that "France would have escaped attack, possibly because it is not a member of NATO's integrated structure. Britain, which has always been at the heart of NATO, would also have been spared, suggesting Moscow wanted to stop at the Rhine to avoid overstretching its forces.".

There are many high-value targets in Britain (like RAF Fylingdales, RAF Mildenhall or RAF Lakenheath) that would then have to be struck in a conventional manner in this plan, though a nuclear strike would be far more effective (and as the plans show, a preferable option to the Soviet leadership as shown by their strikes in Western Europe). The plan also indicates that USAF fighter-bombers, primarily the long-ranged F-111 would be employed in nuclear strikes, and that they would launch from those British bases.

The Soviets planned to use about 7.5Mt of atomic weaponry in all during such a conflict.

Known targets
Vienna was to be hit by 2 500kt bombs, while Vincenza, Verona and several bases in Italy were to be hit by a single 500kt bomb. Hungary was to capture Vienna and part of northern Italy after this had happened.

Stuttgart, Munich and Nuremberg were to be destroyed by nuclear weapons and then captured by the Czechoslovaks and Hungarians.

Possible planned expatiation
The Soviets planned to have reached Lyon by day 9 and then pressed on to a final position at the Pyrenees. The Czechoslovaks thought this was a bit over-optimistic at the time and today's Western planners thought such a goal was completely unattainable. There were also plans relating to a planned naval operation in the North Atlantic against NATO shipping.