JONATHAN WALKER and MICHAEL WALSH: Operation Unthinkable – Churchill’s plans to invade the Soviet Union.

If you thought the Cold War between East and West reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, then think again. 1945 was the year when Europe was the crucible for a Third World War.

So concerned was the unelected autocrat Winston Churchill, that in the spring of that year he ordered his Chiefs of Staff to prepare a plan, ‘Operation Unthinkable’ to attack the Soviet Empire.

The top-secret plan was so sensitive that only Churchill’s immediate circle of military advisors were privy to the blueprint.

The detailed proposal, which may seem fanciful today, sought to claw back East Germany and Poland, which had fallen under Soviet domination.

Churchill, it was claimed, felt particularly guilty over the fate of the Poles, who had fought valiantly for the Allies during the war but whose country was now occupied by the Red Army, which was slaughtering Poles en masse and whose future was now dictated by Stalin.

POLAND HAD SERVED ITS PURPOSE. February 1 1945; Poland’s General Anders reproached Winston Churchill for not adhering to the English guarantees.

He asked the unelected British Prime Minister. ‘What shall we say to our soldiers? 

Soviet Russia is now confiscating half of our territory and wants the remaining part of Poland to be managed according to its own fashion.  We know from experience where that leads.’

WINSTON CHURCHILL REPLIED, ‘You yourself are to blame for that… we did not guarantee your eastern frontiers.  Today, we have enough soldiers and do not need your aid.  You can remove your divisions.  We are not using them anymore.’ – Winston Churchill. Pro-War Lobby.

If Churchill wanted to act, he knew that time was running out. The United States were about to move vast numbers of its troops and ordnance out to the Far East for the assault on mainland Japan, leaving Western Europe at the mercy of Stalin.

Furthermore, demobilisation would start after Victory in Europe (VE) Day and would rapidly reduce the size of the British Army and its capacity for offensive action.

The Reich’s armed forces, not the legitimate elected German government, had capitulated on May 8, 1945.

The plan called for a massive Allied assault on 1 July 1945 by British, American, Polish and German – yes German – forces against the Red Army.

They aimed to push them back out of Soviet-occupied East Germany and Poland, give Stalin and bloody nose, and force him to reconsider his domination of Eastern Europe.

But the plan was fraught with danger, and the Allied force risked being dragged deeper into Soviet territory to face the nightmare of fighting in a Russian winter. The ghosts of Hitler and Napoleon were never far away.

Eventually in June 1945 Churchill’s military advisors cautioned him against implementing the plan, but it still remained a blueprint for a Third World War.

There were numerous flashpoints around Europe, where Allied troops were face-to-face with the Red Army, and any of these confrontations could have sparked another world conflict.

The Americans had just successfully tested an atomic bomb, and there was now the final temptation of obliterating Soviet centres of population.

But Churchill’s political days were numbered. In that same month of July 1945, a General Election removed him from office, and the plan for ‘Operation Unthinkable’ was put away in the bottom drawer.

Churchill, alone amongst Western leaders, appreciated the Soviet threat, and it was only a matter of months before the Americans themselves woke up to the threat from Stalin and consulted the British military about a new war plan. The Cold War was now a reality. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

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