Could World War Three have started right after World War Two? It sounds like something unthinkable, but it could have well happened. By the way, it was under this very name – Unthinkable – that a plan was developed, which envisaged a sudden attack on the Soviet army on 1 July 1945 by Anglo-American troops with the participation of German divisions that had surrendered on the Western Front but had not been disarmed. Documents relating to the circumstances of the emergence and development of Operation Unthinkable were declassified only in the early 1990s.
Why did the USSR’s former allies plan to attack the Red Army? Who was behind the organization of Operation Unthinkable? Why was it never implemented? And what was not taken into account during the preparation of this plan? The historian Yevgeny Spitsyn spoke about this in a recent episode of BelTA’s project On Point.
Who was behind the organization of Operation Unthinkable?
According to the historian, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was behind the organization of the plan for a war of allied forces against the USSR. It was he who gave instructions to develop the relevant plan to Field Marshal Alan Francis Brooke and other British military leaders.
“He truly believed that the successes and victories of the Red Army in Europe were fraught with the total sovietization of the entire European continent. And he was mortally afraid of this. Even going against the interests of the United States, he signed all the documents related to the adoption of this plan,” Yevgeny Spitsyn said.
The historian drew attention to the fact that Winston Churchill held Euro-Atlantic views. “Churchill became an Atlanticist around 1942-1943. He already understood then that the British Empire was experiencing its sunset, that the Americans were getting the upper hand, and that he needed to integrate in time in order to stay on top,” he noted.
Nevertheless, not all members of the UK government adhered to the ideology of Euro-Atlanticism. Yevgeny Spitsyn emphasized that the British professed different principles of foreign policy. For instance, Clement Attlee, who replaced Winston Churchill as prime minister, was a Europeanist. Ernest Bevin, who held the post of foreign secretary in Attlee’s government, held similar views.
Why Churchill never implemented the plan
Yevgeny Spitsyn noted that there are different opinions on this matter. The parade of Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945 is mentioned among the reasons and circumstances. “This parade ended with the latest heavy tanks of Soviet make, which had the effect of a bombshell on the allies. The power of these tanks made a shocking impression,” the historian said.
He also noted that a staff game took place off the coast of Newfoundland in late April – early May 1945, which was attended by British Commander-in-Chief Bernard Law Montgomery and Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America and concurrently of the allied forces in Western Europe Dwight Eisenhower.
“This staff game was held on Montgomery’s personal yacht. It is also called the ‘yacht meeting’. As wise military men and strategists, they correlated the potential of the Soviet troops and the skill of the Soviet commanders as well as the capacities and capabilities of the Soviet economy to uninterruptedly supply its troops with the necessary amount of ammunition, food, and so on,” Yevgeny Spitsyn said. “And then they came to the firm conviction that if such a war broke out on the European continent, within one month the Soviet troops would deal a crushing blow to the enemy’s army and reach the coast of the English Channel.”
Dwight Eisenhower and Bernard Law Montgomery reported to Winston Churchill that the implementation of the plan was fraught with the defeat of the allied troops. “No matter how much Churchill resisted this objective information, he was still forced to give it up. He did not give up on this plan out of his own free will. The military simply showed him the complete lack of prospects for the implementation of this plan, since the Soviet armed forces and the Soviet economy were at the peak of their power then,” Yevgeny Spitsyn explained.
What else the British failed to consider during the preparation of Operation Unthinkable
Among the notable miscalculations made by the British during the preparation of Operation Unthinkable, the historian named the fact that for the American troops the main theater of military operations was the Pacific, not the European one. “For them Japan was the main enemy. And American strategists perfectly understood that without the help of the Soviet Union the war against Japan would drag on for many, many years. They needed the Soviet Union to take part in the war against Japan without fail,” he emphasized.
At the same time, Yevgeny Spitsyn noted, the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan in force since 1941. Thus, the Soviet leadership had every legal right to refuse the Americans’ request to take part in the war against militaristic Japan.
“Therefore, the Americans did everything to disrupt this plan. And the Soviet Union fulfilled its allied obligations, which had been specified back in Tehran [during the Tehran Conference of 1943]. It was explicitly stated there that two or at most three months after the end of the war in Europe, Soviet troops would enter the war against militaristic Japan,” the historian said. “By the way, this is exactly why the Soviet Union warned the Japanese six months in advance that it would not prolong this treaty and would be forced to break it. The Japanese already knew that they would have to fight against our country, although they did not know exactly when.”
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