Warsaw Pact - Strategy

Strategy

The strategy of the Warsaw Pact was dominated by the desire of the Soviet Union to prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of another large scale invasion of its territory by hostile Western powers, akin to those carried out by the Swedish Empire in 1708, Napoleonic France in 1812, the Central Powers during the First World War and most recently by Nazi Germany in 1941. While each of these conflicts resulted in extreme devastation and large human losses the invasion launched by Hitler had been exceptionally brutal. The USSR emerged from the Second World War in 1945 with the greatest total casualties of any participant in the war, suffering an estimated 27 million killed along with the destruction of much of the nation's industrial capacity. Eager to avoid a similar calamity in the future, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact as means of establishing a series of buffer states, closely aligned with Moscow and serving to act as a political and military barrier between Russia's vulnerable borders in Eastern Europe and its potential enemies in the West.