![]() The USSR, fearing the restoration of German militarism in West Germany, had suggested in 1954 that it join NATO, but this was rejected by the US and UK. Albania withheld its support to the Warsaw Pact in 1961 due to the Soviet–Albanian split and formally withdrew in 1968.) (The black dot represents West Berlin, an enclave aligned with West Germany. Yugoslavia, member of the Non-Aligned Movement As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered "superfluous", and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a "cardboard castle". The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans. Soviet leaders, like many European leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. ![]() The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. These states protested strongly against the re-militarization of West Germany. The Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, where the Warsaw Pact was established and signed on īefore the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a rearmed Germany, sought to create a security pact with East Germany and Poland. In the following 20 years, the Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR each joined NATO (East Germany through its reunification with West Germany and the Czech Republic and Slovakia as separate countries), as did the Baltic states which had been part of the Soviet Union. The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991, although most of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization shortly thereafter. On 25 February 1991, at a meeting in Hungary, the pact was declared at an end by the defense and foreign ministers of the six remaining member states. Įast Germany withdrew from the pact following German reunification in 1990. The pact began to unravel with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland, its electoral success in June 1989 and the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989. Its largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (with the participation of all pact nations except Albania and Romania), which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the pact less than one month later. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. ĭominated by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955 as per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954. ![]() The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant defensive alliance, the Warsaw Treaty Organization ( WTO). The Warsaw Pact ( WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War.
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