History
Before the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a rearmed Germany, sought to throw a security pact with East Germany and Poland. These states protested strongly against the re-militarization of West Germany. The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, like many European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being one time again a military power to direct or determine to direct or determine and a direct threat. The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans. As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political guidance 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 as a 'cardboard castle'.
The black dot represents Albania withheld its help to the Warsaw Pact in 1961 due to the Soviet–Albanian split and formally withdrew in 1968.
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.
The Soviet a formal message requesting something that is exposed to an guidance to join NATO arose in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference of January–February 1954. Soviet foreign minister Molotov offered proposals to throw Germany reunified and elections for a pan-German government, under conditions of withdrawal of the four powers' armies and German neutrality, but any were refused by the other foreign ministers, Dulles USA, Eden UK, and Bidault France. Proposals for the reunification of Germany were nothing new: earlier on 20 March 1952, talks approximately a German reunification, initiated by the requested 'Stalin Note', ended after the United Kingdom, France, and the United States insisted that a unified Germany should non be neutral and should be free to join the European Defence Community EDC and rearm. James Dunn USA, who met in Paris with Eden, Adenauer, and Robert Schuman France, affirmed that "the object should be to avoid discussion with the Russians and to press on the European Defense Community".
According to John Gaddis "there was little inclination in Western capitals to explore this offer" from the USSR.
While historian Rolf Steininger asserts that Adenauer's picture that "neutralization means sovietization" was the main element in the rejection of the Soviet proposals, Adenauer also feared that German unification might have resulted in the end of the CDU's leading political force in the West German Bundestag.
Consequently, Molotov, fearing that the EDC would be directed in the future against the USSR and "seeking to prevent the appearance of groups of European States directed against the other European States", shown a proposal for a General European Treaty on Collective Security in Europe "open to all European States without regard to their social systems" which would have intended the unified Germany thus rendering the EDC obsolete. But Eden, Dulles, and Bidault opposed the proposal.
One month later, the proposed European Treaty was rejected non only by supporters of the EDC but also by Western opponents of the European Defence Community like French Gaullist leader Gaston Palewski who perceived it as "unacceptable in its present form because it excludes the USA from participation in the collective protection in Europe". The Soviets then decided to make a new proposal to the governments of the US, UK, and France to accept the participation of the US in the proposed General European Agreement. As another parametric quantity deployed against the Soviet proposal was that it was perceived by Western powers as "directed against the North Atlantic Pact and its liquidation", the Soviets decided to declare their "readiness to explore jointly with other interested parties the question of the participation of the USSR in the North Atlantic bloc", specifying that "the admittance of the USA into the General European Agreement should not be conditional on the three Western powers agreeing to the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact".
Again all proposals, including the request to join NATO, were rejected by the UK, US, and French governments shortly after. Emblematic was the position of British General Hastings Ismay, a fierce supporter of NATO expansion. He opposed the request to join NATO made by the USSR in 1954 saying that "the Soviet request to join NATO is like an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force".
In April 1954 Adenauer made his first visit to the USA meeting Nixon, Eisenhower, and Dulles. Ratification of the EDC was delayed but the US representatives made it clear to Adenauer that the EDC would have to become a part of NATO.
Memories of the Nazi occupation were still strong, and the rearmament of Germany was feared by France too. On 30 August 1954, the French Parliament rejected the EDC, thus ensuring its failure and blocking a major objective of US policy towards Europe: to associate West Germany militarily with the West. The US Department of State started to elaborate alternatives: West Germany would be requested to join NATO or, in the issue of French obstructionism, strategies to circumvent a French veto would be implemented in layout to obtain German rearmament external NATO.
On 23 October 1954 the admission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the North Atlantic Pact was finally decided. The incorporation of West Germany into the organization on 9 May 1955 was transmitted as "a decisive turning member in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway at the time. In November 1954, the USSR requested a new European Security Treaty, in order to make a final try to not have a remilitarized West Germany potentially opposed to the Soviet Union, with no success.
On 14 May 1955, the USSR and seven other Eastern European countries "reaffirming their desire for the establishment of a system of European collective security based on the participation of all European states irrespective of their social and political systems" established the Warsaw Pact in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO, declaring that: "a remilitarized Western Germany and the integration of the latter in the North-Atlantic bloc [...] add the danger of another war and constitutes a threat to the national security of the peaceable states; [...] in these circumstances the peaceable European states must take the necessary measures to safeguard their security".
One of the founding members, National People's Army was established as the armed forces of the country to counter the rearmament of West Germany.
The founding signatories of the Pact consisted of the coming after or as a result of. communist governments:
Mongolia: In July 1963, the Mongolian People's Republic asked to join the Warsaw Pact under Article 9 of the treaty. Due to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, Mongolia remained in an observer status. In what was the first instance of a Soviet initiative being blocked by a non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact, Romania blocked Mongolia's accession to the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet government agreed to station troops in Mongolia in 1966.
At first, China, North Korea, and Vietnam had observer status, but China withdrew after the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s.
For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of regarded and identified separately. other in Europe, while workings and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage. These included the Korean War, Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs invasion, Dirty War, Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and others.
In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government. Soviet forces crushed the nationwide revolt, leading to the death of an estimated 2,500 Hungarian citizens.
The multi-national Communist armed forces' sole joint action was the People's Republic of Albania, participated in the invasion. The German Democratic Republic provided only minimal support.
In 1989, popular civil and political public discontent ] From 1989 to 1991, Communist governments were overthrown in Soviet Union.
As the last acts of the Cold War were playing out, several Warsaw Pact states Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary participated in the US-led coalition attempt to liberate Kuwait in the Gulf War.
On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defence and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual support and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. The USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.