Central/Eastern Europe

Washington D.C., February 4, 2005 - Today the National Security Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary history of the U.S government's relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals.

Washington, D.C., November 17, 2004 - Fifteen years ago today, a modest, officially sanctioned student demonstration in Prague spontaneously grew into a major outburst of popular revulsion toward the ruling Communist regime. At that point the largest protest in 20 years, the demonstrations helped to spark the Velvet Revolution that brought down communism in Czechoslovakia and put dissident playwright Vбclav Havel in the Presidential Palace.

Forty-six years ago, at 4:15 a.m. on November 4, 1956, Soviet forces launched a major attack on Hungary aimed at crushing, once and for all, the spontaneous national uprising that had begun 12 days earlier. At 5:20 a.m., Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35-second broadcast, declaring: "Our troops are fighting.

Generals Jaruzelski, Siwicki, Tuczapski, and 6 other top-ranking Polish insiders of the Soviet military alliance reveal unprecedented details about its functioning and plans against NATO during the Cold War. 350 pages of interviews are made public today on the Zurich-based website of the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP)--an international consortium of scholars dedicated to the study of the historical dimension of European security, www.isn.ethz.ch/php. The National Security Archive at George Washington University is the primary U.S.

Vienna, Munich, Verona, and other European population and cultural centers were to be “completely destroyed,” according to 1965 Warsaw Pact plans for war in Europe made public today on the Zurich-based web site of the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP) -- an international consortium of scholars dedicated to the study of the historical background of European security, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php. Found in the Hungarian archives, the documents are vivid reminders of the menace posed by the Cold War nuclear arsenals that Presiden

In stark contrast to the close U.S.-Russian relationship of today, forty years ago serious tensions over Berlin and Germany and the danger of world war clouded Moscow-Washington relations. Fred Kaplan's article in the October 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, "JFK's First Strike Plan," shows that key White House officials and the President himself briefly considered proposals for a limited nuclear first strike against Soviet military targets in the event that the Berlin crisis turned violent.

Washington, D.C., June 15, 2001 – Forty-eight years ago, on June 17, 1953, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) erupted in a series of workers' riots and demonstrations that threatened the very existence of the communist regime.  The outburst, entirely spontaneous, shocked the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and their Kremlin sponsors, who were still reeling from the death of Joseph Stalin three months earlier.  Now, a new National Security Archive document volume based on recently obtained and translated records from archival sources throughout the former Soviet blo

Newly published documents on the landmark worker-led uprising of June 1953 in East Germany show that the crisis was far more widespread and protracted than previously believed. The documents, obtained from the files of the former ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of East Germany, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as well as other former Soviet bloc and American archives, also prove that the scale of the crackdown was much larger than official sources had indicated.

Washington, D.C., April 5, 2001 – On April 5 Poland celebrates the twelfth anniversary of the signing of the Round Table Agreements -- a landmark power-sharing agreement negotiated by representatives of the Communist Polish government, leaders of the long-outlawed union Solidarity, and leaders of the Catholic Church that allowed for the first free elections in Eastern Europe in nearly 50 years.  To mark the anniversary, the National Security Archive is publishing a new electronic briefing book, featuring recently declassified Department of State documents detailing the U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Twelve years ago today in Warsaw members of Poland’s communist government, officials of the Catholic Church, and representatives of the Solidarity trade union signed the Round Table Agreements, a landmark power-sharing agreement that set the stage for Poland’s first free elections since World War II.  To mark the anniversary, the National Security Archive is publishing on the web a new electronic briefing book, “Solidarity’s Coming Victory:  Big or Too Big?,” featuring recently declassified Department of State documents detailing the U.S.