Operation unthinkable had become reality?

9 min read

What If…

In 1945, Churchill secretly planned war with the Soviet Union. But could ‘Operation Unthinkable’ have resulted in a third world war?

Interview by Callum McKelvie

In 1945, with Nazi Germany defeated, Britain was already planning World War III. Well not exactly, but Prime Minister Winston Churchill had become disturbed by the Soviet Union’s occupation of much of Eastern Europe. On his orders a plan was drawn up to explore the potential of a military push to force the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe, specifically East Germany and Poland. Of course, such a plan was never put into operation, but what if Britain had launched a military strike against the Soviet Union? Would it have been a swift, decisive victory? Or would it have ended in a third world war?

What exactly was Churchill’s Operation Unthinkable?

I don’t think there’s been a military operation more aptly named, because essentially Operation Unthinkable amounted to Churchill contemplating starting World War III. By the end of World War II, he was extremely alarmed by the Soviet Union’s expansion into Eastern Europe, particularly about what was happening in Poland. In early May of 1945, he instructed the British chiefs of staff to do a sort of feasibility study, exploring the possibility of Britain forcibly driving the Red Army out of eastern Germany and Poland – codenamed Operation Unthinkable.

What were the plan’s key points?

Well, the plan was only put together in a few weeks. There was a British general election looming in July 1945 and Churchill was insistent it be completed quickly. It was secretly drafted by a small group of joint planners, because obviously what was being proposed was enormously contentious. When they examined Churchill’s proposal, they realised that to ensure a lasting security buffer for Eastern Europe, should the Allies be successful in driving the Red Army out of it, they would probably need to occupy the same sort of area that Hitler had at the height of his invasion of the Soviet Union. Effectively what Churchill and the joint planners were proposing was rolling the Red Army out of eastern Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and then essentially repeating Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, across the Soviet border to within reach of the Ural Mountains, which originally had been Hitler’s plan.

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