Seven Days to the River Rhine

Battle context

Seven Days to the River Rhine was a top-secret Warsaw Pact military simulation exercise developed in 1979, depicting a projected seven-day nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. The exercise represented the Soviet Bloc's operational thinking about a potential European conflict and was part of a series of Warsaw Pact war plans developed at least since 1964. The simulation projected Warsaw Pact casualties of approximately two million, illustrating the anticipated scale of destruction in a nuclear exchange and reflecting the fundamental strategic calculus underlying Cold War military planning in Europe. Its existence, when eventually disclosed, offered direct insight into how Warsaw Pact planners conceived of escalation, the tempo of nuclear conflict, and the prospects for any conventional or nuclear campaign on the European continent.