The Polish Netflix series 1983 tells an alternative Cold War history: simultaneous bombings across Poland keeps the communist party in power until the present. Twenty years later, the truth unravels as it’s discovered that it was no terrorist act but instead an inside job intended to get the country to unify behind the Communist Party and to keep Poland communist.
A secondary, perhaps unnecessary, plot line has a Polish general working with the United States to remove nuclear weapons from Poland. It appears the general has gone rogue; regardless, a Polish general decides the safety of the world is more important than his oaths to his country.
Apparently there is a precedent.
Randomly exploring on my first full day in Krakow, I stumbled upon the Ryszard Kukliński Monument. Apparently, Kukliński was moved to offer his services by the Warsaw Pact nations invading Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell the uprising and stop planned liberalization.
Starting in 1972, Kukliński provided classified military documents to the CIA, documents that outlined the weaknesses in NATO‘s assumptions about the Soviet Union and detailed plans for an attack on the west. Kukliński supposedly was convinced that any attack would destroy Poland, most likely through military attack, and felt that he was actual being a Polish patriot.
Eventually he defected to the United States because he was close to being arrested, which would have likely resulted in his death.
Today, even after his death in 2004, he remains a controversial figure in Poland, the CIA believes he was one of the most valuable spies of the cold war, perhaps preventing World War III. Who knows.
