Touring Communist Poland: British Defence Attachés in Search of Secrets, 1980–1987

Abstract

This article explores problems of collecting intelligence in Poland by British defence attachés. In the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, tours of Poland by the British defence attaché staff turned out to be an essential method of collecting military intelligence about the Polish Army and Soviet forces in Poland. Annual reports of British attachés in Warsaw were declassified for every year of the 1980s except 1988 and 1989. Most of their content was made available, with the exception of some parts related to equipment and coordination of tours with North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners. The reports provided a detailed picture of the British Section’s knowledge about the Polish armed forces whose military capabilities it sought to assess.