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When generals of the Soviet Union decided in the mid-1960s to install nuclear bunkers in Poland, so as to be closer to their targets in Western Europe in the event of the Cold War heating up, they took nearly every precaution to keep them secret.

But they also erred in two remarkable ways, according to new archeological research on the three Polish bunker sites, which today are either partly demolished or overgrown and stripped of scrap metal by looters.

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To keep their nuclear installations secret, the Soviets did not tell the Polish people, who paid for them, but did not find out that they had hosted about 160 tactical nuclear warheads until the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union collapsed. In fact, the Soviets explicitly denied it. The Polish soldiers who built the bunkers had no clue either, as they worked on separate sections with no knowledge about the broader purpose. Many were told they were building barracks for Soviet communications units.