Within days of the defeat of Germany in World War II, Winston Churchill ordered his war cabinet to draw up contingency plans for an offensive against Stalin that would lead to ``the elimination of Russia'', according to top secret British documents.

The resulting battle plan included the use of up to 100,000 German troops to back up half a million British and American soldiers attacking through northern Germany. It assumed that Stalin would invade Turkey, Greece, Norway and the oilfields of Iraq and Iran in retaliation and launch extensive sabotage operations in France and the Low Countries.

A 29-page report, codenamed Operation Unthinkable, was presented to the Prime Minister on 22 May 1945, 14 days after the end of the war in Europe.

It assumed that the Third World War would start on 1 July 1945, probably with a surprise attack by 47 British and American divisions between Dresden and the Baltic.

The war cabinet plan ruled out ``total war'' against the Red Army, which outnumbered the Allies by more than two to one, adding that there was no reason why an Anglo-American invasion of Russia would fare any better than Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.

Historians had long believed that the tense period immediately after the meeting of the armies of West and East led to plans of this sort, but today's publication is the first proof of their existence.

Professor D.C. Watt, the eminent historian who has written the official history of the British cabinet office in wartime, said it was the first time the papers had been read by anyone other than the principals.

``Nobody has ever seen this kind of thing before,'' he said, ``but we have had strong suspicions that they must have been written.''

The Unthinkable plan was eventually rejected by Churchill on the advice of the Chiefs of Staff and replaced with a defensive scheme to guard against invasion by the Red Army..
 

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