Civil servants preparing for a third world war drafted an address to the nation in which the Queen would speak of the horror of Britain’s involvement in a nuclear conflict.
It was part of a detailed “war game” carried out in 1983, in which Whitehall officials played the roles of Margaret Thatcher and members of her cabinet responding to a simulated attack by the Soviet Union.
Wintex-Cimex 83 was the Nato code name for the exercise, which was designed to test the West’s responses in the event of a nuclear strike and included a speech to be delivered by the Queen after the declaration of war. The monarch was to speak of a third struggle for freedom in “this sad century” in a reference to the two previous world wars.
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