Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova answering in thorough detail this question from a reporter, based on this topic. It is long, will tax many people's attention span but illuminating and very important:

(from Moon of Alabama)

"About the need to remember the lessons of history. Operation Unthinkable

At the last briefing, I did not have time to answer one of the questions. I promised to come back to it later. This question was sent to us by the European Herald.

It concerns the United Nations, its role, and the historical interconnection of events in the context of the UN. It reads as follows: “During his speeches at the high-level week of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeatedly emphasised that the world is beginning to forget the lessons of World War II. What, in your opinion, is the danger of such a development of events?”

We have prepared a fairly extended answer. First of all, I would like to remind you that, in my opinion, the basic answer to this question can be found in Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speeches at the UN General Assembly, including in his speech at the Security Council meeting on the situation around Ukraine, but with an excursion into history, and during the news conference following the participation of the Russian delegation in the work of the UN.

The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry paid a lot of attention to the problems of the revival of neo-Nazism in Europe, forgetting the lessons of history, and distorting historical memory. Today I will cite a few examples that show that the threats noted by the Russian Foreign Minister are by no means hypothetical. This is not Moscow’s empty “alarmism”, not “speculation on the topic of Victory”, but a real threat to peace and stability.

I think many of you have heard about the plan for Operation Unthinkable initiated by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in April 1945. Many have heard, but not all. And I want as many people as possible to know about it now. Why? Because on June 1, 1945, it was planned to deliver a surprise blow to the positions of the Red Army with the forces of 47 British and American divisions, as well as 12 undisbanded German divisions located in the Anglo-American zone of occupation. The main task was to knock out the Soviet troops from the territory of Germany and Poland, throw them back to the borders of the USSR, and in a favorable development of events – even further. [To finish Plan Ost]

And this was not the only such plan born in the headquarters of the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. Let me remind you that we are talking about plans that were to be launched in June 1945, that is, the victory over Nazism had just been declared on the territory of the European continent, the war was still going on in the Far East, and according to these plans, we were already destined for fate. Let’s see what these “projects” were.
In September 1945, US President Harry Truman ordered the military to develop an American analogue of the British plan “Unthinkable”. The American plan was called “Totality”. At that time, American ideologists were even ready to use nuclear weapons to deter the Red Army.

Work on the next plan, Operation Pincher, was completed in March 1946, and on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous speech in Fulton, which is considered a public announcement of the Cold War. The Pincher was approved by Washington in June 1946. You don’t need to go there, you can do it online. You will read everything for yourself. It was planned to drop from 20 to 30 atomic bombs on twenty cities of the USSR.

And now they will tell us something about the alleged imperial ambitions of our country? About the alleged colonial attitude towards countries? Are they the ones who developed these plans to literally destroy us with nuclear weapons even after World War II?

During 1948, the following plans were successively prepared: “Bushwacker”, “Krankshaft”, “Halfmoon”, “Fleetwood”, “Cogville”, “Offtack”, “Chariotir”. With each new plan, the scale of the planned nuclear strikes increased. Thus, according to the Chariotir plan, 200 atomic bombs were to be dropped on 70 Soviet cities.

On December 3, 1949, the United States approved the Trojan plan, which provided that Great Britain would take part in the attack on the USSR. The Allies were preparing to rain down three hundred atomic and 20 thousand conventional bombs on 100 cities of the USSR. At the same time, the Dropshot plan was approved, providing for the participation of the United States exclusively. It It is long, will tax many people's attention span but illuminating and very importantwas planned to drop 300 atomic bombs and 250 thousand tons of conventional bombs on the USSR.

These are the “cute” plans. Most of all, I like this endless story, as many media claim, that there were no “Dulles plans”, that it is all fiction and so on. I don’t know if there was any specific plan called the “Dulles plan.” These plans are quite enough for me to draw the appropriate conclusions.

Even after nuclear parity was established between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Americans continued to develop new plans, such as “Totality” or “Dropshot”.

Under President D. Eisenhower, five plans were successively adopted. Under John F. Kennedy – four. Under L. Johnson – four. Under Richard Nixon, it was five.

All this was accompanied by the fanning of anti-Soviet hysteria, the intimidation of the Western philistine with the threat of an “imminent attack by the USSR” and other attributes of the Cold War, many of which, as we can see now, have been taken out of the “storerooms of history” and are actively used by some European leaders who dream of “becoming Europe’s leading military force again.” And inside the United States, all this ultra-liberal wing did the same and continues to dream of the same.

However, then, in the 1940s and 1950s, the leadership of the United States and Great Britain, despite all the efforts of the “hawks” in their ranks, had enough common sense and political will to “put all these plans on the shelf”. Not the least role was played by the fact that the overwhelming majority of politicians and ordinary citizens of the United States and European countries remembered the horrors and deprivations that the world war brought them, and categorically did not share the bellicose attitude of the authors of such adventurous plans.

And now “well-fed generations” have been born in these countries. In principle, like in the United States, they do not know what it is to conduct hostilities on their territory, what occupation and genocide are, what cities and villages burned down together with people. They do not know at all what war is in principle, so they begin to “flirt”. And they flirt with Nazi symbols, sell souvenirs with swastikas, record songs, glorify Nazism and Hitler, and come up with ways to “pick out” from history those who were buried by history and the world community under the ruins of their own crimes. But we did not. We remember, know and will pass on this memory and knowledge further.

This is the historical memory, the “lessons of history” that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke about, in particular, at the UN General Assembly this year. These lessons of history then, in the 1940s and 1950s, allowed the world to hold on and not fall over the brink of disaster.

Now, unfortunately, people have come to power in many EU capitals about whom there are very serious doubts about their education, general level of culture and, you know, mental characteristics. These Western “elites” have neither the historical experience of the post-war generations nor the level of erudition to realise the catastrophic consequences that their Russophobic policy, neo-Nazism, and connivance with the revival of all the most terrible misanthropic practices, from neo-Nazism and fascism to everything that this engenders, can lead to. They are distinguished by extreme historical ignorance.

It is this danger that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke about during his speeches at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.

Thank you for asking and wondering. But I want to say that these are not only some reminiscences, not only an excursion into history. This is about today. [My Emphasis] "