Topic summary
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
East Germany
CzechoslovakiaSupported by:
Albania
Romania
China
YugoslaviaNikolai Podgorny
Alexei Kosygin
Andrei Grechko
Ivan Yakubovsky
Konstantin Provalov
Władysław Gomułka
Marian Spychalski
Józef Cyrankiewicz
Wojciech Jaruzelski
Bolesław Chocha
Florian Siwicki
Todor Zhivkov
Dobri Dzhurov
János Kádár
Lajos Czinege
Walter Ulbricht
Ludvík Svoboda
Oldřich Černík
Martin Dzúr
250,000 (20 divisions)
2,000 tanks
800 aircraft
Peak strength:
350,000–400,000 Soviet troops, 70,000–80,000 from Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary
6,300 tanks
2,500–3,000 tanks
87 wounded
5 soldiers committed suicide
10 killed (in accidents and suicides)
4 killed (in accidents)
1 killed
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four fellow Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
About 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops (rising afterwards to about 500,000), supported by thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircraft, participated in the overnight operation, which was code-named Operation Danube. The Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania refused to participate. East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, were ordered by Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion, because of fears of greater resistance if German troops were involved, due to public perception of the previous German occupation three decades earlier. 137 Czechoslovaks were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation.
Public reaction to the invasion was widespread and divided, including within the communist world. Although the majority of the Warsaw Pact supported the invasion along with several other communist parties worldwide, Western nations, along with socialist countries such as Romania, and particularly the People's Republic of China and People's Socialist Republic of Albania condemned the attack. Many other communist parties also lost influence, denounced the USSR, split up or dissolved due to conflicting opinions. The invasion started a series of events that would ultimately pressure Brezhnev to establish a state of détente with U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1972 just months after the latter's historic visit to the PRC.