Czechs with their flag walking past a burning Warsaw Pact tank.
On this day in 1968 the Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia.
The action commenced very late in the day, at 11:00 p.m. to be precise, and featured an armored invasion by forces from the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria and Hungary. The total combined Warsaw Pact forces totaled 500,000 troops, the same number of men that the United States committed to Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War. It was not a small operation.
The Czechs had not prepared for the invasion and the government quickly called on its citizenry to not resist, a call that wasn't fully headed. In part the Czechs were of the view that resistance was futile, which explains a lack of preparation, but they had also assumed that they would not be invaded by fellow Communist countries, a naive assumption. Having said that, Romania, Yugoslavia an Albania refused to participate. Indeed, the invasion was denounced by Romania on the day it occurred and Albania reacted by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.
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