Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 8,802
The end of the "Prague Spring" ...!
At 2 a.m. on August 21, 1968 units of the Soviet 7th Guard Airborne Division from Kazan landed with their Antonov 12 transporters ...
... at the Prague airport "Ruzyne" (today: "Waclaw Havel airport"), occupy it, unload heavy equipment...
... and block all access roads.
This marked the beginning of the “Danube” operation of the Warsaw Pact's armed forces to put down the “Prague Spring”...:
The head of the CSSR-CP, Aleksander Dubcek, had begun liberal reforms in his country, which the heads of the other Comecon countries saw as a "counter-revolution".
The commissioners of the invasion are CPSU leader Leonid Brezhnev ...
... the Bulgarian CP-Chef Todor Schiwkow...
... his Polish collegue Wladislaw Gomulka...
... Janos Kádar from Hungary...
... and GDR ruler Walter Ulbricht - the latter one of the most ardent supporters ...:
In comand of the "Operation Danube" are the three Soviet Generals Iwan Pawlowskij
…Iwan Jakubowskij…
…and Pjotr Koschewoj…:
The troops of the Comecon states move into the CSSR with a total of 500,000 men and more than 5,000 armored vehicles and occupy all strategic points.
Troops from all Warsaw Pact states are involved with two exceptions:
Romania under its murderous dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu ...
... refuses to take part in the action, which will later bring him a disproportionate amount of "political capital" in the West.
The GDR leadership would like to participate with units of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) (= Nastional People's Army), the corresponding enforcement report was already written...:
The invasion of NVA troops is stopped literally at the last minute!
The organizers of "Operation Danube" were too embarrassed by the obvious parallels between the invasion of the Hitler army in Prague on March 15, 1939 ...
… and this operation!
So the 15,000 men of the 7th Panzer Division (headquarters in Dresden) and the 11th motorized rifle divisions (headquarters in Halle / S.) Mobilized by the GDR remain on the other side of the border, albeit in full combat readiness.
The folowing pictures were taken on August 21 and show a unit of the 7th NVA Panzer Division, which was stopped on German soil before the border ...:
Walter Ulbricht is very angry about this - and instructs his propagandists afterwards to pretend they were there after all - which later leads to the legend that the NVA was actively involved in the CSSR.
There is even a few open contradictions against the intention of the Kimunist GDR rulers to participate in the actions in the CSSR:
About 20 members of the army are being prosecuted in connection with the events in the CSSR. There are mainly lower ranks: conscripts, NCOs and officer students.
A 21-year-old member of the NVA is “openly on the side of the counterrevolution”. He urged his comrades not to shoot in the event of an invasion of the CSSR and therefore to remove the firing pin from the submachine gun.
He was given a year and eight months' imprisonment.
There are also isolated protests in the GDR - mostly by young people, but they are nipped in the bud by the "State Security"!
**continued next post**
At 2 a.m. on August 21, 1968 units of the Soviet 7th Guard Airborne Division from Kazan landed with their Antonov 12 transporters ...
... at the Prague airport "Ruzyne" (today: "Waclaw Havel airport"), occupy it, unload heavy equipment...
... and block all access roads.
This marked the beginning of the “Danube” operation of the Warsaw Pact's armed forces to put down the “Prague Spring”...:
The head of the CSSR-CP, Aleksander Dubcek, had begun liberal reforms in his country, which the heads of the other Comecon countries saw as a "counter-revolution".
The commissioners of the invasion are CPSU leader Leonid Brezhnev ...
... the Bulgarian CP-Chef Todor Schiwkow...
... his Polish collegue Wladislaw Gomulka...
... Janos Kádar from Hungary...
... and GDR ruler Walter Ulbricht - the latter one of the most ardent supporters ...:
In comand of the "Operation Danube" are the three Soviet Generals Iwan Pawlowskij
…Iwan Jakubowskij…
…and Pjotr Koschewoj…:
The troops of the Comecon states move into the CSSR with a total of 500,000 men and more than 5,000 armored vehicles and occupy all strategic points.
Troops from all Warsaw Pact states are involved with two exceptions:
Romania under its murderous dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu ...
... refuses to take part in the action, which will later bring him a disproportionate amount of "political capital" in the West.
The GDR leadership would like to participate with units of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) (= Nastional People's Army), the corresponding enforcement report was already written...:
The invasion of NVA troops is stopped literally at the last minute!
The organizers of "Operation Danube" were too embarrassed by the obvious parallels between the invasion of the Hitler army in Prague on March 15, 1939 ...
… and this operation!
So the 15,000 men of the 7th Panzer Division (headquarters in Dresden) and the 11th motorized rifle divisions (headquarters in Halle / S.) Mobilized by the GDR remain on the other side of the border, albeit in full combat readiness.
The folowing pictures were taken on August 21 and show a unit of the 7th NVA Panzer Division, which was stopped on German soil before the border ...:
Walter Ulbricht is very angry about this - and instructs his propagandists afterwards to pretend they were there after all - which later leads to the legend that the NVA was actively involved in the CSSR.
There is even a few open contradictions against the intention of the Kimunist GDR rulers to participate in the actions in the CSSR:
About 20 members of the army are being prosecuted in connection with the events in the CSSR. There are mainly lower ranks: conscripts, NCOs and officer students.
A 21-year-old member of the NVA is “openly on the side of the counterrevolution”. He urged his comrades not to shoot in the event of an invasion of the CSSR and therefore to remove the firing pin from the submachine gun.
He was given a year and eight months' imprisonment.
There are also isolated protests in the GDR - mostly by young people, but they are nipped in the bud by the "State Security"!
**continued next post**
