Günter Bischof - The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

62. RGANI, F. 89, op. 38, d. 57, pp. 19–61.

63. RGANI, F. 89, op. 38, d. 57, pp. 19–61. This was a risk Brezhnev was not prepared to take. “One had to assume that the right would gain the upper hand there.” SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61, minutes of the talks between the CPSU and the “fraternal parties,” 28 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #109; Bil’ak directed him into the direction desired by the Kremlin. Bil’ak, Wir riefen Moskau zu Hilfe , 176–78.

64. Brezhnev mentioned to the representatives of the “fraternal parties” on the following day, 24 August 1968, that he had spoken twice with Dubček and Černík. For details, see below. It may be assumed with a probability bordering on certainty that no minutes were kept during the second conversation—if there was one.

65. Dubček, Leben für die Freiheit , 291.

66. The clue is Brezhnev’s statement on the following day in his meeting with the CP leaders of the “fraternal countries”: “We spoke with them twice yesterday.” SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61 (cf. note 63).

67. Prager Schwarzbuch , 80.

68. Walter Ulbricht had left Berlin for Moscow around midnight on 23 August 1968 accompanied by Willi Stoph and Erich Honecker. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling” 1968 , 261.

69. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61 (cf. note 63); Pauer, Prag 1968 , 308–10.

70. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61 (cf. note 63).

71. On this point, see the minutes of the talks between the Soviet leadership and Svoboda on the previous day referred to by Brezhnev in this context, RGANI, F. 89, op. 38, d. 57, pp. 1–19 (cf. note 51).

72. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61 (cf. note 63). Gomułka used the same argument after his return to Warsaw to explain why Dubček had not been ousted from his post. Pauer conjectures that in Gomułka’s thinking his own experience played an important role. Pauer, Prag 1968 , 311.

73. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, 212–61. The talks ended at 11:50 a.m., almost an hour and a half behind schedule.

74. RGANI, F. 89, op. 38, d. 58, pp. 1–30, stenographic transcripts of the negotiations in Moscow between the leaders of the USSR, L. I. Brezhnev, A. N. Kosygin, and N. V. Podgornyi, and the leaders of the ČSSR, J. Smrkovský, J. Špaček, and B. Šimon, 24 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #110. On the talks, see also Pauer, Prag 1968 , 306; the stenographic transcripts were, however, not accessible to Pauer at the time he wrote his book.

75. A MZV, Tlg. došlé, 7868/1968, telegram of the Czechoslovak ambassador in Moscow, V. Koucký, with a message from L. Svoboda to L. Štrougal, 24 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #111.

76. Prager Schwarzbuch , 84.

77. For details, see Pauer, Prag 1968 , 312.

78. Dubček, Leben für die Freiheit , 314.

79. Indra did not return to Prague until 28 September 1968, in Arbeiter-Zeitung , 29 September 1968, 1; Mlynař, Nachtfrost , 284, 297, 309; Pauer believes that the pro-Soviet side may have engineered Indra’s disappearance for tactical reasons. Pauer, Prag 1968 , 306.

80. RGANI, F. 89, op. 38, d. 60, pp. 1–39, 57–58, stenographic transcript of the talks between the delegation of the Politburo CC CPSU and the presidium of the CC KPČ and the president of the ČSSR, L. Svoboda, 26 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #114.

81. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, pp. 212–61, minutes of the talks between the CPSU and the “fraternal parties,” 25 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #113. For details see Pauer, Prag 1968 , 319–20.

82. Vojtěch Mencl, “Die Unterdrückung des ‘Prager Frühlings,’” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (1995): 9–31. The so-called Moscow Protocol has been reprinted several times in the literature, for example in Mlynař, Nachtfrost , 342–46.

83. On the “negotiations” from 25 August onward and the differences within the Czechoslovak delegation, see Pauer’s extremely well documented analysis: Pauer, Prag 1968 , 312–26.

“I feel like a hitchhiker in a Texas hailstorm. I can’t run. I can’t hide. And I can’t make it stop.” 1That was how Lyndon Johnson described to press secretary Bill Moyers how troubled he felt while making the agonizing decisions over U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Since ascending to the presidency in 1963 Johnson had solicited the advice of many on Vietnam, and by 1968 the results of the decisions he made over the intervening five years left him frustrated and exhausted. By August 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, the Johnson administration, although the president himself had already abandoned a reelection bid, found itself in the middle of a floor fight over Vietnam policy at the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The president still held out hope for negotiations with the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, and an increasingly difficult South Vietnam. Two of the chief architects of his Vietnam policy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland, had been relieved. A full 78 percent of Americans believed that the United States was not making any progress in Vietnam. 2Johnson indeed could neither run nor hide from the Vietnam War, and even though it appeared that negotiations might begin to bear fruit in 1968, he couldn’t stop the war.

From 1965 onward, as George Herring and other historians attest, U.S. military policy in Vietnam had been improvised rather than carefully designed. Initially, the administration went to war to prevent the collapse of South Vietnam. From 1965 to 1967, Johnson gradually escalated the bombing of North and South Vietnam and slowly but surely increased the number of ground forces. By 1968 the number of U.S. forces reached well over half a million, and the United States had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than they had on all their enemies in World War II. None of these actions stopped the North Vietnamese from bringing troops into the South or weakened the resolve of the southern-based National Liberation Front, or Vietcong. The increasing bombing of the south and the bloody U.S. strategy of attrition did the opposite of winning the “hearts and minds” of the people the United States was trying to save from communism. Similarly, no amount of military action or monetary aid could create a popular government in Saigon.

Though Johnson did, indeed, improvise in the formulation and execution of his Vietnam strategy, the gradual nature of the president’s escalation was deliberate. He always chose a middle course between the military and their champions in and out of Congress, and the political left, who eventually advocated U.S. withdrawal. He did this for a number of reasons. First, Johnson’s championing of his Great Society social reforms necessitated limiting the commitment to the war so as not to anger liberals who would support these programs. Second, while keeping the military commitment limited, at the same time he needed to prove to conservatives that he remained committed to decisive military action that would find Ho Chi Minh’s “breaking point” so as to not provoke a “right-wing backlash” which also would kill his domestic programs and his presidency. Third, Johnson followed a policy of gradualism in Vietnam because of his fear of provoking the Soviet Union or China into military intervention. 3