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

The August invasion caught the Western leaders off-guard. This was not because the Western intelligence communities failed to detect massive troop movements on the border areas of Czechoslovakia in the summer. Indeed, June and July were the months when Western intelligence officials were most acutely concerned about the risks of a Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia. 45

Partly because of this heightened sense of danger, NATO governments, led by the United States, had deliberately kept a low profile. The White House was decidedly against any move which might provoke the Soviet Union at this difficult time. In the United Kingdom, the foreign secretary told Parliament on 18 July that every country had its own right to determine its own domestic affairs, which could be taken as a veiled warning to Moscow, but Whitehall, too, avoided giving any impression that the United Kingdom was interfering in the Soviet Union’s sphere. In June, NATO showed an interest in discussing with the Warsaw Pact countries the Mutual Balanced Reduction Forces. The implications were that if the Soviet Union went ahead with the use of force, détente would then be in jeopardy, which, the West believed, would make the Soviet Union think twice before it used force against Czechoslovakia. 46

Apart from this soft approach to Moscow, the West did not have any strategy to deal with what turned out to be an escalation of the Czech crisis, for few in Western capitals really believed that the Soviet Union would resort to force to restore stability and order in Czechoslovakia. Thus the crucial point of this analysis must focus on the question of interpretations and, ultimately, the judgments by senior ministers and officials on the basis of the information collected, rather than on the technical accuracy of such information that influenced the UK and West’s attitudes toward the Soviet Union and its intentions toward Czechoslovakia.

In hindsight, it was ironic that the Harold Wilson government had undertaken a series of reforms of the UK intelligence community, for he thought the community’s credibility had been reduced in recent years by numerous Soviet spy cases, the difficulty of collecting information from within the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, and the failure to predict unrest in Ghana and in Nigeria. 47Like the Eisenhower administration’s centralization of the numerous U.S. intelligence agencies in the 1950s, the Labour government introduced measures which were intended to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the intelligence community, including the appointment (in the spring of 1968) of an intelligence coordinator operating from the cabinet office. The reformed intelligence system ignominiously failed to pass the first big test over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August. Sir Percy Cradock, a former Foreign Office official, recalled that the Federal Republic of Germany’s intelligence community got it right, more or less, in terms of the likelihood of military invasion, but those Western intelligence officers who believed that there might be a Soviet armed invasion thought that this would be after the Czechoslovakia Party Congress on 9 September, and not before. 48

According to recently declassified documents in the United Kingdom, the JIC maintained throughout the crisis that the Soviet Union was not going to invade Czechoslovakia in defiance of world opinion and détente. UK intelligence officials were aware of two large military exercises taking place between 11 and 20 August, but these were interpreted as part of “the psychological warfare” against Prague and not a preinvasion move, which was what they turned out to be. How could this military training maneuver involving a total of twenty-nine divisions around the Czech border area be dismissed as a mere show of force? The line of argument by the intelligence community was that if intervention was on the agenda then the military build-up would be kept secret where possible, and not be as openly conducted as it was prior to the invasion. 49

The Foreign Office, too, was aware of the risk of invasion, but it thought that the Soviets would do everything—“bully and cajole, bribe and threaten”—to the Czechs, except embark on a military invasion. This feeling was somewhat strengthened by another mistaken belief that the heightened tension between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia had been largely resolved during their bilateral meetings at Čierná nad Tisou between 29 July and 1 August and also at Bratislava on 3 August. 50As a result of this estimate, the Joint Intelligence Committee “in consequence sat on the fence.” 51

Why did the United Kingdom and the West so misjudge Soviet intentions? One can, of course, legitimately argue that this was because the Kremlin itself did not reach a final decision to intervene until late July. However, while there were frequent and massive military exercises by the Warsaw Pact countries from the summer onwards, the West, including the United Kingdom, continued to dismiss the thought of Soviet invasion, assuming that the Kremlin should not, or would not, do things which might affect the development of détente with the West. Why? This was probably because it was the desire of the Western leaders to maintain détente with the Eastern Bloc, which resulted in not fully appreciating the strategic priorities from the Soviet Union’s point of view and that of other conservative Eastern European leaders who were desperate to hold Eastern Europe together under the Kremlin leadership for the sake of their countries’ stability and interests. Michael Stewart gave what he meant to be a veiled warning to the Soviet Union when he met M. Smirnovsky, the Soviet ambassador to Great Britain, at the end of July: “[I]f events went badly over Czechoslovakia, the opportunities for increasing understanding between us would be frozen.” 52Hence, “too much thinking in Western terms” led to misjudgements about what was to happen in Prague. 53

When the invasion actually took place, most cabinet ministers were away on their summer vacations, and only a few (including the prime minister, the foreign secretary, and the defense secretary) attended a hastily arranged emergency cabinet meeting on 22 August. 54The invasion was condemned by Yugoslavia, Romania, and many other Western governments, including Great Britain. Whitehall was concerned that the Soviet Union might also use force against Romania or Yugoslavia. Denis Healey, returning home after cutting short his family holiday in Switzerland, felt it important to warn Moscow that NATO would not stand aside if a neutral country, like Yugoslavia, was attacked. Later in November, NATO publicly urged the Soviet Union “to refrain from using force and interfering in the affairs of other states,” and repeated this warning later in April 1969 at the end of the NATO’s Council meeting in Washington, DC. 55

The August cabinet meeting was also reminded that soon after the invasion, the Soviet government made painstaking efforts to convey a message to the United Kingdom and other NATO governments to the effect that its invasion was limited in nature and scale and that Moscow had no intention in harming any other states. In the case of the United Kingdom, Moscow hoped that its bilateral relationship with London would not be affected by this incident. It was also confirmed at this cabinet meeting that there seemed to be no other threats in the European theater. The prime minister promised at the end of the cabinet meeting that if, in the meantime, there was any urgent development which might require the UK’s action, this would be considered by himself in consultation with the foreign secretary, suggesting that no full cabinet meetings would be necessary for the time being. 56Nevertheless, Wilson called for an emergency sitting of Parliament for two days toward the end of August. The pro-Wilson minister of health and Social Security, Richard Crossman, thought it was “right” for Wilson to arrange this, which brought nearly three hundred members of parliament back from their holidays. Having said that, Crossman soon found the debate rather depressing because “everyone now knows that Britain could do nothing to help the Czechs.” 57