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First Secretary Dubček's assurances about remaining in the Warsaw Pact did not allay Soviet fears. They inderstood clearly that real democracy in Czechoslovakia would bring the end of Communism in that country and fundamentally change the country's client state status. In the end, the Soviet settled the debate--with Red Army tanks. The Prague Spring ended with and the invasion of 650,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops (night of August 20, 1968). Czechs along the border awoke to awoke to the sound of clanking tanks sounds. Beginning that day and for several months, Soviet armor moved throughout the country. That night the Soviet tanks rolled past on the way to Prague and other major cities. The Czech Army did not resist. People in Prague began to panic as the tanks and other armored vehicles entered the city in overwealming force. The Czech people at firce understood what was happening. Even the Soviet soldiers and other tankers understood. Only Dubček and his associates along with a few high-ranking Soviet officers and officials knew what was underway--the full-scale invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Government immediately declared that the troops had not been invited into the country and that their invasion was a violation of socialist principles, international law, and the United Nations Charter. Most of the invading militry force was Soviet. To imprive the optics of the operation, the Soviets wanted the operation to appear to be a Warsaw Pact and not a purely Soviet action. Thus there were small contingents of Polish, East German, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops deployed, mostly well away from Prague. The Communist officials in those countries were more than willing to comply. They understood that their population generally wanted their own Prague Spring and that their regimes would be endangered if the Prague Spring was not immediately and forcibly extinguished. Only Romania refused to join the Soviets. There was only minimal resistance. General Secretary Brezhnev was determined to firmly establish who was in control of Eastern Europe. Clearly the Czech military had no ability to stand up to such a force and the invasion was all but bloodless in stark contrast to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. There was passive resistance such as taking down road signs. Soviet tankers in Prague were confronted by unarmed youths pleading with them to no avail. Soviet tanks rumbling through the streets of Prague would be an enduring emblem of Soviet control of its Eastern European empire.
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