Prague, Aug 20 (CTK) – The West German secret service had known of the Soviet plans for a military intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, daily Lidove noviny (LN) wrote on Saturday, citing a new study of German and Czech historians available on the website of the Czech civilian intelligence UZSI in both Czech and German.
In a report made by one of the spies of the West German intelligence Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) on May 9, 1968, he wrote that the Soviets were adopting measures leading towards an intervention, including a military one, in Czechoslovakia from mid-March 1968. BND reported about unusual movements of Soviet troops.
Though the BND had very precise information about the intentions of the Soviet Union, its agents made mistakes, the paper writes.
Shortly after the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops during the night from August 20 to August 21, the BND still believed that East German soldiers entered Czechoslovak territory along with other soldier from the Eastern bloc, but only East Germans specialists and observers took part in the military operation. The country was invaded by the Soviet, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Polish armies.
The BND even handed the piece of news that East German soldiers participated in the invasion to the West German paper Der Spiegel, LN writes.
A BND agent wrote on August 25 that the final decision that Czechoslovakia would be invaded was made on August 9 at the latest and his superior added his written comment that he knew of this even before this date, while in reality the decision was made only after August 9.
The historical study presents more than 50 BND documents and comments on them.
These documents disprove the theory that West Germany actively supported the political opposition in Czechoslovakia and sought a counter-revolution in the country, which the Czechoslovak secret police StB claimed after 1968, LN writes.
The StB claimed that the American CIA and the BND agreed to start a coordinated action against the Czechoslovak state in November 1967 and that the centre of the conspirative game was the West German trade representation in Czechoslovakia, which was the only official West German institution in the country.
The study shows that the StB fabricated this story because it did not want to admit that the crisis occurred only due to an inner corrosion of the system, the paper writes.
It is noteworthy that before the Soviet occupation the StB warned against inner destructive processes that led to the political crisis in Czechoslovakia and it did not monitor any increased activities of Western secret services. The StB reports written before the invasion are in fact in accordance with the BND findings.
The BND documents released confirm that in the period prior to the Prague Spring reform movement BND limited its activities to the detailed monitoring of the developments and did not encourage Czechoslovak citizens to cause unrest or form a political opposition. BND mostly only dealt with the possibility of a military intervention and it monitored and analyses the movements of troops near the Czechoslovak border and the border of West Germany. BND was also interested whether the leaders of the Warsaw Pact member states reached agreement on the form of the intervention against Czechoslovakia.
The study notes that BND praised its own work concerning the Czechoslovak reform movement and the potential Soviet military action. BND even cooperated with some West German journalists to whom it gave information provided that they speak highly of its work, LN writes.
