In my Osprey book about Warsaw Pact armies, it mentioned that East Germany did send forces into Czechoslovakia in 1968 despite the political implications. The question is what actually went in there.

AFAIK there were no NVA units involved in the invasion.

Initial plan was to use the 11. motorisierte Schützendivision(Halle an der Saale) and the 7. Panzerdivision(Dresden) of the NVA(approx. 15 000 men) for the invasion, but due to political reasons, the plan was changed and these units remained as Reserve Forces on East German soil.

There was a NVA Operative Group(couple of dozens of liason and reconnaissance officers), that were present in or did enter Czechoslovakia with WP forces.

HTH

Tom,

I may be able to help here(!)

According to Thomas M Forster's book "The East German Army" the following units were involved:

11th Motorized Infantry Division from Halle (assigned to the Soviet 1st Armoured Guards Army).

7th Armoured Division from Dresden provided contingents for the Russians' 20th Guards Army.

Forster goes on to describe that …"many of the occupation troops, however, were withdrawn from Czechoslovakia after a few days when their commanders had to admit that the troops were no longer to be relied on for suppressing the population. They were replaced by fresh Soviet units."

However, Forster does not necessarily assign these comments to East German units, as he also describes Polish and Hungarian units.

He goes on to state, "Within a few days East German troops were only being allowed to move around by night, otherwise remaining hidden in the Bohemian forests, and they were soon withdrawn anyway except for some small contingents. The chief reason for this was that world opinion saw the entry of NVA troops in Czechoslovakia as a repeat performance of Hitler's occupation in 1938/39. East German soldiers found themselves reading yard-high graffiti saying "Wir wollen Eure Freundschaft nicht!" ("We want none of your friendship!"

But there was a second reason for the hasty pull-back of NVA troops which must have weighed still more with Soviet commanders. Many Czechs were familiar with developments in Germany and spoke German, whereas few of them knew Polish or Russian. In Soviet eyes far too many Czech-German discussions were taking place, and these could only damage their cause".

'Hope this all helps somewhere along the line.

Brian

Very very little according to this web-site:
https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article181350648/Einmarsch-in-der-CSSR-Warum-durch-Prag-keine-Panzer-der-NVA-rollten.html
Some staff personnel and some small border patrol units who destroyed Czech posters/propaganda.

The German leader, Ulbricht, REALLY wanted to participate but the Soviets said No. Hitler in 1938 and the NVA in 1968, that was too much for the Soviets since it would have exposed the very thin lie that the invasion was requested by the Czech leaders.
Ulbricht took this as an insult, indicating that NVA was not trustworthy or good enough, and this gave birth to an official lie pretending that the NVA had indeed participated and done their duty to World Communism just as much as any of the other armies. The even produced fake propaganda films showing how the NVA suppressed the Czech counter-revolution.

In 1989 the parliament in East Germany asked Czechoslawakia to forgive them for their participation so they still believed the official lie that they had participated.
Archives opened afterwards, 1990'ies and later, have shown that there was very little NVA in Czechoslowakia but the NVA still aided the invasion by handling logistics in East Germany, closing the border et.c..
https://www.radio.cz/de/rubrik/sonderserie68/nva-truppen-machen-halt-an-der-tschechoslowakischen-grenze


Anything about this published before 1990 should be seen as highly uncertain, such as Thomas M Forster's book "The East German Army"
Ospreys Warsaw Pact Ground Forces was published in 1987.
/ Robin

Ouch Robin - I'd always thought that Forster was fairly highly respected..?

However, there must have been some presence as there are photographs showing placards in German demanding what the NVA was doing in Czechoslovakia: "Ulbricht was sucht die DDR-Armee in der CSSR?" (this was all in capitals so I may not have transcribed this quite right).

Brian

Well, if Ulbricht and Co were busy boosting their ego by saying that they are in the CSSR then I would assume it to be fairly logical that CSSR citizens would assume this to be correct. They would not have believed that Swedish, British or Australian troops were there but one of the WP armies makes perfect sense. How could they know that Ulbricht was lying?
The Germans made propaganda movies showing that they participated so blaming someone for not knowing the facts in 1988 is totally unjust.
Many families got really upset when the archives showed that husband/wife had been reporting to the Stasi. Imagine that kind of "cheating" in a marriage, my wife/husband is cheating on me with a Stasi officer ....

Forster: He based his book on the official truth back in those days. The archives were opened a LOONG time after his book was published. Many years ago the established truth in science was that the atom was the smallest unit in the universe, then we found out about protons, neutrons and electrons and now they scientists are fiddling around with the buildign blocks of those as well. A thousand years ago scientists knew that there was four elements: fire, earth, water and air

Any "truth" needs to be evaluated against the background of its own time.
"The new continent is inhabited by savages" was the official truth at Colombus' home-coming party ...

"Facts" about the WP, Eastern bloc, USSR et.c need to be re-evaluated now that the archives are opening up (the Russian archives are being closed again by Putin and his cronies, don't want too many truths leaking out, could cause unrest ...)

Angel posted that there was about 30 or so intelligence staff attached to some WP staff and there were some border patrol type units sneaking in at night to destroy anti-WP postters/placards so there was "some" presence but compared to the many divisions from other countries would be as if I claim to contribute to the water level in the Thames by taking an ale induced late night leak from the Westminster Bridge
/ Robin

Also remember that our army was mostly stationed in west of the country to face the NATO, so the NVA would have to operate in an enviroment "saturated" with superior Czechoslovak troops, while the Soviet, Polish and Hungarian troops penetrated empty space and headed directly for big cities. During the invasion itself Czechoslovak units stand their ground - e.g. didnt vacate their locations and didnt give up arms, and a lot of ocupation units spend a lot of time living in tents in undefensible locations. Any interaction between both sides was avoided if possible. If a war would start, Hungrian and Polish troops would be pulled back due to political instability in those respective countries and Soviets didnt have the manpower at hand to handle the situation, so it was paramount for them get some sort of political solution.