← Empire: World History
Empire: World History
285. Suez Crisis: The Secret Meeting Between Israel, Britain & France (Part 2)
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnhem and me, William Thoroughby. And once again we are joined by the fabulous Alex von Tinselman. Alex, absolute superstar, author of Blood and Sand Sewers, Hungary and A Crisis that Shook the World. And you left us on just the most delicious cliffhanger. It was a psychodrama of Shakespearean proportions. Between in the red corner, Anthony Eden, fading hottie and Prime Minister, greying moustache, Prime Minister of great Brit with a much younger wife, Clarissa. And in the blue corner, you've got Nasser of Egypt, who is the young hottie, who is much closer in age to Clarissa, and the whole kind of sort of clash of these two men, one of whom insists that this dinner, this horrible dinner of talking down to Nasser and explaining to him what it is to be Arab, just imagine being sort of butt clenching moment that would have been. And the two of them have precisely zero chemistry unless the chemistry is explosive. So from that point, I think what we should do is look ahead to July 26, 1956, which is not long after this dinner, is it, Alex?
- [02:18]
D
That's a year and a bit. The dinner was February 1955. So it's taken a while for Eden's loathing of Nasser to reach a sort of full pitch. About a year to ripen. Yeah, I mean, it's about a year between the disastrous dinner party and then Eden telling his ministers that he wants Nasser killed. Literally. I mean, you know, he says, I want him murdered. This isn't a sort of vague allusion.
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A
Just to put that in context, Alex, is that unique? I mean, were there many British assassinations at this point of nationalism?
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D
No, no, not many. No. I mean, and there are sort of some hints that possibly good old James Bondlot in SIS had a bit of a go at various things like this. But I mean, it wasn't really done. It wasn't what they did.
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A
No, you didn't, you didn't go for. For Prime Minister?
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D
No, I mean, when Eden said this to his Minister Anthony Nutting. Notting was really shocked. I mean, this was a sort of complet, completely horrendous thing to say. That was not normal at all. Which is why Nasser wrote it all down in his diary. And why we know about it is because it was such an unusual thing for this to happen. He thought at that point that Eden was losing his mind. I mean, that was the sort of.
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C
Level of this evidence is stacking up against Eden and the state of his mind. But then, if anything is going to push him over the edge, it is what NASA does in July 1956. Because as you've pointed out, there was a distinction between who owns the canal itself, which was always the Egyptians, and who owns the operating company that operates the Suez Canal, which was this conglomerate of investors, predominantly French. And so at this point in 56, Nasser says, you know what, Nationalizing it. Had enough of this, had enough of the colonial interference in my country. The whole thing is going to be ours. How does he make the announcement, first of all?
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D
Well, it was a very dramatic scene, which of course we love on Empire. So he was telling anyone he was going to do this, although it had been suspected that that was a possibility that would happen. And what had just happened is that the Americans and the World bank had just pulled funding from his big development project, which was the Aswan Dam project.
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A
Just to explain what that is, this is this crucial moment when Nasser is going to build the first of the big dams. This is happening all through the post colonial world. Nehru is building dams in India and calling them the new temples. And NASA's one involves moving some of the biggest ancient Egyptian monuments, including Abu Simnel. And this is a huge moment. National Geographic are covering this moment when these great statues are moved around. This will allow NASA to control the Nile and the annual Nile floods, which have been such a feature of Egyptian life since antiquity, are no longer going to be random, they're going to be controlled. And this is the background to what happens next.
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D
Yeah, it's a huge project and the Americans didn't particularly like it, but they kind of helped fund it and they'd, you know, allowed the World bank to go along with that too. And all of this, but largely because of sort of maintaining a good relationship. John Foster Dulles Secretary of State, did not like Nasser, but the CIA really did. They thought he was a very useful man to them in the Middle east, someone they could do business with.
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A
What did they like about him? Because it's not an automatic match. You would have thought the CIA and NASA, this leading post colonial figure.
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D
I know you wouldn't have thought so. Well, the reason is basically they just thought he was quite sensible. They thought he wasn't a communist, not in league with the communists.
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A
At this point there are communist rebels all over Yemen and so on. And Nasser is not that.
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D
Absolutely. And you know, Syria and everywhere else. And he is not a commie. In fact, he's persecuting the commies, not in with the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, he's persecuting them. And they tried to kill him.
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A
And the founder of the Muslim Brothers has just been shot, Hassan.
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D
Right. I mean, you know, so all of this is surreal mess. But you know, he's not an extremist. He's actually someone, you know, they see as quite a sort of sensible centrist, as Middle Eastern leaders go. They also thought, I mean, all Arab leaders were obviously implacably opposed to Israel, but they thought that with Nasser they at least had the possibility of conversation.
- [06:15]
A
That's right. And in fact, Nasser had been stopping the first Palestinian fedayeen raids which were taking place in Gaza. And he was arresting them.
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D
Yeah, you know, so again, the CIA thought, well, this is someone we can work with. And they could not understand why the British were being so nutty about him, really, because they felt like this is, is really useful that we have this guy who, you know, speaks English, is very aware and yes, fine, he wants to be non aligned and he wants all of this, but actually we can kind of work with that. It's fine. So basically the scene happens in Alexandria in Mansha Square, which is this really beautiful square in the middle of Alexandria, very neoclassical, palm trees sweeping down to the Mediterranean Sea. And it is also very resonant because Nasser had been given there a speech exactly the same spot in Mancha Square less than two years before, when he was attacked by an assassin from the Muslim Brotherhood who fired just from 25ft away, fired eight shots at him, all eight missed. And Nasser appeared completely unruffled. And that really sort of cemented him as, you know, this sort of his Trump leader. Well, much more dangerous than Trump. I mean, eight shots, you know, from 25ft is much, much more dangerous than what was fired at Trump. But he wasn't hurt and he did survive. And so this spot's very resonant, very important. And he went to give this speech there and huge crowd, about a quarter of a million people packed in to the square at that time. But also this was broadcast on Voice of the Arabs. This was going out to the whole Arab World and it was translated as well. And he gave this sort of speech and he talked about imperialism, about Britain and France, about this control. And he was being quite funny about it. It's very comical speech, knock about. And he was talking about, you know, the Aswan Dam and his recent negotiations with the president of the World bank, who was a man called Eugene Black. And then he said, Mr. Black suddenly reminded me of Ferdinand de Lesseps. Now this name you will recall is your mate Ferdi, the guy who built the Suez Canal or oversaw the building of the Suez Canal. Obviously it was Egyptian workers who built it. But he seemed to get stuck on this name, Nasser. And he kept repeating it. He kept saying de Lesseps. De Lesseps. De Lesseps, yeah. People were kind of like, what is happening? What's going on now? What was happening is that the name de Lesseps was actually a signal. And it was a signal to his very trusted friend, Colonel Mahmoud Yunus. When that name was mentioned. Yunus mobilized his men. They stormed into the headquarters of the Suez Canal Company with their guns drawn. Nasser paused for a moment and then said, today, in the name of the people, I'm taking over the company. Tonight our Egyptian Canal will be run by Egyptians. Egyptians. And the crowd erupted there, shouting mabruk. Which is congratulations. Letting off fireworks. There's a huge float. I think you will particularly love the float that paraded past. It was a float of the Egyptian Sphinx devouring a British soldier who had a union flag sewn onto his backside. So.
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C
Oh my word, that is so Tippoo's.
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D
I know Tippoo's. Tiger living again and growling again. So this rather wonderful scene. Now, when this happened, Anthony eden was in 10 Downing street hosting a dinner party. This news came through in the evening about 10:45pm and his guest of honor was King Faisal II of Iraq, a 21 year old king and his uncle, Crown Prince Abdullah and Nouria Said, who was the Iraqi Prime Minister, who is Eden's closest friend in the Arab world. So they heard that this had happened and I mean, can you imagine a sort of more incendiary moment for this to turn up when he's around these people and you know, the French ambassador was there, the American charge of, you know, it's a big sort of fancy evening, everyone wearing their tinpot medals and all of this stuff. Nasser nationalizing the Suez Canal Company was not illegal. Eden was trying to say, oh, it's an international asset, he mustn't do that. But it wasn't. It was a Private company with various international investors. Britain had nationalized those, of course, under Attlee, that had already happened. There was nothing illegal about this. But Eden sort of was immediately furious. And this looked like kind of what he'd been waiting for, which was an excuse to go to war and to topple Nasser. That's what he was really wanting. And Nuri really encouraged him. At that meeting, Nouri said to him. This is according to Noori's own recollection. He said, hit him hard, hit him soon, and hit him by yourself.
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A
And again, to give context here, the reason that Hashemites don't like Nasser is that he, again, is the wrong sort of Arab. The Hashemites were the sharifs of Mecca. They are one of these old established Arab families. They are royalty now. And Nasser's from none of that. Nasser is, in their view, from the streets of Alexandria. And he represents a completely different movement that threatens all these Middle Eastern monarchies. He's nationalist, he's a meritocrat, he's risen up the army and he's as much of a threat to the Hashemites as he is to Eden.
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D
Absolutely. I mean, they can't stand him because he's much more popular than them. And he's there sort of genuinely uniting A lot of the people in the Arab world, a lot of younger ones, they can see their powers ebbing. They look, you know, old, tired stooges, basically.
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C
Creaky and colonial. They look creaky and colonial. And the world is not like that.
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D
Exactly those things. And Nassau looks cool.
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A
They've still got Brits running their own.
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D
Yeah. And I mean, you know, this is sort of horrifying for all of them. So. Absolutely, that's sort of what happened that night. And, I mean, Eden straight away wanted to go to war and the Americans warned him off straight away. Actually, the Americans took a really strong line from the absolute beginning of like, no, you are not going to invade Egypt. You are not going to do this.
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A
So they warn him off. But presumably at that point, they're not saying, you're not going to do this, because at this point, the Americans are not saying that to the Brits, are they?
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D
No, they are saying precisely that. They are saying exactly that. In those words, it's actually an incredibly strong position that Eisenhower takes from the absolute beginning.
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A
What does Eidenhower think of Eden?
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D
He has his doubts, but at this point is kind of, you know, is sort of thinking, well, this must be a reasonable man, because he's got such a good reputation and, you know, he's done all these things in the past, but he begins to have his doubts about him. He begins to think, you know, Eden's going a bit rogue here, really. So actually, you know, Eden and Guy Mollet wanted immediately to invade Egypt and seize the canal.
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C
Well, okay, you've mentioned a name we haven't talked about so much. And also we're acting as if, you know, this is a British asset that's been seized. Yes, sure, but De Lesseps. De Lesseps is the French name that's being mentioned. And what do the French make of all of this?
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D
Guillemore, Prime Minister of France is actually a socialist because, you know, France's politics is a bit different. And it's sort of important to say here because I think, you know, when we're coming at this from a modern perspective, we don't always appreciate these different dynamics that were operating at the time. Like, even though Guillemot, left wing labor leader, all of this kind of stuff, he was extremely pro France, keeping control of places like Algeria in French politics, that didn't go with a kind of anti imperialist movement in a way that it did in Britain and elsewhere. So he was actually extremely concerned with keeping Algeria. And one of his first acts when he became prime minister was to go to Algeria and he was pelted with rotten fruit by Algerians. This made him extremely angry. It was known as La journee des Tomatoes, the Day of the Tomatoes, for the fact that he was pelted with it. And this humiliated him. It made him furious. And he decided, much as Eden had kind of formed this fixation, that Nasser was somehow behind all of his ills. Molay. Not quite to the same extent, but sort of similarly decided that, you know, Algeria would be absolutely fine. Nobody would be making any kind of fuss if it wasn't for Nasser.
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C
I mean, look, okay, so you've got the French understandably up in arms, Eden frothing. But you said the Americans warned against it. But I want to know how strongly worded that warning is, because there are warnings and there are warnings in diplomacy. So what, what does Eisenhower say?
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D
This is really strong. Okay, so Britain and France said, basically, okay, we're going to invade Egypt. That's what's going to happen. Eisenhower heard that. So if you remember, Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal Company on the 26th of July, the 31st of July. So just days later, Eisenhower heard this had happened and he wrote this letter to Eden, incredibly strong letter, expressing his horror at the prospect of, and it's quote your decision to employ force without delay or attempting any intermediate and less drastic steps. I have given you my own personal conviction, as well as that of my associates, as to the unwisdom even of contemplating the use of military force at this moment. And I think you can see the level of Eden's delusion that when he wrote his memoirs many years later, which are, I'm afraid, totes d? Lulu and really bear very little relation to reality, Eden said the President didn't rule out the use of military force. And actually he really does. I mean it's about as clear as these sort of letters get. So from the beginning the Americans didn't want that. They spent the whole of this summer of 1956 with John Foster Dulles trying to organize various conferences to resolve this issue. But in fact what happened is that Britain and France decided they were going to plan a war anyway. It was going to be called Operation Musketeer and they were going to set up a plan to invade Egypt.
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A
So Alex, you have very beautifully painted the picture in England with Eden. You've told us of Guy Mollet and his new socialist government who are perhaps counterintuitively determined to cling on to Algeria and are also ready for a punch up with Nasser. Tell us about the third corner of the triangle which is Israel and tell us all about the situation there because Ben Gurion is in charge. This is only what, eight years after the foundation of the country. Ben Gurion had always been more anti British than the generation before him. Chaim Weizmann was the guy who was very Anglophile who had charmed Balfour and Ben Gurion, born in Poland, a labor leader who rises by the power of the Hastridut labor union in pre state Israel always wants to take a stronger line with the Brits than Weizmann does. And in the process of the end of the second World War and the British pull out from mandate Palestine, the pre state Israeli forces and the British often come to blows. And actually there are moments in Jaffa during the withdrawal when they're shooting at each other. And there are of course beyond Ben Gurion, there is the Stern Gang blowing up the King David Hotel, hanging the British sergeant. So it's not necessarily the case that Ben Gurion and Eden are going to be mates.
- [16:51]
D
I'm very far from mates. And at this stage, again we have to kind of put ourselves in 1956 where the political kind of allegiances and things are completely different from today. Israel at that time. Dave McGuin's a socialist. Israel's politics were seen as much more left wing at that time. Of course, this is long before 1967. Yes, it's after the Nakba, but this is a very different point in Israel's history. And actually the allegiances were much stronger at that stage between the Labour Party and the left and Israel. Eden was an Arabist and saw himself much more in league with those kind of more conservative strains in the Arab world. Didn't trust Israel at all. So not natural friends. And, you know, I think now we sort of tend to see that obviously support for Israel is on the right of politics in the west, usually, and it tends to be very criticised on the left. But those positions are completely different in 1956, totally the other way around.
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A
So this was a surprise that Eden would reach out to Ben Gurion, a man who he may well have clashed with.
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D
No natural sympathy, no huge surprise. And it didn't happen for a very long time. So all of that summer, Britain and France were planning an open invasion of Egypt, Operation Musketeer, that they were just going to go in together and so seize the canal, that's what they were going to do. But meanwhile, as I say, everyone was trying to have negotiations and actually those worked pretty well. You had at the UN late in the day, actually, Egypt pretty much giving in to most of the demands to, you know, have sort of international control of the Suez Canal Company. And all of this being really quite accommodating. And it's pretty much resolved.
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C
When you say international control, I'm sorry, I just want to understand what that means. So NASA says, okay, we'll have a body looking after your interests, even though we will take all the profits. I mean, what is the. What is the give that he gives?
- [18:33]
D
Really? They're completely accommodating. I mean, there's a complex list of demands you can look up if you want, but, you know, basically it's pretty much resolved, actually. And Britain and France are then very upset that they're not going to be able to have their war. And it's really the French that come up with this wizard wheeze of why don't we talk secretly to Israel? It hasn't been planned like that. This war has been planned as an open invasion. But the French come up with this idea and invite them. There's this extraordinary meeting at Sevres and they decide to have a meeting there, a secret, completely secret meeting between Britain, France and Israel where they will plan a conspiracy.
- [19:07]
A
And there's this wonderful moment, isn't it, when Ben Gurion arrives at the airport, and he's spotted by a worker because Ben Gurion is a very distinctive looking character. Looks like Einstein. He's got hair all over the place. And he's not someone that you'd mistake when you saw him in the street. The guy at the airport calls his friend who's a journalist and says, ben Gurion's just landed and in Paris furtively. And the judges said, oh, rubbish. Couldn't be possibly.
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C
Don't be so stupid. What would Ben Gurion be doing in Paris? What, are you crazy?
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D
Exactly. So he just missed the biggest story of his lifetime, basically because it was Ben Gurion.
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C
Let's take a break here and we'll come back with the biggest story of that stupid journalist lifetime that he missed. But we're not going to.
- [19:49]
E
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C
So welcome back. So we left you Just before the break with David Ben Gurion arriving at an airport. Not even that much incognito, but nobody seems to notice, except one airport worker who tells a journalist who misses the story of his life. But Ben Gurin is on his way to this secret meeting. And Alex, I want to know who else is at this secret meeting.
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D
So this meeting you have this Israeli delegation led by Ben Gurion, but you know, he's also got Moshelin and Shimon Peres with him.
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A
Shimon Peres and Moshedan are both there.
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D
They are both there.
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A
Both young men at this point, very young men.
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D
And by the way, the French really didn't like Siobhan Perez. They thought he was badly dressed and they called him the man in the blue suit. The entire time he was almost impeccably dressed. I didn't like him anyway. Didn't like his outfit, thought it was too blue. Anyway, there we go. That was just the French opinion at the time. And then you had Christian Pinault, who's kind of the French equivalent. Foreign Secretary Eden wasn't there, but he had. His British representatives were there, Basically his private secretary, Donald Logan, and there was a British delegation. So there were delegations from Britain, France and Israel there.
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C
And at this point we should say that the relationship is so sour between Eden and Nasser that he has taken to calling him the new Hitler. And so, you know, it's very much the sort of notion that he's having a sort of a second Yalter Wind to him. This is how we defeat the new Hitler. The talks last for how long? And what is it exactly that they want to come out of these talks?
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D
So it goes on for, you know, a couple of days. And effectively, the idea here, I mean, you know, to put it in the simplest possible terms, is to plot a secret war. So, as I say, Britain and France already had an invasion plan to invade Egypt, but now they weren't going to be able to do that openly because Egypt had kind of agreed to everything they said they needed. They still wanted to do it. So the idea that comes up, which is so mad that actually afterwards, lots of people really didn't believe it could possibly have happened, although we know it definitely did because we now got the papers and so on, was that there would be a sort of fake beginning to this. So what was going to happen was called the Protocol of Sev. This is what was agreed, was that Israel would pretend that there had been attacks from Arab raiding groups and on that basis it would invade Sinai, attack Egypt, saying Egypt was sending these raiders.
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A
We should say that that is not an improbable thing at this point.
- [23:58]
D
No, no, it's happening all the time.
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A
To give the context here, you've got sitting in Gaza, for example, 200,000 Palestinian refugees, many of whom are from the immediate vicinity, looking onto their land that they can't visit.
- [24:11]
D
Exactly.
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A
So from the very beginning in 1948, you have these people trying to go across. Initially, you have people just going to go and harvest their crops. They are refugees in Gaza, but their fields are within sight over the new international border. And they go and try and harvest their crops and they're pushed out. Then you get the growth of what's called the fedayeen, who are these guys who in Gaza are usually Muslim brothers who are doing potshots at the Israeli border guards. You have the new kibbutzes which are being built on Palestinian villages which had just been destroyed and emptied only eight years earlier in Jordan, which at that point includes, of course, the west bank, because the Arab Legion have held the West Bank. At this point, you have other Palestinians trying to both infiltrate and get back to their lands and also do military raids across the border. So the whole idea of a fedayeen raid, a mock one, is entirely plausible. A lot of this sort of stuff is going on, isn't in the news every week.
- [25:09]
D
That bit is plausible. The rest of what happens is not. That is the kind of setup that is actually vaguely feasible at the beginning. So the plan was that Israel would claim this had happened and it would then attack Egypt. It would cross the Sinai Peninsula with the goal of reaching the Suez Canal. Britain and France would then issue an ultimatum to both Egypt and Israel. They would act as peacekeepers or a sort of international police forces, saying, both of you must cease fire, withdraw your forces from the Suez Canal Zone. And the idea would be that this was because they only care about protecting the canal in good international interests. That's what they're doing. They expected Egypt would refuse that ultimatum, and they would also give an extremely short time, just 12 hours, to do that, which would be really far too short. If Egypt did refuse, which they pretty much knew it would, Britain and France would then intervene militarily, do their war plan, occupy the Suez Canal, assert their control over it, and also go and topple Nasser into the bargain. What they were going to do was hope that the entire world would believe this Israeli invasion was spontaneous and not, in fact, being set up and supported by Britain and France.
- [26:19]
A
Alex, in your book, you very much take the view that this was a kind of Crazy plan and could never have worked. But it could have worked, couldn't it? In actual fact, NASA's army was not militarily strong. Israel, Britain and France were all much more military adept than the Egyptians in all sorts of ways. Whatever the morality of it, it wasn't something which was doomed to failure.
- [26:43]
D
I think it really was. You're absolutely right that those armies were much more organized, stronger, better armed, and that that will become apparent as we move into the actual war. But there were a number of really big problems with it. First of all, even Britain and France's original invasion plan, which was just an open invasion, it wasn't pretending to be a covert operation. And then a police response to it was not considered militarily feasible by the planners in Britain. They thought it was not going to work. Partly it was completely unrealistic about how long it would take to get to Alexandria. There was also, and again, one might have some historical flashbacks to more recent events, such as the invasion of Iraq. There was no plan for what would happen after they'd toppled Nasser. They didn't have a reasonable plan for how they were going to occupy Egypt. Were they going to run it as a colonial power? Who were they going to put in charge? Absolutely no thought about any of this had occurred. It was an extremely difficult plan to pull off. Plus, of course, you have the basic problem of human error. Now, the idea, yes, theoretically, to sort of stop an Israeli invasion and have this police action. Let me tell you how long it took for this conspiracy to leak. And this is one thing, you know, we have conspiracies in history and when they come, we normally find out about them really quickly because people are massively leaky. And basically what happened almost immediately, immediately, because the French weren't particularly bothered. It was Eden that cared about keeping this secret. The French and the Israelis did not care about keeping a secret. So what happened is that somebody from the French government went for some nice drinks at a nightclub in Paris and told all about it to another politician who then went and told a junior British MP who then went and told everyone in the uk and basically this took days to leak out that this was not real.
- [28:25]
A
And there's also a sense on the Israeli side that they're quite chuffed to be pulled into. The Israelis are delightful, a young nation. They haven't got the reputation or the diplomatic heft that they have today. And they're rather pleased to be invited in with the big boys.
- [28:38]
C
Well, they've also got no reason to keep schtum about it, okay? So, I mean, so the word is out, the cat is out of the bag, meowing furiously but the invasion still happens. And just tell me how it goes. Does it go according to plan?
- [28:52]
D
No, because these things almost never do. As I said, the military strategists involved all thought this plan was a bad one. And it's partly because if you are trying to plan something that looks like that is a kind of reaction to an invasion, that would look very different from an open invasion. If you're trying to plan something that looks like a police action, it would be a completely different scenario. So initially the plan seems to happen. Israel, the idf, being led by Ariel Sharon at that point invades Sinai, starts marching into Sinai. The French rush to London to have this kind of sham talk that is supposed to be sort of a spontaneous reaction to Israel's invasion of Egypt. And they issue this 12 hour ultimatum. 4:15pm they come out with, which says that both Israel and Egypt must stop fighting and withdraw 10 miles from the Suez Canal. This is essential. And if they don't do this, and if they don't accept an Anglo French occupation of the canal zone within 12 hours, Britain and France will invade. Now this immediately looks absolutely ridiculous to everyone involved, partly because the Israeli army, the IDF has not got as far as they thought. So no forces are anywhere near the suez Canal on the 30th of October at 4:15pm Actually the front is about 75 to 125 miles east of that. Egyptian troops then engaging the Israelis in Sinai. So what this meant is that the ultimatum that said you've both got to withdraw 10 miles from the canal, in fact asked Egypt, which was technically the victim of aggression, to withdraw 135 miles. Well, Israel, the aggressor was actually being told to advance 115 miles into Egypt. So people could immediately see that this was absolute nonsense. It just wasn't realistic.
- [30:37]
C
Something stinks here. This doesn't. It also just doesn't make sense. The whole thing isn't just nonsense.
- [30:42]
D
Exactly. And I mean, you know, we've got a line from the Foreign Office. At that stage, it's not attributed. But one Foreign Office official asked another what was going on and the man pointed at Downing street said, don't ask me, ask that fucking madman over there.
- [30:55]
C
Really, seriously, don't you like US records?
- [31:00]
D
You can bleep me if you like, but that's no, we don't do bleeds.
- [31:07]
C
Everyone's a grown up. That's okay.
- [31:09]
D
People worked it out immediately because this was just a complete Nonsense that didn't fit the facts on the ground. So, I mean, that's why I say this plan couldn't have worked. And by then, news was reaching people that there had been this kind of collusion, that there'd been this conspiracy. Even if you didn't believe those rumours, you could see what was happening, just didn't fit what they were saying.
- [31:28]
C
So, Alex, I mean, it just seems like chaos and a right mess and a really incendiary, dangerous mess going on in Egypt. Meanwhile, it's not much better in Hungary. And these are really important stories to tell because they almost sort of mirror each other in the timeline and also in the effect that they have on international security. So tell us what's going on with Hungary at this time.
- [31:52]
D
Well, there's a whole other story going on, basically in the Soviet states and the Soviet bloc, but it becomes incredibly important because these things happen at the same time. It's important to remember Stalin had just died, 1953, just three years before this, and Nikita Khrushchev took over as the Soviet leader after various shenanigans, rather amusingly represented in the film Death of Stalin. That's a good summary of it. And around, you know, this time, Khrushchev issued his secret speech. As it was, it wasn't really secret, it was published. But the idea was it was this speech that basically said, at this point, it kind of denounced Stalin and Stalinism, pretty much said, look, that was too harsh, it was too tightly controlled. It wasn't, you know, what we want for our new, wonderful Soviet world? Begin a process of liberalization, of desalinization. Not desalinization, which removing the salt, but destalinization, removing the Stalin.
- [32:44]
A
Good job. You made that decision.
- [32:45]
D
Very important to say the word very carefully.
- [32:48]
A
Muddled viewers.
- [32:49]
D
Exactly. So basically, you know, this. This has quite a big effect. And I mean, a lot of those Soviet bloc countries, Poland, particularly in Hungary, had been under really harsh Stalinist regimes. A lot of repression, a lot of really horrible kind of imprisonments, terror for the population, really unpleasant situations. And this seemed like a moment when things might change. It's quite exciting for a lot of people that might happen. So in Poland, there was, you know, a kind of a moment where it looked like things might change. And actually Khrushchev flew there to try and sort it out and then was, you know, and sort of calmed that situation down. And then, very unexpectedly, there was this uprising in Hungary, and this began on the 23rd of October 1956, so exactly the same time as you had The Israelis in France negotiating the Protocol of Sev. This is coincidental, but it is happening at the same time. And it becomes therefore not coincidental and really important. So it was a spontaneous uprising, really, in Budapest, but a huge uprising of 200, 300,000 people parading through Budapest and calling for a new government. So getting rid of Matthias Rakozi, who was this really quite unpleasant leader who was heavily associated with Stalinism, and putting in a guy called Imre Nagy, who was also a communist, had been leader of Hungary before, was seen as kind of a much more liberalizing presence. So they weren't overthrowing communism, they just wanted nicer communities. Communism.
- [34:16]
C
I mean, just a little observation that he was so completely despised, Rakozi, that, I mean, his nickname widely throughout Hungary was Asshead because he had a bald head. So they referred to him as down with Arsenal was what the cry was from the populace.
- [34:32]
D
And, you know, let's be honest, he deserved it. Although you had to be quite careful about using nicknames like that in the hearing of the Hungarian avh, the security services secret police at that time. But basically all these people paraded through Budapest and they pulled down this enormous statue of Stalin that was in the center of Budapest that had been put up, and it took forever. It was a very heavy, difficult statue to pull down. Trucks, hacksaws, you know, blowtorches, eventually got this thing down. And, you know, this was sort of deeply alarming, not only to the Soviets, of course, but also to the. A lot of the Hungarian government, Rakazi and so forth, who were pro Soviet, who had supported this. And actually they called in Soviet troops. They said, we're going to need Soviet troops for this. We're going to crack down. You had kind of this sort of very dramatic scene going on in Budapest that night with clashes between Hungarian troops and protesters and so on, and Soviet troops begin to move towards Budapest at that point.
- [35:27]
A
So how does US react?
- [35:29]
D
Well, I mean, with great complexity, the US doesn't quite know what to think. The CIA hadn't thought Hungary was a place that the first anti Soviet revolution would start. They had actually assessed that as very low risk. So in Moscow, Khrushchev said, the CIA is doing all of this. They're setting it up. This is coming from the Americans. Like, obviously Hungarians would never rebel against our wonderful Soviet system. So this must be the CIA. The CIA is saying, wow, we had no idea this was going to happen. And they really didn't. They didn't think it was even really worth their time. They thought Hungary wasn't going to shift. So, you know, it really wasn't coming from the CIA, to be fair. It was actually very much a natural, spontaneous uprising by the Hungarian people. So the Americans don't quite know what to make of it. One problem is that Hungary is landlocked. It's, you know, in the center, if you think about it. So any possibility of American troops turning up to help is very, very difficult. Is how you would even get them there. So basically the Americans are like, what the hell is happening? Why is this happening? And also at that point they thought, and everyone knew things were getting very spicy in the Middle east and they knew Israel was planning something, but everybody thought at that point Israel was going to invade Jordan.
- [36:38]
A
Alex, wouldn't you have thought that this would be a good moment then for shenanigans in the Sinai, Americans looking elsewhere? The Soviets are tied up. If you're Eden or Ben Gurion, you'd thought this might be the moment to snatch your chance at pulling a fastball.
- [36:52]
C
You might have thought, but they probably do.
- [36:54]
D
I mean, they might as well. That might have been. Yeah, a thing that went through your head, unfortunately. What sort of happens here is, you know, I think until we get into the Cuban Missile Crisis itself, the huge nuclear event, this is kind of the most dangerous point of the Cold War so far because these countries are not speaking to each other. You know, Nikita Khrushchev doesn't have a phone line to Eisenhower in the White House. They can't talk. They don't talk. They both hugely mistrust each other. So what these two leaders can see now, remember, Britain, France and Israel know what they're planning. They're planning this, this secret invasion. And Britain and France have this idea that this is going to be, you know, marvelous sort of imperial action and re establish them in the Middle East. The US does not know that they are planning that. They have had to keep it from Eisenhower. He doesn't know what's going on. They all at this point think the Israelis are going to probably go to war with Jordan for totally different reasons and that this is what's sort of happening. Khrushchev doesn't know that the CIA are not involved in Hungary and they're also not really involved in Egypt. He thinks America is probably planning all these things at the same time and that therefore that this great war is starting, that the Americans are planning this kind of global conspiracy to topple Communism. That's not what's happening at all. But those are the things he can see.
- [38:08]
C
But that's what it looks like if you're in your respective turrets and you don't talk to each other, that's what it looks like. Can I just ask very pointedly, risk assessments are always made. Does anybody at this time mention the phrase World War iii?
- [38:21]
D
It's literally the phrase that everyone is then saying, partly because these two things happen at once and that they both pull in the Soviet Union and the us Neither of whom actually is planning either of these things, but both of whom think the other is. And therefore, these sort of levels of. Of mistrust get to a very, very high level.
- [38:40]
A
Distrust and paranoia. Yeah.
- [38:42]
D
And so they basically start thinking, okay, this is it. This is the big one. And it's happening simultaneously in the Middle east and in Eastern Europe. This is a global war. This is what's going to kick off.
- [38:53]
C
So with that phrase, World War 3 hanging in the air, we're going to leave you on that cliff edge, because, remember, this is, you know, sort of people who have not long been at peace, Okay? A world that was torn apart in everybody's memory. And you've got turmoil and distrust, not just in the Middle east, but in Hungary as well, between the United States and the Soviet Union. So, look, if you can't wait to find out what goes next, who can blame you? I don't blame you.
- [39:20]
A
Who could blame you? I would want to join the Empire Club because I would not know what's coming next.
- [39:24]
C
EmpirePod UK.com is where you need to go join our club. Then you don't have to wait. And you get all of these miniseries in one go. But whichever way you listen to us, whether it's on the regular slot or in one big gulp, till the next time we meet, just goodbye from me, Anita Arnand.
- [39:40]
A
And goodbye from me, William Durable.
- [39:51]
G
Hi again. It's David from the Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier. Victory over drugs is our cause, a just cause, and with your help, we are going to win.
- [40:03]
A
Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin drug cartel, the world's 14th richest man.
- [40:09]
F
He was, in many ways, a terrorist.
- [40:12]
G
This is an economic power concentrated in a few hands and in criminal minds. What they cannot obtain by blackmail, they get by murder.
- [40:21]
D
And I don't think he expressed any regret at all.
- [40:25]
G
He tries to portray himself as a man of the people, this kind of, like, leftist, revolutionary outlaw.
- [40:31]
A
Nearly everyone in Medellin supports the traffickers. Those who don't are either dead or targets.
- [40:37]
F
If you declare war, you got to expect the state to respond this is.
- [40:42]
G
The moment where he goes too far. 13 bombs have gone off of Medellin since the weekend. By the end of 87, Bogota is essentially a war zone. US spending for international anti drug efforts is going to grow from less than $300 million in 1989 to more than 700 million by 1991.
- [41:01]
D
It is the certain knowledge that no one is really safe in Colombia from drug cartel assassins.
- [41:06]
G
It's a conflict where the goal wasn't even to stop the flow of cocaine. It was to bring down this narco terrorist.
- [41:13]
F
Everything has turned against him after this point. The whole thing he was building is collapsing. To hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.